Viking ship Gokstad at the brilliant Vikingskiphuset, Oslo
Saluhall, Stockholm’s food heaven
Without wishing to give the impression that my stomach was the only thing on my mind while visiting Stockholm I have to make it clear that in the historic Ostermalms Saluhall there lies foodie heaven. This elegant market has about twenty traders, all leaders in their fields, who sell the most divine…
Just a few of the reasons it’s impossible not to love Helsinki
The Food: Always noted for it’s beautiful fresh product, particularly its fish, Helsinki is now a foodie paradise with plenty of inventive cutting edge fine-dining restaurants as well as fun cafes.
Helsinki Trams: Not just an easy and accessible way of getting from A to B they are also a quick easy and cheap way to see many of the major sites in Helsinki in the company of locals going about their daily lives. The routes are easy
What the papers are saying today about books
“The women who led us so magnificently into our own modernist age in Australian literature are lost to time,” argues Natascha Robinson in The Australian. And this means that fine authors like Eleanor Dark, Stella Miles Franklin, Katherine Prichard and Rosa Praed are under-appreciated, if known at all. Read the full article.
Steve Romei argues that Peter Carey “under appreciated” Amnesia may be Australia’s best hope for the upcoming Man Booker Prize long list. And he’s got some tips on who else might be there.
Why I won’t be reading Harper Lee’s Go Set A Watchman
It’s been a while since there has been such an explosion of commentary about a book. Particularly before its release. All weekend the twittersphere has been running hot about Harper Lee’s Go Set A Watchman which is officially released on Thursday. Rarely have 140 characters been so breathlessly targeted.
To Kill A Mockingbird is probably my favourite books. Atticus Finch is
probably my favourite literary character. And even allowing for the trepidation that usually accompanies the sequel or prequel to any loved novel, particularly one that is part of the canon of American literature, my order was lodged with my local bookshop and I was looking forward to diving straight in. Not now though. For me, the deluge of commentary has had the opposite effect. Atticus Finch a racist!!!!!! screamed one tweet.
Pic of the Day: Wedding day, street art, Redfern, Sydney, Australia
Review: Sparse prose, clever plot and subtle lyricism combine to make I Saw A Man by Owen Sheers a classy novel
It is not surprising to discover that Owen Sheers, author of the newly-released I Saw A Man, is also a poet and a playwright. Evidence of those skills are apparent throughout this ingenious and captivating novel where three men are inextricably woven together by a series of tragic events, each culpable in their own way, each also a victim of those events.
Michael Turner is a journalist who has become internationally famous particularly for a book written after years of intense observation of the subjects and immersion in their lives yet in which the writer is completely “eradicated”. He leaves his Welsh cottage and moves to London after the death of his journalist wife Caroline in a US drone attack while she is on assignment in Pakistan. On the day he moves into his new apartment he meets Josh Nelson, a Lehman Brothers banker who lives next door, and who seems to go out of his way to absorb him into his family, wife Samantha and two young daughters. Until tragedy strikes and through his guilt and pain Josh realizes that just as he has not been the perfect husband and father, Michael may not be the benign friend he had thought.
And on the other side of the world USAF Major Daniel McCullen who gave up his
Pic of the Day: Once extinct in the wild the legendary Przewalski horse now roams again the wilds of Mongolia
The Last Pilot by Benjamin Johncock travels back to the excitement of the early space race
I can vividly remember as a young child, all those years ago, listening to the radio with my family as Neil Armstrong’s voice announced “one giant leap for mankind” as he stepped on to the moon. We were staying at a tiny hotel in northern Spain and together with the handful of other guests including a Belgian couple on their honeymoon and a family from Paris, we marveled at the achievement, later staring up through the starlit night sky at the moon trying to imagine that two men were up there looking down at us. It really was the most unforgettable experience, almost impossible to convey in the context of today’s world.
The Last Pilot, Benjamin Johncock’s debut novel, is set in the years of the
fledgling space programme that paved the way for Apollo 11. It was a world made increasingly fearful by the belligerence between the USA and Russia. The Arms Race and the Space Race becoming two sides of the same coin. The book focuses on the fictional USAF Captain Jim Harrison and his wife Grace happily living in the searingly dry heat of California’s vast Mojave Desert where he was a military test pilot. Apart from the job which comes