Pakeha New Zealander, trying to read more and be a bit more grounded in the real. Huge Goodreads fan but also a fediverse fan and keen to try this thing out. Grateful to the volunteers with their ethos that have established all this.
Despite being curious and picking up tiny little slivers of knowledge through work; I know I know essentially nothing about Aboriginal Australian nations and culture. This book is great; and introduction and invitation written/edited by a proud Koori man named Bruce Pascoe; to know more, to celebrate culture, to reckon with historical and contemporary injustices. I am grateful for this accessible intro and recommend it to anyone who ever lives in or travels to Australia.
From the bestselling author of The Garden of Evening Mists, a spellbinding novel about …
Swimming in phosphorescence was the best scene
2 stars
I dunno if I just wasn’t in the mood for it, or if it was just a hard act to follow after the gentleman in Moscow, but I didn’t love this book, and joined through it for book club rather than for any other reason. Maybe it’s my ignorance of malay history. Maybe it’s that I don’t really care about the marriages of white people in history. It hit some sweet notes and I appreciated the theme of what loyalty may mean in the context of friendship and marriage and with lovers. But despite some evocative scenes and clever plot weaving it just felt two dimensional.
When, in 1922, thirty-year-old Count Alexander Rostov is deemed an unrepentant aristocrat by a Bolshevik …
I’m there for the description of wine
4 stars
Another book club book and I swear in trying to speed read this I must have missed huge chunks and don’t fully understand what happened at the end! But I loved the descriptions and the main character and would probably happily re-read it on an island. One critique from another in book club which I agree somewhat with is that the main character didn’t feel very Russian; his optimism in particular felt very American. But maybe that’s the point- the internationalists perspective? Or maybe we have too grim a view of Russia? Nonetheless a great read and would recommend.
A stunning illustrated memoir of one man's journey across New Zealand's stunning yet challenging Te …
Sweet and easy read
4 stars
Man this dude was lucky; this could be a tale of warning (at one point he heads off into the hills with a cyclone coming)… but he wasn’t the only one doing this.
He makes this walk seem accessible, which is inspiring, but also worries me a bit.
But on the flip side, it’s an easy and beautiful and inspiring read. I think he benefitted from the hospitality of the girls more than he let on, but it was also cool to see how things worked for them. Will give this to my mum, I know she will enjoy it a lot. Very pretty book.
Peacemakers: The Paris Peace Conference of 1919 and Its Attempt to End War (2001) is …
Long & detailed audiobook
4 stars
I don’t know if I would have been able to get through the density of it reading normally- that’s more of a reflection on me than the book; which deftly explains details of countries and people I’d never known much about. It’s crazy seeing the impact of that time and those decisions to today; the audacity of the men that made decisions at the time about places they at times barely knew also.
It starts off with the most horrific bits; it’s important for context: for the confusion and love that follows.
It blows my mind that we celebrated this man, but this book challenges and explains that fact beautifully.
The years that have passed since Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and Michael Collins piloted the …
Review of 'Carrying the Fire' on 'Goodreads'
5 stars
Without a doubt, this is by far best book I've read about the space program. Collins was uniquely positioned to write such a singularly important book, being the closest eye-witness to one of humanity's towering achievements. Not participating directly in the landing, but listening to it from orbit 60 miles above the surface of the Moon, gives him an enhanced perspective, detached yet supremely interested, as evidenced by his futile attempts to locate his crewmates via his ship's sextant. This perspective, along with Collins's predispositions, yields fertile ground from which to reap rich meaning and context, commodities perhaps hard to come by for test pilots who have been trained to operate complex machines and collect raw data. Among his Apollo 11 crew, Collins represents a sort of middle ground between cool and reserved Neil Armstrong and hot and flamboyant Buzz Aldrin, possessing personality traits that served him well while flying …
Without a doubt, this is by far best book I've read about the space program. Collins was uniquely positioned to write such a singularly important book, being the closest eye-witness to one of humanity's towering achievements. Not participating directly in the landing, but listening to it from orbit 60 miles above the surface of the Moon, gives him an enhanced perspective, detached yet supremely interested, as evidenced by his futile attempts to locate his crewmates via his ship's sextant. This perspective, along with Collins's predispositions, yields fertile ground from which to reap rich meaning and context, commodities perhaps hard to come by for test pilots who have been trained to operate complex machines and collect raw data. Among his Apollo 11 crew, Collins represents a sort of middle ground between cool and reserved Neil Armstrong and hot and flamboyant Buzz Aldrin, possessing personality traits that served him well while flying solo in Columbia, and while writing this book. By this I mean that Collins offers the reader a balanced combination of technical information regarding his flights and those of his colleagues, and honest discussions of what all of this meant to him personally. After all, we send humans in space not only to collect data, but to hear their stories.
Project Gemini is often overlooked due to its position between the firsts of Mercury and the Moon landings. In some ways it's my favorite phase of the early space program though, as it represents, and indeed contains, much of the journey, the trial-and-error figuring out of basic yet complicated problems such as "how do you bring two spacecraft together in orbit?" and "how do you get around outside your spacecraft?" and "how long can astronauts live in space anyway?" Or indeed, "how do you put crews together?" These are things that were top-line prerequisites for going to the Moon. Collins flew on Gemini 10 with another legend, John Young, and performed one of the hairiest spacewalks in the program. The chapters covering Gemini are standouts in this superb book.
As mentioned earlier, Collins doesn't hesitate to personalize his narrative, to describe frankly his point-of-view and give his opinions on space exploration, politics, conservation, or less serious matters, all the while relating to the reader in a very personal way. This, along with his unique perspective and excellent writing style, makes Carrying the Fire a perennial essential read.
The years that have passed since Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and Michael Collins piloted the …
A Stunning account of a Stunning event
5 stars
Listened to the audiobook version.
I found this deeply engrossing and immersive; his explanation of complex physics and step by step experiences were beautiful and inspiring. I particularly appreciated his description of quitting smoking (!) and of Velcro for folk who may have never seen it before. Highly recommended.
