Memoir/Biography

Memoir/Biography

Under a Venice Moon by Margaret Cameron

Reviewed by Wendy Lipke Margaret Cameron is new to sharing her work, but a brief conversation with a friend, who remarked that she’d seen it all and she could write a book, changed everything. As the author recalls, the assertion arrived like a wind-blown leaf in an overgrown conversational garden. I decided to write that

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Memoir/Biography

Little Bird of Auschwitz by Alina and Jacques Peretti

Reviewed by Richard Tutin Anyone who was interred in the Auschwitz prison camp during World War II was, more often than not, destined never to be released. Auschwitz has gone down in history as one of, if not the most, despicable places of death and torture created by human beings. It was a place where

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Memoir/Biography

Four Years in a Red Coat by Miyakatsu Koike

Reviewed by Norrie Sanders How would you feel if you were happily working overseas, then arrested without trial and deported to another country and held indefinitely in custody by armed guards? All through no fault of your own. Such was the fate of Miyakatsu Koike, a Japanese national, working in Indonesia for a Japanese bank.

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Memoir/Biography

I Am a Killer by Danny Tipping and Ned Parker

Reviewed by Clare Brook The general public has a fascination with sensational details surrounding murder.  There have been many documentaries made to satisfy that curiosity, usually detailing the immediate evidence surrounding the physicality of the crime.   I Am a Killer is based on the successful Netflix series of the same name.  The aim of this

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Memoir/Biography

The Boys by Ron Howard and Clint Howard

Reviewed by Gerard Healy A very interesting look inside the world of 1960s and 70s TV shows and later Hollywood movies, by brothers Ron Howard and Clint Howard. Ron is the better known of the two with his childhood appearances in The Andy Griffith Show and Happy Days and his later successful directing career. He

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Memoir/Biography

Twelve Summers by Adam Zwar

Reviewed by Richard Tutin Sport has a special place in the hearts and minds of many Australians. While some just enjoy watching their favourite sports heroes in action, others, like Adam Zwar, take it to a different level. Zwar recounts memorable moments from his life while tying them to the cricket season that played out

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Memoir/Biography

William Cooper by Bain Attwood

Reviewed by Ian Lipke Bain Attwood is an experienced historian who currently occupies a Chair of History at Monash University. The professor knows what he is writing about. In 2010, his book Possession: Batman’s Treaty and the Matter of History won the Ernest Scott Prize for the most distinguished contribution to the history of Australia

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Memoir/Biography

Broken Spear by Robert Cox

Reviewed by Ian Lipke This novel by Robert Cox introduces its readers to a man called Tom Birch, one of those almost forgotten identities who lived in a fertile part of middle and eastern Tasmania. As always in attempts to resurrect a person, long dead, there must be considerable research combined with a lot of

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Memoir/Biography

These Precious Days by Ann Patchett

Reviewed by Patricia Simms-Reeve It is no wonder that this latest book by Ann Patchett has inspired unanimous praise and enthusiastic responses from those who have read this as a ‘hugely enjoyable conversation with a particularly brilliant friend.’  She is one of the current 250 members of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and

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Memoir/Biography

Margaret Flockton – A Fragrant Memory by Louise Wilson

Reviewed by Patricia Simms-Reeve To celebrate the 200th birthday of the Sydney Botanic Gardens, Wakefield Press has produced a book that is a delight on many levels. It is a detailed tribute to Margaret Flockton’s work, her life, and her position in Australia’s art scene – and her courageous journey from England to forge her

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Memoir/Biography

A Funny Life by Michael McIntyre

Reviewed by Antonella Townsend I laughed, I cried laughing … I cried! I could leave it there, but for the sake of this not being the shortest review in the history of reviews, I will give a brief explanation. I laughed to the point of tears because Michael McIntyre is clearly one of the funniest

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Memoir/Biography

Take Risks by John Marsden

Reviewed by Gerard Healy What a fascinating, controversial and notable memoir/political manifesto by John Marsden, the well-known Australian author of the Tomorrow When the War Began series. In this book he looks back over his own schooling, his long teaching and writing careers and his establishment of two independent schools in country Victoria. Quite a

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Memoir/Biography

Nellie by Robert Wainwright

Reviewed by Wendy Lipke Robert Wainwright is a veteran journalist who has now written fourteen books. As has been his custom, he focusses on the people behind the major news of the day. In this case, it is a time over 140 years ago. There has been much written about the career of ‘the nightingale’,

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Memoir/Biography

Borges and Me by Jay Parini

Reviewed by Antonella Townsend “How on earth had I landed in bed with an elderly, loquacious blind man in a remote village in the Scottish Highlands?” A famous blind Argentinean writer, an American student, driving an old Morris Minor, touring the Scottish Highlands. Interesting plot.  But this narrative is more biography than fiction. The student

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Memoir/Biography

A Historian Against the Current by Don Longo

Reviewed by E. B. Heath ‘… all history is contemporary history … all serious study of the past is informed by the problems of the historian’s own time.’ Benedetto Croce On reading the prologue in Don Longo’s biography of Austin Gough, it occurred that Longo was being dramatic in an effort to incite readers’ curiosity.

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