Human smoke

by Nicholson Baker. Simon & Schuster, 2008.

Better-known as a novelist, Baker here turns to history, with a fresh perspective on the lead-up to World War II. Using a huge variety of sources, from contemporary newspapers to diary extracts, and eye-witness accounts, he composes a sort of verbal mosaic of the times. This has been done before, notably by Studs Terkel, but Baker’s particular narrative views the accelerating drift to war from a pacifist perspective. It is unusual to have an emphasis on the voices which dissented to the inevitability of war, and surprisingly confronting. Baker has already drawn fire from critics who feel he underemphasizes the imperative reasons for going to war with Hitler’s Nazi Germany; he does not paint a flattering picture of Churchill by any means. He takes his narrative up to the end of 1941, when, as he points out, the great majority of those who were to die in World War Two had yet to die.

Thought-provoking, gripping, grim - this is history with great immediacy. Will there be a second volume descending further into the storm?

Miles Franklin award winner 2008

This year's Miles Franklin Award has gone to Steven Carroll for his novel The time we have taken. Set in suburban Melbourne of the 1970's the novel is described by the judges as a 'moving and indelible in its evocation of the extraordinary in ordinary lives'.

Carroll said of the award:

"It's instantly recognisable so hopefully these things help you and kick in
and help you in your writing career and make sure it doesn't go bum."

Here's the link to the ABC news story.
Manly Library has several copies of the book. To check availability and place your hold please visit our online catalogue.

LibriVox

LibriVox is a site that hosts audio book versions of books that are in the public domain. They are read and recorded by volunteers and hosted on the site for download. They just reached 1500 titles in the collection.

We’ve had a pretty extraordinary May. We cataloged our 1,500th book, James Baldwin’s children’s history book, Four Great Americans, which was a great accomplishment. (Considering seven months ago we were at 1,000). But we also had an impressively productive month: we released 115 (!) audiobooks into the public domain, almost four per day. Our previous record for monthly production was 77, reached in July 2007.