Literature, Australian football, Rugby, Cricket. Written on Ngunnawal country. Follow on twitter @qbynrob
In so much other fiction, and in life in general, empathy is presented as a virtue, as inherently linked with kindness, sympathy, charity, and compassion. But, to Carver, empathy can create benevolence or malevolence, for any number of reasons. He tends to present empathy as its own beast, and above all, as a method of self-exploration.
Looking back, if I were an ordinary worker in Redfern or Glebe in 1910, I would almost certainly have sided with league.
Pat reads Ursula Le Guin's fantasy classic. "If ever you want to delve into a world that is utterly fanatistical, but explore the lives of the people within whose struggles are so strikingly like our own, Earthsea is surely for you."
Bertrand Russell was a British philosopher, mathematician, and political activist who lived from 1872-1970. His magnum opus is generally considered to be the Principia Mathematica which is a three-volume work establishing the foundations of mathematics using logical axioms and symbolic logic. Russell then proceeded to venture into the field of epistemology. I started my recent … Continue reading The Value of Philosophy
Once again, I come to you with a novel recommended to me by a dear friend. It seems to be a good way to choose literature, by having someone else determine whether it’s worth reading or not beforehand. The novel in question, The Eye of the Sheep by Sofie Laguna, was mentioned during a discussion … Continue reading The Light in the Eye of the Sheep
Sure, funny has an energy, but it's the structure of funny that gives that energy life. In the height of the show's success, The Marine Biologist took to the screens for the first time, and to me it typifies the character of the Seinfeld project.
The friend who gifted me this book described it as her second or third favourite book. She had found a copy of it in one of those street libraries – the kind where you swap one book for another - and picked it up for me hoping that I would read it and write a … Continue reading The God of Small Things
The success Van Reybrouck achieves here is not only by documenting a wonderful history of the Congo. What makes Congo a masterpiece is the way he weaves it together with the history of the world, bringing to light the enormous importance and influence of a nation that before reading this book, I knew not a single thing about, and the intensity of perspective that even a cursory understanding of Congo’s history can offer us all.
A Thousand Days paints a picture of Kennedy the way just one person saw him, but that person describes a lucid decision maker, principled problem solver, and a man deeply interested in international progress. In terms of global leadership, he was certainly not out of his depth. By any interpretation of this recount, it's clear the 35th President provided leadership the world desperately needed in a deeply troubling time.
Simultaneously an excellent Cold War history and a gripping tale of the human experience, steeped in great research and excellent storytelling, Command and Control offers profound perspective and insight on nuclear war and proliferation that I am unlikely to forget any time soon.
The Queanbeyan Review 