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Congo’s incredible history
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…
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Lessons in Leadership: JFK
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…
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Understanding the bomb: Command and Control
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.
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From Here To Eternity: An Intimate Death
Several weeks ago I attended a presentation that my sister had given at the National Gallery of Australia. She had participated in the ArtMed program in 2016 whilst studying medicine. For the program, she had conducted a research project into how death is presented in the artwork of the Sumatran culture and compared it to…
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J R: A Humble Cello Piece
None of William Gaddis’s books continue to be published in Australia. I had to order my copies of J R and The Recognitions from the US, ironically paying a premium for these pieces of art because, I suppose, that’s what America’s all about. It is truly tragic that Gaddis, arguably the person responsible for kickstarting…
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My first Murakami: Sputnik Sweetheart
There is simply no way for sex and love not to be messy. After all, have you ever seen somebody get shot without bleeding?
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Siddhartha and the Quest for Subjective Experience
Recently I have found myself embroiled in the concept of subjective experience and its importance in generating true understanding about particular concepts. The human experience is a particularly challenging idea to convey to another person; it is often challenging to the point of being impossible, a limit which we can asymptotically approach but have no…
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William Stoner and the act of loving
“Love was a passion neither of the mind nor of the flesh; rather, it was a matter of both as if they were but the matter of love, its specific substance. To a woman or poem, it says simply, ‘Look! I am alive.'”
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The Outsider (The Stranger) by Albert Camus
My close friend, Arend, gave me a copy of this novella for my 20th birthday. It was the Penguin Classics translation by Sandra Smith. It’s a very short read with a succinct, dense story told from a first person perspective of a man by the name of Mersault. Every thought within the novella is as…
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Out of Ireland; getting to know Robert Devereux
Out of Ireland is a novel by Christopher Koch; it is a diary of an Irish political prisoner, Robert Devereux, and the story of his exile in 1849 to Van Diemen’s Land penal colony for the incitement of violent revolution in Ireland. I chose to read this book purely for the reason that it was on…
The Queanbeyan Review
Literature, Australian football, Rugby, Cricket. Written on Ngunnawal country. Follow on twitter @qbynrob
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A thug’s game played by … thugs?
For the first time in rugby history national teams are, to the man, players who first took to a rugby field knowing there might be one day a chance of competing for money – now the effect this had on their psyche is playing out on the field.
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A love-hate letter to David Foster Wallace
“You, not something like you, but you, are one of the voices inside my head, and having read you so young, I don’t know whether it’s mine or yours. But you know what, David? I don’t like that voice very much. It’s usually more trouble than it’s worth. You aren’t one of the good voices.”
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May the days be aimless
There is a rhythm in this novel. Not a rhythm to its prose, that’s an analogy you’ve probably heard a lot, but to the entire piece of work. Beneath every piece of music lies a beat. Not the beat played by the instruments, I mean beneath even that. Beneath the beat is the original beat.…
The Queanbeyan Review 