0311 | The Crying of Lot 49 | Thomas Pynchon
Context: Bought this at a charity shop and walked onto Hartham in Hertford to sit and read it and almost immediately had company in the form of 2 swans and…
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0310 | The Death of Ivan Ilych – Leo Tolstoy
Context: Started this at the Mapang Guesthouse in Port Moresby before heading back to the UK. REVIEW This is more of a short story than even a novella, but what…
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0309 | Ben Hur: A Tale of the Christ – Lew Wallace
Context: Finished this off as I waited four hours for my connecting flight to Port Moresby at Nadzab Airport just outside Lae. REVIEW All I could think about was the…
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0303 | The Jungle – Upton Sinclair
Context: Read this on my e-reader while walking to and from work. First book I’ve read on my 5 min commute. REVIEW Wow. What a book! And not just because…
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302 | The Island of Dr. Moreau | H.G. Wells
Context: Finished this over a plate of beans one lunchtime. REVIEW Wells was a genius who was way ahead of his time in being able to grasp some of the…
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0300 | The Scarlet Letter – Nathaniel Hawthorne
Context: Started and finished this in the garden as I’ve taken to 30 mins a day pottering around there ridding my body of office toxins. REVIEW The first audio book…
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0299 | Botchan – Natsume Soseki
Context: While I was reading this, a friend who was going away lent me her little runaround. Didn’t run around on it much though. REVIEW Lived in Japan for years…
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0296 | One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest – Ken Kesey
Context: This was the first book I finished in our new home in the Highlands of Papua New Guinea. REVIEW Long ago, I saw the film of this book and…
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0290 | The Plague – Albert Camus
Context: Read this while we screened the Jesus Film on a generator at the Foursquare Church in Male, PNG. REVIEW It seems entirely appropriate that I should finish this book…
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0287 | Paddy Clark, Ha, Ha, Ha–Roddy Doyle
Context: While I read this, we did teacher training sessions for the teachers at Male Primary School. REVIEW Heard a lot about this Booker Winner (1993) but never had a…
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0286 | The Bookseller of Kabul – Åsne Seierstad
Context: Read this as we continued to cross off days on our calendar during 34 days in the village in PNG. REVIEW This as not what I was expecting. I…
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0284 | The Handmaid’s Tale–Margaret Atwood
Context: Read this while we hosted many villagers on our large veranda in PNG. REVIEW I’ve read a number of Atwoods but nothing comes close to this. Somehow she’s managed…
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0281 | The Pearl – John Steinbeck
Context: Finished this off the day we decorated the meeting house with palms and said thanks to our wasfamilis. REVIEW Steinbeck hasn’t written anything that I haven’t enjoyed in some…
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0280 | Kim – Rudyard Kipling
Context: Finished this off in the midst of packing for five weeks living in a village in Papua New Guinea. REVIEW This took a lot of getting through. Thankfully I’d…
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0279 | The Return of the Native –Thomas Hardy
Context: Listened to this over weeks while travelling through Korea, Japan and Australia to emigrate to Papua New Guinea. REVIEW Some Hardy I like. Others I do not. This fell…
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0278 | A Dry White Season – Andre Brink
Context: Finished this the weekend we started cooking our own food in shelters we’d built ourselves called haus kuks. REVIEW Seems to be a season of South Africa! Following…
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0276 | The Life & Times of Michael K – J. M. Coetzee
Context: Finished this book off and read most of it under the haus win shelter at Nobnob in Madang, PNG. REVIEW This is a curious little book about a man…
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0273 | On Chesil Beach – Ian McEwan
Context: Read this while we were meeting the church staff for lunch at our immense church in Seoul, South Korea. REVIEW This is the most amazing book. It’s the fourth…