|
|
Post by Matthew on Jul 10, 2014 7:36:56 GMT
|
|
|
|
Post by edwin on Jul 10, 2014 8:25:23 GMT
Interesting that the Australian inferiority complex comes out, British thinking of Australia as just Neightbours etc. One could ask if Australians aren't already living in a PA world, clinging as they do to the coastal areas like some "Wool" silo relying on artificial support.
To talk of a 75,000 year-old culture is laughable when incoming Australians have done their best to denigrate that culture. Read The Hunter-Gatherer Way by Ffyona Campbell for a small example of a fresh view of that culture, for example she has, literally, a new slant on the very tall images of people in Aboriginal cave paintings.
What Australia does have, as one of the comments said is thousands of miles of not much, from a superficial view which is what Mad Max and the like are filmed from. The same point is illustrated in one of my favourites The Bush Soldiers by John Hooker where the sort of PA survivors of a Japanese invasion are stalked for a time by one of an Aboriginal family they have wronged.
|
|
|
|
Post by triffiduscelestus on Aug 3, 2015 2:38:38 GMT
I have just been reading a new-to-me Australian PA novel that I found in the charity shop.
Salt by Gabrielle Lord. Set in 2075 after an Australian Civil war and the ravages of increased salinity and climate change. The remanants of Sydney live in a diminishing area of the town surrounded by walls and sun-resistant netting. The normal outside temperature is 57celcius. The government has given way to a state controlled by a security apparatus and the brutalised population find solace in new drugs and violence.
It is quite a good read and fairly prescient about climate change considering it was published in 1990.
|
|
|
|
Post by gladys on Aug 3, 2015 18:47:24 GMT
Technically John Marsden's young adult series beginning with Tomorrow When the War Began, is probably not "PA"but has similarities.It was a great favorite at the school where I worked and when we had a visit from some Kiwis,(still not sure how they blundered into northern New York) produced a lot of laughs when I congratuated them on saving the world.....or, strictly speaking, just Australia.....  (Recently in the US library community there has been a great kerfuffle over adults who read young adult literature-don't ask-but I am definitely guilty as charged...and not only for "professional" reasons as a retired/volunteer librarian!) |
|
|
|
Post by edwin on Aug 5, 2015 17:32:05 GMT
Young adult novels can be great. My romantic soul is entertained by some of the flutterings towards love by youthful survivors. Reminiscent of the later Lone Pine novels by Malcom Saville. I got stuck reading The When the War Began but might return to it.
|
|
|
|
Post by gladys on Aug 5, 2015 19:29:52 GMT
Oh dear Edwin, more books for me to hunt down and fill the house with.....:)Actually I searched several library union catalogs and found nothing, went to US Amazon site and found the books (at serious prices) but no synopses or reviews. Landed on the UK Amazon page where some had descriptions and reviews-enough to more than catch my interest but not at those even more interesting prices (postage!)I suspect if I'd run into them as a "young adult" (not an ancient adult...:)I would have absolutely loved them as I was then suffering from a serious case of Anglophilia....I'll keep looking, and as they said in Galaxy Quest, "never give up, never surrender...."
|
|
|
|
Post by edwin on Aug 5, 2015 20:39:28 GMT
|
|
|
|
Post by edwin on Aug 5, 2015 20:47:33 GMT
|
|
|
|
Post by gladys on Aug 6, 2015 19:48:12 GMT
Yup, you sure are. But considering I do the same thing......:)I've been working with finding "western" books (like Tony Hillerman) for an 80yr old friend of my husband's, resulting not only in his getting his first library card, but also his first interlibrary loan transaction. I've had a lot of satisfying moments as a librarian but that was one of my favorites!Just this morning picked up what was described as PA by Paolo Bagicigalup(oops, spelling not likely accurate. I reverted to Brooklyn speak there-it's close to the author's name but dead on for a common name in the Greatest Boro of NYC)Got water in the title-just the kind of description that used to make my day on the reference desk.....
|
|
|
|
Post by edwin on Aug 6, 2015 21:53:12 GMT
The Water Knife by Paolo Bacigalupi?
|
|
|
|
Post by gladys on Aug 7, 2015 19:16:12 GMT
Got it in one, but that's what I'd expect from a librarian. Slightly off topic, but here are my two favorite titles people wanted to know if we had: l. Alastair America's Cookbook. 2.The King of Pelham. Can you guess the real titles? Hint: late 70's reference question.... |
|
|
|
Post by edwin on Aug 8, 2015 11:03:06 GMT
Letter from America (Penguin Celebrations) by Alistair Cooke (ISBN: 9780141035345)?
|
|
|
|
Post by edwin on Aug 8, 2015 11:07:28 GMT
King of Pelham-my London origins would lead me to think of George Major "Pearly King of Peckham"
Or, The Taking of Pelham 123
|
|
|
|
Post by edwin on Aug 8, 2015 11:11:33 GMT
One of our Romance readers put in a request for the, then, latest James Bond novel "In Love with a Spy" (The Spy Who Loved Me).
|
|
|
|
Post by gladys on Aug 8, 2015 16:35:30 GMT
Someone should publish a book of these things-you got The Taking of Pelham 123, the other was Alastair Cooke's America, which was popular at the time!
|
|
(Recently in the US library community there has been a great kerfuffle over adults who read young adult literature-don't ask-but I am definitely guilty as charged...and not only for "professional" reasons as a retired/volunteer librarian!)