Read “real fiction” Nart, they say. “You’ll love it” they say. Pass. Plot: Anarchist, socialist, sometimes illicit gardeners Birnam Wood are fighting for a better future with fiery leader Mira  at the helm and her long suffering second Shelley. Yes, like in Macbeth, so you probably know what’s coming. Unfortunately, given that they are a bunch of law breaking anarchist socialists, they can barely keep their operation running, let alone have wide reaching influence. Mira is determined to find a way to break through though, […]

I read good things about Birnam Wood, and so I put it on my library queue – and realized I had not read her earlier, Booker-winning novel, The Luminaries. I put both on my queue, and both arrived near-ish to each other. Both were ALSO nearly (and now just slightly) about to be overdue at the same time, so I read them back-to-back, in order to return them without too much strain on the library borrowing system.  Despite the fact that these are very different books, I […]

“The Korowai Pass had been closed since the end of the summer, when a spate of shallow earthquakes triggered a landslide that buried a stretch of the highway in rubble, killing five, and sending a long-haul truck over a precipice where it skimmed a power line, ploughed a channel down the mountainside, and then exploded on a viaduct below.” I think if I read and reread this book more than once or twice it would grow in my estimation. I really enjoyed it, and there’s […]