Notes from Eve Abbey • January 2019

Browse: SUMMER READING 2018 CATALOGUE NEW RELEASES

I have already recommended to you the books written by newish Australian writer Jock Serong. First he wrote two thrillers called Quota and The Rules of Backyard Cricket and then On the Java Ridge, another thriller about asylum seekers and now he offers a terrific piece of historical fiction. It is called Preservation and is based on the wreck of the Sydney Cove which happened at the entrance to Bass Street in 1797.

The survivors from this wreck set off in a longboat to get help from Sydney but they were again shipwrecked. The survivors from this second shipwreck, including some lascars, then set off to walk 300 miles to Sydney. Only three people reached Sydney. One of these people published a diary of the trek which was published in a newspaper at the time.

Jock Serong has taken this epic story and with great care given us his version of the events. You can bet your bottom dollar this is thrilling but not a thriller. Wonderful characters include the earnest assistant to Governor Hunter who is deputed to find out the truth from the arrivals, and his self-confident wife, as well as the most evil baddie you can ever hope for.

Contact with the indigenous people is nicely handled and all ends well when a rescue ship is sent down to Preservation Island where the original survivors are still clinging to hope. This forgotten shipwreck will now be well-remembered I am sure.

Biologist James Watson, 1962 Nobel Prize co-winner with Francis Crick for discovering the double-helix form of DNA has been in trouble again over his views about racial intelligence. You can find his famous story about the decoding of DNA on the shelves at Abbey’s. It is called Double-Helix: A Personal Account of the Discovery of the Structure of DNA. Full of gossip and rivalry, this was a best seller for us at the time.

There was talk that they had used X-Ray photographs done by Rosalind Franklin, without her permission, and there was a book about this, Rosalind Franklin: The Dark Lady of DNA. Her family were involved with the firm of Routledge and Kegan Paul and I recall going to lunch with her brother who had come to Sydney to promote their books.

I’ve been to see Mary Poppins Returns and can assure you it is totally terrific. Indulge.

Happy New Year,

Since 1968 ~ Abbey's 131 York Street Sydney ~ An Aladdin's cave for readers

Notes from Eve Abbey • November 2018

Browse: SUMMER READING 2018 CATALOGUE NEW RELEASES

Rick Morton, journalist on The Australian, has written a searing autobiography about his childhood on an enormous pastoral station in far-west Queensland. Not easy reading but leavened by some very amusing insights.

His violent and tyrannical grandfather passed on his genes throughout the family. Morton now says he is a “middle-class man in a poor boy’s body”. If you want to understand what it is like to be poor in this country read this. It is called One Hundred Years of Dirt.

It is 250 years since Captain Cook set sail from England to enter the Pacific. There is a book which is a companion piece to a TV programme on Foxtel I think. It is called The Pacific in the Wake of Captain Cook with Sam Neill and written by Meaghan Wilson Anastasios.

As I was born in New Zealand and went to a country school with many Maori friends I especially enjoyed the first section. I even have a copy of Cook’s famous map of New Zealand. I might put it up in the shop. It is a very readable book with informative remarks from interested people especially displayed throughout the text as well as excellent colour photographs.

There is a new book from Clare Wright who wrote The Forgotten Rebels of Eureka about the women involved in that famous episode. This new, much larger, book is called You Daughters of Freedom: The Australians Who Won The Vote and Inspired the World. Clare points out that World War I overshadowed the fame of Australia as a progressive reformist nation.

This new book is about the well-travelled activists such as Vida Goldstein, Nellie Martel, Dora Montefiore, Muriel Matters and Dora Meeson-Coates (who painted the famed banner carried in the British Suffragettes’ enormous marches in 1908 and 1911). These Australian women were amongst the leaders in the International movement for votes for women.

Both books are very readable. Here is an historian who can tell a good story!

Robyn Williams, of ABC Radio's The Science Show fame, has just written his autobiography and given it the title Turmoil: Letters from the Brink. Like many of us in the later stages of interesting lives he wonders where the world is heading.

Many of his tales fall into line with the recent upheaval at ABC where management by email or cartoon seemed to have gained the upperhand. He enthusiastically sings the praises of young scientists in Australia and thinks he has had a very lucky life.

You will enjoy, as I did, some stories about famous scientists. The Science Show is on Radio National on Saturday at noon and repeated on Wednesday. Don’t miss it. Thank you Robyn and friends.

I hope you pick up a copy of Abbey’s Christmas catalogue for 2018 which is in-store now. Inside the front cover there is a nice photograph of Abbey’s when we were in the Queen Victoria Building in George Street. Do you remember that comfortable shop? I think we have customers today who came along there with their parents. That was fifty years ago!

Keep well,

Since 1968 ~ Abbey's 131 York Street Sydney ~ An Aladdin's cave for readers

Notes from Eve Abbey • October 2018

NEW RELEASES

I’ve been reading some really good novels, not the latest releases, most especially Ruth Park’s The Harp in the South. What a great writer! You can get Harp in the South at a good price as a Popular Penguin, but the typeface is old fashioned or you can choose The Harp In the South Novels which includes Missus, Harp in the South and Poor Man’s Orange. I’m sure if you have been to the Sydney Theatre Company production you will want to fill it all in. Pure enjoyment.

Photo credit: Daniel Boud





I was also given Steven Carroll’s latest version of T.S.Eliot’s private life in A New England Affair. Steven has made two previous imaginings in The Lost Life or in A World of Other People. All wonderful books. This latest one is so very sad it was hard to read.

I admire greatly the writing of Steven Carroll so must remind you again of the Glenroy series about a suburban family in Melbourne beginning in the Fifties. There are five novels now – the first is The Art of the Engine Driver, so check them out at Abbey’s or in your library. Unique style. Great writing.





Finally I have also enjoyed an expanded edition, of Anthony Hill’s Captain Cook’s Apprentice. It is 250 years since Cook’s momentous voyage into the Pacific , so important to us, so it is a good time to publish the expanded edition of this ripping novel. Isaac Manley, one of the servant boys on board was promoted to Midshipman and later became an Admiral so there will be lots to learn for anyone dreaming of a life at sea – both good and bad.

Keep well,

Since 1968 ~ Abbey's 131 York Street Sydney ~ An Aladdin's cave for readers