Book reviews: October 2019
Check out the reviews of the latest titles to hit the bookshelves
Guinness World Records 2020
Macmillan
$49.99
Reviewed by Esha Chanda
4/5 stars
The 66th instalment of Guinness World Records is a snapshot of our world and its quirks. From the weird and wonderful naturally-formed phenomenon on our planet Earth to man-made achievements in sports, tech, and engineering, the book is packed with 11 chapters that celebrate some of the most astonishing and inspiring achievements.
The editor’s letter says that the team goes through 100 applications each day and while it’s a regrettable no for ‘most e-mails unread’ and the ‘longest time in the shower’, the hand-picked ones make it to the final print.
It’s a fun compilation and makes for a good coffee-table book with interesting bits of information, from the coolest (largest Lego-brick sundial) to feel-good ones (oldest professional club DJ; an 83-year-old woman in Japan in case you’re wondering) and most bizarre (most toothpicks in a beard).
The Fifth Column
Andrew Gross
Macmillan
$34.99
Reviewed by Steve Atkinson
4/5 stars
Charlie Mossman is a New York bloke who’s fallen on hard times in the late 1930s. The once highly regarded academic made a dumb move with one of his students and an even dumber move while filled with a skinful of liquor. But, he’s paid his price in the big house and is back in society on the bottom rung of the ladder.
It’s here while trying to make amends to his estranged wife and young daughter that he runs into a sweet elderly Swiss couple who are not all what they seem. Well, that’s how he sees it, but unfortunately, with his past track record, not many are listening.
Set prior to the US entering World War II, the old-school styled plot gives us a look-in and the local politics at the time and perhaps a wider understanding of neo-Nazism that bubbles below the surface there today. Not a bad read at all.
Psychedelic Apes
Alex Boese
Macmillan
$34.99
Reviewed by Steve Atkinson
4/5 stars
Ever stood around a barbeque on a starry night with maybe one too many ales in you and contemplated the Universe with some mates? Well, here is the ticket to helping provide answers to those crazy discussions, like, are we living in a black hole, what if dinosaurs died in a nuclear war (say what?), what if humanity is getting dumber, what if Jesus were a mushroom, and many other questions that get bandied around when friends and frowned-upon substances collide.
The author explains all of this in easy-to-understand language, while backing the theories up with solid evidence from clever academic papers. But, getting back to dinosaurs dying in a nuclear war, this would mean that they would have had to harness nuclear fusion. Surely not?
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