Tag Archives: Parramatta City Library

On the Noodle Road

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On the Noodle Road by Jen Lin-Liu

Non Fiction – Cooking, Silk Road

Abstract

A food writer travels the Silk Road, immersing herself in a moveable feast of foods and cultures and discovering some surprising truths about commitment, independence, and love. Feasting her way through an Italian honeymoon, Jen Lin-Liu was struck by culinary echoes of the delicacies she ate and cooked back in China, where she’d lived for more than a decade. “Who really invented the noodle?” she wondered, like many before her. But also: How had food and culture moved along the Silk Road, the ancient trade route linking Asia to Europe and what could still be felt of those long-ago migrations? With her new husband’s blessing, she set out to discover the connections, both historical and personal, eating a path through western China and on into Central Asia, Iran, Turkey, and across the Mediterranean. Continue reading →

What days are for

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What days are for by Robert Dessaix

 

Abstract

One Sunday night in Sydney, Robert Dessaix collapses in a gutter in Darlinghurst, and is helped to his hotel by a kind young man wearing a T-shirt that says F… YOU. What follows are weeks in hospital, tubes and cannulae puncturing his body, as he recovers from the heart attack threatening daily to kill him. While lying in the hospital bed, Robert chances upon Philip Larkin’s poem ‘Days’. What, he muses, have his days been for? What and who has he loved ? and why? This is vintage Robert Dessaix. His often surprisingly funny recollections range over topics as eclectic as intimacy, travel, spirituality, enchantment, language and childhood, all woven through with a heightened sense of mortality.

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Collapsed on a pavement, Robert Dessaix was helped by a young man wearing a t-shirt that says F… YOU and a hotel staff member. He suffered a major heart attack but thanks to those kind people, he was saved. Continue reading →

The Yellow Birds

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The Yellow Birds by Kevin Powers

 

Abstract

“The war tried to kill us in the spring,” begins this breathtaking account of friendship and loss. In Al Tafar, Iraq, twenty-one-year old Private Bartle and eighteen-year-old Private Murphy cling to life as their platoon launches a bloody battle for the city. In the endless days that follow, the two young soldiers do everything to protect each other from the forces that press in on every side: the insurgents, physical fatigue, and the mental stress that comes from constant danger. Bound together since basic training when their tough-as-nails Sergeant ordered Bartle to watch over Murphy, the two have been dropped into a war neither is prepared for. As reality begins to blur into a hazy nightmare, Murphy becomes increasingly unmoored from the world around him and Bartle takes impossible actions.

Comments

Took a while to get into the book but enjoyed it. Very good portrayal of what it means to go to war and the consequences. Sterling was a very interesting character. Heart of gold but very rough exterior. Continue reading →

Nebula Awards

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Sci-Fi and fantasy lovers, here are some great reads for you.

The Nebula Awards are voted on, and presented by, active members of Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, Inc. With its 1,500 members, many of the leading writers of science fiction and fantasy, it awards the best in sci-fi and fantasy one of major fiction genres.

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