Sunday 30 December 2007

Christmas reading: Espresso Tales

From the book by Alexander McCall Smith, p. 4:

Australia was a world away, and it was full of possibilities. Anybody might be forgiven for going to Melbourne or Sydney—or even to Perth—and discovering that life in those places was fuller than the one they had led before. There was more space in Australia, and more light—but it was also true that there was there an exhilarating freedom, precisely the sort of freedom that might appeal to a nineteen-year-old. And there were young men, too, who must have been an additional lure. She might meet one of these and stay forever, forgetful of the fact that vigorous Australian males within a few years mutated into homo Australiensis suburbis, into drinkers of beer and into addicts of televised footie, butterflies, thus, into caterpillars.


Not to mention the cricket. Nice to see India beaten into early submission in the Boxing Day Test.

"As a batsman, if you don't have runs flowing, you're under the pump," said Gilchrist after India were bowled out for 161 in their second innings to secure a 337-run victory, with the last five wickets collapsing in 10 overs for a mere 27 runs. "They [the Australian bowlers] were a great pack of bowlers that worked well and hunted well."

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Gordon, not sure what you felt about the Blue Like Jazz book craze across the U.S., but after reading your blog, i just have to recommend a book to you and your readers for the new year. It is Brown Like Coffee. Kind of wacky but real challenging. I found it at brownlikecoffee.com . It seemed kind of like a response to BLJ. I would love to get your response to both books.