Tag Archives: Family Compact

Some Thoughts on a Year of Reading

16-01-02 READING picIt’s been an aver­age year of read­ing. 160 books and about 500 aca­d­e­m­ic papers, arti­cles, short sto­ries and oth­er short items. His­to­ry and anthro­pol­o­gy dom­i­nat­ed the book read­ing, as usu­al, with an empha­sis on Aus­tralia, the Pacif­ic, the Cana­di­an North and West, and the ideas of 19th cen­tu­ry Cana­di­an demo­c­ra­t­ic reform­ers. I became par­tic­u­lar­ly fas­ci­nat­ed by the 19th cen­tu­ry con­vict colonies of Aus­tralia and the French Pacif­ic pos­ses­sions, and I ampli­fied pre­vi­ous read­ings (such as Robert Hugh­es ven­er­a­ble The Fatal Shore, and the eye-open­ing but lit­tle known Australia’s Birth­stain, by Babette Smith). Thomas Keneal­ly, giv­ing Hugh­es a run for his mon­ey in A Com­mon­wealth of Thieves, cov­ers the gen­er­al sub­ject with extra­or­di­nar­i­ly vivid prose, and Siân Rees makes a clos­er case study in The Float­ing Broth­el — The Extra­or­di­nary True Sto­ry of an Eigh­teenth- cen­tu­ry Ship and Its Car­go of Female Con­victs. Read more »