The author invites you inside the protagonist's exhausted and possibly paranoiac mind, and for most of the book you're wondering if we're all headed for the funny farm. The denouement celebrates the resilience and capability of an exhausted parent in very unexpected ways.
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He/him. Living and working in Melbourne Australia. Aging, with a lifelong interest in reading but not many books actually consumed these days. Would love to recapture the voraciousness of my youth.
Mastodon: @gerg@hachyderm.io
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2024 Reading Goal
Success! gnewt58 has read 12 of 12 books.
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gnewt58 started reading The Man Who Didn't Fly by Martin Edwards
gnewt58 finished reading Murder in the Frame by Dave Warner
gnewt58 reviewed Hours Before Dawn by Celia Fremlin
The Hours Before Dawn (1958) was Celia Fremlin's debut fiction, and won the Edgar Award …
Oh mother!
4 stars
Content warning Slight spoiler
gnewt58 finished reading Hours Before Dawn by Celia Fremlin
Hours Before Dawn by Celia Fremlin, Chris Simmons, Laura Wilson
The Hours Before Dawn (1958) was Celia Fremlin's debut fiction, and won the Edgar Award for novel of the year …
gnewt58 quoted Hours Before Dawn by Celia Fremlin
The Hours Before Dawn (1958) was Celia Fremlin's debut fiction, and won the Edgar Award …
For she wasn’t happy exactly, not just now; she was too sleepy most of the time. It was more that she possessed happiness, as one might possess an evening dress tucked away in the back of a wardrobe. Even though one might find no time to wear it, it was still there; it wasn’t like not having an evening dress at all….
— Hours Before Dawn by Celia Fremlin, Chris Simmons, Laura Wilson
gnewt58 reviewed Force and Fraud by Ellen Davitt
Melodrama
3 stars
First published in 1865, and billed as "Australia's first murder mystery", Force and Fraud is a well paced 19th century melodrama. The characters are fairly thinly drawn, but the social observations seem (from this temporal distance) accurate to time and place. To the reader the outcome seems obvious from early in the book, and the mystery is only in the minds of the characters themselves. Not a bad read at all, and the biographical notes on the author are a great read in themselves.
gnewt58 started reading Hours Before Dawn by Celia Fremlin
Hours Before Dawn by Celia Fremlin, Chris Simmons, Laura Wilson
The Hours Before Dawn (1958) was Celia Fremlin's debut fiction, and won the Edgar Award for novel of the year …
gnewt58 finished reading Force and Fraud by Ellen Davitt
gnewt58 started reading Force and Fraud by Ellen Davitt
The name behind the Davitt award
gnewt58 reviewed Fancy Bear Goes Phishing by Scott J. Shapiro
Fancy Bear Goes Phishing is an entertaining account of the philosophy and technology of hacking—and …
Not the darknet diaries
4 stars
While the book does review some pivotal cybersecurity incidents the conclusions it draws are way more thought provoking than (for example) the Darknet Diaries.
gnewt58 quoted Fancy Bear Goes Phishing by Scott J. Shapiro
Fancy Bear Goes Phishing is an entertaining account of the philosophy and technology of hacking—and …
Cybersecurity is not a primarily technological problem that requires a primarily engineering solution. It is a human problem that requires an understanding of human behavior.
— Fancy Bear Goes Phishing by Scott J. Shapiro (62%)
of 'Conclusion: the death of solutionism'
gnewt58 finished reading Fancy Bear Goes Phishing by Scott J. Shapiro
Fancy Bear Goes Phishing by Scott J. Shapiro
Fancy Bear Goes Phishing is an entertaining account of the philosophy and technology of hacking—and why we all need to …
gnewt58 reviewed The Saint Meets the Tiger by Leslie Charteris
(aka known as "The Saint meets the Tiger.") In the quiet village of Baycome on …
A sign of another time
3 stars
Anachronistic adventure with impossibly heroic protagonist. A bit hard to swallow in 2024
gnewt58 finished reading The Saint Meets the Tiger by Leslie Charteris
The Saint Meets the Tiger by Leslie Charteris
(aka known as "The Saint meets the Tiger.") In the quiet village of Baycome on the North Devon Coast, the …