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Books I have completed

So Sad To Fall In Battle

The Bat­tle of Iwo Jima has been memo­ri­al­ized innu­mer­able times as the sub­ject of count­less books and motion pic­tures, most recent­ly Clint Eastwood’s films Flags of Our Fathers and Let­ters from Iwo Jima, and no wartime pho­to is more famous than Joe Rosenthal’s Pulitzer Prize-win­ning image of Marines rais­ing the flag on Mount Surib­achi. Yet most Amer­i­cans know only one side of this piv­otal and bloody bat­tle. First pub­lished in Japan to great acclaim, becom­ing a best­seller and a prize-win­ner, So Sad to Fall in Bat­tle shows us the strug­gle, through the eyes of Japan­ese com­man­der Tadamichi Kurib­ayashi, one of the most fas­ci­nat­ing and least-known fig­ures of World War II.

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The Ship That Never Was: The Greatest Escape Story Of Australian Colonial History

The great­est escape sto­ry of Aus­tralian colo­nial his­to­ry by the son of Australia’s best-loved sto­ry­teller In 1823, cock­ney sailor and chancer James Porter was con­vict­ed of steal­ing a stack of beaver furs and trans­port­ed halfway around the world to Van Diemen’s Land. After sev­er­al escape attempts from the noto­ri­ous penal colony, Porter, who told author­i­ties he was a ‘beer-machine mak­er’, was sent to Mac­quar­ie Har­bour, known in Van Diemen’s Land as hell on earth.

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Syria’s Secret Library

The extra­or­di­nary sto­ry of how the besieged Syr­i­an town of Daraya found hope and inspi­ra­tion in a secret under­ground library. Daraya lies on the fringe of Dam­as­cus, just south west of the Syr­i­an Cap­i­tal. Yet it lives in anoth­er world. Besieged by Syr­i­an gov­ern­ment forces since 2011, its peo­ple were deprived of food, bom­bard­ed by bombs and mis­siles, and shot at by snipers. Its build­ings lay in ruins; office build­ings, shops and fam­i­ly homes shat­tered by the con­stant shelling from gov­ern­ment forces. But deep beneath this scene of fright­en­ing dev­as­ta­tion lay a secret library. No signs marked its pres­ence. While the streets above echoed with rifle fire and shelling, the secret world below was a haven of peace and tran­quil­li­ty. Books, long rows of them, lined almost every wall. Bloat­ed vol­umes with grand leather cov­ers. Tat­tered old tomes with bare­ly read­able spines. Pock­et sized guides to Syr­i­an poet­ry. Reli­gious works with gaudy gold-let­ter­ing and no-non­sense ref­er­ence books, all arranged in well-ordered lines. But this pre­cious horde of books was not bought from pub­lish­ers, book ware­hous­es, or loaned by oth­er libraries. Many peo­ple had risked their lives to save books from the dev­as­ta­tion of war. Because to them, the secret library was a sym­bol of hope — of their deter­mi­na­tion to lead a mean­ing­ful exis­tence and to rebuild their frac­tured soci­ety. This is the sto­ry of an extra­or­di­nary place and the peo­ple who made it hap­pen. It is also a book about human resilience and val­ues. And through it all is thread­ed the very won­der­ful, uni­ver­sal love for books and the hope they can bring.

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Shackleton

An author­i­ta­tive biog­ra­phy of Sir Ernest Shack­le­ton from polar adven­tur­er Ran­ulph Fiennes. In 1915, Sir Ernest Shack­le­ton’s attempt to tra­verse the Antarc­tic was cut short when his ship, Endurance, became trapped in ice. The dis­as­ter left Shack­le­ton and his men alone at the frozen South Pole, fight­ing for their lives. Their sur­vival and escape is the most famous adven­ture in his­to­ry. Shack­le­ton is an engag­ing new account of the adven­tur­er, his life and his incred­i­ble lead­er­ship under the most extreme of cir­cum­stances. Writ­ten by polar adven­tur­er Sir Ran­ulph Fiennes who fol­lowed in Shack­le­ton’s foot­steps, he brings his own unique insights to bear on these infa­mous expe­di­tions. Shack­le­ton is both re-appraisal and a vale­dic­tion, sep­a­rat­ing the man from the myth he has become.

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Signs Of Life: To The Ends Of The Earth With A Doctor

In 2010 Stephen Fabes rode away from his career as an emer­gency doc­tor in Lon­don, on a jour­ney that would see him ride the length of six con­ti­nents; a cycling cir­cum­nav­i­ga­tion which took six years. Signs of Life is his sto­ry of a world of chal­lenges — from Tajik camel spi­ders to camp­ing on a frozen lake in Mon­go­lia, to coax­ing anoth­er few kilo­me­tres out of ‘Ol’ Patchy’ (his faith­ful inner tube), and of fas­ci­nat­ing inter­ac­tions with the peo­ple of sev­en­ty-five coun­tries; from hos­pitable nomads and curi­ous chil­dren to vin­dic­tive bor­der guards and gang­sters. It is also a sto­ry of med­i­cine call­ing Stephen back; he recalls his first pro­nounce­ment of death as he exam­ines the frozen body of a monk high in the Himalayas; he is drawn into treat­ing patients at a lep­rosy clin­ic; he helps refugees at The Jun­gle in Calais. All the while, he reflects on how soci­eties treat their most vul­ner­a­ble and draws com­par­isons with the lost souls he had treat­ed back home in Lon­don; peo­ple who he resolves to tru­ly lis­ten to, when he returns to his vocation.

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Nala’s World

Insta­gram phe­nom­e­non @1bike1world Dean Nichol­son reveals the full sto­ry of his life-chang­ing friend­ship with res­cue cat Nala and their inspir­ing adven­tures togeth­er on a bike jour­ney around the world. When 30-year-old Dean Nichol­son set off from Scot­land to cycle around the world, his aim was to learn as much as he could about our trou­bled plan­et. But he had­n’t bar­gained on the lessons he’d learn from his unlike­ly com­pan­ion. Three months after leav­ing home, on a remote road in the moun­tains between Mon­tene­gro and Bosnia, he came across an aban­doned kit­ten. Some­thing about the pierc­ing eyes and plain­tive meow­ing of the bedrag­gled lit­tle cat proved irre­sistible. He could­n’t leave her to her fate, so he put her on his bike and then, with the help of local vets, nursed her back to health. Soon on his trav­els with the cat he named Nala, they forged an unbreak­able bond — both curi­ous, inde­pen­dent, resilient and adven­tur­ous. The video of how they met has had 20 mil­lion views and their Insta­gram has grown to almost 750k fol­low­ers — and still count­ing! Expe­ri­enc­ing the kind­ness of strangers, vis­it­ing refugee camps, res­cu­ing ani­mals through Europe and Asia, Dean and Nala have already learned that the unex­pect­ed can be pret­ty amaz­ing. Togeth­er with Gar­ry Jenk­ins, writer with James Bowen of the best­selling A Street Cat Named Bob, Dean shares the extra­or­di­nary tale of his and Nala’s inspir­ing and heart-warm­ing adven­ture together.

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Les Misérables

Set against the back­ground of polit­i­cal upheaval in France fol­low­ing the rule of Napoleon I, the nov­el tells the sto­ry of the peas­ant Jean Val­jean, a con­vict strug­gling to escape his past and on the run, hunt­ed by Inspec­tor Javert, a police agent with a ruth­less con­science. Their world encom­pass­es a broad sec­tion of the out­casts, rejects and rebels of ear­ly 19th-cen­tu­ry French soci­ety, as events take in a tour of the city’s sew­ers, the bat­tle of Water­loo and the July Revolution.

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Dark Emu

In this sem­i­nal book, Bruce Pas­coe uncov­ers evi­dence that long before the arrival of white men, Abo­rig­i­nal peo­ple across the con­ti­nent were build­ing dams and wells; plant­i­ng, irri­gat­ing, and har­vest­ing seeds, and then pre­serv­ing the sur­plus and stor­ing it in hous­es, sheds, or secure ves­sels; and cre­at­ing elab­o­rate ceme­ter­ies and manip­u­lat­ing the land­scape. All of these behav­iours were incon­sis­tent with the hunter-gath­er­er tag, which turns out have been a con­ve­nient lie that worked to jus­ti­fy dispossession.

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