Forrest Gump (Winston Groom)

Forrest Gump

Winston Groom

Blurb: Laugh, cry, stand up and cheer: Forrest Gump is everyman's story, everyman's dream. A wonderfully warm, savagely barbed, and hilariously funny 'tale told by an idiot', from the razor-sharp pen of a contemporary wizard.

No one is spared and everyone is included. If you've ever felt lacking, left out, put upon - or just wanted to have a rollicking good time - this book is for you. At 6'6'', 240 pounds, Forrest Gump is a difficult man to ignore, so follow Forrest from the football dynasties of Bear Bryant to the Vietnam War, from encounters with Presidents Johnson and Nixon to powwows with Chairman Mao. Go with Forrest to Harvard University, to a Hollywood movie set, on a professional wrestling tour, and into space on the oddest NASA mission ever. 

Forrest Gump lives! Thank heavens!

ISBN: 0552996092 (Paperback)

Year: 1986

Publisher: Black Swan

Pages: 239 (Fiction)

Links

1. Buy from the Book Depository

2. Buy from Amazon

3. Wikipedia page on the author

4. Wikipedia page for the book

5. Goodreads page for the book

Fair Share: Country and City in Australia - Quarterly Essay Issue 42 (Judith Brett)

Fair Share: Country and City in Australia - Quarterly Essay Issue 42

Judith Brett

Blurb: Once the country believed itself to be the true face of Australia: sunburnt men and capable women raising crops and children, enduring isolation and a fickle environment, carrying the nation on their sturdy backs. For almost 200 years after white settlement began, city Australia needed the country: to feed it, to earn its export income, to fill the empty land, to provide it with distinctive images of the nation being built in the great south land. But Australia no longer rides on the sheep's back, and since the 1980s, when 'economic rationalism' became the new creed, the country has felt abandoned, its contribution to the nation dismissed, its historic purpose forgotten. 

In Fair Share, Judith Brett argues that our federation was built on the idea of a big country and a fair share, no matter where one lived. We also looked to the bush for our legends and we still look to it for our food. In late 2010, with the country independents deciding who would form federal government, it seemed that rural and regional Australia's time had come again. But, as Murray-Darling water reforms shows, the politics of dependence are complicated. The question remains: what will be the fate of the country in an era of user-pays, water cutbacks, climate change, droughts and flooding rains? What are the prospects for a new compact between country and city in Australia in the twenty-first century?

ISBN: 9781863955263 (Paperback)

Year: 2011

Publisher: Black Inc.

Pages: 91 (Non-Fiction)

Links

1. Official site for the issue

2. Buy from Readings

3. Buy from Penguin Books

4. Review of the essay

5. Blog on the essay

The Given Day (Dennis Lehane)

The Given Day

Dennis Lehane

Blurb: Set in Boston at the end of the First World War, The Given Day tells the story of two families - one white, one black...

Beat cop, Danny Coughlin, the son of one of the city's most powerful police captains, is on the hunt for hard-line radicals. Drawn into the political fray, he soon finds his loyalties compromised. Luther Laurence, on the run after a deadly confrontation with a crime boss, works for the Coughlin family, all the while desperately trying to find a way home to his pregnant wife.

As Danny, Luther and those around them face increasingly turbulent times, they are forced to ride a rising storm of hardship and deprivation that will change their lives forever.

Coursing through some of the pivotal events of the age, Dennis Lehane's masterly new novel explores the crippling violence and irrepressible exuberance of a country at war with, and in thrall of, itself.

ISBN: 9780552775588 (Paperback)

Year: 2008

Publisher: Black Swan

Pages: 733 (Fiction)

Links

1. Author's official site

2. Buy from Amazon

3. Review of the book

4. Another review

5. Wikipedia page for the author

Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides (James Ponti)

Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides - Book of the Film

James Ponti

Blurb: Captain Jack is back! Grab your sword and get ready for a brand new swashbuckling adventure with Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides! Captain Jack is searching for the Fountain of Youth, along with his crew aboard the Black Pearl. But when he comes up against the most fearsome and legendary pirate of all time, Blackbeard, it looks like he has finally met his match...

Climb aboard the Black Pearl and prepare for the ride of a lifetime in this fantastic book of the film!

ISBN: 9781445419374 (Paperback)

Year: 2011

Publisher: Parragon

Pages: 101 (Fiction)

Links

1. Original novel compared with movie version

2. Pirates wiki page

3. Review of the film

4. Official Disney page of the film

5. IMDB page for the film