Born to Run: A Hidden Tribe, Superathletes, and the Greatest Race the World Has Never Seen by Christopher McDougall

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An epic adventure that began with one simple question: Why does my foot hurt?
 
Isolated by Mexico’s deadly Copper Canyons, the blissful Tarahumara Indians have honed the ability to run hundreds of miles without rest or injury. In a riveting narrative, award-winning journalist and often-injured runner Christopher McDougall sets out to discover their secrets. In the process, he takes his readers from science labs at Harvard to the sun-baked valleys and freezing peaks across North America, where ever-growing numbers of ultra-runners are pushing their bodies to the limit, and, finally, to a climactic race in the Copper Canyons that pits America’s best ultra-runners against the tribe. McDougall’s incredible story will not only engage your mind but inspire your body when you realize that you, indeed all of us, were born to run.
 
Available in BLRC: NF 796.425 MCD
 
 

Gold by Chris Cleave

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Gold is set in London in the lead up to the 2012 Olympics. This is a novel about sport, but concentrates on the rivalry and friendship of three elite cyclists and their struggles towards the ultimate prize.  The storyline ducks and weaves, but the characters drive the narrative. You will fall for the 8 year old Star Wars obsessed Sophie;  the focussed, fault ridden Zoe (who I wanted to hug and then slap in quick time); Kate is a self-sacrificing, methodical and naturally talented athlete and Jack  is pushed and pulled between these two strong women. Cleave’s research is evident and the hard-work, torturous training and pressure of elite racing drips off the page.

Available in BLRC: F CLE

The Marmalade Files By Steve Lewis and Chris Uhlmann

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Award-winning journalists Steve Lewis of News Ltd and Chris Uhlmann from the ABC combine forces in this arresting novel that proves fiction is stranger than fact.

THE book’s blurb says it’s a romp through the “dark underbelly of politics” and for once the blurb doesn’t lie.

The Marmalade Files is a banquet of bastardry. There are fixers and spinners, thugs and hypocrites, treachery and hatred. Lewis and Uhlmann take a swag of cheeky liberties, starting with the background of a barely surviving minority Labor government.

They craft characters who are irresistibly recognisable and then muddy the waters, sometimes through a sex change. Take Cate “Attila the Hen” Bailey. She is fluent in Mandarin, has a work ethic bordering on the demented and is socially autistic. She talks in “wonk-strine” and became Australia’s first woman prime minister with, for a while, stratospheric approval ratings. But her fall was swift and cruel.
The main plot centres on journalist Harry Dunkley’s search for a Walkley Award-winning story after a mysterious photograph comes into his possession.

Journalists cop almost as big a hiding as the politicians do. The end, after a murder and some steamy sex, is a tease and leaves the door open for a sequel.

VERDICT: Cavalcade of caricatures

Available in BLRC: F LEW

Extreme South by James Castrission

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In the footsteps of Scott and Amundsen, two Aussies, Cas and Jonesy, set out to conquer the last great wilderness on earth. This is their story of tenacity, mateship and survival.

On 31 October 2011 James Castrission and Justin Jones set out to achieve ‘one of the last great polar adventures’ – an unsupported return journey from the edge of the Antarctic continent to the South Pole. This is a quest that has been attempted by many experienced polar explorers before them…and all have failed. This book will detail everything: the preparation, the setbacks, the outset, the highs and the lows in brutally honest detail.

This expedition is the modern-day equivalent of the exploits of Scott, Amundsen and Shackleton. They are man-hauling a pulk (with 200kg of provisions each) and will utilise prevailing wind with kites where possible.

Why they are doing this? Through realising a childhood dream and committing themselves to a groundbreaking expedition, they wish to inspire others to overcome fear and pursue their own adventures and dreams.

Available in BLRC: NF 919.8904 CAS

The Last Child by John Heart

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Winner of the 2010 Edgar Award for Best Novel

Thirteen year-old Johnny Merrimon had the perfect life: a warm home and loving parents; a twin sister, Alyssa, with whom he shared an irreplaceable bond. He knew nothing of loss, until the day Alyssa vanished from the side of a lonely street. Now, a year later, Johnny finds himself isolated and alone, failed by the people he’d been taught since birth to trust. No one else believes that Alyssa is still alive, but Johnny is certain that she is—confident in a way that he can never fully explain.Determined to find his sister, Johnny risks everything to explore the dark side of his hometown. Traveling the wilderness between innocence and hard wisdom, between hopelessness and faith, The Last Child leaves all categories behind and establishes John Hart as a writer of unique power.

Available in BLRC: F HAR

Brave Heart: Lessons Learnt from Life by Brett & Hayley S. Kirk

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Brave Heart is an inspiration glimpse into the life of Australian footballer Brett Kirk. With the help of his wife, Hayley S. Kirk, Brett has given access to the highs, lows and very lows of his life and his sporting career.

Sharing details from losing his mentor, meeting the Dalai Lama, the support of his wife and family, leaving his AFL Team the Swans behind and learning the tough lessons from life.

With co-writing this autobiography the Kirk’s hope to inspire, challenge and motivate the reader to find out who they really are and where their path in life leads.

Brave Heart includes journal extracts, helpful life advice, wisdom from the Kirk’s close friends, and family photos. this book is not only for the AFL of Swans Fans. This inspiring motivational story is for anyone that needs a little push to find the right path at the crossroads of life.

Available in BLRC: NF 796.336092 SMI

Canada by Richard Ford

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Richard Ford’s magnificent, compassionate, strangely languorous new novel begins with a crafty come-on: “First, I’ll tell about the robbery our parents committed. Then about the murders, which happened later.” That’s quite some opener. What follows is not a Bonnie and Clyde-style adventure, but a far more ruminative affair about the imperceptible slide from normal to not normal, edging towards the point of no return. If that’s mildly disappointing, he more than makes up for it in the bitter fallout from physical actions.

Ford’s genius at capturing human frailty and its pitiful disguises burns through this novel, from Dell and Berner’s visit to their parents in jail, when their father insists on keeping up his ordinary banter, to Dell’s final meeting with his sister, to whom the hippie lifestyle has not been kind. In the end, though, the pieces of the whole are not separable. Keeping everything together, achieving a sort of completeness and purity that does indeed recall those great fictional forebears, is the novel’s outstanding feat.

Available in BLRC: F FOR

A Perfectly Good Man by Patrick Gale

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Recommended by Ross Tarlinton.

The apparent serenity of parish life in Pendeen and Morvah is disturbed when 20-year-old Lenny Barnes takes his own life in the presence of Father Barnaby Thomas, the charismatic, indefatigable local priest, whose enduring service has made him a popular member of his Cornish community.

Though Lenny′s death is publicly mourned, the tragedy continues to wound those closest to him, and its reverberations seem to threaten a fissure between the Parish and its inhabitants. And yet Lenny′s death is simply Pendeen and Morvah′s most visible misfortune: beneath the surface of the parish newsletter, in the life of Barnaby′s wife Dorothy, in that of his son Jim, in that of their neighbours Modest Carlsson and Nuala Barnes, and in particular in the life of Father Barnaby himself, lies vast, inarticulate sadness.

In what is more an echo-chamber than a sequel, Patrick Gale returns us to the landscape of ′Notes from an Exhibition′, unfurling the complex web of a Cornish community with an empathy that touches clairvoyance and a sure eye for significant mundanity. ′Good People′ is the faithful register of a community′s fortunes, its gentle malignance, and one priest′s struggle to live virtuously.

Available in BLRC: F GAL

Upon the Rock: The Popes and their changing Role by Paul Collins

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The papacy is the greatest and longest-lasting institution in the history of the West. In Upon This Rock, Paul Collins describes the evolution of the office of the papacy over the past two millennia, from St. Peter to Pope John Paul II. Other recent histories of the papacy treat it as a political or social phenomenon. Upon This Rock, on the other hand, examines the links between the teachings of Jesus in the New Testament, the interpretations of his teachings by the Apostles, and the changes and developments in the nature and understanding of the papal office under successive bishops of Rome. The role and powers of the holders of the papal office have been redefined many times over the centuries. Paul Collins discusses in detail the attitudes, influences and teachings of each of the Popes and sets them in a historical and cultural context, offering an illuminating account of developments and changes in Catholic teaching, theology and liturgy.

Available in BLRC: NF 262 COL