Congrats on your new job Angus!

Angus, that is great news about your new job! Sounds exciting! You'll have to keep us updated on your blog how it goes :) Congrats also on finishing your thesis!

Book Review: "Shantaram"

Has anyone else read this book? I really enjoyed it. It is a novel based on the life of its author, a guy called Gregory David Roberts, who escaped from a Melbourne jail, went to NZ, and then flew to India and made a life for himself in Bombay. He is a pretty smart guy and I think pretty charismatic, and he has had an amazing life filled with regrets and his attempts at redemption. In India, he firstly lived in a slum working as a "slum doctor" using his basic first aid training to (try) to treat rat bites, cholera, etc. He then goes through a lot of other crap which I wont go into as it would give the plot away. The main character, Lin, is based on the author. It is a really interesting as well as engaging read I found.

Other than the interesting story itself, the other thing that pulled me in with this book is some of the great characters, especially Prabaker the awesome tour guide who meets Lin when he first gets to Bombay. I laughed and cried my head off with this book and I've even joined an online forum (www.shantaram-forum.com) to chat about it more as it moved me quite a bit.

Some people may not like this novel as it is a thick, long book with a few rambling bits and a few (only a few) cheesy bits during a love scene and in relation to Lin's love interest. But overall I would recommend this book. It is going to be made into a movie I think, which may be a good or bad thing, with Johnny Depp playing Lin as far as I know.

Book Review: 'We need to talk about Kevin'

I recently read the novel entitled 'We need to talk about Kevin', by Lionel Shriver. It was a very easy book to read, and I thought it brought up a lot of really really interesting issues, such as bringing up children, relationships and also the question of whether people are born 'evil' or if society shapes them. It's written by Kevin's mother, who spends most of the book questioning if her behaviour and the way she brought up her son is the reason that he massacres a dozen classmates & teachers when he's about 16 years old. It's a really interesting thought - was he born that way, or did his childhood influence him to the point where he could commit such a horrendous crime. It's hard to believe that anyone could do such a thing, but it's fairly often that you hear in the news of another event similar to this occuring somewhere in the world. So what is the point at which a child turns from a normal child into a killer? Do they really understand what they are doing? Also in this book the mother says that the child never really bonded with her, no matter what she did - does this imply that the child was already locked into a certain mindset? How strong is the nature vs nurtre and how much could this really affect someone?

Summary: A good, easy book to read with some interesting issues in it. It made me think about the consequences of having children beyond the normal ones that I would have thought about before reading it. It did make me cry at one point though ;-)

*** Worth a read.

More: This wiki article doesn't totally give the plot away, but you might not want to read this site unless you've already read the book or don't plan on reading it.