A Country Road, A Tree

                                              
Now here we go with coincidences again.   I couldn't have lined it up more perfectly if I had done it on purpose.  As I have written previously, I have just this year read Ulysses by James Joyce, what I haven't talked about yet is that just this March I found a good copy of Waiting For Godot by Samuel Beckett at the used book store I visited during Spring Break.  This I have also read quite recently.  Now my next coincidence is the book A Country Road, A Tree by Jo Baker, the next book on my list of James Tait Black nominees to read.

This book was wonderful!  I have been developing a fondness for historical fiction, since I have been reading some very good ones, All That I Am, To Say Nothing of the Dog and The German Girl  just to name a few.  I did read Baker's Longbourn last year, and enjoyed that.    But this one I really enjoyed.

It is a fictional account of Beckett's life just before and during the occupation of France by Nazi Germany.  History can be dry and somewhat uninformative of those things that I am interested in the most (the human side of it, thoughts, feelings and motives), which is why I was enthralled with the television drama To Walk Invisible, and A Country Road, A Tree is just as interesting and exciting.  There is some name dropping throughout the book, including James Joyce who did live in Paris at the time.  Having only read the one play by Beckett, I found myself wanting to read the rest of his works, especially when I reached the part in the novel that was a direct reference to Godot (just imagine what it would have been like if I could have read more of his works before starting this book...my head might have exploded!).

  So, in my usual book-geeky way I will come back to this book again sometime after I have read all of Beckett's works, and a biography or two.  I love it when a book just inspires you to carry on and read some more (of the author's work and of the subject's).

Next on my list: The Lesser Bohemians by Eimear McBride (and I already have a pretty good idea about the title of that blog entry... something along the lines of What is it with these Irish writers?).

The German Girl

It's funny how co-incidences evolve in my reading order sometimes.  My connection to this was completely random (a friend recommended I read this last March and it took this long to become available at BC Libraries Cooperative).   As a historical novel about escaping Jewish families from Germany, I liked the format of this one.  There was a lot of to-and-fro-ing from one character to another (Anna in the future, Hannah in the past, Anna being a relative of Hannah's), which I felt helped to ground this story and allowed me to see that this was not going to be another book about Jewish peoples suffering but also about surviving.  Of course, the story about the escape from Germany is vitally important, and the fact that the Cuban Government turned them away was also very significant (as well as the American and Canadian governments also rejecting them).  As well as the premise of this book being about survival, it's a commentary on the inability of the Cuban government to produce aid to those in dire need  Coming as I was, from Poet Slave of Cuba to this story, it struck me how conflicted and hypocritical people can be about the suffering of others.

Before I put politics aside I just want to say that this book could not have come at a better time.  I know that opinion  drastically differs about refugees today, and living in Canada I am extremely proud of the Trudeau Government for their stance.  I think this book would be a great way to show people how to see the importance of helping when those that are suffering need shelter.  I can't help but feel that compassion should always come before commerce, and fear.

Historical events and political machinations aside, this story about Hannah, and her survival of not only one regime, but two is powerful.  Her ability to love and to show love (to Anna) even after all she has lived through, and ultimately at the conclusion to have peace and joy was a potent message.  By the the time I reached the end of Hannah's story I was in tears because this novel, even with all of it's ugliness, fear and cruelty, was evocatively and beautifully sad.  

Beloved

This is one of those books I made myself read because it is on one of my literary mugs "The Greatest First Lines of Literature".

So one of my reading challenges this year is to read the books that I haven't already on this mug and one other, "The Banned Books" mug.

  And it's been quite a challenge, because some of these books, while being 'great' or 'banned' are a challenge to read.  Either it' s the language, the writing or mostly the content that is hard to digest.

So this summer I decided that I needed to put in a concentrated effort to make myself read some of these books (which I will talk about soon).

It has all been very heady stuff, and Beloved tops the stack at being a very challenging book to read.  I made three first attempts before I finally made it stick.  When I could stick with it I was engaged and anxious to get to the end, because I really couldn't see where the book was headed.  I knew what I had hoped to see but that, of course, is no guarantee that an author will be considerate and take your  own feelings or preferences to account.  It won the Pulitzer Prize so you can almost bank it that this would be a stressful, ugly and painful novel about slaves. And it was.  That's not really a spoiler.

Beloved is not the first book this year that I have read about slaves.  Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe was tackled earlier on in February during Black History Month, and I had to make a few tries to start reading that one too.    There are many similarities, but one thing I am extremely grateful for is that the speech is easier to read.  It really bothered me that Stowe had most of her characters sound illiterate and it was so bad you could barely understand what she had them saying...

Beloved, was an easy read, and even when the speech was slang, I didn't have the need to parse what was said.  

Morrison was clever to feed out the horrible parts in bits and pieces throughout the book, which was very kind and humane of her.  It was a story which wound around you like a spell, with each divulgence, and then grasped you at the climax when everything was laid bare and horrible, holding you there until the very end. 

At some point it feels like we as a people have written so much (too much!) about the horrible times in our history, and it feels like we are beating it long after it should have been laid to rest.  I can honestly say that some people are total jerks for writing something this horrible and it has angered me very much.  But I think that has more to do with how the author has treated the subject.  Beloved is different.  Toni Morrison wrote a thoughtful, insightful book about ex-slaves and the ghosts of their pasts which do come back to haunt them as any hard thing in a person's life does.  It was real, honest and a way of writing that makes me think about those times soberly and with sadness, but not with anger.  Like a story about the war,  the Holocaust, or any other terrible event in our history, this too should be remembered all the time, because it happened, and it should never be forgotten, lest it should happen again.

Remains of the Day

I am surprised that I have not already written about this book... but I am glad that I did not because I have a different way of looking at it now with comparison to what I have already read by Ishiguro.
When I first read it, I had already seen the movie with Anthony Hopkins, and Emma Thompson (two of my most favourite actors!), and I already loved it.  This is unfortunate, because the movie predisposed me to see things that aren't too apparent with the book (unless you already know what to look for).

Second time around I began to see a theme with what I have read so far in A Pale View of Hills, An Artist of the Floating World and Remains of the Day.  They are all retrospective novels, they all look back in to their past (and they are bittersweet).  Also, the protagonist does at some point try to make a change, but really it is too late to do so and learning to live with events and their consequences is inevitable and unusual in each story.  Of course, it is only a stressful situation for the lead character, and once the book concludes you do see that it isn't really as bad as you once thought it was, but I love how you are drawn in to the story and carefully held there until it is over.
Remains is a departure from the first two books, a story that is heavily steeped in a British culture that is almost extinct now (or the book would have you believe so),  it was extremely interesting to read about the life of a servant in a large country estate, and about the measures he took to be an excellent butler.   I am in awe of how Ishiguro has taken me from Japan in the first two books to England in the third and has immersed me in the distinct cultural experience of each country.  I am very excited to see where he will take me next!

To Say Nothing of the Dog

Since reading Blackout/All Clear I have been hooked on Connie Willis.  I have collected all of her major works to date and have been jealously hoarding them ever since (only reading one of them a year).  What's really awesome is that she is still alive...so that means she might write some more, which is great, but I still find myself stingily doling out the love an an annual basis.  I mention this because I have dared to begin reading a second one by Connie this same calendar year, and it has me panicking a little!  
But today I am talking about To Say Nothing of the Dog.  I read this in February, and it was the last of her books written about her Time Travel series.  I really hope that she will write more, they are just that good!   It won the Hugo and the Locus award.
This book was mainly situated in the Victorian era.  As usual, a couple of things go wrong for the historians visiting there and the protagonist Ned Henry is sent to fix things up.  Unfortunately for Ned, he has been time travelling a lot recently and he is suffering from 'time lag'.  After being shoved in to the time net,  he has forgotten half of his damage control instructions, thus making the mission go 'pear-shaped' in a comically tragic way.
The main things I love about these stories is that I learn a lot of history (and it's all very interesting), there are a lot of literary references (which I love to follow up on... this time I bought the Kindle bundle of Jerome K. Jerome's complete works), and there are lots of unforgettable characters.  When things go wrong it's all very engrossing, exciting, and best of all gets me chuckling throughout the read, greedily gobbling up pages of the story to the very end.
What is also nice, I suppose, is that even though you have finished the book, there are lots of things to look up and read about, so it helps to keep me busy and not think too much about there not being another book in the series.

That Deadman Dance

Admittedly, this one was a toughie.  Tough because I will always feel guilty over the plight of the Australian Aborigines, though I personally have not done anything either way to hurt them or to help them.  There is just no way that I can feel any sort of affinity to them, I just don't know enough about them.  I have more of an understanding of the First Nations that I live and work with here in Canada.
That Deadman Dance helped me to understand a little bit, and I am grateful for that.  The story is told by a Noongar named 'Bobby' Wabalanginy at various stages of his life, and in the style of his people.  The way he weaves in and out of the narrative with his dreamings of what was and what could or should be was magical and mesmerizing.    It was a powerful way to tell this story (which was about first contact between Europeans and the aborigines), and a perfectly simple and creative way to help us see it from the Noongar's point of view.  I will be seeking out the rest of this author's work, I love his way of telling the story.

All That I Am

I liked this book.  As it is a Miles Franklin winner, I did first view it with caution, because as I stated in Questions of Travel I am tired of the ugliness of humanity and pointless or violent episodes that just make me reluctant to carry on reading this particular book or others that are probably just like it
(I suspect that it might be one of the prerequisites for an award winning novel).

Of course, any book about Germany between the world wars is not going to be a bright sunny, happy-shiny-people-holding-hands kind of story.  I liked this book because it was different  by covering an aspect  of that era I had not read of before.  Not only did I appreciate learning something new in a historically fictional book,  it was nice to know that the author based it off real people and that there is a brilliant bibliography at the back which I plan on using for further reading.  She (Anna Funder) gave these people from the past a voice, which was clear, poignant and respectful.
It was a good story, despite the subject matter, and I am glad that I read it.  I look forward to Anna Funder's next book.

Witness

Another brilliant verse novel from author Karen Hesse (Out of the Dust was my introduction to Hesse, and it is one of my favourite historical fiction novels which also won the Newbery Medal as well as the Scott O'Dell Award).  As I have been reading a lot of Newbery award books this past school year, I have come to appreciate even more the historical novel (which is what happens, I suppose, when you only read award/honor winners... they are the cream of the crop!).  

This is not one of them.  I chose it because April and National Poetry Month are looming, so I grabbed a pile of poetry books from the local library's children's section, and Witness was just picked up on a whim (I'm always on the lookout for more books to add to the perpetually growing wish list for the school library).  

The layout of Witness is like a play.  You have your dramatis personae:-

The sepia photographs loan this book a verisimilitude that makes an unforgettable impression (of course the subject material does that too).  The novel is about the introduction of the Ku Klux Klan into a small town set in 1924 Vermont.  There are five acts.  Each character has a unique point of view to relate, the verse giving each perspective an emotional flavor which just adds oomph to an otherwise well covered tale (there are so many of these kinds of stories, real and imagined!)  I love how D.W. Griffiths' black and white movie The Birth of a Nation is thought of by the sheriff Percelle Johnston as a bad influence  (having slogged through the 133 minutes of this incredibly long and somewhat painful movie I can see how it would affect people... the Ku Klux Klan was remarkably romanticized to look like the good guys).  

The verse novel has become increasingly interesting to me over the years, it is a type of story telling that is very new, and old all at the same time.  I have seen students become interested in this format, when chapter books have put them off.  I really loved this book, it brought to mind the Shakespearean drama of which I am a huge fan, and a deeper appreciation of what verse can really do for a story.  Makes me hungry for more!  I'm ready for National Poetry Month...are you?

Blackout/AllClear

Imagine if you were a historian that could travel back in time to observe particular time periods.  Imagine getting stuck there for some unknown reason...

It's not a new idea, and after reading and watching Doctor Who, there are many examples of time travelling gone wrong, and of the sometimes terrifying consequences.

I read the first half of this dynamic duo a few years back as part of a selection of women authors who have won Nebula Awards.  I loved it until I got  to the end, when I thought,"What's going on here, isn't she cutting it a bit close?"  The book begins with a lot of almost harried activity...there is just so much going on, and underlying is this tension and an uneasy sense that things are tragically going to go to pot, the suspense is just building up with no real release.  Anyone who's read my blog knows just how annoyed I get when I make these discoveries (I hate to read a book and then have to wait for the sequel), but I take all the blame because I didn't do the research.  I was left hanging after finishing Blackout!  I have done the research now.  As a matter of fact I have bought several of Connie Willis' books in preparation for reading this pair, and it works to my advantage because in another of her books Firewatch  (a collection of short stories) is one about this particular universe, so it was with a smug feeling that I began the books, first with the short story Firewatch and then on to Blackout and finishing up with All Clear.  

Naturally I chose November to read this as during this month I usually read someting that has some relation to the World Wars, and these two did not disappoint.  I got an unusual education about an era in our history that is already so well documented.  It was a true homage to the English people, those folks who lived through the Blitz and afterward.  If you want to step in to history, this is a good way to do it.  I loved the books from beginning to end, and since there is over 1100 pages, there's a lot to love. 
I look forward to reading more of Connie Willis' books as these two were so well researched and written, I can understand why she has won so many awards for her genre. 

Burning Girls

                       Tor.com advertised on their Facebook page this week two novellas (Tor Originals) that are Nebula nominees, which are free to download.  Naturally I could not pass those up so (happily! joyfully!) they were downloaded with rapid dispatch to my Kindle app.       
Burning Girls by Veronica Schanoes   
I loved this story!  Cast in the early 1900's it was, from the very beginning, an immediately captivating tale.  As with all books (especially if you do not spoil things by doing a little research first), there were questions, and the more I read into it the more questions I had...it began so strongly as something that I could (but probably shouldn't) say was "Grimmesque", but much better than that. Of course, with a novella everything has to be more compact, but this story magically excels in it's ability to lure you into it's web. Exciting connections were made in it to other literature (The Brothers Grimm) and historical events and some of my questions were answered.  I haven't read a lot of Jewish folklore, I don't know much about the religion and lifestyle but this was fascinating, as well as familiar to what I have read, and rich with the traditions and lore of the past.   A fairy tale for grown-ups.  I will be looking for more by this author.
On top of all that nostaligic, folkloric awesomeness is the relationships involved, the strengths of the characters, the love and friendships between women and the artwork is lovely too.  It is, all together, an lovely attractive bundle and I hope might be available in book form someday.

A Tale of Two Cities

                          
Charles Dickens has done it to me again.  For me, A Tale of Two Cities was an emotionally devastating book for me to read and as it lacked the comic relief of his other novels, it was also an intense and suspenseful read as well.  I liken the experience as listening to an orchestral piece by Gustav Mahler, full of the most painfully beautiful, emotionally evocative, unbelievably pure notes that an orchestra can play.  That actually sums it up quite accurately.  Every chapter in a Dickens novel is like its very own section of an intricate symphony, rich in character and feeling.
As usual Dickens' social commentary is provocative, but this book was confusing.  I could not help but feel compassion for both sides... the French Revolution was so barbaric and I am ashamed at rational people who abandoned all sense to the hatred and revenge so meted out in this book.  It is understandable though.  Dickens was brilliant in portraying everything, making you despise the aristocracy (more behaviour to be deeply ashamed of) one moment and feeling horror for them the next. 
I treasure each experience I have whenever I read his books (and yes...I lovingly hugged the book when I was finished!).  I am so grateful that he was so prolific (there are still so many for me yet to read).  As they are such an intense experience I ration myself to reading one book a year (thus ensuring that I will not run out anytime too soon!), and naturally I plan to revisit them, one book each year for the rest of my life, guaranteeing that my life shall always be enriched.
 Music to swoon to:-
Gustave Mahler Symphony #10

At Last!

                          
After the cliffhanger from the last book Speaking From Among the Bones, I have been eager to find out how it would all end in this final book.  I can't really say of course how it all finished up, but I can say that it wasn't how I had hoped, but that it was a satisfying conclusion anyway.
I just love Flavia.  She is one of my most favorite characters, and I cannot help but be happy for her when things are going well, and sad when they are not.  I will speculate now about the possibility that Alan Bradley might write about her again one day.  Possibly when she has grown a bit?  Something to hope for anyway, because I would love to know what else Flavia's future has in store for her.
I know that  in my future is a Flavia de Luce marathon read, complete with custard tart, gallons of tea and whatever other book related provisions I can come up with. 

The Detective Wore Silk Drawers

                    
This was the next book to be taken off the stack I currently have by my reading chair.  This was an impulse buy, bought purely on it's merit as a Penguin and I implicitly trust Penguins (especially at second-hand book stores where part of my criteria for treasure hunting  is that if it is a Penguin it ought to be good, and at that inexpensive price what is the risk?).  I was not wrong with that assumption, it is a good book.  Just not my cup of tea.    I am essentially a non-violent person and this book was prevalently violent.  I did not like those bits at all, which made the book a punishment to get through and because of this it also took a longer than usual time for me to finish it.   What was of interest was the time period, and of how Scotland Yard was beginning to do such things as having policemen working under cover to catch their murderer.  I hated what happened to the under cover policeman though, but for the sake of the story I believe it was necessary as they were after all just experimenting with this kind of policework, and had not as yet come up with regulations about the safety and welfare of their staff.  
The book ended well, though, and if you are someone who can handle all of the 'scrapping', you  might enjoy this book.

The Once and Future King

Since I was a kid I have loved the story of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table.  It was one of those books that I re-read a couple of times, but never re-visited when I was an adult until I got a hold of a two volume set by Sir Thomas Malory, Le Morte D'Arthur, even then I only glanced at it, and it has sat on my shelf ever since, neglected.  Not for much longer!  The Once and Future King has re-birthed my keenness for the original story again, making me feel sentimental for the story I once knew.   This epic was written so beautifully, so true to the original, that I was just awestruck at how wonderful it truly was.  It is like an essay, a very long one, making an argument for the original tale, looking at it in a different light, which helped me to get through the harder parts, and there are a lot of hard parts to the story.  White’s brilliance is obvious, revered and worshipped by me, and I have sought out whatever else I can read by him, because I want more.  Some of his arguments touched a personal pain in me,  and his conclusions were a comfort for me, winning me over as a steadfast, awestruck fan of his work, forever.

The Phantom of Pemberley

Okay, I found this story a bit too difficult to believe.  There were too many liberties taken, and some things I felt were ridiculous.  I have always had faith in my hero and heroine’s intelligence and there are just some things that would be impossible for them not to know.
That aside, I still enjoyed the book.  I am always curious to see what someone will come up with for a Pride and Prejudice fiction, and I am not always disappointed.  

A Little Bit Janeish...

I have to admit that as far as these novels go, I have been disappointed  with Grange’s diaries because I don’t see much more than what is really already there in Jane Austen’s books. The biggest allure of reading such novels is getting something more, something ’tasty’ from the other side, some tidbits that make us love our romantic heroes even more than we already do, something...that we don't know already.  That doesn’t happen in these books (I have read two other diaries).  What did happen out of the ordinary in this book is a prelude, which is a nice change from what I have already read by Amanda Grange.  This prelude really was written very well, and for that alone I would recommend this book to fans of Jane Austen's Persuasion. 

Blackout

Silly, silly me, I did not find out first if this was part of a series.  Not that I mind... it just means that it will be a re-read at a later date after I have bought the rest.
I read this because it was a Nebula winner, and you can take it from me that this book has earnt it's laurels.  I have never read Connie Willis before and I enjoyed myself so much that I want to collect the rest of her books and read them in the order intended.  While reading this book there were many references to things that I realise now were from past books and not from further along in this one... right up to almost the very end (the third last page!) I had expected this to conclude, and boy was I surprised that it was not so.  It's my own fault... internet access for me is spotty at best and taking the time to do the research before-hand has not been an appealing prospect. 
What is appealing, however is reading the rest of these stories and whatever else Willis has written. 

Indulging the Romantic

 Huge fan of Jane Austen?  Can’t get enough of Pride and Prejudice?  Well look no further (well maybe that isn’t the right thing to say as I will always be on the lookout for more fan fiction about Pride and Prejudice!).  This trilogy goes a long way to fulfilling the need for more.  The Fitzwilliam Darcy, Gentleman trilogy is very thorough.  Three books about one book, all about  Darcy’s delicious side of the tale, it is very satisfying, doling out not just Darcy’s oh-so-wrong outlook and his struggles to become the man that would be eligible for marriage with Elizabeth Bennet, but sharing other lovely tidbits of Regency Era history, and some nods to the other books that Austen wrote (but I’m not going to tell you much about that…it’s just too much fun to find them on your own).  This is a must-have for a Janeites collection, and be sure to have plenty of Earl Grey tea, harp music, and  of course, an empty weekend in which to indulge yourself completely with this lovely collection of novels.

With this first installment we get to see just how snotty, selfish, ignorant and arrogant our romantic hero is.  But never fear, we do get to see the goodness in him too when we see how loving he is with his sister. I also simply adored Aidan's extras (people not featured in Pride and Prejudice).

I loved how much character development was done here, and the Gothic goodies were so very deliciously macabre.

The wonderful conclusion.  We all know how the story ends... but with this the struggle was so engaging, Darcy's angstful efforts to become our romantic hero (with all its warts etc.,) was epic.  I will be re-reading this in the not too distant furture.

Travelling....

I have made a point of adding Japanese authors to my reading challenge this year (as well as Scandinavian and European), because I like to travel.  Ever since I was a kid I have always wanted to go somewhere else, particularly to England and Europe, but in my forties I have become interested in the more exotic and strange (to me) countries of Asia.  While the first book I ever read by Ishiguro was based in England (Remains of the Day), I was extremely touched by his talent for involving me in his story and for taking me somewhere and somewhen. 
This book brought me to post-war Japan and it was a real treat.  Japanese life is so different to what I know, and I find it fascinating.  Have you ever had the thought "I wonder what they must have been thinking, did they know what they were doing...did they care?"  Not so much with the Japanese have I thought about it but I have still wondered.  I have read most of what my school library contains on Japan, and there are few mentions of those particular indcidents, but I did want to cry when I read about the Peace Lantern.
While Artist of the Floating World  doesn't go too deeply into the past it is broached in remembrances of the protagonist, so I can see a little the climate of Japan pre World War II.  I can commiserate with him because I see how he must have felt watching his generation receding into history and the new generation is something unfamiliar to him.  Naturally, at that period of time in Japan the changes were almost abrupt because the new generation wanted to distance themselves from the shame of a nation and it was not so organic as the cultural changes of the few generations that I have had the privilege to see in the western world.
There is this quiet flavor to this book, which I have noticed with other books I have read by Japanese authors.  It takes a little getting used to, but I find it restful, even calming.  It feels like a reflection of the culture as a whole, everything is simple, subtle and always beautiful.  I look forward to reading whatever else Ishiguro has written because two books in, he is still taking my breath away.

The C-word Rant

I have just recently read The True History of the Kelly Gang by Peter Carey (well...not very recently, I had to take a couple of weeks to mull it over first before I could write calmly about it).  When DH first bought it I automatically dismissed it because instinctually I just don't want to go there in my mind, but a friend recommended it to me so I thought it was time to have a look.  It was pretty much as I expected, the usual story, with some neat little extras,  a story told in letter form to his fictional daughter, and it was nice how Ned tried to tone down his cursing by substituting the word adjectival instead of the usual words.  Which was probably a good idea as he had a lot to be adjectivally mad about.  At the end I felt the usual frustration and anger, which I have always felt.  Maybe this is hardwired into all Australians?  The indignation felt over such outrageous treatment of another human being.

At the root of it I will always be angry about how convicts and descendants of convicts were treated.  It has become personal for me.  When I was a kid and was taught at school about Ned Kelly he was always held up as a colonial hero (even though he was a thief and a murderer which was much more than what his father, who was a convict, was sent over for in the first place).  He has always been a folk hero because he fought against the English which has always been a very hard thing to do. Those Emglish bastards had so much power over everyone else (and incidentally there were thieves and murderers too among the upper gentry who could get away with it because of their class and power).  To be fair, the English weren't all like that, and I have been making a study of various journals and books written by people of the times, trying to get a grasp of my own heritage and history.  No matter the origins, these are the people who built Australia from the bottom up.  That's nothing to be ashamed of.

It became personal for me because since I immigrated to Canada I have been asked a few times if I was descended from convicts (I don't know if I am), but the latest, most rudest, stupidest, arse-hattiest question was pointed at me last spring where the tool who asked outright after finding out I was Australian,  "Are you a criminal?".  He thought it was funny and even laughed at me.     The guy was actually raving about a trip he wanted to take to Australia specifically to do the surfing etc. and it occurred to me at the time to give him a little warning about not asking that kind of question to people there, but something stopped me from doing so, and I can only hope that he does ask someone there, hopefully at the local pub filled with really beefy guys from the local footy team.

Thing is, Australia would not be what it is today if it weren't for the convicts and colonists.  Douglas Adams wrote this lovely little story about Australia that is included in his very last book The Salmon of Doubt  (compiled after his death), which I recommend reading because, naturally it is funny, but also provides a different point of view to the whole idea of dumping criminals in a paradise like Australia.  I am proud of my heritage, no matter what, because hard working backbone-of-the-country type people stuck it to the English and made a great nation, chock full of the most brightest, creative and beautiful people.  It's something to be proud of.

So give the True History a read.  Even with it's fictional elements it is still really close to the original story, he did those things, and for those reasons.  Try not to get too mad about how it ended for Ned and remember that he is a legend, which is more powerful than anything he could have ever done while he was alive.