Yes it keeps growing with (needless to say) free offerings so tempting me daily! Ridiculous because I will never read them all in the very finite time I have left! Not ridiculous, because clearly I can read some, and browing is also an excellent thing to do
Here is the Calibre interface.
Right now I am revisiting with delight #5 there on that list arranged in order of time added. (You can arrange easily in other ways — author, title, size, publisher….) Yes, the first 1926 outing of Hercule Poirot!
CHAPTER IX
THE GOLDFISH POND
We walked back to the house together. There was no sign of the inspector. Poirot paused on the terrace and stood with his back to the house, slowly turning his head from side to side.“Une belle propriété,” he said at last appreciatively. “Who inherits it?”
His words gave me almost a shock. It is an odd thing, but until that moment the question of inheritance had never come into my head. Poirot watched me keenly.
“It is a new idea to you, that,” he said at last. “You had not thought of it before—eh?”
“No,” I said truthfully. “I wish I had.”
Now the next one is an absolute delight to browse — and it is amazing who one finds. A well remembered strange character from the streets of Sydney. A childhood neighbour from Auburn Street Sutherland in 1950.
I used to see him often in the city, always head down and completely uncommunicative. Trolley Man.
CINDRIC, JOSEPH (1906/08–1994), displaced person, labourer, and homeless person, was born on 9 June 1906 or 1908 at Sastavol in the region of the Austro-Hungarian Empire that later became the state of Yugoslavia. Also known as Josef, Joe, or Joso, he was a forced evacuee to Germany from Yugoslavia in June 1941. He had worked on his father’s farm since childhood, and had no formal schooling; he could not read, could write only his name, and spoke no English. His Australian immigration papers later recorded that he spoke German and Yugoslavian (probably Croatian).
In Germany Cindric became part of the Nazi forced labour program, spending four years in a coal mine, followed by six months in a gas factory and then over a year polishing lenses. Frustrated and bored with life in the Ansbach Displaced Persons Camp at the end of the war, he sought to emigrate to Australia to work as a coalminer.
Cindric arrived in Sydney from Bremerhaven aboard the Charlton Sovereign on 29 October 1948. By then he was a widower and his two children had predeceased him. The following month he was in Nyngan, central New South Wales, working for the State railways. It was here that he began to identify what he believed to be threats by other immigrants against his life. He left the railways and in July 1949 applied for employment at Dubbo. His work on a Coonamble property lasted but a few days before he left without notice.
It is likely that an obsession with walking also began at this time….
What a story!
And the neighbour…
VALLANCE, THOMAS GEORGE (TOM) (1928–1993), petrologist and historian of science, was born on 23 April 1928 at Guildford, Sydney, elder of two sons of New South Wales–born parents Alfred Sydney Vallance, commercial traveller, and his wife Edna Vera, née Taber, who died in 1931. Tom and his father moved in with the boys’ strict non-conformist paternal grandparents at Sutherland; his brother Douglas lived with his maternal grandparents at Menangle. After primary schooling at Sutherland, Tom attended Canterbury Boys’ High School, matriculating in 1945. He studied at the University of Sydney (BSc, 1950; PhD, 1954), turning from an initial interest in chemistry to geology, particularly petrology, under the influence of William Rowan Browne [q.v.13]. He graduated with first-class honours and the university medal, and was awarded the Deas Thomson [q.v.2] and John Coutts (shared) scholarships….
Little did I know of that when I was 7 and constantly bothering him and borrowing his books! Tommy.
After my grandparents and Uncle Roy moved out to their own place around 1949, and I had just begun school where I shocked the Kindergarten teacher by writing “Sydney Morning Herald” and the date on the blackboard but showed no aptitude in craft, I made a new friend. I spent more and more time with Tommy, Old Fred’s son; he had the most wonderful books which he let me borrow. Mostly they were the old Warnes “Wonder Book” series, prewar most of them, but I devoured the lot. Tommy showed me color slides too of overseas places and flying boats taking off. It was wonderful.
He showed me his rock collection, and I decided then and there I would be a scientist. I seem to remember announcing to the family that I would be a professor one day, and once when we drove past Sydney University for some reason said “I’m going there.” No-one in my family had, up to that point.
Well, a bit of it came true. And if you want to know who Tommy was — he died just a few years ago — read the passage just below these paragraphs, and this review of his last work. When I arrived at Sydney University as a sixteen-year-old in 1960, one of the first people I saw was Tommy who greeted me warmly; I was surprised he recognised me and a bit shy to be so addressed by the eminent petrologist Doctor Vallance.
Tommy was, as you might gather, a bit older than I; I seem to recall my parents apologising to him if I was making a nuisance of myself, but apparently he didn’t mind my frequent visits. I still remember an argument Tommy had with Old Fred, though this may have been later, when I was living in Vermont Street but used to go back to Auburn Street every now and again. The Vallances were strong Methodists, but old Fred apparently (and surprisingly) had a liking for Alexander Pope, and the argument was about Catholics. “Well,” said Tommy to Fred, “that Alexander Pope you are so fond of was a Catholic.” “Pope by name and Pope by nature, eh,” replied Fred. A bonus in visiting Tommy was that Mrs Vallance was always making cakes and let me lick out the mixing bowl. She was a Scot who reminded me of the Queen (no, not that one–the Queen Mother; George VI was still alive at this point.)
My Uncle Roy kept in touch with the Vallances; he was a regular visitor to Old Fred up until Fred died at a very advanced age; I can remember Roy bringing Old Fred down to Wollongong to visit my mother some time around 1973 or 1974.
The Vallance collection, purchased from the private library of the late Professor Tom Vallance, contains between 10,000 and 15,000 volumes as well as 3,000 offprints and 1000 maps, as well as some long runs of geological journals. The collection contains major works in mineralogy, petrology, palaeontology, natural philosophy, geology and geography from the 19th century and selected works from the early 20th century. (www.lib.unimelb.edu.au/cmc/ESCI.PDF )
About the Whitfields: Wandering Willie’s Tales
Here is one I have lined up to read:
Goodreads shows how this book divides people.
One of the funniest, cruelest, and most savagely revealing books about American life ever written, The Magic Christian has been called Terry Southern’s masterpiece. Guy Grand is an eccentric billionaire — the last of the big spenders — determined to create disorder in the material world and willing to spare no expense to do it. Leading a life full of practical jokes and madcap schemes, his ultimate goal is to prove his theory that there is nothing so degrading or so distasteful that someone won’t do it for money. In Guy Grand’s world, everyone has a price, and he is all too willing to pay it. A satire of America’s obsession with bigness, toughness, money, TV, guns, and sex, The Magic Christian is a hilarious and wickedly original novel from a true comic genius.
And about yesterday evening
Neil's Commonplace Book 