Oceania Books

In the great spirit of the early American settlers, post war Brits moved to Australia in search of opportunity. The strange world that was found was exciting and mind blowing. When that place was taken away by circumstance, a young man's curiosity was so great he had to return in later years. If you love the spirit of adventure, you must read this book. It will entertain you, it will make you feel proud of your own history.

In the great spirit of the early American settlers, post war Brits moved to Australia in search of opportunity. The strange world that was found was exciting and mind blowing. When that place was taken away by circumstance, a young man's curiosity was so great he had to return in later years. If you love the spirit of adventure, you must read this book. It will entertain you, it will make you feel proud of your own history.

I read this book before deciding to emigrate to Australia. I found both extremely helpful and factual, as well as being entertaining. I am trying to procure a copy of it for myself - the one that I read was borrowed from a library

Philip Weigall is a long time fly fisher from the New South Wales/ Victorian border area in Australia. His book focuses upon his experiences in fly fishing in this area, and irrespective of whether or not you know the area, the book will quickly bring you under its spell.

The book describes to the reader in a series of stories, how Philip feels about flyfishing - not a sport but a part of life.

The stories are beautifully accompanied by pictures taken by Philip and his partner and add immeasurably to the experience of the book.

Dangerous to leave on the coffee table, this book will be worn out within 12 months. A great book as a gift (My father got a copy last Christmas!) but buy two and keep one on your own bookcase. I did.

Jessye loves living with her Nana in the Maori village by the river, but she also misses her mother and their very different world in the city. So when one day her mother returns and asks Jessye to return to the city, she's willing to give her flighty mother one more chance - until a handsome stranger threatens her world. Her determination to survive and build a better life makes for an inviting saga of change and adjustment in RIVER SONG.

I have read this book with the very exciting feelings ,as reading a good scientific novel. The story bigins with the history of scientific novels as well as the history of the observation on Mars. The central portion of the book would de the argument of the experiments about the possibility of life on Mars. This argument is too deatiled to read the book with patience, but may be of considerable scientific importance. After leaving the story of Mars, this book also refers to the future endevour for searching life in the outer space beyond earth. This book may be best dedecating for amature astronomers or students interested in science.

This is a great coffee table book. It provides a good overview of the individual battles (from both the Japanese and American sides) without being full of dry historical facts. Several survivors traveled along with the expedition, and their human interest stories are incorporated very well into the stories of the battles.

It then delves beneath the waves to look at the warships as they are today. The pictures and illustrations are typical of Ballard's expeditions, well detailed and moving.

Sometimes I need to stop reading a book for the night but decide to read one more chapter. Then I find myself sliding into the next chapter, and the next, etc. This is one of those books. The Rock is well written and it covers the subject. On occasion it does wax purple as though the author prefers poetry to prose and the theme of the apologetic white man who tries to defend and bond with the aboriginal has become hackneyed, especially given the attitudes of the aboriginals themselves toward other cultures and toward wild animals. Yet this attitude and no other seems to satisfy the demands of today's marketplace.

A great way to experience Hawaii!

This is a truly amazing book. By its contents, its style, and ... its price. The author affects a convoluted, turgid style where archaisms abound (erstwhile outnumbers former by two to one), where few words will not do when many can (in March 1865 becomes at the very end of the American Civil War in March 1865), where speculations and misrepresentations are handed down as God's Truth. Three pages on Father Sebastian Englert, who spent most of his life on Easter Island, would alone justify buying this book if it were not so expensive. They are a torrent of venomous, defamatory abuse opening with a mild Sebastian Englert (1888-1969) was perhaps personally the most remarkable-and academically the most overrated-figure, soon waxing to the German Capuchin father distilled a yarn as far removed from the historical truth of rongorongo's erstwhile use as one can imagine. For if Englert genuflected to any dogma it was to that of the almighty Oral Tradition... His claim that the inscriptions were read alternately left to right and right to left, without mentioning boustrophedon or the need to rotate the artefact while reading, shows in fact just how limited his knowledge of the subject was...Even in his posthumously published Island at the Centre of the World - New Light on Easter Island (Englert, 1970: 73-81)- regarded today on the island, in the Spanish edition, as "Scripture"-Padre Sebastian only reiterated the superannuated posture toward rongorongo of the 1930s and confused its scientific discussion with sophomoric inaccuracies... ignoring in later years all scientific advances made by Thomas Barthel or the Russians... and concluded with Unscientific but remarkably well-read, Padre Sebastian was long on words-but short on substance. The fascinating thing there is that those claims are never substantiated by, say, a direct quote, or a precise reference. Even more fascinating is that any reader who bothers to look up pages 73-81 of Englert "Island at the Center of the World" will discover that Fischer's claims are all outright misrepresentations. There Englert wrote: According to the tradition, Hotu Matua brought with him from Hiva sixty- seven of these inscribed tablets...The sequence of the writing is a rare and curious one called reversed boustrophedon that is, each line of script when it reaches the edge of the board turns back upside down to form the next line. This means that to read the script one must turn the board around at the end of each line...The most complete work dealing with the problem up to the present time is Grundlagen zur Entzifferung der Osterinselschrift (Foundations for the Decipherment of the Easter Island Script) by Thomas Barthel... A group of Russian scholars... have spent some years studying the problem. Englert having died in 1969, the editorial board of Clarendon Press must have felt it was safe to publish this libellous material. Fischer's aim becomes clear when he mistranslates Thomas Barthel's Grundlagen zur Entzifferung der Osterinselschrift as Rudiments Toward the Decipherment of the Easter Island Script (p. vii). The message is clear: Barthel's work was rudimentary, only awaiting the coming of Fischer's. The mistranslation is systematically repeated to ensure that the reader gets the point. What then, of Fischer's offering? The corpus of inscriptions is given as free- hand line reproductions of the hieroglyphic texts, falsely claimed to be computer- drawn (p.404). Those drawings are vastly inferior to Barthel's and contain glaring errors. Where Barthel had further provided alphanumerical transliterations to help analyze the texts, Fischer gives none. There are photographs, but so reduced that the signs, already tiny (10 to 15mm tall), become quite microscopic. A truly amazing book, hailed as the first study of rongorongo in any of the world's languages that comprehensively addresses the classical Rapanui scripts full history, traditions, and texts by its author, who has himself modestly described elsewhere as the greatest decipherer to have ever lived.