The world's worst title for a book ever

 

Read the book online at www.archive.org

 

Heinrich Hoffman was a key part in the making of the Hitler legend, the photographer who carefully crafted the image of the Führer as a godlike figure. Hoffmann published his first book of photographs in 1919, following his work as an official photographer for the German army.

In 1920 he joined the Nazi Party, and his association with Hitler began. He became Hitler's official photographer and travelled with him extensively. He took over two million photographs of Hitler, and they were distributed widely, including on postage stamps, an enterprise that proved very profitable for both men. Hoffmann published several books on Hitler in the 1930s, including "The Hitler Nobody Knows" (1933).

Hoffmann and Hitler were very close, and he acted not only as a personal confidante but also as a matchmaker; it is Hoffmann who introduced Eva Braun, his studio assistant, to Hitler. Unlike millions of others, Hoffmann survived the war and died in 1957, aged 72.

 

 

The book also includes a photograph of Adolf Hitler that so embarrassed him he banned it from being published. It shows the Führer in his lederhosen, striking a more "camp" than "commandant" pose as he awkwardly leans against a tree with his hands in his pockets.

 

 

I haven't had time yet to read Heinrich Hoffmann's "Hitler Was My Friend", as I'm still trying to finish the one about his kampfy chair.

 

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Tell 'em they're dreamin'!

 

 

On this first day of spring, as warm and sunny as it turned out to be, I felt a bit flat, and so I turned to an old-time favourite to cheer me up: "The Castle", still considered one of the most iconic and greatest Australian films ever made.

It's all about every Australian family's dream. A quarter-acre block. A Pool Room. A barbie. And an airport over the back fence.

Shot in eleven days on a budget of just A$750,000, on its cinema release in Australia on 10 April 1997, it grossed A$10,326,428 at the box office. Some of the quotes from the movie have become part of the Australian vernacular, none more so than Darryl's "Tell 'em they're dreamin'!"

 

"How's the serenity?"

"That's going straight to the pool room!"

"It's the Constitution, it's Mabo, it's the vibe..."

"What are you calling an eyesore? It's called a home ya dickhead!"

"It's not just a house... it's a home!"

"Dad, he reckons powerlines are a reminder of man's ability to generate electricity."

"The real estate agent said 'location location location' and we were right next to the airport!"

"Dad still can’t work out how he got it so cheap. It’s worth almost as much today as when we bought it."

"We're right next to the airport. It'll be very convenient if we ever have to fly one day."

"He say plane fly overhead, drop value. I don't care. In Beirut, plane fly over, drop bomb. I like these planes."

"Dad reckons fishing is 10% brains and 95% muscle, the rest is just good luck."

"Tell 'em they're dreamin'!"

 

Michael Caton, who was 54 years old at the time, was paid $3,000 for his starring role as Darryl Kerrigan. Caton later said that the real value of the film came from the decades of career opportunities it created for him afterward, because it sent his career straight to the pool room.

 

 

There are only trailers and other bits and pieces on YouTube. And there's no point in hoping to find a cheap copy at your local op-shop, as over the years I must've have bought them all to give as a present to visitors to "Riverbend" and give to friends here or send to friends overseas.

If you want to see the full movie, you can still buy it on ebay, or by clicking here, after which you can take it straight to your pool room.

 

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The Thirty-Nine Steps

 

 

I always thought that "The Thirty-Nine Steps" was just another Alfred Hotchcock movie until I discovered the slim hundred-page book by John Buchan of the same name. As the book's Introduction tells me, it is one of five novels which have Richard Hannay as hero, the others being "Greenmantle", "Mr Standfast", "The Three Hostages", and "The Island of Sheep".

"The Thirty-Nine Steps" is significant as being the first true espionage adventure, following "The Riddle of the Sands" by Erskine Childers, which was made into a beautiful movie in the U.K., and also in Germany where it was filmed in the Frisian Islands off the North Sea coast.

 

Listen to a radio dramatisation here
Read the book here

 

I've just copied the above audiobook onto a USB stick to take to bed with me for some four hours of listening pleasure under my electric blanket on this penultimate winter's night. See you all in the morning.

 

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P.S. Don't pick on me for using the word 'penultimate'. I'd never used it either until I worked for the American construction company Bechtel Corporation on Bougainville Island. Americans love big words - well, except for the Donald perhaps - and after one of them had used this word in one of his memos, it spread like wildfire, with some even adding an extra paragraph to their memos so that they could refer to the 'penultimate paragraph'. The words 'penultimate' and 'Bougainville' will be one and the same for me until I draw my penultimate breath.

 

I know you won't read this book ...

 

Read the book online at archive.org

 

Under the noses of British intelligence, London has become the European hub for the promotion, recruitment and financing of Islamic terror and extremism - so much so that it has been mockingly dubbed Londonistan. In this ground-breaking book Melanie Phillips pieces together the story of how Londonistan developed as a result of the collapse of traditional English identity and accommodation of a particularly virulent form of multiculturalism. Londonistan has become a country within the country and not only threatens Britain but the rest of the Western world.

 

 

I know you won't read this book - well, at least not until it's too late to do anything about it - so I've found you two video clips of a speech by the author, Melanie Phillips. It received a total of altogether FIVE!!! thumbs-up on YouTube which says it all about the apathy of the West.

Now go back to watching "Gardening Australia".

 

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Tea in the Library

 

 

A bookseller wins ten million dollars in the lottery. His estatic friends ask him what he plans to do with the money. With a huge smile on his face, he answers: "I'll keep selling books until the money runs out!"

Despite this joke, I have often fantasised about being surrounded by books all day long by opening a bookshop. I even went as far as doing some research on the subject, only to find out about the low margins, the long hours, the tough competition, and how hard it would be just to cover the rent.

One particular book that helped me in my research was "Tea in the Library", and I even struck up a short acquaintance by email with its author, Annette Freeman, who was then already living in Europe. She had actually turned her fantasy into reality. As she wryly noted, her book is a 'how not to' for anyone thinking of venturing into retail, let alone bookselling although, on the whole, the book is a positive read.

 

 

I had found the book several years ago in an op-shop, read it, and put it away somewhere. It was during last week's trip to Ulladulla that I found another copy in another op-shop. It seemed like it had been waiting for me, and so I took it and gave it a new home in "Melbourne", to be read once more should the old fantasy of opening a bookshop reassert itself.

If you have had the same dream of opening your own bookshop, you will reap vicarious pleasure from her forays into choosing colours and designs for her logo and shop fittout; the excitement of deciding what books to outlay her budget on; the images of her Chesterfield lounges and wing chairs in cosy lamp-lit corners surrounded by floor-to-ceiling wooden shelves brimming with beautiful books. Bliss indeed. And if you are lucky, the cost of this book will be all you give up to experience it.

 

 

I bought this book - twice! and for a mere $2 each time - primarily for the vicarious experience, but I quickly found that Annette Freeman's prose (her day job is as a trademarks lawyer) is an absolute pleasure to read. The chapters conveniently cover specific aspects of the life of the shop: Yarn-a-Thon, The Duck Run, Sea in the Library (getting curious?), and throughout Annette interweaves a taste of her own modus operand for life. Here is a brave woman who deliberately ventures out of her comfort zone into the angst-ridden territory of the small business owner but does not end up completely disillusioned, bitter and twisted. Instead, you meet a woman who has accumulated great wisdom at great cost and in the process maintained her poise, grace and equanimity.

Reading this book will give you a whole new appreciation for your local bookshop and, if nothing else, will want you shake the hands of their owners in gratitude for what they endure for your reading pleasure.

 

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