The soul of Twitter

I've been feeling bad about the books that lie unblogged in my wake. I've also been reflecting on the one-line review as a particularly artful and expeditious reading record. The harbinger of one-liners, Twitter is bagged for eroding language and maiming expression, but it could equally prove a useful discipline, a healthy moderation. Brevity, after all, is the soul of wit. In the spirit of Twitter, then, herewith some 140 character (count them!) reviews of my recent reads.

Served with a mint julep and a jazz band, Gatsby, Fitzgerald’s greatest, shatters America’s gleaming dreams on the dark shore of modernity.

In Wolf Hall, Hilary Mantel remarkably makes both Thomas Cromwell and historical fiction rich, rounded, beguiling, believable and likeable.

Brutal sins long hidden surface on the southern coast in The Broken Shore, Peter Temple’s bleak, bluntly understated slice of modern gothic.

My Brother Jack calls up classic Australian types, the literate prig and the larrikin digger, to chronicle a young nation’s wars and wounds.