16 April 2026

This is NOT a doctor!

This is not censorship

Early in the life of this website, back in April 2017, Victoria wrote a review for J.D. Vance’s Hillbilly Elegy. As Australians, we had never heard of J.D. Vance before the success of his book, but we were certainly interested in how someone who had made a success of themselves from an area supportive of Trump explained the world he grew up in, and why he thought the culture had reached a point that it could elect a person like Trump.

After a discussion with Victoria this morning, the review has become the first-ever I’ve removed from this website. We agreed we would both feel more comfortable with it gone. Certainly, the tenor of Victoria’s discussion of Vance was very different in April 2017 than what she would write if she had reason to, now. Now, Vance is Vice President, supporting an insurrectionist criminal president whom he once called “America’s Hitler”. But political ambition brushed those concerns aside, it seems. Vance has also supported Viktor Orbán in the recent election in Hungary, which he lost, and has tried to excuse Trump’s representation of himself as a saviour, dressed in the guise of Jesus Christ, seemingly performing a miracle. At the same time, Trump has denounced the Pope’s stance against violence and war.

We are not religious at all, but we can see how deeply offensive these acts are to millions on religious grounds, as is Vance and the administration’s attempts to brush the concerns about Trump, aside. Trump’s religious appropriation is also deeply offensive to us on the grounds that this man is a megalomaniac who simply lies as often as he breathes and is clearly more concerned about self-aggrandisement (think of his plans for a triumphal arch, the ballroom and his renaming of the Kennedy Centre) than the chaos and suffering he causes throughout the world. To promote his own reality, he is willing to trample any norm, abuse any opposition, abandon the very tenets upon which he was elected (he started a war!), rail against NATO, protect paedophiles, degrade public discourse, act corruptly and undermine his own country and its standing in the world.

J.D. Vance is supporting all that and more. Seriously, there is just too much to write about: ICE and the murder of civilians, Putin, sexual assault . . . the list goes on and on. There is even censorship in school libraries. Trump’s administration whines about cancel culture on the left, which is what the removal of Victoria’s review would be deemed if this website had any broad base to be noticed. But we are removing the review as an act of free speech: choosing to have words made public that represent what we think and feel. Removing a review from a private website is not the same as taking books away from children: not the same as banning reporters from the Pentagon; not the same as twisting reality for large portions of American citizens who vote against their own interests because men in women’s sport is a neat distraction from billionaire interests.

We have deleted a review but this is not censorship. You can still go buy Vance’s book. We haven’t taken it away from you. But if you read it now, you have a far broader knowledge about Vance and who he is than Victoria had when she wrote her review in 2017. That review no longer represents what we know or wish to say.

If this sounds a bit like a rant, then it is. I am disgusted and angry about what is happening in America. Historians of the future will turn themselves inside out to try to explain how all this has happened, while others who are sympathetic to Trump and Vance’s agenda will simply call everything that has happened – the very facts – fake news, because that is what Trump has taught them to do: deny facts and embrace his reality.

Thankyou for your attention to this matter!

- bikerbuddy

3 April 2026

A short rest with Lucy

After a day reading Cameron Sullivan’s new book, The Red Winter, I took a few minutes to rest my eyes with Lucy, the Reading Project dog.

But Lucy is ever vigilant, possessing hair-trigger reactions. No period of respite, no matter how briefly intended, could ever last!

- bikerbuddy

2 April 2026

The International Booker Prize Shortlist for 2026 Announced

The International Booker Prize Shortlist for 2026 was announced yesterday. So begins this years’ round of following the two prizes. The International Booker, awarded for a translated book, is the first award, followed later in the year by the original Booker Prize, which started in 1969. The International Booker Prize has been awarded in its current form since 2016. We have an ongoing long-term project to review all the Booker and International Booker Prize winners since they were inaugurated.

Given that, I always like to put up the shortlists each year. I’ve taken descriptions for each book from the Booker website. You can view this year’s International Booker page on the official site by clicking here.

On Earth as it is Beneath Ana Paula Maia

Translated by: Padma Viswanathan

Original Language: Portuguese

On land where enslaved people were once tortured and murdered, the state built a penal colony in the wilderness, where inmates could be rehabilitated, but never escape. Now, decades later, and having only succeeded in trapping men, not changing them for the better, its operations are winding down.

But in the prison’s waning days, a new horror is unleashed: every full-moon night, the inmates are released, the warden is armed with rifles, and the hunt begins. Every man plans his escape, not knowing if his end will come at the hands of a familiar face, or from the unknown dangers beyond the prison walls.

Ana Paula Maia delivers a bracing vision of our potential for violence, and our collective failure to account for the consequences of our social and political action, or inaction. No crime is committed out of view for this novelist, and her raw, brutal power enlists us all as witnesses.

Tiawan Travelogue by Yáng Shuāng-zǐ

Translated by: Lin King

Original Language: Mandarin Chinese

May 1938. The young novelist Aoyama Chizuko has sailed from her home in Nagasaki, Japan, and arrived in Taiwan. She’s been invited there by the Japanese government ruling the island, though she has no interest in their official banquets or imperialist agenda. Instead, Chizuko longs to experience real island life and to taste as much of its authentic cuisine as her famously monstrous appetite can bear.

Soon a Taiwanese woman – who is younger even than she is, and who shares the characters of her name – is hired as her interpreter and makes her dreams come true. The charming, erudite, meticulous Chizuru arranges Chizuko’s travels all over the Land of the South and also proves to be an exceptional cook.

Over scenic train rides and braised pork rice, lively banter and winter melon tea, Chizuko grows infatuated with her companion and intent on drawing her closer. But something causes Chizuru to keep her distance. It’s only after a heartbreaking separation that Chizuko begins to grasp what the ‘something’ is.

She Who Remains by Rene Karabash

Translated by: Izidora Angel

Original Language: Bulgarian

High in Albania’s Accursed Mountains, in a village ruled by the ancient laws of the Kanun, Bekja escapes an arranged marriage by becoming a sworn virgin, renouncing her womanhood to live as a man. Her decision sets off a brutal chain of events, destroying her family and separating her from the one she loves the most.

Years later, as Bekija – now Matija – tells their story to a visiting journalist, long-buried truths come to light, along with the realisation of all that might have been.

The Director by Daniel Kehlmann

Translated by: Ross Benjamin

Original Language: German

When the Nazis seize power in the 1930s, G.W. Pabst, one of cinema’s greatest directors, is filming in France. To escape the horrors of the new Germany, he flees to Hollywood. But under the dazzling California sun, the world-famous director suddenly looks like a nobody. Not even Greta Garbo, whom he made famous, can help him.

When Pabst receives word that his elderly mother is ailing, he finds himself back in his homeland of Austria, which is now called Ostmark. Pabst, his wife and his young son are confronted with the barbaric nature of the regime, but the minister of propaganda in Berlin wants the film genius. He won’t take no for an answer, and he makes big promises.

While Pabst still believes that he will be able to resist these advances, that he will not submit to any dictatorship other than art, he has already taken the first steps into a hopeless entanglement.

The Nights are Quiet in Tehran by Shida Bazyar

Translated by: Ruth Martin

Original Language: German

1979. Behzad, a young communist revolutionary, fights with his friends for a new order after the Shah’s expulsion. He tells of sparking hope, of clandestine political actions, and of how he finds the love of his life in the courageous, intelligent Nahid.

1989. Nahid lives her new life in West Germany with Behzad. With their young children, they spend hour after hour in front of the radio, hoping for news from others who went into hiding after the mullahs came to power.

1999. Laleh returns to Iran with her mother, Nahid. Between beauty rituals and family secrets, she gets to know a Tehran that hardly matches her childhood memories.

2009. Laleh’s brother Mo is more concerned with a friend’s heartbreak than with student demonstrations in Germany. But then the Green Revolution breaks out in Iran and turns the world upside down.

The Witch by Marie Ndiaye

Translated by: Jordan Stump

Original Language: French

Lucie comes from a long line of witches, powers passed down from mother to daughter. Her own mother was formidable in her powers, but ashamed of her magic. Perhaps as a result, Lucie’s own gift is weak: she can see into the future, sometimes, but more often she can only see the present of some other location. Not very useful. And the worst part? All she can ever see are insignificant details – a scrap of outfit, the colour of the sky.

Lucie’s own children are initiated into their family’s peculiar womanhood when they reach 12 years of age, and in a few short months, Maud and Lise are crying the curious tears of blood that denote their magical powers. Having learned, they take off quickly and fly the nest. Literally.

Witty, dreamlike, unsettling and enchanting, The Witch brings the mysteries of womanhood and motherhood into sharp relief and leaves us teetering on the edge, unbalanced by questions as seemingly unbreakable relationships break down left and right.

Who is to blame for family failures? And how can you build a nest that no one wants to fly?

- bikerbuddy

1 April 2026

Us Modern Luddites

Yesterday I finally managed to get back on schedule with my pages for ‘Homer and the Epic Cycle’ project, with a third page published for The Odyssey in March. Ever since I heard that Chris Nolan was releasing a screen adaptation of The Odyssey in July, I’ve wanted to finish our Odyssey pages before it gets released. It’s easy to drag it out. The Iliad pages took a couple of years to complete, in the end.

That’s because this website is designed by, and its contents written by human beings. We have things going on in our lives, too! I say this because I find the prospects for the future lamentable: a future when people may want to work creatively, but perhaps it is no longer economically viable to pay for human-produced content. Not that we get paid. This is a hobby site. But on a commercial scale, I can imagine that not only authors, but graphic designers, webmasters and many other industries will become increasingly redundant occupations with the advent of AI.

I know this sounds like doomsaying, but I’ve seen several stories in the last month about mass layoffs in intellectual and creative spheres for this very reason. And in case that sounds like a vague assertion to make a bullshit point, consider the following. Atlassian, a software company founded in Sydney, announced it will be laying off 10% of its workforce – about 1600 people, globally, including almost 500 Australian staff. WiseTech Global announced its plan to cut around 2,000 jobs – around 30% of its workforce – over the next two-years, as part of its “deep AI transformation”. Block Inc., the company that owns Afterpay, has taken an “all in on AI” strategy, and thousands of jobs are being axed in the company as a result. And if you’re of a more creative bent, like you might one day wish to write novels, for instance, then you would have to be concerned about those ads that pop up on Facebook etc, boasting that you can have a book written in the morning and be selling it in the afternoon. That may be an exaggeration, or the returns may be poor in a market increasingly flooded by AI texts on platforms like Amazon, but it can’t bode well for authors who might take months, even years to produce their work in an environment where publishing companies will have to transform how they distribute their products, and perhaps face commercial pressure to publish fewer authors of flesh and blood.

That’s why you may have noticed this little badge appearing on our latest reviews:

I downloaded the badge for free from the Not by AI website (which I really really hope is not produced by robots!)

I was having a discussion with Victoria a few weeks back and I said that as people increasingly assume the content they consume on social media is AI driven, that it might be assumed this website is AI produced, too. I realised this because I was having thoughts that it was nuts how much we’d done on the website over the last decade, starting with a silly conversation and inflated ideas about what we might do. None of this website is AI produced. Not even our logo, the picture of Lucy our dog, reading a book. It was produced from several photos – of her sitting in our hall, from photos of her paws as she was being held, and from a book being tentatively held at the bottom – all of it edited and put together on an older version of Photoshop that has no AI assistance. So I wanted to use the ‘Not by AI’ badge in reviews to signal that the website is produced by humans. Because that is still important to many people. I know there is no way to absolutely convince anyone of this now, given the advancements in AI (I have plans for making a short film on how our reviews are produced, but even that proves nothing in the context of AI). But if you’re in Sydney, if you really care to know, you could always drop me a line, ask to say hello, even. I’ll even meet in the town square of Springwood if anyone demands to know. In that case you can take a photo and prod me a bit, like doubting Thomas poking the wounds of Christ!

Maybe things will get better.

- bikerbuddy