Secrets of the Jury Room

Secrets of the Jury Room: Inside the Black Box of Criminal Justice in Australia by Malcolm Knox

My rating: 2 of 5 stars


This book came from one of those shops furnished with cardboard boxes full of the same 3 books that make you question the sanity (or sense of humour) of the creep in charge of giving manuscripts the ok. Biographies of reality TV stars from the UK circa 2002, family encyclopaedias of garden sourced home remedies, joke books. And ‘Secrets of the Jury Room’, plastered as it is with endorsements from QCs.



‘Secrets of the Jury Room’ looks at the role of juries in the Australian legal system, with discussions and evaluations of surveys of jurors that have been undertaken. The book follows a case in which Knox served as a juror, albeit with enough details and names changed as to make it untraceable. The case, as it appears in the book, is interesting enough to justify the length of the book, and give it pace enough to allow the examination of these issues.



It’s a light read, which throws up some interesting issues. How much power rests with the jury, and in the end, how much power rests with the juror with the loudest voice. What it’s like to serve on a jury, down to the stodgy hot food and reading on the train to the city. It’s an interesting insight into jury duty, and group dynamics under strange circumstances.



The importance of having community attitudes and values represented, and conveying to a jury the issues that they are to decide on. Or more importantly, those that they aren’t placed to adjudicate. The people that are on juries, those that manage to avoid it, and the slither of society that it ends up representing.



I was particularly interested in the issues around the interaction between the jury and lawyers. The second guessing, focusing on the clear ‘leader, the winks and nudges vs avoidance of eye contact. The tactics, and the complete mystery that juries are to lawyers. The way that jurors are able to be so powerful but in some cases are treated with little more than contempt. The way judges are held in such high esteem, and the way people act when put in such a clear role, with clear boundaries and expectations.



Given the 3 strikes it came with, it was ok. Shrug.





View all my reviews

Snow, 2

This dog has taught me to appreciate baby steps, and the step forward after the two steps back. He has shown me just how popular cat statues and monuments are in Brunswick, because for the first week, he was transfixed by all of them. Cat mementos are more popular and lifelike than I had ever considered, and for a while made every stroll an extended nightmare of arm-wrestling and sighs.



I gush uncontrollably when he stops to smell something in the gutter, and takes forever to inspect fallen branches in Methven Park. I can’t bear to correct him when he drags his muzzle along parked cars, smelling them, because smelling means he’s using more than his eyes to process the world.



He has started to develop the kleptomania I had read so much about, and which is so much cuter when he doesn’t realise he has an audience. He ripped the cover off my book by doing turns on my bed, where he wasn’t meant to be allowed. He suddenly pounces on toys that for he hadn’t acknowledged for the previous 3 weeks. He follows me into the shower, opening the door if I don’t invite him in, and lies on the floor, occasionally sighing with frustration. The shadow of his nose poking the shower curtain, and the dark little dots that mist and water leave on the dark parts of his face. The way women always comment on his eyeliner. The way old men always look approvingly at me, before some abhorrent comment about greyhound racing. The way kids love his little bootie, and are never scared of his muzzle until their parents panic and pull them away.



How, whenever I forget, the white hairs on everything I own remind me that he’s at home, asleep, probably oblivious to how much I love him. I don’t know how anybody can foster dogs and not be completely destroyed by it.

number9dream

number9dream by David Mitchell

My rating: 2 of 5 stars


As many times as I tried to come back to number9dream, it couldn't hold my attention. It is one of David Mitchell’s earlier books, and reads as such – it moves clunkily between dream like states and real world happenings, in a way that annoyed me rather than swept and kept me in. I can’t get beyond half way, and wish I hadn’t started. I started reading it in Tokyo, where the first couple of chapters were set in places that if I hadn’t seen, I could imagine, and which kept me reading.

There is none of the deft character building of Mitchell’s other works (particularly The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet), and the awkward dialogue prevented me from ever caring about any of the characters. Whenever I was getting close to being sucked into a scene, some dialogue wrenched me out like an ill-written line in a movie which slams you back into your seat, in the theatre, surrounded by people, and watching a screen. The moment is gone, and you’ve lost your train of thought.

Maybe I’ll try again later, but for now, many more books are calling.




View all my reviews

Snow

I have visited the meat sections of the supermarkets at Barkly Square for the first time in my life, and though I haven’t mustered the courage for more than an extended gaze in the direction of the butcher, it’s probably next. The only way I can tell between what has been designated as dog food is by price, unless it has a sticker with a picture of an animal. Being a dog or cat, because no supermarket intending to sell its meat would put a picture of a cow on its beef packet, surely.

I buy zucchinis for me and Snow, and we share what was formerly my breakfast toast, and the 2-pack biscuits that I steal lovingly from my housemate. I wonder whether me being so attached to him is making him too attached to me, and what it will mean for when he is adopted. The hallway is long enough for him to pick up just too much speed to enable him to stop before hitting the door at the end. His bed takes up the floor space that was left after my bed and bookshelves. He takes his special treats because it would be a sin not to take something offered, and drops them because actually, pig ears are kind of gross until you’re by yourself and well, there they are. Like internet porn, I guess.

His front legs are so long and lanky that he can’t shake his body without them splaying everywhere. His tail has hairless lines along the vertebrae from where it hits everything when it wags. He sighs for attention and doesn’t seem to know how to break the fall from standing to lying down. He doesn’t seem to know a lot of things.


.

Middlesex, part way through.

Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


I usually start reading goodreads reviews when I'm around 3/4 through a book. Just to check whether I'm on par with the rest of the world, I suppose.

I love this book. I am in Japan, have trawled tens of bookshops in search of an English section, and have some books lined up for when I allow myself to finish Middlesex. Reading reviews has disturbed me, though. As usual, there are those that, with varying degrees of detail and personal reflection, praise it.

What is particularly disturbing, however, is the number of reviews that rate the book so poorly because it describes incest, or because, essentially, it's not what they expected it to be. I don't find the book's description of incest disturbing - I find it disturbing that people are unable to read a book because they consider it to be somehow glorifying incest, in relaying a story which contains it. People are funny, but I find it horrifying that people are so happy to go about life sticking their fingers in their ears going LA LA LA.

Middlesex is a family history, which leads us through three generations of the Stephanides family. It is narrated by Cal, who is the main character of the last third of the book. Cal is a hermaphrodite, who is brought up a girl, discovers at the age of 14 that she is not definitely physically female, and starts living as a male.　The fact that Cal is a hermaphrodite, and the 'reasons' for want of a better word, are the most controversial and talked about parts of the novel. They do not make the novel, though.

If you heard Oprah talk about xxx, read the book and realised that there's more to the book than Oprah's discussion of xxx, it's not a shortcoming of the book.



View all my reviews

The Colour of Magic

The Colour of Magic by Terry Pratchett

My rating: 1 of 5 stars


The only reason I tried to read this book again is because I am on holiday, and need something to break up the Seven Pillars of Wisdom. This was the only English book I could find, and as much as I have hated Terry Pratchett before, I figured that it couldn't possibly be as terrible as my memory would have me believe.



Wrong.



Reading Terry Pratchett is the literary equivalent of watching sketch comedies inspired by the local political figures of another country, a decade on. I imagine that you'd like if you had watched it back then, and had a chuckle. Now, however, it seems dated and un-funny. There are a few little quips that made me smirk, but they couldn't keep me going beyond about 2/3 of the book. I hate it.



I love fantasy. Swords, horses, mana, flaxen locks, spells and chosen children are not a problem for me. I'm happy to read pulpy trash, particularly on holiday. One would think that I'm the kind of person that ought to love the the kind of person that ought to love the Discworld series. I'm just not.　Three or so chances are enough; this is one of the very few books that is too painful to finish than to leave hanging.



View all my reviews

Historical Fiction reading challenge

I think I can be Daring and Curious and read 5 historical fiction books in 2011. I'm kind of curious as to whether The Seven Pillars of Wisdom would qualify as 'historical fiction' actually. I suspect it might spark the kind of debate that I haven't got the patience to engage in. Regardless,
at this rate Lawrence is going to accompany me well into 2011.