I had to drop my brother off at a friend' place in Glebe (he was over from Adelaide for the weekend - his first visit in 10 years!). So then I drove around the corner and parked the car in Derwent St. It is a very pretty street. This tree must be at least a hundred years old: it has grown out into the road and it's a wonder it hasn't been cut down. Nowadays they never plant street trees that will be in the least bit undisciplined in their old age. And it's so nice to be able to park your car in some actual shade when the temperature is over 30.


Opposite was this charming not-quite-derelict building:




My real destination was Gleebooks. I bought:
3 whodunnits:
Anrnaldur Indridason, Tainted Blood
Karin Fossum, He Who Fears the Wolf
Karin Fossum, Calling Out For You

and 2 others:
Mary Lucille Sullivan Making Sex Work: a failed experiment with legalised prostitution
Tanya Reinhardt The Road Map to Nowhere: Israel/Palestine since 2003

I have read the first three. The first one was kinda bizarre because it made Reyjavik seem like a city - although the entire population of Iceland is only 120,000. Still, I quite liked it. The Karin Fossums are especially good because they are less to do with the whodunnit than with strange relationships in small towns. Calling Out For You was particularly satisfactory as the murder mystery was really not quite resolved at the end. There was the suggestion that cops are not always on top of things. I'm looking forward to reading more of her stories.

The other two will need to wait until I've finished the other book I'm reading, which is Michael B. Oren's Power, Faith and Fantasy, about US relations with the Middle East. I'm a bit under half way through. It is a very traditional historian's narrative - non-analytical - but nevertheless quite fascinating.