Historic Great Ocean Road

When explorer Matthew Flinders reflected on Victoria's south western coast he said "I have seldom seen a more fearful section of coastline".
These sentiments were shared by many a ship's captain as he 'threaded the eye of the needle' guided by the Cape Otway light. So difficult was this passage, and frequently treacherous the conditions, that more than 50 ships including the 'Schomberg'(1855), 'Loch Ard (1878), Falls of Halladale' (1909), and 'Casino' (1932), were lost.

Post-Jungian Reflection

A Delight of Introversion

Memories, Dreams, Reflections is insightful and humane and a tale of the humble individual facing larger societal patterns. Or at least partly so.
While leaving praising aside, it's quite accessible to understand why Jung became the founder of analytical psychology - and intriguing to learn about the details of his interaction with Freud and the rest of the scientific community.
The manner in which he manages to hold on to his modesty while elevating the human psychology to religious heights can't but impress. In someone else's words:

Throughout his life and as an analyst, Jung developed a refreshing ability to stand outside himself and to bring so much of his unconscious material into consciousness.

Sillanpää

So one day, quite some time ago, I had decided to give Finnish writers a chance. And what better start than a Nobel prize novelist, right?
Thus I chose Sillanpää's Maid Silja, a referential work for the time; also representative for the author's overall distinction of "deep understanding of his country's peasantry and the exquisite art with which he has portrayed their way of life and their relationship with Nature".

The book shows nothing of my expected - why? - feminist sprouting of those particular Northern realms; instead, it's a simple and dramatic narrative of Silja's life in a certain given set of historical circumstances.

Big themes raise their heads and cross the path of the narrative - poverty and infant mortality, civil war and the brutal alternation of reprisals, the crossed purposes of love ... Somehow, the main character retains integrity, courage, and a sort of good cheer, even in the face of premature death. The intensity of life, although brief, is like the few summers that are imprinted on the heroine's mind.

[from here]
And so it ends, with a distinct sensation of having depicted life's small and large cycles alike.
It left me wondering how different might our great grandparents' lives have been back in the glory days of Bolshevik inception.

Strength in What Remains

That 63-year-old Tracy Kidder may have just written his finest work — indeed, one of the truly stunning books I’ve read this year [i.e. 2009] — is proof that the secret to memorable nonfiction is so often the writer’s readiness to be ­surprised. [...]

While reporting his 2003 best seller, “Mountains Beyond Mountains,” a fitfully earnest book about a character almost impossible to love too much — Dr. Paul Farmer, leader of a global campaign to eradicate preventable disease — Kidder stumbled across a spectral African refugee who had signed on with the doctor’s organization, Partners in Health, as a bit player, a guy helping out, answering e-mail, “performing any jobs that needed doing.” His name was Deogratias, or “thanks be to God” in Latin.

“Strength in What Remains” is Deo’s story. And what a tale it is, opening from a passenger seat in an airliner in war-torn Burundi, where Deo, then 24, is leaving behind what once seemed a promising life in Africa as a third-year medical student. It was 1994. Burundi and neighboring Rwanda were exploding in civil wars, in which Hutu and Tutsi were slaughtering one another in one of the 20th century’s most horrifying conflicts. With the help of the privileged family of one of his med-school friends, Deo is able to escape the carnage, bound for America.

If intrigued, here's the remainder of the NY Times review.