Recently I've read Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad. I think the first half of the book was better than the second but it was still a great read, very poetic at times.
Then I read My Steve by Terri Irwin. Only because me Dad wanted me to. It fucking sucked. I mean if you can't write, don't try. She could have recorded a video tribute or something. And I still think the same of Steve, great efforts towards conservation and that's highly commendable but all in all, still a hyperactive douche bag.
Now I'm reading Cloudstreet by Tim Winton on recommendation by UAN. Really brilliant and enjoyable so far. It's the second novel of his I've read and this one is much more accessible. Beautiful prose, even if it is Aussie as fuck. And by that I mean you wouldn't think Aussieisms to be able to be pulled off in a way that makes you think anything more than "bogan." But if you assumed that, you'd be wrong. Pour example:
Men looked at her the way they look at horses. They were bolder now they knew her old man was a crip. She was fed up with this town. She knew it was time to make her own luck and piss off, but she just couldn't get started. It'd be better when the summer was over, when the war was over. There'd be a better time, she knew.
No money came in. No compo. Sam didn't go on the dole. At night she lay beside him in bed, sensed his wiry weight spilling her towards him, and she tilted guiltily his way every time to scramble astride him and pull him into her, watch the harbour lights rise and fall through the window as she remembered the girlhood colour of moonlight on a paddock of stubble and the grind of dirt beneath her buttocks.