Not Quite Everything (Everywhere) All At Once

by Ian Worthington
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5 books
I don’t have a particular genre when it comes to reading like some people do. Books for me can be fiction or nonfiction, serious or comic, short or long, topical or outdated, you name it. The books I selected below are diverse, but they have a certain uniformity in their diversity because they reflect me and how I like to choose something that takes my fancy at any given time.
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Working Class Boy

Jimmy Barnes, 2016
Jimmy is Australian Rock and Roll Royalty who shot to fame in the band Cold Chisel before going solo. If you want no-holds-barred rock and roll screamed out and powerful, then this is the man for you, but play it very loud! At the same time, sings soul that makes you think it must be someone else. His childhood and upbringing in the streets of Glasgow before moving to Adelaide in the early 1960s at age five were appalling, and this raw biography lays bare what he and his siblings suffered, how he spiraled into alcoholism and drug dependency, and how music saved him and then family life. It’s inspirational and everyone should read it.

Blackpink

K-Pop's No.1 Girl Group
Adrian Besley, 2019
I fell victim to Hallyu (the Korean wave) a couple of years ago and moved from being addicted to K-dramas to K-pop, especially IU and Blackpink. This book is a narrative with plenty of glossy pictures of how this girl group came into being, from their arduous training years at their management company in Korea to their debut in 2016 and their rise to global superstardom. The book brings out the contrast between Western artists who can be incomprehensible and yet be overnight successes and the hard slog, talent, resilience, and toughness needed to make it in the K-pop world. If you think the book is good, wait till you see Blackpink live in concert!

The Return of the Native

Thomas Hardy, 1995
Hardy is my favourite novelist, and this is my favourite of his novels. Its complexity yet ease of storytelling, cast of characters, many of whom are delightfully eccentric and exasperating, pathos interspersed with clever humour, and sensitivity to human dreams, failings, and demands, all make it compelling reading. It’s also a book that gripped me as never before when, as a young lad, I found the first forty-odd pages unexciting, and then suddenly, like a fish to bait, I was hooked!

A View from the Bridge

Arthur Miller, 1995
Every time I read this play, I find something new about it or identify with a different person in it. Not to mention, I wonder why I enjoy a play that is a tragedy and rips apart a family. I think this is one of Miller’s cleverest – if not the cleverest – plays. It has a simple premise but is fleshed out in such complex ways and with such brilliant finessing of the characters that you quickly become lost in it – you become part of the action and even interpret it. The final scenes are predictable, but even so, how they are presented is Miller at his best.

The Military Legacy of Alexander the Great

Lessons for the Information Age
Michael P. Ferguson, Ian Worthington, 2023
This is one of my own books, but I was told that’s OK as long as I disclose it! My co-author is a U.S. combat veteran with special knowledge of global security issues and the increasing mechanization of warfare. We take Alexander the Great’s phenomenal leadership and strategic skills and show what lessons they have for 21st-century military challenges and the security environment. Technology has changed since the fourth century BC when Alexander was forging an empire from Greece to India in less than a decade: what hasn’t is the need for human leadership and boots on the ground, which today is giving way to the use of technology.