Paul McGuire
Paul McGuire is a freelance author, writer and reviewer. He is also Deputy Principal of Sha Tin Junior School.
A Sea of Green by Bill Purves
PAUL MCGUIRE | 20 June 2006Ships sail each day of the year from thousands of ports throughout the world carrying goods of every description. Trade is a global economic lifeline and the means of providing life's essentials as well as luxuries from wherever they are grown or manufactured. But rarely do landlubbers give a second thought to those who ply the high seas braving all manner of danger to bring them energy supplies, cars, clothes, food,... [ more ]
The Third Ear by Chris Lonsdale
PAUL MCGUIRE | 16 May 2006Anybody involved in trying to learn a new language will enjoy CHRIS LONSDALE's personal take on how best to achieve success. THE THIRD EAR is a loosely-knit web of ideas using an engaging mix of anecdotes, personal experiences, philosophy and language acquisition theory which, even if it does not prove to have all the answers at least poses intriguing questions.
Questions such as why do adults, with all their... [ more ]
Camel Bells in the Windy Desert: Coming of Age in Inner Mongolia by Andrew Tu
PAUL MCGUIRE | 26 April 2006Personal testimonies coming out of China have become something of a cottage industry. But this reprint of ANDREW TU's traumatic experiences growing up in Inner Mongolia, first published in 1987, is coolly descriptive and its emotional balance and potent imagery makes for an uncomplicated, genuine account of a confused child desperate to make sense of a cruel, harsh world.
PAUL MCGUIRE | 22 October 2005EMMA LARKIN is a journalist. She maintains that the unholy trinity of George Orwell's most popular and accessible books -- Burmese Days, Animal Farm and 1984 -- were uncannily prophetic about the fate of Burma as it moved from colonial rule to an uneasy military dictatorship in the author's after his death in 1950. Her book is a physical and metaphorical odyssey as she travels the length and breadth of Burma... [ more ]
Desert Rose by Mary Weijun Collins
PAUL MCGUIRE | 23 September 2005Many Chinese people suffered during the various purges, civil wars and competing ideologies of the last century. The author's family were no exception. Mary's father suffered terribly and eventually died poor and hungry in a labour camp. But because the family were high born teachers in Qingdao and called black rather than red during communist rule, everybody went through a personal hell difficult to comprehend from a... [ more ]
Isabella: She-Wolf of France, Queen of England by Alison Weir
PAUL MCGUIRE | 11 September 2005Queen Isabella's reputation since her controversial reign in the fourteenth century has been little short of disastrous. She shocked contemporary biographers and generations of historians alike with behaviour that labelled her as little more than a murderess, an adulteress, a traitor -- but perhaps worst of all, a woman with a mind of her own who acted against the social, ethical and political mores of her time.
[ more ]
How Hedley Hopkins Did a Dare by Paul Jennings
PAUL MCGUIRE | 07 September 2005Fans of PAUL JENNINGS fed on a diet of his hilarious books for younger readers will find his first attempt at teenage fiction something of a disappointment. Based on his own childhood experiences as an immigrant into Australia this piece suffers from all the classic weaknesses of stories using the author as the main character. Yet... [ more ]
My Friend the Enemy by J.B. Cheaney
PAUL MCGUIRE | 12 August 2005Hazel is nine years old when Japanese planes bomb Pearl Harbour. Two years later she grapples with anti-Japanese sentiment in her quiet Oregon community. The `Japs' are a clearly identifiable and obviously dangerous enemy and anybody with the same ethnic background is subject to suspicious scrutiny.
