Asides

WOODEN: The Age’s "senior in years" scribbler wins prize for lamentably poor book

“Phoney” Leonie Wood won a prize for her extraordinarily dull purple prose offering on Steve Vizard. Those looking for a serious biography will be sorely disappointed. It’s essentially one long court report about the trial of his former book-keeper who stole millions from the former TV presenter turned multi-millionaire and confessed insider trader.

There’s a puff piece book on him, written by a mate of his, that’s a much more interesting and comprehensive account.

The only impressive thing about Wood’s book is that she was able to get paid twice for the same court reports, only slightly embellished with prose that could see Phoney Leonie snapped up by Mills and Boon after her inevitable redundancy.

Far more impressive was Bruce Dover’s incredibly interesting book on the Rupe and his Chinese business activities. Well written, original, revealing of many untold secrets about News Corp and dealing with the Chinese regime generally, it’s a must-read.

We attempted to read Margaret Simons book, and found it a useful way of inducing sleep. It has a future role perhaps if able to registered as a medicine with the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme. The other book about glass manufacturing we haven’t yet got into, and is perhaps in the same potentially medicinal category.

Being miserly, we don’t tend to buy books but we spend hours at Border’s and the State Library free-loading there, Dover’s book was clearly the stand out business book by an Aussie this year. He was robbed.

And to add insult to injury, The Aged celebrated the occasion by publishing a pic of the sullen and hard-faced shrew, which must be photoshopped because she appears to be smiling (or possibly farting).

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