Reviews for Formal specification and software development

The average rating for Formal specification and software development based on 2 reviews is 5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2016-07-04 00:00:00 Lucy Rutherford Note, Jan. 8, 2020: When I read short story collections intermittently over a long period of time, my reactions are similarly written piecemeal, while they're fresh in my mind. That gives the reviews a choppy, and often repetitive, quality. Recently, I had to condense and rearrange one of these into a unified whole because of Goodreads' length limit; and I was so pleased with the result that I decided to give every one of these a similar edit! Accordingly, I've now edited this one. My second-hand knowledge of Australian literature is practically non-existent; and until I started reading this anthology, my first-hand acquaintance with it consisted entirely of having read a Reader's Digest condensed version of Morris West's novel The Shoes of the Fisherman decades ago, and skimming Katharine Susannah Pritchard's story "The Cooboo" in The Norton Anthology of Literature by Women when we were home-schooling our girls. (I didn't care much for the latter.) Given my Aussie connection, however, this is a state of affairs I'd like to remedy. So, I was particularly pleased to discover this collection on the shelves of the public library in Harrisonburg, Virginia while I was passing time there on one of my visits to the area. This anthology is apparently arranged chronologically (the individual selections aren't dated, however), and includes 52 stories by some 44 authors who were born in Australia or emigrated there. (Not all of them stayed there; and a few, like Henry Handel Richardson --who, interestingly, was a woman-- lived elsewhere most of their lives.) Pritchard's was the only name I recognized, but an appendix of short autobiographical sketches of the authors is provided. Henry Lawson, Edward Dyson, Barbara Baynton, Frank Penn-Smith, Les Robinson, and James Hackston are each represented twice, and Ray Mathew is represented both by a story he wrote by himself and by a collaboration with Mena Abdullah (who was born in 1930, and is the youngest of the contributors here). Editor Stewart also contributes a story. The great majority of the writers were male, and judging from their names almost all were of European (mostly British) birth or descent. Chronologically, the stories were composed from the last few decades of the 19th century down through, apparently, the first seven decades of the 20th. (The book was originally published in 1971.) For the most part, the writing is in the Realist style, and not all of the selections are really plotted stories; some could be described more as "slice of life" vignettes or sketches. (But they're interesting sketches!) Nearly all are set in Australia, though Louis Becke's "The Methodical Mr. Burr of Majuru" is set in the Marshall Islands, and William Baylebridge's World War I story "The Duel" is set during the Gallipoli campaign (the G-word isn't used, but the enemy soldiers in the opposing trenches are said to be Turks). My recollections from my Australian visits helped me appreciate the particular touches of local color in the various selections, such as the reversed (compared to the Northern Hemispere's) seasons, shepherd's pie, and the technique of panning for gold in streams --which I and my family did for a day near Gympie, Queensland back in 2007. :-) Readers who need trigger warnings should be aware that two of the stories here deal with rape, or in one case a would-be rape that turns into murder; but the actual violence isn't described in detail in either of these. As is often the case, a number of the tales are difficult to comment on much without resorting to spoilers. I skimmed four stories that I concluded weren't worth a real read (but I skimmed closely enough to make a fair assessment). One of the latter was "The Cooboo," which I re-skimmed to reassess my earlier judgment (see above). Alas, that assessment stands; this is a very ugly, brutal tale of infanticide, which seems to have the agenda of painting the aboriginal community in a negative light. Its morbid and pessimistic vision is calculated to appeal to modern critics, but it isn't my cup of tea. The other selections I skimmed included both of those by Robinson, who was obviously into surrealism (I'm not). His "Song of the Flea," for instance, follows a narrator inexplicably turned into a flea. (It was probably Kafka-influenced; but I'm not a Kafka fan.) Though I read it in full, Ray Mathew's "A Real Lie" was another of the most intensely disliked selections for me personally, though it's impossible to explain why without resorting to a spoiler. Based on her work here, I'd characterize Barbara Baynton as a representative of the Naturalist school, and I don't embrace the underlying Naturalist assumptions. So her stories were hard to get into. I'd also say that "Billy Skywonkie" [a "skywonkie" is a weather predictor] would have worked better if she'd have developed and described her unnamed female protagonist more. Marjorie Barnard's "The Persimmon-tree" (obviously influenced by Henry James at his worst) didn't impress me; and I have to say that Dyson's "A Golden Shanty," though it has an ingenious premise, is marred by its prejudiced treatment of immigrant Chinese laborers. In Cecil Mann's "The Pelican," the motivation for the protagonist's climactic change of attitude and behavior would not, in real life, have been credible; the author is attempting to portray a type of character whose psychology he simply doesn't understand, and the result isn't convincing. "Come On, Billy" by David Campbell is a slight story that failed to make much positive impression, and while John Morrison's "Goyai" is an engrossing study of a disturbed character, it doesn't ultimately go anywhere nor help us to truly understand the person's disturbance; so it doesn't seem to pass Thomas Hardy's test, that a story must be worth telling if you're going to tell it. Editor Stewart's "The Three Jolly Foxes" exudes a cynical view of life and human relationships that didn't, to my estimation, present any real rewards either. (Note: foxes are not native to Australia, but they're an invasive species introduced in the mid-19th century to enable fox hunting, and have subsequently spread to most of the continent, with highly detrimental effects for the native fauna.) Elizabeth Harrower's "The Cost of Things" follows the critically-approved formula for modern "literary" short fiction: take unpleasant and unlikable characters in dysfunctional relationships, show us a depressing and pointless slice of their lives, finish it up with an unconvincing, out-of-character unexpected gesture by the main character presented with no follow-up as to its effects, and try to leave the impression that it's somehow "Meaningful" and "Consequential." :-( On the other hand, though, I would say that in general, the other selections were mostly solid, entertaining works worth a read, though as usual I liked some stories better than others. The one I considered most outstanding was the lead story, Lawson's "The Drover's Wife," whose unnamed title character becomes an embodiment of the guts and determination of the pioneers --and particularly the pioneer women-- of the Australian bush. (An American reader can relate; much of the same quality of character was demanded by the pioneer experience on our frontier, too.) Frank Dalby Davison's "The Road to Yesterday," D. E. Charlwood's "The Pilgrimage Year," and Peter Cowan's "The Tractor" are also outstanding, powerful stories that are very much of their Australian setting but transcend it to speak to readers of any time and place, and which are fully equal in quality to the best works of short fiction I've encountered in any other national literature in which I've read. It could be said that the first two, as well as Hal Porter's "Frances Silver" and Gavin Casey's "That Day at Brown Lakes," share as a common theme the influence of memories or impressions (which may or may not be accurate) of the past on the way we think in the present; but they're each very individual stories with their own takes on that idea. But I also liked most of the other selections. Judith Wright's "The Ant-lion," a story with child protagonists that's designed for adults to appreciate, and "Uncle Patrick Was a Scholar" by Margaret Trist also both deserve special mention. (Having seen traditional Queensland houses, built on low stilts to allow a draft underneath, and been underneath a couple, I could appreciate that image in the latter.) Trist's story has a humorous note; Dyson's "A Visit to Scrubby Gully" and James Edmond's "The Deeply Poetic Account of a Midsummer Night's Idyll" (yes, that title is purely sarcastic!) were laugh-aloud funny --and I don't typically laugh out loud very often. Ethel Anderson's "The Rector's Wife Tempts the Bishop with a Brew of Nyppe," is another droll example of what's obviously a strong tradition of humorous writing in Australian letters. Other humorous tales here include "The Cast-iron Canvasser" by A. B. Paterson, "The Enthusiastic Prisoner" by E. O. Schlunke, and "The Outcasts" by Norman Lindsay, which has child characters but is intended for adults, and transports modern readers to a much more innocent time. (The latter story would have benefited from some indication of the children's ages, though.) Born in Odessa, Russia in 1911 and brought to Australia by his parents at the age of three, I'd surmise that Judah Waten, like his unnamed narrator here in "Mother," was of Jewish stock. (How autobiographical the story is, I can't really guess.) While the title character is an immigrant, "Mother" isn't really an exploration of the immigrant experience; it's more a poignant character study of a woman who was an outsider in both her native and adoptive countries because of her peculiar personality and life experiences. It does, though, positively reflect Australia's ethnic and cultural diversity, as do a few other stories. One of these is the other Schlunke selection, "The Irling," set among Australia's German Lutheran immigrants, as many of his stories were, which was one of my favorites here. The Mathews-Abdullah story mentioned above, "Because of the Rusilla," focuses on the experience of Moslem immigrant kids from India (which I surmise was Abdullah's background) including the racism of some but not all European-descended Aussies. (This is one of some stories that read almost as if they could be creative nonfiction, or have a very strong autobiographical component --though in most of these cases one hopes that they don't!) "Price Warung" (whose real name was William Astley) was best known for his tales of convict life in the days when Australia was a penal colony. I'm guessing that his grim "Lieutenant Darrel's Predicament," set in early 19th-century Tasmania, is probably fairly representative of his work, and gives a very negative view (which does not appear to be at all exaggerated!) of the savage prison system of that day. Vance Palmer's "Mathieson's Wife" is another story that's primarily a character study, and not of a character who's exactly a moral exemplar; but I don't think Palmer's intention is either judgmental or exculpatory. Rather, it seems to be more simply descriptive, leaving the reaction up to the reader. "The Beautiful Pattern" by Olaf Ruhen (who was originally from New Zealand, and immigrated to Australia only after serving in World War II) appears to be a Maori legend retold. Both of the two stories by James Hackston have a flavor similar to American writer Clarence Day's recollections of his father, except that Hackston's humor strikes a more mordant note. (Hackston's real name was Hal Gye.) While three of the stories aren't necessarily cheery or relentlessly upbeat reads, they all go somewhere worth going, and give us the feeling that we've profited by the experience in some way when we get there. Possibly the best of the three is "The Pepper-Tree" by Dal Stivens, the narrator of which reaches back into his boyhood in the Depression to share a well-done character study, a kind of coming-of-age story, and a pithy illustration of psychological truth. Also employing the structural conceit of a narrator looking back to his childhood (and also with a coming-of-age element), Alwyn Lee's "The Corvidae"could probably use a strong trigger warning for cruelty to, and by, animals; but it's a very effective evocation of the stark hardship of farming life in the harsh, arid Outback. Finally, despite its title, "A Schoolie and a Ghost" (a "schoolie" is a schoolmaster in a one-teacher rural school) by David Rowbotham isn't a ghost story; but it's an unforgettable glimpse into the culture of a mountain community where illegal activities like moonshining and cattle rustling are a way of life. Its title notwithstanding, this isn't necessarily THE definitive collection of Australian short fiction (although I gather that in the decades since it was published, it's attained near-classic status). My guess is that if I were more broadly familiar with the larger corpus of fiction from Down Under, even up to 1970, I could probably have found stories I liked better than some selections here; and of course much of merit has no doubt been written in the ensuing 50 years. (In particular, this collection almost entirely neglects historical fiction, and ignores mystery and speculative fiction --not, I'm sure, because good examples haven't been written by Australian writers, but more likely because the editors snidely disdained "genre" fiction.) But as a beginner's introduction to the terrain of Aussie literature, it was an informative and mostly enjoyable survey that I'm glad I read!

Review # 2 was written on 2015-05-20 00:00:00 Steffen Liebenow I loved this book. A collection of stories that offer a humourous or at times sobering and thought provoking expose of life in Australia in bygone days; many with a twist in the ending. Whilst many of these stories are set in the bush some have an urban or city setting. I hadn't heard of most of these authors - amazing to realize the depth of Australian short fiction writing talent. This book was published 40 years ago, and it's a pleasure to read stories not influenced by current popular prejudices or stifled by modern political correctness. Easy to read and very enjoyable. A must for short story lovers or those that enjoy the Australian bush settings. Older readers will love the nostalgia [arguably the strongest drug in the world].