Kate @Books Are My Favourite & Best first piqued my interest with Heating & Cooling a month ago. So much so, I ordered the book at work the very next day and it turned up in time for me to take on my beach holiday to beautiful, tropical Far North Queensland. The micro-memoirs were perfect … Continue reading Heating & Cooling: 52 Micro-Memoirs | Beth Ann Fennelly #BookReview
The first thing we did was change our names. This post will look less like a book review and more like a list of feminist writers. But before we get to the list, a little about my journey with After Sappho by Selby Wynn Schwartz. I deliberately chose to start reading After Sappho knowing next … Continue reading After Sappho | Selby Wynn Schwartz #BookReview
Trian's stomach growls. He's not twenty yet, still growing, and always hungry. When I first heard about Emma Donoghue's book, Haven, I thought it would not be for me. Even though it was historical fiction, it was three monks alone on an island in Ireland. The religious life holds very little interest for me, so … Continue reading Haven | Emma Donoghue #BookReview
Photo | Adeolu Eletu on Unsplash Anna Akhmatova was a Russian modernist poet (11th June 1889 Odessa - 1966 Moscow). She was part of the Acmeist group of poets in Russia from about 1910, 'their ideals were compactness of form and clarity of expression' (wikipedia). Other Acmeist poets were Nikolay Gumilev (Anna's husband for a while), Sergei Gorodetsky, Osip Mandelstam, … Continue reading A Poem For a Thursday | Anna Akhmatova #RUSpoem
It is on the train from Russia to Ukraine that the moment I have been waiting for finally comes, and Billie refuses to use the toilet, point-blank. Maria Tumarkin is an Australian writer of memoirs and cultural histories. Her books and essays tend to include oodles of fascinating things about the nature of memory, change … Continue reading Otherland | Maria Tumarkin #UnderstandingUkraine
One of the online sites that came up when I duck, duck, go'd this title, suggested She and Her Cat was one of the five translated books this season that could soothe a battered soul. My soul was not feeling particularly battered (except for this seemingly endless La Niña rain!) but I definitely felt soothed … Continue reading She and Her Cat | Makoto Shinkai & Naruki Nagakawa #JPNshortstories
The genesis of this book was a desire to find out what were the effects on society of the most lethal disaster of recorded history - that is to say, of the Black Death of 1348-50, which killed an estimated one third of the population living between India and Iceland. A number of times throughout … Continue reading A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century | Barbara Tuchman #USAnon-fiction
I don't know what to tell you about. Death or love? Or is it the same thing. What should I tell you about?... Prologue: A Lone Human Voice I'm so very glad I read Chernobyl Prayer. I really appreciate the type of history Svetlana Alexievich has captured in her books. It's oral history, or more … Continue reading Chernobyl Prayer: A Chronicle of the Future | Svetlana Alexievich #ReadtheNobels
As I've been reading so many chunksters this year, novellas have proven to be the perfect inbetween palate cleansers. The current ones are both from 2022 and both new releases. One is from Australia and one is from Pakistani writer Mohsin Hamid (on his website he says that he now spends his time between Lahore, … Continue reading #MiniReviews – the Novella edition
1950 "I'm your brother," he said, holding his cap in both hands. Book two of the Edith Trilogy, Dark Palace finished as the aftermath of WWII gave birth to the brand new United Nations. Book three, Cold Light sees us jumping forward four years to Canberra, Australia. 1950's Canberra. A city that was only conceived … Continue reading Cold Light | Frank Moorhouse #EdithReadalong
Some people HAVE to finish every single book they start. I'm looking at Mr Books here! I used to be like that, but that was before I started working in a bookshop. In fact, I can think of only two books I bailed on pre-bookshop. One was Gillian Mears' Grass Sister, which was given to … Continue reading #MiniReviews – the DNF edition
Alejandro Ferri is my name. I truly am being stalked by Jorge Luis Borges. Everywhere I turn, there he is! Again! The latest incident occured on the 1st August when I opened my copy of Cold Light by Frank Moorhouse to complete my Edith Trilogy Readalong. Frank ambitiously included six, yes SIX, epigraphs. The first … Continue reading The Congress | Jorge Luis Borges #ARGshortstory
Jazz Money is a poet and artist of Wiradjuri heritage, currently based on sovereign Gadigal land. Her debut collection of poetry, how to make a basket, was described by the judges of the David Unaipon Award as 'luminous and beautifully sculpted, [a] seamless collection of poems that reflect on place and passion...[and] builds on the … Continue reading how to make a basket | Jazz Money #AWWpoetry
No Document is an elegy for a friendship and artistic partnership cut short by death. The memory of this collaboration becomes a model for how we might relate to others in sympathy, solidarity and rebellion. At once intimate and expansive, Anwen Crawford’s book-length essay explores loss in many forms: disappeared artworks, effaced histories, abandoned futures. Written … Continue reading No Document | Anwen Crawford #AWWnon-fiction
Sherlock Holmes took his bottle from the corner of the mantlepiece, and his hypodermic syringe from its neat morocca-case. The Sign of the Four was my latest lucky spin for the Classics Club and my second Sherlock Holmes story. There's not a lot to be said about another Sherlock Holmes story that hasn't already been … Continue reading The Sign of the Four | Arthur Conan Doyle #CCspin
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