What's On My Mind: July was a busy month with two weekends away from Sydney for various social gatherings. One with friends; one with family. The friend one was a catch up with all the women I worked with at Mudgee Preschool in my first year of teaching - 1990. Many of them are still … Continue reading Stories & Shout Outs #52
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
[Kumquat] Photo by Tina Xinia on Unsplash During Poetry Month, I find that poems pop up everywhere. In chapter 10 (Furnishing the Capitol) of Cold Light by Frank Moorhouse, Edith, our charming but ageing protagonist recites a couple of stanzas of John Shaw Neilson's poem, The Orange Tree. She is inspired to do so after eating a cumquat … Continue reading The Orange Tree | John Shaw Neilson #poetrymonth
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
Throughout Poetry Month I am on the lookout for serendiptious poetic moments in my reading and my daily life. It's rather surprising how and where a poem will suddenly present itself. Perhaps not surprising to find a poet or a poem in a book, but a recent visit to The White Rabbit Gallery threw up … Continue reading Bao Guang | Roses Made From Water #poetrymonth
Photo by ray rui on Unsplash Have you ever felt haunted by an author? I had cause to look inside a copy of Michael Cunningham's The Hours the other day and the very first thing to jump out at me were the epigraphs. The first one was a quote from a Jorge Luis Borges poem called The Other … Continue reading The Other Tiger | Jorge Luis Borges #poetrymonth
Cold Light sees me moving into uncharted territory and the main reason why I have been rereading Grand Days and Dark Palace in the first place - to finally finish the Edith Trilogy - to find out how Edith's story concludes. Where does she end up? What work does she move onto next? Does she … Continue reading Cold Light Introduction #EdithReadalong
August is turning out to be a busy, but exciting reading month. Poetry Month Red Room Poetry is once again hosting Poetry Month across Australia to promote awareness and visibility of poetry and to support the growing diversity of voices. They provide a handy list of 30 ways for the rest of us to celebrate … Continue reading August – Poetry and Austen
When I was nine years old I was a good little girl, though this hadn’t always been the case. Have you ever noticed that the books you really enjoyed reading - a lot - and would like to read again, are the ones you find the hardest to write something about? The Inseparables has been … Continue reading The Inseparables | Simone de Beauvoir #FRAfiction
It was hard not to feel that Paris was the place. My response to The Paris Bookseller has been complicated. I was keen to read it thanks to the blurb which told me it had a Paris setting, a bookshop and Sylvia Beach. That should have been enough. But it wasn't. The writing was dull … Continue reading The Paris Bookseller | Kerri Maher #USAfiction
Geneva, on the night of October 15, in the year of 1931...Edith and her friend, Jeanne, found themselves in the dining room of the Hôtel des Bergues - Geneva's best - wining and dining in a grand, exuberant, and stately manner. One of the things I fear most when reading a series is the lengthy recap. In … Continue reading Dark Palace | Frank Moorhouse #EdithReadalong
As always when he returned home at night, Maigret paused at the same place, just past the gas lamp, and looked up at the lit windows of his apartment. Every July since 2017, there has been one rainy, cold, miserable weekend that becomes my Maigret weekend. This past weekend was it! There is nothing sweeter … Continue reading Maigret and the Minister | Georges Simenon #ParisinJuly
Some images you record unconsciously, with the precision of a camera, and when you find them later in your memory, sometimes you rack your brains to recall where you saw them. Maigret Goes to School is my ninth Maigret. I'm well and truly hooked! This story sees Maigret leave Paris to help out with a … Continue reading Maigret Goes to School | Georges Simenon #ParisinJuly
What's On My Mind: Covid blues. It has been three weeks since I tested positive, but a lingering cough and tiredness now that I'm back at work has made it rather hard to blog and read. Most nights I'm lucky to read 5-6 pages of my book - which is a VERY slow way to … Continue reading Stories & Shout Outs #51
*Cultural warning to Indigenous readers: This post contains the names of people who have passed away. First Nations Reading Week 2022 is an annual reading event hosted by Lisa @ANZ LitLovers to coinincide with NAIDOC Week. The 2022 theme is Get Up! Stand Up! Show Up! One of their aims is to 'amplify our voices'. As … Continue reading First Nations Reading Week 2022 #PictureBook
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