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
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
Chapter 1: How Edith Campbell Berry Ate Six Courses and Practised the Seven Ways in the Dining Car on the Train from Paris to GenevaOn the train from Paris to Geneva, Edith Campbell Berry, at twenty-six, having heard the gong, made her way to the first sitting and her first lunch in a railway dining … Continue reading Grand Days | Frank Moorhouse #EdithReadalong
20 Books of Summer Winter with Cathy @746 Books is an annual blogging event that I simply cannot resist, despite the fact that the only way I complete it each year is by swapping out some of the books from my original list! But that's half the fun. There are always a handful of books … Continue reading 20 Books of (Summer) Winter
An entire day had passed since George Walker had spoken to his wife. As so often happens when reading, one book reminds you of another. A character, a plot development, a thing said or done becomes linked in your mind to something else, purely by the serendipity of happenchance. In the early days of my … Continue reading The Sweetness of Water | Nathan Harris #USAfiction
Perveeen Mistry sighed, adjusting her hat on her sweating brow. The Satapur Moonstone is book two in the Perveen Mistry series set in India in the 1920's. Whilst book one felt rather undercooked (my own little in-joke as I included a recipe in my response to The Widows of Malabar Hill), book two is far … Continue reading The Satapur Moonstone | Sujata Massey #INDcosycrime
In her Preface, Louise Crisp describes her collection of poetry, Yuiquimbiang as an 'ecopoetic form that integrates political essay and environmental poetics: a project that evolved out of my double life as a poet and environmental activist'. The regions she writes about the East Gippsland and the Monaro. Crisp's poems and texts evolve from her … Continue reading Yuiquimbiang | Louise Crisp #PoetryMonth
Kaiser Wilhelm of Germany abdicated on 9 November 1918 and in the streets of Paris there was jubilation. One of the reasons I decided to pick up Pale Rider: The Spanish Flu of 1918 and How It Changed the World at this point in history, was for the history. We are now 18 months into … Continue reading Pale Rider | Laura Spinney #USAnonfiction
Let me begin in my father's house. A good opening line tells you a lot. Right from the get-go we see there is a story to be told. There is a father (but not a mother) and that houses will be significant. We start with Erica returning to her old family home - a cottage … Continue reading The Labyrinth | Amanda Lohrey #AWW
The abandoned hotel comes into view. Derelict, windswept. Who is Mette Jakobsen and how is it I have never heard of her before? In 2011 she wrote The Vanishing Act about a young girl growing up on a small snow covered island. In October of the same year, a brief story called The Island appeared … Continue reading The Wingmaker | Mette Jakobsen #AWW
My mother was blue, a pale blue mixed with the colour of ashes. I find myself drawn to memoirs that dive deep into difficult, complicated mother-daughter relationships. It's a dynamic fraught with push me/pull me tensions. Tensions that seem to only evolve with time. Is it possible to work them out? Come to terms with … Continue reading Nothing Holds Back the Night | Delphine de Vigan #FRAmemoir
There was a moment, between Quai des Orfevres and Pont Marie, when Maigret paused, so briefly that Lapointe, who was walking beside him, paid no attention. Happy Bastille Day! Joyeux Quatorze Juillet! Picking up a Maigret is like falling into a soft, cosy blanket with a tray of strong cheeses, biscuits and a robust red … Continue reading Maigret and the Tramp | Georges Simenon #FRAfiction
There was 'nothing for him' in England. The trouble with reading faster than one is blogging, is the backlog of reviews and trying to remember what I wanted to say about each book. I currently have eight books waiting to be reviewed. Thankfully I jot down notes as I go along and I underline interesting … Continue reading My Phantoms | Gwendoline Riley #GBRfiction
All I can remember, and this is what I told the police over and over again, is that there was a party at the house and I'd been drinking. It took me several weeks to read Benang in preparation for Indigenous Literature Week. It was intense, demanding and confronting. I'm very grateful to have finally … Continue reading After Story | Larissa Behrendt #AWWfiction
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