The acclaimed Penguin Monarchs series: short, fresh, expert accounts of England's rulers - now in paperback I collected two reading copies from the Penguin Monarchs series towards the end of last year - in fact, before the Queen died on the 8th September. I forgot that I had them until I went looking for another … Continue reading Penguin Monarchs #BitesizedHistory
I knew next to nothing about the mother/daughter Mary Wollstonecraft/Shelley pair until reading Romantic Outlaws: The Extraordinary Lives of Mary Wollstonecraft and Mary Shelley. I had started reading Frankenstein for the very first time as a #CCdare when the Preface alerted me to the fact that there had been an ongoing controversy about who wrote Frankenstein. … Continue reading Romantic Outlaws | Charlotte Gordon
I finally got around to reading The Green Road thanks to Cathy's #ReadIreland Month. It has been sitting on my TBR pile since 2016. Over my years of blogging, I've come to realise that writing a rave review about a book I really enjoyed, if not loved and adored, is actually harder to do, than … Continue reading The Green Road | Anne Enright
It has been a long wait between drinks in this Tudor trilogy by Jane Caro. But the wait has been worth it.Just A Girl was a tremendously good read in 2011. Four years later, Just A Queen surpassed my very high expectations.Caro has written a thoroughly researched, thoroughly convincing version of Elizabeth's first 25 years … Continue reading Just a Queen by Jane Caro
I began Reckoning knowing about all the rave reviews. This can be a good thing or a very bad thing. Expectations are high and it can be hard to meet them. However, in this case, there was nothing to fear. From the very first sentence I was in wow! mode. I was impressed; I was … Continue reading Reckoning | Magda Szubanski #AWWmemoir
I read Fugitive Pieces around about the time it won the Orange Prize for Fiction (which is now the Women's Prize). I fell in love with Anne Michaels ability to weave magic with her words. I remember being completely under her spell for the entire story. I felt bereft when it finished. When I recently … Continue reading The Adventures of Miss Petitfour | Anne Michaels
Fictionalised biographies are one of my favourite form of literature, and although the historical evidence for David and Solomon is very slight, there have been a couple of recent archaeological finds that suggests that a unified governing system was actually in place during this time in this particular region.So few facts are a blessing for … Continue reading The Secret Chord by Geraldine Brooks
I thoroughly enjoyed The Bones Clocks and have recommended it to many, many people who have never read a David Mitchell before. I found The Bone Clocks to be very accessible and not as dense or as incomprehensible as his earlier works (I attempted to read Cloud Atlas and The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de … Continue reading Slade House | David Mitchell
A Little Life will be my only Man Booker long-listed book to be completed before/around/during the announcement of the shortlist on Tuesday. However, I have been avidly following the (wo)man booker shadow reading group here. It was thanks to their reviews that I made A Little Life my priority read out of the list. There … Continue reading A Little Life | Hanya Yanagihara
This was to be my home – no, my grave – for the rest of my life. I had the good fortune to listen to Cadwallader speak at this year's Sydney Writer's Festival in a session moderated by Ashley Hay called The Body: Sin, Sex, Denial. I came away from it with a very strong … Continue reading The Anchoress | Robyn Cadwallader #AWWhistoricalfiction
I've managed to get to this point without reading any reviews for The Buried Giant. Therefore, when I began reading it last week I had no idea what it was about or what to expect. There is something very thrilling & even a little daunting about opening a new book by such a well-known, well-regarded … Continue reading The Buried Giant by Kazuo Ishiguro
bronasbooks.com 