In her childhood Virginia Woolf was a keen hunter of butterflies and moths. I first attempted to read Virginia Woolf in my early twenties - To the Lighthouse - I couldn't get into it, even though I really wanted to. There was something about Virginia that fascinated me, but her writing was too dense for … Continue reading Virginia Woolf | Nigel Nicolson #UKbio
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
In 1930 the woman who called herself Mrs Hill caught the Old Trans across the Nullarbor. She sat with a notebook propped on her knees, her suitcase, typewriter and thin swag slung in the rack overhead, revelling in the train's front-stall view of the weird and mournful wilderness all around. Sometimes books come into your … Continue reading Into the Loneliness | Eleanor Hogan #AWW
A few minutes past midnight on Tuesday, 10 September 1940, an air raid struck Mecklenburgh Square. After a mini-reading slump in April, I needed something to capture my attention and my heart. Normally I would go to some cosy crime, or pick up a Jane Austen. Instead, this time, I found myself in the warm … Continue reading Square Haunting | Francesca Wade #UKnonfiction
Marie Curie is one of my personal heroes. Ever since my Year 12 science depth-study on her, (which incidentally helped me to top the class and receive my one and only first-in-class medal) I have been constantly drawn to her story. As part of my depth-study research, I read Ève Curie's bio about her mother, … Continue reading Marie Curie & Her Daughters | Imogen & Isobel Greenberg
Gabrielle Carey, with this book about Elizabeth von Armin, had the honour of being the very first author event by zoom, that I participated in during this Covid year. Also in attendance was Lisa from ANZLitLovers, who had alerted me to the event in the first place. It was lovely to be able to … Continue reading Only Happiness Here | Gabrielle Carey #AWW
Writing regularly blog posts seems to be something quite beyond right now. But thanks to Karen @Booker Talk I've be revisiting some of my older posts to find fresh inspiration. This post about the rather silent author, Randolph Stow, was originally published on the 29th August 2015.I've been thinking about Gabrielle Carey a lot, over the … Continue reading Moving Among Strangers by Gabrielle Carey
Truganini: Journey through the apocalypse is an extraordinary read. Cassandra Pybus has compiled a thorough and very personal history of Truganini's life and times. I say personal, because what gives this book that little extra something special is Pybus' relationship to Truganini. As she says in her Preface, the 'rapid dispossession (of the original people of … Continue reading Truganini | Cassandra Pybus #AWW
Biography:Since my last post I've read a biography called Herman Melville - Mariner and Mystic by Raymond Melbourne Weaver. It was a fairly lacklustre, uninspiring bio in the end. It was a straight down the line linear look at Melville's life, as one might expect from a book first published in 1921. There was a lot … Continue reading Moby-Dick – Chapters 91 – 100
From the New York Times bestselling author of The Invention of Nature, comes a breathtakingly illustrated and brilliantly evocative recounting of Alexander von Humboldt’s five–year expedition in South America. Humboldt (1769-1859) was an intrepid explorer and the most famous scientist of his age. His restless life was packed with adventure and discovery, but his most … Continue reading The Adventures of Alexander von Humboldt by Andrea Wulf & Lillian Melcher
The Real Jane Austen: A Life in Small Things has been sitting on my TBR for a few years now. I was fortunate enough to be gifted it during an #AusteninAugust competition with Adam @Roof Beam Reader, and I hang my head in shame that it has taken me so long to finish it.My only excuse … Continue reading The Real Jane Austen: A Life in Small Things by Paula Byrne
Becoming ended up being an epic read for me, simply because I put the book down when I was half way through it in the New Year, when we were away and busy with family and summer and stuff, and then I forgot to pick it up again.Other new, shiny books caught my eye and … Continue reading Becoming by Michelle Obama
You must be logged in to post a comment.