beautiful town. 2010 My mother had a book she liked to read to me as a child. She must have discovered somewhere that it's good to educate your child. She must have encountered that fact amongst a haze of other facts at the time. She might have once seen a mother and daughter on a … Continue reading Nothing Special | Nicole Flattery
Today I saw a picture of Jude with a child. Not one of the fair-haired nieces I remember from photographs around the Old House, who would be grown by now, but a dark-haired little girl. We've all done it. At some point before, during or after a relationship we have typed their name into our … Continue reading Thirst For Salt | Madelaine Lucas #AWWfiction
Epigraph: In the economy of Nature nothing is ever lost. Gene Stratton-Porter The end of this quote from Stratton-Porter's Jesus of the Emerald (1923) is, "I cannot believe that the soul of man shall prove the one exception." I'm not sure where Arnott stands on the whole idea of souls, but it is clear that … Continue reading Limberlost | Robbie Arnott #AUSfiction
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
Miriam left the gaslit hall and went slowly upstairs. In my very first spur-of-the-moment bookish decision of 2022, I decided to join in #PilgrimageTogether. It popped up on my Twitter radar at the end of last year. It's aim, to read all thirteen novels in the Pilgrimage series written by Dorothy M. Richardson. My aim … Continue reading Pointed Roofs | Dorothy Richardson #Readalong
Goshawk Common, Newford, Surrey. Not the most remarkable expanse of open country, scrubby grass and tumbling hillside in the south of England, just as Newford probably wasn't the most remarkable town. I fell in love with Common Ground and Ishiguro's writing from page one. The only weird part, for me, was the name of the … Continue reading Common Ground | Naomi Ishiguro #GBRfiction
It had stopped raining. Okay, I'm now a Niall Williams convert. This is Happiness is a delight of a book, from start to finish. Full of wonderful, poignant story-telling and rich, humorous characterisation. It is proudly Irish, with glorious descriptions of the weather and the matter-of-fact grimness and poverty of everyday life in County Clare … Continue reading This is Happiness | Niall Williams #IRLfiction
Honeybee by Craig Silvey is my first book club read for 2021. It has taken Silvey over ten years to write this book, after the huge success of his second book, Jasper Jones back in 2009. “I put everything I have into writing Honeybee. It tore me up, but it filled me with joy. I’m enormously … Continue reading Honeybee | Craig Silvey #AUSfiction
Oh, the existential angst! Remember when you were 22 and you had no idea what you wanted to do or how you fitted into the big, wide world and it all seemed overwhelming, sometimes exciting, but mostly this big, huge, void of trying to be an adult, that you had no idea how to fill. … Continue reading Loner | Georgina Young #AWWfiction
I'm reading Coe's trilogy about the life and times of Benjamin Trotter the wrong way round, chronologically speaking. But after reading and enjoying the third book in the series, Middle England, so much last month, I knew I had to find out how the whole thing started. The Rotter's Club is a 2001 novel set in … Continue reading The Rotters’ Club | Jonathan Coe #UKfiction
The German House by Annette Hess was a fascinating read.Translated into English by Elisabeth Lauffer, it's essentially a coming-of-age story about a young woman who works as a translator during the Frankfurt Trials of 1963-65. Her story is complicated by childhood memories that her parents gloss over, a controlling fiance, a co-worker with demons from his … Continue reading The German House | Annette Hess #DEUfiction
I'm struggling, at the moment, to find the right words to describe my reading experiences, yet at the same time, I'm going through an amazing reading phase, with three back to back stunners. Olive, Again by Elizabeth Strout, Girl, Woman Other by Bernardine Evaristo and now Red at the Bone. My journey with Red at the Bone began … Continue reading Red at the Bone by Jacqueline Woodson #USfiction
I suspect I'm going to be the lone dissenting voice when it comes to Boy Swallows Universe by Trent Dalton.This is a debut Australian novel garnering a HUGE amount of attention and rave reviews. In the lead up to our Christmas rush at work last year, this is the book many, many locals were asking … Continue reading Boy Swallows Universe by Trent Dalton
Smile and Sisters have been two very popular books at work with 11-14 year old girls. Now I see why. Raina Telgemeier has created two very personal, engaging stories from two significant events in her pre-teen years. Smile details her rather horrific orthodontic work, while Sisters not only features her relationship with her younger sister, … Continue reading Smile & Sisters by Raina Telgemeier
I like to think that I have taken my 'what to read whilst travelling' choices to an inspired level of brilliance, but I really outdid myself with our recent trip to Japan. Reading Murakami in Japan now feels like the ONLY place to read Murakami!Not only does the usual Murakami weirdness make sense when you're … Continue reading Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami
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