Opening Lines: The pool is located deep underground, in a large cavernous chamber many feet beneath the streets of out town. Some of us come here becasue we are injured, and need to heal. We suffer from bad backs, fallen arches, shattered dreams, broken hearts, anxiety, melncholia, anhedonia, the usual aboveground afflictions. For about a … Continue reading The Swimmers | Julie Otsuka #USAnovella
September 1995I wake to find a young woman sitting beside me. She is Asian. Japanese. Chinese. I don't know. Book club throws up some interesting choices. The Butterfly Man by Heather Rose was such a one. I had never heard of Lord Lucan or the mystery surrounding him. Yet when this book was nominated for … Continue reading The Butterfly Man | Heather Rose #AWWfiction
Have you ever wondered how many times a day you say thank you? This week I have been determined to catch up on some of my outstanding book reviews. Don't judge me for focusing on the easier, slimmer ones! I promise I will one day soon, very soon, write up my thoughts on The Pea … Continue reading Gratitude | Delphine de Vigan #FRAfiction
Mayflies by Andrew O'Hagan appears to be one of those books especially designed for that subset of people born in the 1960's - the babies of the baby boomers and the very first Gen X-er's. Those people too young to get caught up in the whole 60's music scene, but by dint of being born … Continue reading Mayflies | Andrew O’Hagan #GBRfiction
I know there is a lot of love for The Living Sea in Waking Dreams out there already. It's not that I didn't love it, or even admire what Flanagan was trying to achieve, but it's not easy to read a book where you feel like you're being smashed over the head, not just with … Continue reading The Living Sea of Waking Dreams | Richard Flanagan #AUSfiction
Photo by Jack B on Unsplash | Snowdon, WalesDo not go gentle into that good night,Old age should burn and rave at close of day;Rage, rage against the dying of the light.Though wise men at their end know dark is right,Because their words had forked no lightning theyDo not go gentle into that good night.Good … Continue reading Do not go gentle into that good night | Dylan Thomas #Dewithon
It's hard to sum up what an extraordinary read Any Ordinary Day by Leigh Sales really was. I started off a little sceptical, doubtful that Sales would find the right tone to keep me interested, but I was wrong. Very wrong. I thought I knew what the book would be about thanks to the generous media … Continue reading Any Ordinary Day by Leigh Sales
Following on from my recent post featuring several fabulous Australian junior fiction titles, I thought it was time to venture further afield to see what the rest of the world (or at least the US, UK and Japan) were doing in this field.The Afterwards is a new story by U.K. poet A. F. Harrold, illustrated … Continue reading Junior Fiction – the rest!
I fell in love with Karen Foxlee's writing in 2014 when I read and loved Ophelia and the Marvellous Boy.A Most Magical Girl confirmed her ability to move me with her words. So much so, that I acquired her YA backlist to read...one day...!So I was thrilled to discover recently that she had a new … Continue reading Lenny’s Book of Everything by Karen Foxlee
What an extraordinary lucky (or unlucky) life Maggie O'Farrell has had. Seventeen brushes with death in one lifetime seems rather excessive, to one who can barely think of one close call!But seventeen there really are.Some of the brushes are a little more tenuous than others - more like a sliding door moment that many of … Continue reading I Am, I Am, I Am by Maggie O’Farrell
I'm glad this is a book I don't actually need right now. What To Do When I'm Gone: A Mother's Wisdom to Her Daughter is exactly what it says it is. When Hallie had one of those moments during her early twenties when she suddenly realised that one day her mum would die, she felt … Continue reading What To Do When I’m Gone by Suzy Hopkins & Hallie Bateman
When I was a preschool teacher, I used to tell a drawing story about tsunami's.It's over ten years since I last told it, but it involved painting simple images on a large sheet of paper as I recited the story about a small Japanese seaside village, complete with rice fields, a hill and an old … Continue reading Ghosts of the Tsunami by Richard Lloyd Parry
I Married You For Happiness by Lily Tuck was a bit of an impulse read one grey, rainy work day. It's slim form meant it could slip inside my coat pocket and come along to lunch with me.I quickly realised that having happiness in the title was a misnomer as this was yet another book … Continue reading I Married You For Happiness by Lily Tuck
I was feeling a little cautious about reading Lincoln in the Bardo. Anytime I had heard someone talk about the book, they would mention the ghosts, the many, many voices and the grief. It sounded like it might be hard work or a bit too clever for its own good.Fortunately, though, a reading copy recently … Continue reading Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders
Brona's Salon is a new meme which aims to gather a group of like-minded bookish people 'under the roof of an inspiring host, held partly to amuse one another and partly to refine the taste and increase the knowledge of the participants through conversation.'(wikipedia)I will provide a bookish prompt or two to inspire our conversation.However please feel … Continue reading Brona’s Salon
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