"Well, there’s so much to read, and I’m so far behind." Wallace Stegner
The climate and ecological crisis is the greatest threat that humanity has ever faced. It will no doubt be the issue that will define and shape our future everyday life like no other. This is painfully clear. In the last few years, the way we see and talk about the crisis has started to shift. … Continue reading The Climate Book | Greta Thunberg
The moon hid itself behind the clouds. The wind spat an icy snow at angles. In the tall black wall of the palisade, through a slit too seeming thin for human passage, the girl climbed into the great and terrible wilderness. I began The Vaster Wilds as an advance listening copy on libro.fm a couple … Continue reading The Vaster Wilds | Lauren Groff #historicalfiction
We drove home along the forest road, the trees like exposed bones in the headlights, trunks bending in over the gravel track. From the first story in the collection, 'River' Everything Feels Like the End of the World is a speculative fiction short story collection 'exploring possible futures in an Australia not so different from … Continue reading Everything Feels Like the End of the World | Else Fitzgerald #AWWshortstories
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
Trian's stomach growls. He's not twenty yet, still growing, and always hungry. When I first heard about Emma Donoghue's book, Haven, I thought it would not be for me. Even though it was historical fiction, it was three monks alone on an island in Ireland. The religious life holds very little interest for me, so … Continue reading Haven | Emma Donoghue #BookReview
But we might never find them? Fermi's Paradox is at the heart of this story. The story goes that in 1950, Italian-American physicist Enrico Fermi, made a passing comment asking 'where are all the aliens?' given the youngish nature of our planetary system and the relative ease of space travel. Fermi was not the first … Continue reading Bewilderment | Richard Powers #USAfiction
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
At the beginning it's sea was rich and wondrous. We'd snorkel and fish and swim and beach-comb. Ignorance can be bliss sometimes. Until this last month or so I had never really thought about where my smoked salmon came from. Other than somewhere in or around Tasmania, that is. I was proudly buying local product … Continue reading Toxic | Richard Flanagan #AUSnonfiction
Born Into This is a collection of short stories by an exciting new voice in Indigenous writing, Adam Thompson. Adam Thompson may be an emerging Pakana writer from Launceston, but there are powerful and promising things going on here. Some of his stories pack a serious punch, others creep in quietly under your skin. Either … Continue reading Born Into This | Adam Thompson #AUSshortstories
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
Charlotte McConaghy has written an intense, emotional story about the effects of mass extinction in The Last Migration. I don't normally quote the back blurb of the book, but in this case it so aptly describes the book, I'm really not sure I can top it. The Last Migration is a wild, gripping and … Continue reading The Last Migration | Charlotte McConaghy
The series, A Fairy Tale Revolution, consists of four picture books from Vintage Classics, that 'remix and revive' well-known fairy tales and give them a modern, feminist twist. Featuring four amazing UK authors - Jeanette Winterson, Kamila Shamsie, Malorie Blackman and Rebecca Solnit - flexing their authorial muscles in a new format.Like most fairy tales, however, they … Continue reading A Fairy Tale Revolution
Thank goodness for Robbie. After a spate of so-so books and DNF's, I finally landed on this beautifully imagined, eco-dystopian tour de force from my new favourite contemporary Australian writer. My love affair with Arnott started last year, when I read his debut novel, Flames. This is a little of what I had to say … Continue reading The Rain Heron | Robbie Arnott #AUSfiction
Fathoms: The World in the Whale was a recent binge read. The weather had turned suddenly cold and it was bleak outside. Curling up on the lounge with a throw rug and a good book was the only logical response. Rebecca Giggs was the perfect companion for such a session - engaging, personable and … Continue reading Fathoms: The World in the Whale | Rebecca Giggs
When one sets out to read a book, you enter into a contract of sorts with the author. You agree to be apart of their world and to go along for the ride. As I've discussed before, we all have our own criteria by which we judge a book and whether we will pick it … Continue reading Where the Crawdads Sing | Delia Owens #USfiction
This Reading Life 