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
I had no idea that Bill Hayes was working on another scenes of New York book that would focus on the March-April Covid-19 lockdown of 2020. If I'd known, I may have experienced fewer angsty days of my own, knowing that Bill was going to somehow make it all right! It’s a little like losing … Continue reading How We Live Now: Scenes from the Pandemic | Bill Hayes #USANonFiction
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
I recently attended an author talk featuring Robert Tickner talking about the story of his adoption. Ten Doors Down is the book of this story.You may recall Tickner's name. He was an ALP politician during the Hawke and Keating era and the Minister for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Affairs throughout the first half of the 90's. … Continue reading Ten Doors Down | Robert Tickner #Memoir
From chaste kisses to lost innocence; from the bohemian world of sixties Sydney to the counterculture in San Francisco; from radical feminism to disillusion, Cassandra Pybus opens the door on her own remarkable life and transforms it into a mirror which reflects ourselves. Her candid and passionate journey through personal memory and history offers a … Continue reading Till Apples Grow on an Orange Tree by Cassandra Pybus
Three Women by Lisa Taddeo is one of those books of the moment, and one that I have actually managed to read during it's moment! And I can see why so much buzz has attached itself to this book.It's about sex, desire and what it means to be a woman, told from the perspective of … Continue reading Three Women by Lisa Taddeo
Mirka & Georges: A Culinary Affair is a beautiful book and hard to define. Is it an art book? Is it a biography? Or is it a recipe book? I guess the subtitle that Harding & Morgan chose gives us a clue to their intentions - that food is the central idea around which the … Continue reading Mirka & Georges: A Culinary Affair by Lesley Harding & Kendrah Morgan
All Happy Families wasn't the memoir I was hoping it would be. Le Tellier is upfront from the beginning, letting us know that he doesn't feel love for his parents. I was therefore expecting a heartfelt exploration into all the whys and wherefores of his troubled childhood. Instead, we simply got a recital of the … Continue reading All Happy Families: A Memoir by Herve Le Tellier
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
When I was in my twenties and thirties, my friends and I spent a lot of time discussing and dissecting each others dreams (#lifebeforesocialmedia)! We read books, kept dream journals and wondered about the significance of what happened in our heads in the middle of the night. We were searching for meaning and trying to … Continue reading Motherhood by Sheila Heti
This is one graphic novel that really packs a punch.The Complete Maus by Art Spiegelman is one man's journey to understand what happened to his father during WWII. It's obvious from the opening pages that what happened to Vladek during the war had a huge impact on everything that came after. His marriages, his relationship … Continue reading The Complete Maus by Art Spiegelman
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