"Well, there’s so much to read, and I’m so far behind." Wallace Stegner
As Orson Welles told us, if we want a happy ending, it depends on where we stop the story. Deborah Levy's autobiography trilogy is proving to be an absorbing reading experience with The Cost of Living being the second installment. I'm working my way through them slowly, savouring the stories of her life as well … Continue reading The Cost of Living | Deborah Levy
George Orwell believed that up until 1914 Wells was 'a true prophet'. 'Thinking people who were born at the beginning of the century are in some sense Wells' own creation,' he wrote in a 1941 essay on Wells' legacy that could just as well have been written about Leo Szilard's destiny. 'The minds of all … Continue reading Question 7 | Richard Flanagan (4)
Some years ago I was sent a remarkable essay by a then eighteen-year-old Yolnju woman, Siena Stubbs, about the use of a fourth tense in the Yolnju language. It was, in its own way, the equivalent of Szilard's traffic lights for my thinking, and it informs this book deeply. An Indigenous concept of time where … Continue reading Question 7 | Richard Flanagan (3)
That spring when life was very hard and I was at war with my lot and simply couldn't see where there was to get to, I seemed to cry most on escalators at train stations. Things I Don't Want To Know is Deborah Levy's companion piece to George Orwell's famous 1946 essay, Why I Write. … Continue reading Things I Don’t Want to Know | Deborah Levy
After chatting with both Kim and Lisa about their reading progress through Richard Flanagan's latest book, Question 7, I was prepared for two difficulties. Firstly, it would be almost impossible to take in everything Flanagan was posing in one reading and two, it would be extremely difficult to review the book. It only took me … Continue reading Question 7 | Richard Flanagan (1)
Our Gudanji kujiga grew here with Gudanji Country about the same time as our stories, and it was long before paper and words learned to yarn together. I don't know how our mob knew about souls, just that they did, because our stories and our kujiga live inside each other, as well as out there … Continue reading We Come With This Place | Debra Dank
In offering this little tract to the public it is equally the writer's wish to conduce to their amusement and information. The expedition on which he is engaged has excited much curiosity and given birth to many speculations respecting the consequences to arise from it. While men continue to think freely, they will judge variously. … Continue reading 1788 | Watkin Tench
We both sat up in bed. 'What was that?' ‘I think it was a motorbike starting up,’ I said, unsure exactly what sort of sound had ended my dreaming. ‘It sounded like a gun to me,’ said Jan. I didn't mean for Womerah Lane: Lives and Landscapes to take me over a year to read, … Continue reading Womerah Lane: Lives and Landscapes | Tom Carment
Suffolk, November 1936 It has been six months since the wedding. She uncaps the pen. I've spent a couple of weeks trying to think through the best way to share Wifedom: Mrs Orwell's Invisible Life with you. What do I want to remember about this book, and what do I think you might be interested … Continue reading Wifedom: Mrs Orwell’s Invisible Life | Anna Funder
Books first published: 1996 | 2000 | 2008 | 2001 | 2016 There are beings who are overwhelmd by the reality of others, their way of speaking, of crossing their legs, of lighting a cigarette. They become mired in the presence of others. After Annie Ernaux won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2022, five … Continue reading A Girl’s Story | Annie Ernaux #ReadtheNobels
Affairs are a little like childbirth. Someone is always having one somewhere, usually right under the nose of a spouse because nobody knows everything that happens inside a marriage, not even the people in it. I have no idea how I'm going to respond to this memoir. To say Infidelity and Other Affairs has generated … Continue reading Infidelity and Other Affairs | Kate Legge #AWWmemoir
"Long-distance call for Bruce," a F.A.N.Y. sergeant, soured by the years of peace between the wars, looked into the commonroom and addressed me in the third person. "It can be taken in the office but must be short. Personal calls are not encouraged during a state of emergency." What a delightful way to spend a … Continue reading Spam Tomorrow | Verily Anderson #DeanStreetDecember
Heating & Cooling | Beth Ann Fennelly (2018) Kate @Books Are My Favourite & Best first piqued my interest with Heating & Cooling a month ago. So much so, I ordered the book at work the very next day and it turned up in time for me to take on my beach holiday to beautiful, … Continue reading Heating & Cooling: 52 Micro-Memoirs | Beth Ann Fennelly #BookReview
It is on the train from Russia to Ukraine that the moment I have been waiting for finally comes, and Billie refuses to use the toilet, point-blank. Maria Tumarkin is an Australian writer of memoirs and cultural histories. Her books and essays tend to include oodles of fascinating things about the nature of memory, change … Continue reading Otherland | Maria Tumarkin
Some people HAVE to finish every single book they start. I'm looking at Mr Books here! I used to be like that, but that was before I started working in a bookshop. In fact, I can think of only two books I bailed on pre-bookshop. One was Gillian Mears' Grass Sister, which was given to … Continue reading #MiniReviews – the DNF edition
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