"Well, there’s so much to read, and I’m so far behind." Wallace Stegner
Scraps. That's all I got. Fragments that made no sense without the words before or the words after. The Dictionary of Lost Words was such a huge success for Pip Williams and Affirm Press that I am sure they both approached her next book with a mixture of excitement and trepidation. I had the good … Continue reading The Bookbinder of Jericho | Pip Williams #AWWhistoricalfiction
"We must be very nice to him," said Mrs Braithwaite, looking up at her daughter with large blue eyes. "Nice to him!" echoed Miss Braithwaite in surprise. "Well, of course we'll be nice to him. I mean, why shouldn't we?" On the 1st September 1939, Germany invaded Poland. Two days later France and England declared … Continue reading The English Air | D. E. Stevenson #1940Club
To look at Miss Georgina Carter you would never have suspected that a woman of her age and character would have allowed herself to be so wholeheartedly mixed up with an Ifrit. For Georgina Carter was nearing fifty (she was forty-seven to be exact) and there was something about her long, plain face, her long … Continue reading Miss Carter and the Ifrit | Susan Alice Kerby #DeanStreetDecember
"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
By midnight all was blaze and disintegration. A group of soldiers standing on the hill watched with indecent pleasure. The wind locals called the Vardaris blasted from the north, puffed minarets into candles and monuments to blocks of gold. A whoosh of flame - shaped paisley in its exotic unfurling - caused some spontaneously, shamelessly, … Continue reading Salonika Burning | Gail Jones #AWWfiction
It will be nigh on impossible to write anything new or insightful about Tolstoy's War and Peace that has not be said before, so this will be a collection of loose impressions and thoughts that occurred to me throughout 2020 as I read a chapter-a-day (or more accurately seven chapters a week) with Nick. The … Continue reading War and Peace | Leo Tolstoy #RUSclassic
An Indiscreet Journey was a short story written in 1915 by Katherine Mansfield but published posthumously in the 1924 collection, Something Childish and other stories by her husband John Middleton Murry. Initially it reads like a fairly straight forward story about a woman on a train journey to visit her aunt and uncle in the middle … Continue reading An Indiscreet Journey | Katherine Mansfield #ShortStory
Text Publishing back cover blurb: Tom Hope doesn’t think he’s much of a farmer, but he’s doing his best. He can’t have been much of a husband to Trudy, either, judging by her sudden departure. It’s only when she returns, pregnant to someone else, that he discovers his surprising talent as a father. So when … Continue reading The Bookshop of the Broken Hearted | Robert Hillman #AUSfiction
They were walking from the school to the paddock where the children's horses, thirty or forty nondescript animals, grazed all day long. The Wonder-Child is a gentle, juvenile story about an Australian family forced into being separated for years due to the gifted talents of one of the children. Challis plays the piano like … Continue reading The Wonder-Child: An Australian Story | Ethel Turner
The Far Field by Madhuri Vijay was a tremendous read. Fascinating, absorbing and eye-opening. I say eye-opening, because even though I've read a lot of Indian literature over the years, I don't believe I've read many that cover the conflict in Kashmir. Vijay doesn't answer all the questions or provide all the answers, she doesn't … Continue reading The Far Field by Madhuri Vijay
I wanted to like this collection of short stories more than I did. The cover of Jokes For the Gunmen was eye-catching; the topic interesting, important even. The writing and translation were fine too, but surreal and absurd doesn't always work for me. And in this case, I was left scratching my head too often … Continue reading Jokes For the Gunmen by Mazen Maarouf
I'm not sure why it has taken me so long to get my thoughts together about The Song of Achilles, but sitting down to write about my response to this amazing story is probably a story in itself! It was during my early high school days that my love of history developed. My first history … Continue reading The Song of Achilles | Madeline Miller
A couple of weeks ago I listed The Skylarks' War by Hilary McKay on my post about books read but not reviewed in an attempt to remove the backlog of reviews bogging me down. But I always knew that I would have to return to this book. And thanks to Lenny's Book of Everything by … Continue reading The Skylarks’ War by Hilary McKay
In This Grave Hour is the thirteenth Maisie Dobb's book, and as the title suggests, WWII has just been declared. As with any long running series, some books are better than others. In the early stages of this one, I thought we had one of the lesser Maisie's on our hands. It felt a little … Continue reading Maisie Dobbs #13 In This Grave Hour
He drank a glass of wine. He didn’t want anything stronger. He was experimenting with clarity, with time in its ordinary clothes. Historical fiction is my favourite of all genres. It's probably also why I love classic books so much. Even if they were contemporary stories when written a hundred years ago, they are now … Continue reading Now We Shall Be Entirely Free | Andrew Miller
This Reading Life 