The 70th Eurovision Song Contest kicks off on May 12 (and I’ll be there!). Here are my preliminary thoughts but, as we know from previous years, the live performance can change everything (my picks are at the very end). Continue reading
Tag Archives: Austrian
Things That Are Making Me Happy This Week
01. They’ve planted a meadow at the Convent. It’s small but lovely. Continue reading
Happiness and Love by Zoe Dubno
You’ll need to lock in early to Happiness and Love, in order to get with Zoe Dubno’s style. But it is absolutely worth your initial effort.
First to the style: It is pure stream-of-consciousness. There are no paragraphs and no chapter breaks – start reading at page one and keep going until you hit the end (page 267), at which point, you are well and truly feeling all the things the novel’s narrator if feeling (annoyed, aggrieved, exhausted, amused, enlightened, relieved). Continue reading
The Happiest Things from Things That Are Making Me Happy
It’s hard to pick out the happiest of happy things but this is my list of 2025 highlights (excluding books – more on those later – and holidays, and I had some amazing ones this year, notably Hobart, Cambodia, New Zealand, and my sinkholes tour). Continue reading
Things That Are Making Me Happy This Week
01. A big week of early starts in our house because it’s Eurovision week! We had a lot riding on the result this year as, all things going to plan, my daughter and I are going to Eurovision 2026. So, where will we be going…? Continue reading
Things That Are Making Me Happy This Week
01. Morning walk was accidentally interrupted by breakfast at Cumulus Inc. (BTW that’s a smoked trout frittata with crème fraiche, and madeleines with bergamot curd in the background). Continue reading
Sample Saturday – new releases
Sample Saturday is when I wade through the eleventy billion samples I have downloaded on my Kindle. I’m slowly chipping away and deciding whether it’s buy or bye. This week, all three are new releases that have caught my eye. Continue reading
Things that are making me happy this week
01. Should I be mildly concerned that Holy Sugar gave me some extra (unbelievably good) passionfruit sponge because I’m a ‘regular’…? No, not concerned, thrilled (in this week’s bakery edit – passionfruit sponge with lemon curd, pistachio and cream; apple, cinnamon and walnut fritters; Pepperberry s’mores). Continue reading
Things that are making me happy this (actually last) week
01. A little getaway to Bendigo for the Mary Quant exhibition at the Bendigo Art Gallery. It was terrific (especially understanding her ahead-of-the-times marketing strategies). Continue reading
Small Wrongs by Kate Rossmanith
When an author gets the balance between memoir and journalism* just right, it makes for brilliant reading. Kate Rossmanith has done it with Small Wrongs, a book that explores how we say ‘sorry’.
Rossmanith looks at what constitutes remorse from many angles – the ‘theatre’ of courtroom appearances; how judges make their decisions; prison, parole and rehabilitation and how these systems create opportunities for offenders to show remorse; and retribution for victims of crime.
In the justice system…the act of forgiveness was unrelated to the duty of punishment; it was not the role of the courts to forgive a person…only the victims can forgive. Continue reading