It’s time for #6degrees. Start at the same place as other wonderful readers, add six books, and see where you end up! Continue reading
Tag Archives: Caroline Smailes
2017: What I Read
Here’s my year in books (with thanks to the Goodreads record keeping tool): Continue reading
100 RPM – One Hundred Stories Inspired By Music by Caroline Smailes
Any book that begins with a playlist and an introduction by Nik Kershaw is obviously going on my reading list.
A quick Nik Kershaw refresher before I get into the nitty-gritty of 100 RPM – One Hundred Stories Inspired By Music, edited by Caroline Smailes –
And a little reminder of when I met him… Continue reading
20 Books of Summer (except that it’s winter)
Cathy at 746 Books is hosting the 20 Books of Summer reading challenge again this year. I’m joining in, with a particular effort to read from my stacks of hard copies. The challenge is straightforward – read twenty books between June 1st and September 3rd. Continue reading
April Rewind
The last month has been MENTAL. I’ve hardly had time to read. I know, right? Anyway, it’s why I’m only getting around to the April rewind now… Continue reading
Quick! I need to read a whole book.
Sometimes a very, very short book is just the ticket – reading slump, testing a new genre, choosing something for your book group (because you know they don’t have the stamina for anything over 200 pages), a long train ride…
Here’s a list of my favourite very short books. Continue reading
Six Degrees of Separation – from Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close to Royal Lists
It’s Grand Final day in Melbourne but it’s also #6Degrees day (am I stretching the friendship, saying that they compare?!). Anyway, three cheers for reading great books and three cheers for joining in!
We begin this month’s chain with Jonathan Safran Foer’s best-seller, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. I was totally immersed in this book, to the detriment of what was going on around me… Which happened to be a holiday in Palm Cove. Continue reading
Just quietly, this is a great bunch of books
This week’s Top Ten Tuesday focuses on books that have received fewer than 2000 ratings on Goodreads. Hmmm… Clearly I’m hanging out with the unpopular kids because LOTS of the books I’ve read in the last few years fit into this category. Here are some favourites – Continue reading
If I’ve said it once, I’ve said it a hundred times – read these books
I’m as tight as all-get-out when it comes to handing out five stars. Do I even have enough (after four and a half years of blogging) to put together a list of ten? Just.
It’s Top Ten Tuesday and the topic is ‘Ten of My Most Recent Five Star Reads’ (there’s no legitimate reason for the gratuitous Paul Newman pic, I just felt like it).
So, in case you missed me banging on about these books the first time, here are my most recent winners – Continue reading
Disraeli Avenue by Caroline Smailes
I read 99 Reasons Why by Caroline Smailes over two years ago and the character of Kat still hurts my heart. After finishing that book I bought others by Smailes but just haven’t got to reading them all as yet – maybe because I was a little bruised after Kat’s story. Smailes spares no punches – her stories are gritty and real and you might need to look away.
Looking away… it’s why the concept for Smailes’s Disraeli Avenue is clever. It’s a collection of short stories – snippets, really – about what goes on behind the closed doors of each house on a single street, Disraeli Avenue. Like walking by an open window, you can’t help but glance in. What you see varies wildly – stories told through the eyes of a child, through number patterns, through piano practice notes, through memories. They’re told as gossip, as truth, as wishes, as speculation. The observant reader will appreciate the details that link each chapter, as sweet as a mother’s pride and as horrifying as the words in a suicide note. Continue reading