It’s time for #6Degrees and truly, it’s easy to play (no rules, just bookish fun) – join in!
This month we begin with The Slap by Christos Tsiolkas. What can I say about this book except that if you want to start a heated debate at a dinner party, mention it! Continue reading
It’s time for #6Degrees and it’s a cinch to play – please join in! Continue reading
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. Continue reading
My recap of today’s Melbourne Writers Festival session, Barracuda: From Page to Screen will hardly do it justice – needless to say, the session was fantastic. Continue reading
In honour of what’s roughly two solid weeks of sitting on my arse watching sport, I thought it would be appropriate to list my favourite novels about sport.
I don’t read lots of sports books but felt confident that I could find novels that were of slightly higher quality than this. So, some that I have read and some that are still in the TBR stack –
01. The Art of Fielding by Chad Harbach – not only the greatest sports novel but one of the best books I’ve ever read. Continue reading
01. I’ve mentioned how much I love Miffy, right? This.
02. The Melbourne Writers Festival 2016 program was announced yesterday. Tickets go on sale tomorrow, which gives me a few more hours to sort out how I’ll manage #ALLTHEEVENTS (on my radar are Shriver, Flanagan, Tsiolkas, Wood, Garner, Funder, Earls, Beneba Clarke). Continue reading
01. I mentioned a couple of weeks ago that my 9yo daughter had a ‘to-do’ list. I’m pleased to report that she sat in the car yesterday knitting, blowing bubbles and listening to Cantonese CDs (thanks to my lovely friend, Sam, we’ve got the ‘knitting sticks’ out and we’re both knitting together). Continue reading
It’s six degrees of separation for books. Created by Emma Chapman and Annabel Smith. Check out the rules if you want to play along.
This month the chain begins with Matt Haig’s memoir, Reasons to Stay Alive. I haven’t read this book (and it sounds like tough reading) but I have read dozens of other memoirs. One of my favourites is Leanne Shapton’s Swimming Studies – a truly original book about one of my favourite things, swimming! Continue reading
On the back of Tsiolkas’s Barracuda and Pung’s Laurinda (both ‘fictional’) comes Rebecca Starford’s memoir, Bad Behaviour.
Starford recounts her year (at age 14) spent at a school in the bush where she lived in a house with 16 other girls. During her year, Starford experiences bullying (as both a receiver and an instigator) and uses her memoir as a means to explore how this ‘bad behaviour’ impacted her adult relationships.
“…what bothered me the most were all the gaps in the diary. So many things had been left out entirely – arguments, sadness, misbehaviour. On these pages I’d instead pasted in photographs from hikes, to make it look like something else had happened. What, I wondered, was I trying to forget?” Continue reading
