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 come from Reading Matters 20 Books of Summer reviews. Continue reading
I’ve struggled to write reviews for much of this year. I blame working from home. After a day of work, I have no desire to stay sitting at my desk. And so, I’ll continue to keep a record of what I’ve read with short reviews (these are very, very short). Continue reading
01. The picture above is of Gardiner’s Creek. The creek adjoins an oval where my kids play lacrosse (in fact I took this pic last Saturday as they were warming up before their game). The local council is planning to rip up the grass and replace it with an artificial soccer pitch (with a 1.8m fence and extensive car-parking). I can’t tell you how angry it has made me, for all sorts of reasons (environmental, hydrological, community access to open space, light pollution, provision of multi-use facilities, and I could go on). Needless to say, I’m protesting the development. Hard. Continue reading
It’s time for #6degrees. Start at the same place as other wonderful readers, add six books, and see where you end up!
This month we begin with Arthur Golden’s international bestseller, Memoirs of a Geisha. I took this book on holiday with me to Far North Queensland and have fond memories of sitting on the beach and by the pool, absorbed in Golden’s sumptuous story. Continue reading
In his latest novel, From a Low and Quiet Sea, Donal Ryan has taken three very different characters – Farouk, whose country has been torn apart by war; Lampy, a broken-hearted boy from Ireland; and elderly John, whose past sins are haunting him – and created something special.
The novel is structured simply – a short, stand-alone story for each character and a fourth concluding story that brings the three characters together. The danger of drawing a number of disparate stories together is that the overall result can seem contrived. Somehow, Ryan has avoided this – nothing in From a Low and Quiet Sea feels forced or out-of-place. The connections between each story, once revealed, are surprising but also make perfect sense. And the best bit? I didn’t see any of it coming. Quite a feat. Continue reading
I’ve read 99 Kindle samples this year – downloading sample chapters is better than impulse buying books… I think. Of the 99 I’ve read, I’ve said ‘yes’ to 53. Of those that I’ve said yes to, a bunch I’ve now read (or have in the TBR pile), thanks to the library, ARCs and two purchases (I was at the author talks – it would have been rude not to!).
However, if I buy the remaining 47 books, it kind of destroys the small gains I’ve made on reducing the TBR stack this year. So, I’ve narrowed it down to 12 that I’m busting to read. 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