Presenting the 2025 Commonly-Agreed-by-the-People-Who-Publish-Best-of-2025-Book-Lists-Before-December-31 top 48 books.
(This is my annual community service to book-bloggers – a list of the books that appear most frequently on the 54 lists that I listed on Best Books of 2025 – A List of Lists – enjoy!). 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. Continue reading
I’m not mad for historical fiction but have read the book-group-big-hitters, such as Year of Wonders by Geraldine Brooks and more recently, The Marriage Portrait by Maggie O’Farrell. I enjoyed these books but it doesn’t mean that authors of historical fiction are on my automatic-read list. Grief memoirs, however… hello automatic-read list.
Geraldine Brooks’s memoir, Memorial Days, describes two periods of time – firstly, Memorial Day 2019, when Brooks received a phone call to inform her that her husband, author Tony Horwitz, had collapsed and died on a footpath in Washington. 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. Continue reading
The Australian Wooden Boat Festival – is it weird that I love looking at boats, even though I’m not a sailor? On that topic, I met two women (separately) who both told me about other women they knew who began sailing in their seventies. One took my hand and said “I think that will be you.” I hope so. I also hope I don’t leave it that long. Continue reading
Proving that I don’t actually care about my never-really-shrinking-TBR-list is this list of new releases that are on my radar for 2025. Continue reading
Here’s the thing about Geraldine Brooks (because I’m totally qualified to comment on Geraldine Brooks, obvs) and Caleb’s Crossing (which, according to many aggrieved Goodreads members, should be called Bethia’s Crossing) –
01. Stating the obvious but she knows how to write historical fiction. I reckon Brooks tests every single word for authenticity – it’s meticulous.
02. Even the emotions her characters are feeling are ‘historically appropriate’ (tricky, right?) and yet, she manages to create these wonderfully strong females who both make a mark on their time and offer something for the present.
Is it ever thus, at the end of things? Does any woman ever count the grains of her harvest and say: Good enough? Or does one always think of what more one might have laid in, had the labor been harder, the ambition more vast, the choices more sage? Continue reading
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
Oh, how I laughed when I read the topic for this week’s Top Ten Tuesday – Ten Books That Have Been On Your Shelf (Or TBR) From Before You Started Blogging That You STILL Haven’t Read Yet. Jamie at The Broke and the Bookish notes that it’s sad that she’s had some books for six years and still hasn’t read them…. Six years? Pfft. One of the books on my list has been sitting next to my bed for fourteen years. Continue reading
It’s time for #6Degrees – join in! Link up!
We begin the chain with an international best-selling debut that thrilled fans of historical fiction (and everyone else) when it was published in 2001 – Year of Wonders by Geraldine Brooks. Continue reading