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: Joan Didion
The Correspondent by Virginia Evans
Dear Ann,
I am writing to congratulate you on your most recent novel, State of Wonder, which was given to me for my birthday by my brother…
Yes, the protagonist, Sybil Van Atwerp, is referring to Ann Patchett. She goes on to say that if Ann was to ever visit Annapolis, she’d be glad to host her. Sybil’s familiar tone (which she also employs in letters to Joan Didion and Kazuo Ishiguro) is wonderfully endearing and I’d like to imagine, disarming for the receivers of those letters.
However, letters to authors are just a small part of The Correspondent by Virginia Evans. Continue reading
The Bennington Project: Episode 2 – Bret Ellis, Valley Boy
Episode two of the podcast, Once Upon a Time at Bennington College, is titled Bret Ellis, Valley Boy, and it focuses on the city of Los Angeles in the 1980s, and how it provided the setting for Bret Easton Ellis’s first novel, Less Than Zero. Continue reading
Things That Are Making Me Happy This Week
01. A cocktail masterclass at Reed House by Michael and Zara Madrusan, the pair behind the new book, The Madrusan Cocktail Companion. Continue reading
Novellas in November – off to a flying start
By virtue of a long weekend in Melbourne, combined with some solid rain, I was able to devote the first few days of November to reading. And I’ve smashed through a bunch of novellas. Continue reading
Nonfiction November 2025 – Choosing Nonfiction
This week, Nonfiction November is hosted by Frances at Volatile Rune and it’s all about how we choose nonfiction.
It’s relatively straightforward for me – I have a few key categories that I’m always drawn to: Continue reading
My Year in Novellas #NovNov25
It’s week one of Novellas in November and the theme is My Year in Novellas. Continue reading
Sample Saturday – three memoirs
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
South and West by Joan Didion
Joan Didion’s South and West is loosely defined as a travel essay, but of course, like all of Didion’s writing, it delivers so much more.
The book is comprised of excerpts from notebooks Didion kept in the 1970s. The first part, ‘Notes on the South‘, traces a road trip that she took through Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama, with her husband, John Gregory Dunne. Along the way, she chronicles her observations about the small towns they pass through and she gently examines the deeply rooted (and sometimes unquestioned) beliefs about race, class, and heritage held in the South.
Continue reading
The Friday Afternoon Club by Griffin Dunne
I really wish I’d kept a list of all of the names that Griffin Dunne drops in The Friday Afternoon Club. ‘Drops’ might be a little unfair – the people he mentions are/were family friends, relatives, and colleagues. But to give you a flavour, the list would include Harrison Ford, Jack Nicholson, Carrie Fisher, Roman Polanski, George Clooney, and Joan Didion (and husband John Dunne).
During one of my parents’ extravagant parties I got up to pee and caught Judy Garland rifling through the medicine cabinet in my bathroom. Warren Beaty once played the piano in our living room in lieu of joining a drunken game of charades captained by a smashed Ida Lupino. Sean Connery saved me from drowning. Continue reading