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: Jonathan Franzen
Things that are making me happy this week
01. Absolutely obsessed with the podcast Once Upon a Time at Bennington College (thanks to Jenny for the tip). Starting my re-read of The Secret History and Less Than Zero soon. In fact, there will probably be a whole Bennington reading project… Continue reading
Things that are making me happy this week
01. The Melbourne Theatre Company 2022 program (don’t talk to me about Opera Australia – I’m fuming). So much to look forward to at MTC, including some books transformed for the stage (Touching the Void by Joe Simpson; Fun Home by Alison Bechdel; Come Rain or Come Shine by Kazua Ishiguro; and Laurinda by Alice Pung). Continue reading
Things that are making me happy this week
Seems I’m eating and drinking my way through Lockdown 6.0…
01. Attica Chicken and Chill dinner – highlights: house smoked King Ora salmon with macadamia cream, lime oil and ciabatta; the asparagus ‘green slaw’; the silky white chocolate and yoghurt panna cotta with preserved blackberries and caramel corn. Continue reading
Bookish (and not so bookish) Thoughts
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
Fresh Complaint by Jeffrey Eugenides
Curtis Sittenfeld’s You Think It, I’ll Say It is a tough act to follow on the short-story front but nonetheless, I figured Jeffrey Eugenides’s first collection, Fresh Complaint, would be a reasonable bet.
The collection opens with Complainers, a gentle story about the decades-long friendship between two women, and how their relationship changes when one is diagnosed with dementia. I feel like I’m reading about dementia at every turn at the moment, but Eugenides’s take on it from the perspective of a friend was refreshingly different.
Dementia isn’t a nice word. It sounds violent, invasive, like having a demon scooping out pieces of your brain which in fact is just what it is. Continue reading
Six Degrees of Separation – from Fates and Furies to Gould’s Book of Fish
It’s time for #6Degrees and it’s a cinch to play – please join in!
This month’s chain begins with Lauren Groff’s bestseller Fates and Furies. I haven’t read it (yet) but I do know it’s a story about a marriage, told from different perspectives. Continue reading
A glee of author talks
Firstly, what’s the collective noun for a bunch of author talks? A glee? A yay? A make-Kate-very-happy? Anyway, in the past week, I’ve been to three – that deserves a collective noun.
Secondly, I have a half-a-dozen posts in my drafts folder about author talks I have attended. I never get to the ‘publish’ stage. Can’t really say why – I suspect that I leave it a week or so and then feel unsure about the fine detail of what was said – I wouldn’t want to misquote someone.
So, three author talks in one post – my favourite bits of what Rosalie Ham, Hanya Yanagihara and Jonathan Franzen had to say. Continue reading
Bookish (and not so bookish) Thoughts
01. How’s this for a PoDN*? I reckon it’s fabulouso – it’s near Vegas, it’s called Seven Magic Mountains, and it’s by Ugo Rondinone. Continue reading
Bookish (and not so bookish) Thoughts
1. Went to the Marilyn exhibition at the Bendigo Art Gallery this week. The pieces on display were predominantly from Marilyn’s movies. I loved the exhibition but I’ve also always liked the pictures of her reading. She was, by all accounts, a great reader with an impressive collection of books. Continue reading