Here’s my year in books (with thanks to the Goodreads record keeping tool): 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.
The Museum of Modern Love by Heather Rose Continue reading
Louise O’Neill’s novel, Asking For It, is hard-hitting, frightening and all-too-real.
The story opens with a conversation between a group of teenage girls – they’re discussing school, exams, boyfriends and parties – the usual stuff, however it quickly reveals the pecking order among the girls and it’s eighteen year old Emma, who’s on top. Continue reading
In the eighties, much time was spent making mixtapes. If there was a special party, you made a mixtape. If you went on holiday, you made a road-trip mixtape. If you loved someone, you made a mixtape (and gave it to them if you had the guts…).
Continue reading
Do you start singing a certain Kenny Loggins hit when you hear the words ‘comfort zone’? I do. Even though comfort and danger are pretty much opposites… Anyhoo, my comfort zone is contemporary literature. I don’t stray often but there have been some notable (and excellent) exceptions in the last year or so –
Speculative Fiction Continue reading
Film. Continue reading
The eighties bring to mind all sorts of ace things for me but when I think about what I was reading, it was all about the Wakefield twins* and Sweet Dreams.
I’m not afraid to admit that I still have a vast (complete) collection of Sweet Dreams books. I know the stories were all the same, I know they were lame, but there must have been something in them that made me anticipate the new release each month.
I haven’t re-read any of my Sweet Dreams favourites. Why not? A combination of fear of disappointment (all the same, all lame) and the fact that reading about Elizabeth Wakefield having an orgasm has scarred me for life. I can never un-read that.
So instead, I’ll indulge with a walk down memory lane and list my top ten Sweet Dreams romances – Continue reading
I was pleased to open the 2015 reading account with Laurinda by Alice Pung.
Laurinda is the story of Lucy Lam, Chinese-born, but raised for the most part in Australia. Lucy’s parents speak very little English and work extremely hard for minimum (or less) wage. Lucy wins an ‘Equal Access Scholarship’ to the exclusive Laurinda College, an independent school for girls in Melbourne*. Continue reading
It’s the time of the year when I feel like everything goes a bit manic. As well as negotiating Christmas lights, tinsel and December 25th catering, we also have three family birthdays in the mix. So before I completely lose my shit (in a very festive way, of course), I thought I’d get one element of life under control. Hence three quick reviews. Continue reading
I mentioned a week or so ago that I was in a reading slump. Hours after I posted that, I ran into a friend in the supermarket, who was with her 11-year-old daughter, Stella. Stella suggested that I read Counting by 7s by Holly Goldberg Sloan and as my reading situation had been so lack lustre I figured that taking Stella’s advice would be a wise move – change of pace and all that.
It was a wise move. Counting by 7s is a lovely, different, melancholy story for tweens/ young adults. Continue reading