It’s challenging, it’s uncomfortable, and it’s a great read. For some reason I thought it was a memoir. I have no idea why I thought that, so I was fully expecting to not like it when it was announced as the FALS Book Club book for July. (Read the blurb? Or course I didn’t read … [Read more…]
I was expecting a complex book with nuanced characters who made me question right and wrong. I was looking forward to being morally challenged about the ethics of hitting the child. I got none of the above. Instead, I got shallow characters obsessed with sex, drugs and being horrible to each other, who made me … [Read more…]
There was light at the end of the tunnel and it has been rudely switched off. Not the light at the end of the pandemic. That’s a long way off. But the light at the end of not knowing when I’ll see my grandparents again. They’re in their 90s. Every trip counts. I had to … [Read more…]
Suitcase in hand and a shipping container to follow, I set foot in Townsville for the first time on 19 June 2015. It was dark when I arrived. I didn’t know what my new home looked like until the morning. A few weeks earlier I’d signed a contract to move across the country to a … [Read more…]
I used to consider myself a writer. It was a part of my identity. I always wrote things when I was younger. Poems. Stories. The Next Best-Selling Young Adult Novel. For a while it turned to letters. Elaborate letters home when I was living abroad. Whatever it was, I was always writing. I went to … [Read more…]
I’d stopped reading. I loved it, but I’d stopped. Somewhere between 2010 and 2015 I became a lapsed reader. And I was most definitely a lapsed reader by 2017. Which is why I took up the JCU Library Reading Challenge in 2018. And it’s thanks to that reading challenge I got reading again. I didn’t … [Read more…]
I was looking forward to this read. The winner of two Australian literary awards, and shortlisted for another five, I expected I’d have nice things to say. But I don’t. Noah Glass tries too hard to be intelligent, and falls for cliches, stereotypes, and convenience. I had to keep checking it was written by a … [Read more…]
The blurb promised me an amusing read, but it’s about politics – how amusing could it be? Turns out, it was a thoroughly entertaining read. How can you not love this priceless description of Bob Hawke? “[he] strode straight to the car waving his hand and saying ‘Gday, Gday, G–day’, the last word elongated into … [Read more…]
Have you ever read those magazine articles where you can tell the writer has a bit of a crush on the interview subject? The ones where they meet for the interview in a trendy cafe and document the encounter with ridiculous details that say more about the starry-eyed writer than their interviewee? The Art of Happiness … [Read more…]
As a book set in another country, with a film released in 2013 that helped put the Autonomous Region of Bougainville on the tourism map, Mister Pip by Lloyd Jones fits as a Geography and Tourism book. Set during the Bougainville Civil War, Mister Pip is told from the perspective of teenage Matilda, who is introduced to Pip from … [Read more…]