You find me this afternoon, dear reader, writing from my new outdoor office. I’m mid holiday, we’ve finished the pergola and the decking. It’s 35 degrees and hot so I’m in my wet bikini (imagine me slim please) with a large glass of icy water which I hope will be replaced by a St Clair [...]
Books
I’m in Dunsborough with most of my family and some friends and as usual it’s the normal round of sleeping, drinking, eating and reading. Oh and playing cards. My daughter has worked out that I’m a soft touch as long as she intends to buy a book so today we went down to the town [...]
Jennifer Byrne from the First Tuesday Book Club on ABC1 says her comfort book is Marjorie Morningstar by Herman Wouk. She read it when she was a teenager and it resonated. It’s the story of a Jewish teenager in the 1930s, living in New York with dreams of becoming an actress – she falls in love [...]
Last weekend I spent a quite a bit of time at the Perth Writers Festival. I got to host a couple of children’s/young adult sessions which are my faves because a) the books are short and I can read them quickly – especially the picture books and b) I love teenage fiction. This year I [...]
Here’s the massive coincidence. The last two books I’ve read have been The Islands by Di Morrissey and Careless in Red by Elizabeth George. (I know I’m supposed to have been reading The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga – the Booker Prize-winning novel – but I just can’t get into it) Now on the face [...]
When you pick up a Di Morrissey book you are not expecting high literature, or even medium-high. You are expecting a rollocking saga with beautiful women and unreachable men set in an exotic location with a nod to the local culture. In this novel that is exactly what you get. Young Catherine, off on a [...]
Stephenie Meyer’s series is written for teenagers and is essentially about fitting in and peer groups but it’s so much more. Touted as the new JK Rowling and with the first movie coming out on November 21st, this series mixes high-school with the supernatural. Bella moves to Forks in Washington state to live with her [...]
I think this is Tim Winton’s best novel. He has lost his earlier pretentiousness. His writing is spare, evocative and compelling. The tale is told by a paramedic in his 50s who attends an accidental hanging. He knows it’s accidental because of events in his youth, and so you are drawn into this tale of coming [...]
