I finished my first Reading India book last night, Arundhati Roy's first - and only - published novel, The God of Small Things. It's a book I had tried once before to read, and not gotten through the first twenty or so pages. This time, because of my challenge, I persisted. And for a long [...]
Category: Reviews & commentary
Reading plans for 2016 – the Year of Reading India
While I was in Ubud recently, I decided that next year will be my Year of Reading India. I plan for 2016 to be the beginning of a new type of reading approach for me. Why India? Because I have a bunch of books written by Indian authors already, including a few of Salman Rushdie's [...]
Reading catch-up, almost end of 2015
But I will squeeze a few more books in by the end of the year. Last book I listed was Pamuk's A Strangeness in My Mind, which was book 44. Then, I went to Ubud. In my suitcase I took one bottle of champagne, and several books, including Lucy Treloar's Salt Creek; Hanya Yanagihara's A [...]
5 influential books
Culture Street asked me to write about five books that influenced me, including one from childhood. This was a fantastic exercise as it made me really think hard about which books - among many many - had some sort of influence that I could trace. I had 100 words limit to spend on each, they [...]
The Fishermen, by Chigozie Obioma
Book 42: I finished this earlier today and did so with tears in my eyes. None rolled, but they were there. I found it moving, at the end, and also found that it seemed perfectly paced, the last quarter of the book. I felt doom, I felt apprehension and I felt admiration. It's a fine [...]
The Secret Son, review in The Australian newspaper
Was very happy to see this review of The Secret Son (alongside Leah Kaminsky's first novel The Waiting Room) in the paper over the weekend. An author dreams of reviews, and they don't always happen, small or big, positive or negative. They don't always happen quickly, and they don't always happen at all. With 400 new [...]
QUICKSAND Steve Toltz
Let me say first, I have A Fraction of a Whole, I've had it for years, but I haven't read it. Yet. I will, because now I know how Steve Toltz writes, I will be eating up all his words. Book number 35 for the year was Quicksand, ah what to say about it. It's [...]
FALLEN
Today's post is dedicated to the 22nd book I've read this year, Fallen, a memoir, by Rochelle Siemienowicz (HURRAH, that is the first time I've been able to spell Rochelle's surname, without looking. And funnily enough, my spell check has offered 'Microeconomics' instead.) I was always going to read this book, because: DISCLOSURE, I know Rochelle in [...]
Not a review – UNDER THE SKIN by Michel Faber
Well, my first book is read for 2015. Started it yesterday, finished it today (but before that had read a couple of pages of the next Karl Ove (number 2) as well as continuing with a re-read of John Irving's The Water Method Man - must be the fourth time I've read that book). But I've [...]
Not a review: books of strange, new things
For my final book post for the year, I have chosen recent local fiction (plus one non-local interloper) to present. These are all VERY exciting novels, especially for this reader who usually sticks to The Real. Annabel Smith's THE ARK Paddy O'Reilly's THE WONDERS Jane Rawson's A WRONG TURN AT THE OFFICE OF UNMADE LISTS [...]
Not a review, on How to Be Both by Ali Smith
This year I've tested out a couple of book clubs, run by local bookshops. I have a fairly non-existent history with book groups. I went along once to a friend's meeting. I hadn't finished the book, and felt incredibly inarticulate. I don't know whether finishing the book would have made any difference, to be honest. One [...]
Catch-up post: what I’ve been reading
I want to share my thoughts on three recent reads.These are selected because I very much liked the first two, am confused by the third, but all of them I read straight through without stopping and picking something else up. This is odd for me these days so there was something about all of these [...]
The Luminaries, by Eleanor Catton
Is it possible for a book of 800+ pages to make you wait more than 500 pages for some feeling of it 'kicking in'? Yes Is it possible for a book to be almost stupefyingly boring for more than half of it, for it only to start to spin faster and faster on some centrifuge [...]
The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt
It's a big image for a big book. I loved everything about The Goldfinch and for me it was the best read of last year and possibly for several years. There were only two things that bugged me. The first was disappointing, the second more of an irritation. 1. Boris's voice wasn't very good. For [...]
Some small thoughts on Wrecked, by Charlotte Roche
I have a note here I made a year or so ago while reading Charlotte Roche's Wrecked. Like her other book Wetlands, this is a confronting story (though not as much. I don't think I've read a more confronting book than Wetlands?) There is a tragedy at the heart of this book, and one detail [...]
Not a review – The Virgin Suicides by Jeffrey Eugenides
I've been avoiding The Luminaries (I will get back to it, I will) by re-reading The Little Friend, and then I found myself avoiding that by reading The Virgin Suicides, which is an attractive slender thing, something tasty and distracting, but all too quickly over. Oh, how beautifully it's done. It's a book about death [...]
Tim Winton’s latest, EYRIE
Well, I devoured it, it would be fair to say. It took me about the same amount of time to read as Barracuda but the experience was so different. In my head, it was a kind of competition. First time I've read these two authors back-to-back. First time I've had it in my consciousness, some [...]
Not a review, on Don DeLillo’s COSMOPOLIS
This is an old not-review that I blogged elsewhere. Apologies if it's sweary, I do get a little more earthy over at the other place. And as for re-cycling it? Yes, I'm being lazy. Yes, I'm busy. Yes, I hated writing that other real review, and yes I'm uneasy about having that other 'real' review [...]
BOOK REVIEW: Questions of Travel by Michelle de Kretser
I was in a pool in Bali earlier this month and had just read the opening pages of Questions of Travel. ‘I knew that in four or five pages that this is a work of genius,’ I said to my daughter, as I floated on some child’s pilfered foam noodle, filled with the expansion and [...]
A not-review of Jill Stark’s HIGH SOBRIETY
I was going to be very clever with this. I thought to use a 12-step framework to present the review. Geddit? I got to two steps and then stopped writing (but not reading, finished it like that [snaps fingers] and have been proselytising about it all over the city.) I've also decided this will not [...]
Not a Review: Most exciting read for a long time
Currently in the second half of May We Be Forgiven by AM Homes. Have struggled to lose myself in novels lately but this one is good. That is all. PS Here's a link to a recent comment thread at Devoted Eclectic (Elizabeth Lhuede's blog, who is also the founder of the Australian Women Writers Challenge) [...]
Notes on a Scandal, part 1
Jumping the gun here because I haven't finished reading this yet BUT I just had to mark my enjoyment of this book by a mini-post about the language used in this slender, satisfying novel. Am I the last person on earth to read this book? Published in 2003, the movie (I saw) came out in [...]
House of Sticks by Peggy Frew
I really enjoyed House of Sticks. It's about a mother who has put aside her music career to look after her three children. She has a husband, Pete, who is a fairly equal partner in the domestic running of things, and he is a solid and loving presence. It was refreshing to see a male [...]
Lola Bensky by Lily Brett
I was going to write only a few of paragraphs on this because I want this wordpress space to be pithy but I simply can't harness myself with this one. As Lola Bensky's father Edek would say: Oy, cholera. Lola Bensky is a rock journalist for an Australian publication. No doubt elements of Lola [...]
The Lighthouse by Alison Moore
I read two books last week and this 2012 Man Booker short-listed novel was one of them. The main character, Futh, is a man who is contained and restrained, and Moore's writerly hand was so light it was as if she left him alone to wend his way through the narrative. I am still haunted [...]
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