Read 29/07/2018-05/08/2018
Rating: 2 stars
To Norway for The Reader’s Room European Backpacking Challenge. Except the first Harry Hole book by Norwegian Crime giant Jo Nesbø takes place in Australia, where a young Norwegian woman has been murdered. Continue reading
The Tipping Point is the lead book for June’s Six Degrees, hosted at Books Are My Favourite and Best. It’s not a book that I’ve heard of, let alone read. So which way will my book chain go? Continue reading
Read 09/01/2018-21/01/2018
Rating: 4 stars
I’ve had The Secret River on my library wishlist since the Olympics Reading Challenge on the Reader’s Room in 2016. Weezelle reminded me of it when she mentioned that she’d received it as a gift recently. That spurred me on to reserve it at the library.
Kate Grenville has written just the sort of book I love. Think Hannah Kent’s Burial Rites, or Shirley Barrett’s Rush Oh!, or even Peter Carey’s Oscar and Lucinda. It’s historical fiction that records the painful lives of the poor in all its sorrowing detail, but which manages to also capture the indomitable spirit and resourcefulness of some when faced with adversity. More than that, it examines how humans judge each other by the colour of their skin, and how brutally the British treated the indigenous people of Australia. Continue reading
Read 12/11/2017-19/11/2017
Rating: 3 stars
Read for the Reader’s Room Read Around the World Challenge
Mullumbimby is the story of Jo Breen, a former musician, divorced from her husband, bringing up her daughter Ellen as a single mum. Jo lives in Mullumbimby, a town in New South Wales, where she earns a living mowing the grass in the white people’s cemetery. Jo is a Goorie woman from the Bundjalung nation. Her ex-husband Paul is a white Australian. Jo wants to reconnect with her Aboriginal roots. She is instantly likeable, warm and ready to laugh, easy going and a hard worker for the things she believes in – family, identity, and respect. Mullumbimby focuses on Jo’s attempts to re-establish herself on tribal land and reveals the conflict that forms the history of land appropriation and informs the native title claims process in Australia, as well as the conflict between different generations of Aboriginal people. Continue reading
Today’s random thoughts are brought to you courtesy of the Manchester Literature Festival and the Manchester Science Festival. Continue reading
Read 12/09/2016
Rating: 4 stars
Read for The Reader’s Room Olympic Challenge
I bought this book because I wanted to read something by someone I’d never heard of. It sounded like it might be grimly funny, in the mould of Chuck Pahlaniuk or Irvine Welsh. It also sounded very, very male, and very, very male books both fascinate and confuse me.
The two main characters run a sideshow stall in a travelling carnival. Ben is ex-army and trying to make money dealing meth. Mikey is a wannabe rapper, inclined to fight and supremely interested in women. He’s a bit of a caricature, but engagingly so. Ben is the more sober of the pair, the man with an actual game plan. Continue reading
Read 26/06/2016-28/06/2016
Rating: 5 stars (but really 100 stars, 1000 stars, all the stars)
I want to say so many things about this book. I want to talk about it as allegory, as fact, as reportage, as fucked up fairytale. But equally I don’t want to say too much, because I don’t want to take away from anyone the experience I’ve just had. This book contains an important truth. It is brutal and grubby and horrifying. And yet it is gentle. It doesn’t bludgeon. It doesn’t preach. It just tells the truth.
I will try to write a review, then, without really writing a review. Continue reading
Read 19/06/2016-23/06/2016
Rating: 4 stars
It has been a while since I read any Australian literature, but Shirley Barrett’s Rush Oh! caught my eye when it appeared on the long list for this year’s Bailey’s prize. I reserved it at my local library, and my turn to read it came around a couple of weeks ago. Continue reading
What I Think About When I Think About Reading 