At any point over the past fifty years or so a small band of dissidents have made it their business to inform the reading public that the Orwell game is up. In most cases this process involves the …| This Reading Life
Bo Delafort had just turned twelve when she pulled the moon from the mud of the Thames. She hadn’t been looking for it, and that made all the difference. It’s 1918 and WWI is drawing to…| This Reading Life
The Spainish Civil War was fought from 1936 to 1939 between the Spanish Republican Government and Nationalist rebels. The Republicans included socialists, communists, anarchists and Catalan and Bas…| This Reading Life
This is what happened in Faha over the Christmas of 1962, in what became known in the parish as the time of the child. It’s almost four years now since I read This is Happiness by Niall Willi…| This Reading Life
This month’s choice for #AYearofNZLit is a classic work of Kiwi Science Fiction… Wikipedia and Goodreads tell us that Born in England in 1942, Craig Harrison came to New Zealand in 1966…| ANZ LitLovers LitBlog
Harry Ellis is last to step onto the rough-hewn planks of Circular Quay. Some days, Dr Reynolds, I can picture him in excessive detail. At sixteen, rangy and delicate, he is yet to grow the beard t…| This Reading Life
Tall and sharp at fifty-two, Campbell Flynn was a tinderbox in a Savile Row suit, a man who believed his childhood was so far behind him that all its threats had vanished. He had secrets and troubl…| This Reading Life
I woke to the breaths of a whale as it made its way through the channel between islands. The huff difted through my tent; in seconds I shed my sleeping-bag cocoon and sloshed down through the salal…| This Reading Life
Australian cover UK cover Monday: late winter, bad weather. the River Alder, fattened by continuous rain, went in spate through Aldleigh and beyond it, taking carp and pike and pages torn from porn…| This Reading Life
[After some deliberation and conversation with Sue @Whispering Gums, I have divided my original post about Dylan Thomas and George Orwell into two, with a few minor amendments.] In one of those boo…| This Reading Life
Quite early one morning in the winter in Wales, by the sea that was lying down still and green as grass after a night of tar-black howling and rolling, I went out of the house, where I had come to …| This Reading Life
Wintry, misty view from our loungeroom window What a fabulous reading month! Now that the home renovation projects are all-but completed, and the wintry weather has truly settled in, I have had ple…| This Reading Life
in ember and ash / the heart of the Noongar Nation beats buried… Refugia comes from the Latin word ‘refugium’, a noun that meant ‘the act of taking refuge’ or ‘a…| This Reading Life
Lena Derwent had worked at Mason’s for less than a week when they started making fun of her. Highway 13 is a collection of short stories by Australian writer, Fiona McFarlane. The stories are…| This Reading Life
The Spanish war has probably produced a richer crop of lies than any event since the Great War of 1914-18, but I honestly doubt, in spite of all those hecatombs of nuns who have been raped and cruc…| This Reading Life
A sister is not a friend. Who can explain the urge to take a relationship as primal and complex as a sibling and reduce it to something as replaceable, as banal as a friend? Have you ever read a bo…| This Reading Life
Everyone is originally from Africa, and this book is therefore for everyone. Africa is the birthplace of humankind itself, yet little of its ancient and modern history is widely known. An African H…| This Reading Life
Yun Ko-eun is the pen name for South Korean writer Ko Eun-ju. Ever since the buzz surrounding The Disaster Tourist (2020), I have been curious about this author and her writing. When I spotted her …| This Reading Life
and so it begins / a new beginning / not quite genesis She is the Earth is described on the title page as a verse novel but it reads more like a long poem, and like most poetry, it bears repeated r…| This Reading Life
‘The Great Australian Silence’ was how the anthropologist Bill Stanner characterised the history of colonisation and settlement. In a series of consequential lectures in 1968, Stanner m…| This Reading Life
Wintry view from our loungeroom window My reading life has been slow and steady throughout June, which means my progress through 20 Books of Summer Winter has been slow and steady too. I decided to…| This Reading Life
My love, we need to talk. I’ve tried and tried to call you from the Tesla’s dashboard phone, but I haven’t had a clear connection in over six years. There’s nothing but a low buzzing in my earpiece…| This Reading Life