Like most people, I suppose, I’m not at my best when I’m not well, but what helped me to tolerate my recent experience sharing a hospital ward with a dementia patient was remembering a poem that I had so recently read in The Penguin Book of Modern Australian Verse. The book has a permanent spot on […]| ANZ LitLovers LitBlog
I’m always keen to read novels by Chinese authors living in China rather than those filtered by expat experience in the US or UK. So (back in 2020 when I was on Twitter rather than BlueSky) I was intrigued when I had a new follower called Xie Hong. Media-savvy authors often followed me there (as […]| ANZ LitLovers LitBlog
If you’ve been reading this LitBlog for a while, you’ll know that I love trees. Recent favourite books include City of Trees (2019), by Sophie Cunningham and My Forests: Travels with Trees (2021), by Janine Burke, but it was The Tree in Changing Light (2001), by Roger McDonald which taught me a lesson about taking advantage […]| ANZ LitLovers LitBlog
I made it! Thanks to the goodness of my chauffeurs, I’ve just been to a lively and thought-provoking author talk at Kingston Library, and finally got to meet one of my favourite authors, Rachel Matthews, author of Siren (2017, see my review) — a powerful novel about the toxic culture of football; and her recent tragi-comedy […]| ANZ LitLovers LitBlog
Well! I did not expect to end up in hospital this week!! I have been suffering a severe flare up of a very unsexy malady for a fortnight but it was this Monday when the GP told me off for being a Best-of-British stoic and not conceding that I was in really severe pain. (9/10, […]| ANZ LitLovers LitBlog
Nikolai Gogol (1809-1852) was a Russian dramatist, novelist and short story writer. He was born in the Ukraine. His short story The Nose (1836, republished in 1842 with some changes) is said to be …| ANZ LitLovers LitBlog
Readers know right from the start of Catherine Chidgey’s new novel The Book of Guilt that there is something odd about this narrator… Before I knew what I was, I lived with my brothers …| ANZ LitLovers LitBlog
20 posts published by Lisa Hill during September 2025| ANZ LitLovers LitBlog
Andrew Roff’s first novel Here Are My Demands is left-wing political fiction at its most forceful. It’s speculative fiction set in a near-future Australia where there is government rul…| ANZ LitLovers LitBlog
Mary Barton (1848, revised edition 1854) is one of three books by Elizabeth Gaskell that are listed in 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die. The other two are Cranford, (1853, see my review) a…| ANZ LitLovers LitBlog
Dottie, the third novel from 2021 Nobel laureate Abdulrazak Gurnah, is #No11 of #20BooksofWinter, but despite the looming deadline (August 31) to read the other nine books, I have taken my time to …| ANZ LitLovers LitBlog
Listed in 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die, Nobel Laureate Nadine Gordimer’s Burger’s People (1979) is a superb novel about the collateral damage to family members of activists. …| ANZ LitLovers LitBlog
At first, I was a bit puzzled by award winning Emily Maguire’s venture into historical fiction in her new novel Rapture. I know her as an author who writes powerful novels that explore cont…| ANZ LitLovers LitBlog
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
