I’ve been looking for a good excuse to create a post that would allow me to highlight all 21 of the gorgeous retro Read the Year Club badges produced by Simon and Karen. I thought it would be lovely to see them all lined up together. The good excuse turned out to be Simon’s Unnecessary … Continue reading Read the Year Club| This Reading Life
A colony of moss does not speak or think in language. But if such a colony could tell the story of its life, it might say this: Once, we flourished. Our capsules popped and our spores spread far and wide. We drank what we needed from the rain and stored the rest in our spongy … Continue reading Bog Queen | Anna North| This Reading Life
As Irene came down the stairs from her lover’s apartment, again that pointless fear suddenly overwhelmed her. Fear is a novella by Austrian-Jewish writer Stefan Zweig, first published in 1925…| This Reading Life
12 posts published by This Reading Life during July 2024| This Reading Life
A gentleman and lady travelling from Tunbridge towards the part of the Sussex coast which lies between Hastings and Eastbourne, being induced by business to quit the high road, and attempt a very rough lane, were overturned in toiling up it’s long ascent half rock, half sand. This particular lady and gentleman are Mr and … Continue reading Sanditon | Jane Austen| This Reading Life
A recent post by Cathy @746 Books listing the various novellas she is considering for Novellas in November inspired me to create a list of all the unread novellas on my TBR shelves. Every year, eve…| This Reading Life
Classics Club List #3 December 2022 – December 2027 Adam Bede | George Eliot (A) A Difficult Young Man | Martin Boyd The Solitary Summer | Elizabeth von Armin (eReader) L’Assommoir [The Dram …| This Reading Life
Imagine a life story as a house clearance – that’s how for many of us it finds shape, as objects are passed on, memories stirred and made. Some objects will be bequests, handed down in the family or between friends; others will be sold. Yet others will make their way into charity shops, to find … Continue reading Jane Austen in 41 Objects | Kathryn Sutherland| This Reading Life
It’s time for another Classics Club spin. This is the Classics Club’s 42nd CC Spin…and mine. What is a CC Spin? Simply pick twenty books that you’ve got left to read from your Classics …| This Reading Life
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That Glimpse of Truth: 100 of the Finest Short Stories Ever WrittenEditor: David MillerISBN: 9781800249646Imprint: Head of ZeusPublished: 1st March 2022 (originally published 2014)Format: FlexiPage…| This Reading Life
Posts about Reading Austen written by This Reading Life| This Reading Life
A long long time ago, when I was a little chick, not even a chick but a pink and naked thing, a scar a scrap a scrape fallen on roots and wriggling, when I was catching my death and all I knew of s…| This Reading Life
Some of you will have fine monuments by which the living may remember the evil done to you. Some of you will have only crude wooden crosses or painted rocks, while yet others of you must remain hid…| This Reading Life
12 posts published by This Reading Life during August 2013| This Reading Life
11 posts published by This Reading Life during July 2025| This Reading Life
The age of humans will pass. Perhaps the end has already begun, though it may take a long time to play out. About ten years ago James Rebanks visited Norway, in particular the Vega Archipelago. His…| This Reading Life
Ahhhhh! The sigh of satisfaction after finishing an extraordinary, quirky, thought-provoking book is a blissful sound indeed! At the start I had no expections for Ceridwen Dovey’s Only the An…| This Reading Life
No one who had ever seen Catherine Morland in her infancy, would have supposed her born to be a heroine. I was thrilled when Adam announced that he was planning to reinstate his Austen in August re…| This Reading Life
Adam @RoofBeamReader once again hosted #AusteninAugustRBR as well as a #CBAM2017 readalong for Northanger Abbey. I’ve read Northanger Abbey a couple of times, many years ago, but it wasn̵…| This Reading Life
4 posts published by This Reading Life during October 2025| This Reading Life
No one who had ever seen Catherine Morland in her infancy, would have supposed her born to be an heroine. Her situation in life, the character of her father and mother, her own person and dispositi…| This Reading Life
This is an occasional post where I look into something of interest that my latest reading has thrown up. Sometimes it’s a word, a phrase or a saying and sometimes it’s a name, an historical incident or a reference to a painting or a poem. Whatever it is, it makes me pause, research and take … Continue reading Let me look into that… #4| This Reading Life
Jane lies in Winchester, blessed be her shade!Praise the Lord for making her, and her for all she made.And, while the stones of Winchester – or Milsom Street – remain,Glory, Love, and Honour unto E…| This Reading Life
"Well, there’s so much to read, and I’m so far behind." Wallace Stegner| This Reading Life
Monica Elizabeth Knight was born in Birmingham, England on the 4th June 1923. She was privately tutored at home until age 11, before being sent to a Quaker school in Banbury for her highschool year…| This Reading Life
Today I saw a picture of Jude with a child. Not one of the fair-haired nieces I remember from photographs around the Old House, who would be grown by now, but a dark-haired little girl. We’ve…| This Reading Life
Before he left the family, my father worked as a sales representative for a pharmaceutical company. He travelled from chemist to chemist with samples of pills and lotions and pastes in the back of …| This Reading Life
Most of us don’t know the perimenopause…will probably start in our early to mid-40’s – possibly with invisible symptoms we mistake for going bonkers. Told with Kaz CookeR…| This Reading Life
A common theme emerges if you search online for ‘menopause cartoons’. There’s no shortage of offerings – over 7 million results when I Googled recently – and they over…| This Reading Life
The women at the heart of this story come from all walks of life. In 1990 a study of 2000 Australian women, aged between 45 to 55, was undertaken to provide a ‘wide-frame snapshot of women…| This Reading Life
My nana used to call it the ‘change of life’. It was a change alright. If you take a quick glance at the health section in most Australian bookshops, you will notice that suddenly there…| This Reading Life
I started reading perimenopause/menopause books back in 2015 after noticing changes to the way I was experiencing my body. Five years later, I’m still waiting. Still wondering, and wishing it…| This Reading Life
The big five-oh is fast approaching and books like this now have a curious appeal.Suddenly finding yourself experiencing perimenopausal symptoms and not knowing what to do with them can be rather s…| This Reading Life
So, yes. I am a woman of a certain age. I don’t quite know how I got to this age so quickly. I still think of this age as being my mother’s age, not mine. Nevertheless, here we are. For…| This Reading Life
The clock struck half past two. In the little office at the back of Mr McKechnie’s bookshop, Gordon–Gordon Comstock, last member of the Comstock family, aged twenty-nine and rather moth…| This Reading Life
‘Why a book about Orwell’s wife?’ a friend asked. ‘He would have been a great writer no matter who his wife was, right?’ That thought was expressed to me several times…| This Reading Life
14 posts published by This Reading Life during October 2024| This Reading Life
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10 posts published by This Reading Life during June 2024| This Reading Life
Posts about A Swim in a Pond in the Rain written by This Reading Life| This Reading Life
I do love August and Adam@Roof Beam Reader’s Austen in August meme. This year I reread Emma for the second time in my lifetime (so far!) Emma is now a classic study of friendship, truth and c…| This Reading Life
9 posts published by This Reading Life during September 2025| This Reading Life
The Australian Book Review short story prize has been awarded since 2010. In 2011 it was renamed the Elizabeth Jolley short story prize. Anyone from around the world can enter the prize. The story …| This Reading Life
Another year; another menopause book. Menopause is certainly having its moment. After decades of little to no research, study and funding, it is finally getting some much needed attention. Which is…| This Reading Life
ABC Radio National is looking for the Top 100 Books of the 21st Century as voted by its listeners. On their website they explain that, All genres are in the running. Whether you want to vote for yo…| This Reading Life
I started reading Mrs Reinhardt and other stories by Edna O’Brien at the beginning of the year for Cathy and Kim’s yearlong Edna O’Brien project. I read five of the stories bef…| This Reading Life
Note to Reader: One of Jane Austen’s earliest surviving letters is dated 23 August 1796 and was sent to her sister Cassandra from Cork street in London, where the twenty-year-old budding auth…| This Reading Life
Emma Woodhouse, handsome, clever, and rich, with a comfortable home and happy disposition, seemed to unite some of the best blessings of existence; and had lived nearly twenty-one years in the worl…| This Reading Life
The night light in the blue-tinged glass on the mantleshelf burned behind a book, which cast a shadow across half the bedroom. The quiet glow spreading over the bedside table and the chaise lounge,…| This Reading Life
Gervaise had waited up for Lantier until two in the morning. Then, shivering all over from sitting half undressed in the cold air from the window, she’d slumped across the bed, feeling feveri…| This Reading Life
I promised I wouldn’t write a post for every single chapter in L’Assommoir but how does every second chapter sound :-D ? The famous wedding day between Gervaise and Coupeau in L’A…| This Reading Life
Reading Zola in April with Fanda @Classiclit has become a tradition and a treat; something I look forward to every year. Zola’s Paris novels in particular, fascinate me. Zola was the master o…| This Reading Life
The President of the Chamber remained standing until the faint stir caused by his entry subsided. Then he took his seat, saying rather nonchalantly, in a quiet voice: ‘The sitting is open.…| This Reading Life
Émile Zola: A Very Short Introduction is part of the very excellent Oxford University Press Very Short Introduction series. There are over 700 titles in the series covering everything from author b…| This Reading Life
La Teuse came in and popped her broom and her feather duster against the alter. Confession one: this story ended up being a chore to read. After six engaging, enthralling Zola’s I have hit my…| This Reading Life
La Conquête de Plassans, or The Conquest of Plassans (1874) is the fourth novel in Émile Zola’s twenty-volume Rougon-Macquart series that I have been reading with Fanda for #Zolad…| This Reading Life
Le Ventre de Paris (also known as The Belly of Paris – a direct translation, or The Fat and the Thin referring to one of the main ideas explored in the story) is not only an extremely visual …| This Reading Life
La Curée is the second book in Émile Zola’s Rougon-Macquart series of books set during the Second Empire in France. I read it this month in honour of Fanda’s #Zoladdiction2018. I have m…| This Reading Life
April is #Zoladdiction month and this year Fanda is encouraging us to find the art in Zola’s writing. This year I’m reading La Curee (The Kill) which is set in Paris during the mid 1860…| This Reading Life
I cannot thank Fanda @Classiclit enough for once again hosting #Zoladdiction2017 – one of my favourite readalongs each year! I used this year’s readalong to go back to the ver…| This Reading Life
I cannot thank Fanda @Classiclit and O @Behold the Stars enough for introducing me to the wonderful world of Zola. Last year I read Nana for Fanda’s Zoladdiction month with great enjoy…| This Reading Life
I’m still reeling from my Nana experience. Zola has created such a vivid world that it’s impossible to come away from it untouched or unscathed. Nana, herself, is larger than life even …| This Reading Life
Jura, April 1947. It was his third day back on the island but the first he had managed to get out of bed. He knew what he had to do: transfer to paper the ceaseless, grinding monologue that had bee…| This Reading Life
“That braw lanky laddie,” the woman in the upper-deck first-class saloon said, squinting and hitching herself forward in her chaise lounge for a better view. Her white summer dress tick…| This Reading Life
Epigraphs (3): (1) I very rarely think either of my past or my future, but the moment that one contemplates writing an autobiography…one is forced to regard oneself as an entity carried along…| This Reading Life
It was hard not to feel that Paris was the place. My response to The Paris Bookseller has been complicated. I was keen to read it thanks to the blurb which told me it had a Paris setting, a booksho…| This Reading Life
His mother waited upstairs while the servants took coats and scarves and hats from the guests. Some books are not easy to review. If you had asked me a couple of month ago, I would have said, unres…| This Reading Life
Kathy O’Shaughnessy has written an utterly delightful and immersive story about the extraordinary Marian Lewes, otherwise known as George Eliot. The book follows Marian from the early days of…| This Reading Life
A couple of months ago I was fortunate enough to receive a reading copy of Jane Caro’s Accidental Feminists from Melbourne University Publishing. I immediately tucked it into my weekend bag t…| This Reading Life
I knew next to nothing about the mother/daughter Mary Wollstonecraft/Shelley pair until reading Romantic Outlaws: The Extraordinary Lives of Mary Wollstonecraft and Mary Shelley. I had started read…| This Reading Life
It was the man from Records who began it, him all unknowing in his prim, grim way, his above-it-all, oldthink way. He was the one Syme called ‘Old Misery’. Julia by Sandra Newman has be…| This Reading Life
It was an undecided and hazy spring, the spring that MAS370 disappeared, and I didn’t know what I was doing in London. Everyone kept asking me what had happened to the plane. I had become an …| This Reading Life
7 December 1962, Devon 7 REASONS NOT TO DIE: 1. Skin. To never again feel the skin of one’s beloved child. Not another fictionalised biography I hear you cry! One day I will work out why I am…| This Reading Life
I had planned on writing extended reviews for some of these books, but Covid. Assembly especially, which packed a punch much weightier than its mere 100 pages would suggest, deserves to be more wid…| This Reading Life
Lisa @ANZ LitLovers is hosting the inaugural Short Story September where we are encouraged to ‘discover short story collections that are good to read.’ In more recent times I have …| This Reading Life
What’s On My Mind: 20 Books of Summer Winter A BIG tick and pat on the back to me! I finished reading my twentieth book at 11pm on the 31st August. Now I just have to complete two reviews so …| This Reading Life
© Brona’s Books 2025 | The Maroubrix Cube, Maroubra Beach August is usually the windy month; this year it has been the wet month. Perfect for reading but not so good for walking every day or g…| This Reading Life
Last month, when Marcie, Bill and I read Gooseberries for our George Saunders Swim in a Pond in the Rain project, we discovered that the Anton Chekhov story was actually part of a trilogy of storie…| This Reading Life
It was Silvia – she had discovered him before I did – who told me: ‘Look at his hands while he talks.’ He was standing there, legs slightly apart (with hiking boots, we were in the mountains); he w…| This Reading Life
I’m loving Japanese literature more and more. The modern stuff in particular, appears deceptively simple, but as you read, and for weeks afterwards, you become aware of layers of meaning. The…| This Reading Life
11 posts published by This Reading Life during May 2025| This Reading Life
Books first published: 1996 | 2000 | 2008 | 2001 | 2016 There are beings who are overwhelmd by the reality of others, their way of speaking, of crossing their legs, of lighting a cigarette. They be…| This Reading Life
6 posts published by This Reading Life during August 2025| This Reading Life
Alyosha was the younger brother. He was called the Pot, because his mother had once sent him with a pot of milk to the deacon’s wife, and he had stumbled against something and broken it. His mother…| This Reading Life
#368: What had I imagined? Time as a merry-go-round one could jump on and off? The year as a stream running underneath my eighteenth of November? As it turns out, both Tara Selter and I got a littl…| This Reading Life
It was a queer, sultry summer, the summer they electrocuted the Rosenbergs, and I didn’t know what I was doing in New York. I’m stupid about executions. The idea of being electrocuted m…| This Reading Life
The facts of the case, though meticulously reconstructed, proved precisely nothing – except that the discovery made by two carters from Dizy made, frankly, no sense at all. It’s the 4th…| This Reading Life
What’s On My Mind: Stats. Volatile Rune recently wrote a post about her thoughts on The Salt Path controversy which garnered many interesting comments, especially about the increased traffic …| This Reading Life
12 posts published by This Reading Life during April 2025| This Reading Life
It is never easy to move to a new country, but in truth I was happy to be away from New York. That city had become disorientating to me, after my father’s death and my mother’s sudden r…| This Reading Life
Margot is shuffling in a balletic first position along the strip of carpet between the legs of the already-seated people in the theatre and the chair backs of the row in front. The performance at t…| This Reading Life
A gold bar is deceptively heavy. Four hundred troy ounces, about 12.5 kilograms, of ultra-high-purity gold formed into an ingot – a sort of slender brick crossed with a pyramid. The gold bar …| This Reading Life
The whole sky had been overcast with rain-clouds from early morning; it was a still day, not hot, but heavy, as it is in grey dull weather when the clouds have been hanging over the country for a l…| This Reading Life
I know the pleasure of rereading Jane Austen intimately. I know that to reread Austen is to delve deeper into the intricacies of her characters, to appreciate her sparkling dialogue, her wit, her c…| This Reading Life
