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 been reading short story collections very, very slowly as I try to savour each individual story, but the focus of this month is on the collection … Continue reading Short Story September| 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 that I can say that I have read AND reviewed 20 books over the Antipodean … Continue reading Stories & Shout Outs #82| This Reading Life
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 getting out into the garden for a pre-spring tidy up. But I have managed to get in a few Snapshot Saturday posts on my photographic blog, Four Seasons, if … Continue reading Book Diary | August 2025| This Reading Life
7 December 1962 He was lying on a varnished wooden board, the top of a boxed-in radiator. The board was exactly as wide as his shoulders and he knew, from painful experience, he must sit up like a man emerging from his own coffin. Roll over and he would be on the floor. You never … Continue reading The Land in Winter | Andrew Miller| This Reading Life
All the benches in the Jardín facing the link spikes and spires of the Parroquia are already taken by lovers of the morning sun, but you find one set back under the meticulously trimmed and shaped trees you are told are Indian laurels, where you can sit making your way at leisure through the Spanish-language … Continue reading Rosarita | Anita Desai| 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 stories. When I dug a little deeper (Wikipedia) I found that Chekhov in fact had even bigger plans. On 29th … Continue reading The Little Trilogy | Anton Chekhov| This Reading Life
I turned the 6 into an 8. And the 1 into a 9. In a matter of seconds, my world was transformed. I clicked the cap back on the red felt-tip pen. The 61 I earned on my English test was now an 89. In What You Are Looking For is in the Library, Michiko Aoyama … Continue reading The Healing Hippo of Hinode Park | Michiko Aoyama| 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 had beaten him, and the children had teased him. Since then he was nicknamed the Pot. I was … Continue reading Alyosha the Pot | Leo Tolstoy #shortstory| 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 little obsessive about the whole Roman coin thing in On the Calculation of Volume II. On the very … Continue reading On the Calculation of Volume II | Solvej Balle| 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 makes me sick, and that’s all there was to read about in the papers – goggle-eyed headlines staring up at me on every … Continue reading The Bell Jar | Sylvia Plath| 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 April and just beginning to rain. The setting is the river Marne, near Lock 14, Dizy, France and a body has been discovered in … Continue reading The Carter of ‘La Providence’ | Georges Simenon| 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
Posts about Eileen Blair written by This Reading Life| 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 in question is used in an horrific crime – the bashing of a man on a rural property in the heart of … Continue reading Universality | Natasha Brown| This Reading Life
As so often happens, after an extraordinary reading month in June, along comes July. I confess that I have become bogged down in Emma, my least favourite Jane Austen. However the truly awful Mrs Elton has just arrived on the scene to spark things up, so hopefully the final third will zip along a little … Continue reading Book Diary | July 2025| This Reading Life
I got off at Barbés. Like last time, men were idly waiting, clustered at the foot of the Métro overhead. People were trudging along the pavement with pink shopping bags from the discount store Tati. Happening by Annie Ernaux is the third book I’ve read by the Nobel Prize Laureate of 2022 and the second … Continue reading Happening | Annie Ernaux| This Reading Life
Antelopes have 10x vision, you said. It was the beginning or close to it. That means that on a clear night they can see the rings of Saturn. Written as a series of vignettes, Dept. of Speculation is a snapshot of a marriage, with a healthy dash of philosophical musings thrown in for good measure. … Continue reading Dept. of Speculation | Jenny Offill| This Reading Life
The most common response I get when I tell people what I do for a living is: I couldn’t do a job like that. What they mean is they wouldn’t do a job like this. Every so often a new gruesome story circulates about salesmen, and what travelling between time speeds does to one’s physical … Continue reading Skipshock | Caroline O’Donoghue| 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
Posts about Haruki Murakami written by This Reading Life| This Reading Life
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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
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
6 posts published by This Reading Life during July 2025| This Reading Life
The day it happened, Arlie wasn’t paying attention. An owl had visited, that was the problem, but Arlie had forgotten. It is going to be very difficult to top the three insightful and engagin…| This Reading Life
Henry Thomas Austen (8th June 1771 – 12th March 1850) wrote two memoirs, or biographical notices, about his sister Jane. The first one was written in 1818 just after her death and was included…| This Reading Life
Friday, 7 November. Concarneau is empty. The lighted clock in the Old Town glows above the ramparts; it is five minutes to eleven. The tide is in, and the south-westerly gale is slamming the boats …| This Reading Life
The practical test for my CAPES examination took place at a lycée in Lyon, in the Croix-Rousse area. A new lycée, with potted plants in the buildings for the teaching and administrative staff, and …| This Reading Life
What’s On My Mind: Anniversaries. Today is the 16th blogoversary of This Reading Life, formerly known as Brona’s Books. A lot has happened since the 6th July 2009. Mr Books and I got ma…| This Reading Life
No one noticed what was happening. No one suspected that something serious was taking place in the small station’s waiting room, where only six passengers sat dejectedly among odours of coffee, bee…| This Reading Life
Mr. Jones, of the Manor Farm, had locked the hen-houses for the night, but was too drunk to remember to shut the pop-holes. With the ring of light from his lantern dancing from side to side, he lur…| This Reading Life
13 posts published by This Reading Life during June 2025| This Reading Life
© Brona’s Books 2025 | The Three Sisters, Katoomba June has been grey, windy and cold with some huge overnight frosts. The crisp, blue-sky days of winter have been rare so far, so I was deligh…| This Reading Life
It seemed an unlikely choice, this large establishment in the financial district, so that I stood outside and checked the address, the name of the restaurant, I wondered if I had made a mistake. Bu…| This Reading Life
My Dearest Ruby, – We got back from Loch Sween last night. It was still raining there when we left, and we reached home in a downpour. To-day it rains steadily. A wet Glasgow Sunday! The Brit…| This Reading Life
When in 1926 Robert Chapman published his edition of James Edward Austen-Leigh’s biography of his aunt Jane Austen the Times Literary Supplement chiefly welcomed its reissue not for the life …| This Reading Life
I meet my parents at a fish shop in an inner-city mall. By the time I get there, they are waiting in their windbreakers and matching hiking shoes. I greet their outdoor energy with a wave hello. &#…| This Reading Life
Artwork by Julia Soboleva On the 25th March 18–, a very strange occurrence took place in St Petersburg. On the Ascension Avenue there lived a barber of the name Ivan Jakovlevitch. He had lost…| This Reading Life
At the sunset hour of one warm spring day two men were to be seen at Patriarch’s Ponds. The first of them – aged about forty, dressed in a greyish summer suit – was short, dark-ha…| This Reading Life
Over the weekend, The Orwell Foundation announced the finalists for the Orwell Prizes in Political Writing, Political Fiction, Journalism and for Reporting Homelessness. The judging criteria looks …| This Reading Life
Posts about A Swim in a Pond in the Rain written by This Reading Life| This Reading Life
Before I knew what I was, I lived with my brothers in a grand old house in the heart of the New Forest. It had blue velvet curtains full of dust, and fire surrounds painted like marble to fool the …| This Reading Life
It’s time for another Classics Club spin. This is the Classics Club’s 41st CC Spin…and mine. Yes you read that correctly. I have participated in EVERY single Classics Club spin. What is…| This Reading Life
About thirty years ago, Miss Maria Ward of Huntingdon, with only seven thousand pounds, had the good luck to captivate Sir Thomas Bertram, of Mansfield Park, in the county of Northampton, and to be…| This Reading Life
Helen realised that she had walked too far just as daylight was beginning to fade. As she looked around her, she was struck by the desolation of the country. During her long walk she had met no one…| This Reading Life
At first he barely notices the children. They’re waiting for the bus, a small boy, and a girl of about ten with braided hair. He’s twenty-three, too close to childhood and too far from …| This Reading Life
Penguin Classics UK covers designed by Alceu Chiesorin Nunes I have been saving this post for closer to July and all things Paris, but I’ve come down with a nasty lurgy after my recent FNQ ho…| This Reading Life
12 posts published by This Reading Life during March 2025| This Reading Life
I was feeling a little cautious about reading Lincoln in the Bardo. Anytime I had heard someone talk about the book, they would mention the ghosts, the many, many voices and the grief. It sounded l…| This Reading Life
I have been asked some very odd questions during my seventeen years working in independent bookshops – where did that time go? It is now almost as long as my teaching career lasted for! But r…| This Reading Life
What’s On My Mind: Far North Queensland. By the time you are reading this I will be ensconced in our happy place. Mr Books and I both love to travel to new and interesting places, but we also…| This Reading Life
According to The Orwell Foundation website which manages The Orwell Prizes for Political Writing and Political Fiction, ‘Each shortlist celebrates work that aspires to Orwell’s ambition to “m…| This Reading Life
Original title of Master and Man: Хозяин и работник (Khozyain i rabotnik) Translated by Louise and Aylmer Maude (1899) Project Gutenberg 24 February 2020 ebook #986 Date Read: 10th May 2025 M…| This Reading Life
“Aren’t we kind of the opposite of Adam and Eve?” a boyfriend once asked me, long ago. I was twenty years old and had taken this boyfriend home at a time when I knew nobody would …| This Reading Life
After a decade hosting the worldwide blogging event, 20 Books of Summer, Cathy @746 books has decided it is time to pass the baton. I have been with Cathy and the 20 Books Of community since 2…| This Reading Life
In the Rue Neuve-Saint-Augustin, a hold-up in the traffic stopped the cab which was bringing Octave and his three trunks from the Gare de Lyon. The young man lowered one of the windows, although it…| This Reading Life
A biting wind swept through an open window at the end of the hall where Mary kept vigil outside her mother’s bedroom. The month of May had been mean thus far to the rural market town of Bever…| This Reading Life
It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single lady in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a husband. ‘Nonsense,’ Miss Caroline Bingley muttered into her empty teacup…| This Reading Life
Photo by Kaye Hanson on Unsplash April, where did you go? In a blur of autumn leaves, crisp mornings, chocolate eggs and extra shifts at work another month has hurried by. It looks l…| This Reading Life
I have hated my mother for most of my life but it is her face I see as I drown. But Rowan doesn’t drown and the face she sees upon wakening is the ‘rough and wind-bitten and scratchy…| This Reading Life
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
The 1952 Club is hosted by Karen @Kaggsy’s Bookish Ramblings and Simon @Stuck in a Book. After checking the lists to see which books were first published in 1952, I realised that I had three o…| This Reading Life
Olenka, the daughter of the retired collegiate assessor, Plemyanniakov, was sitting in her back porch, lost in thought. It was hot, the flies were persistent and teasing, and it was pleasant to ref…| This Reading Life
#121 There is someone in the house. Heard as he moves around the room upstairs. When he gets out of bed or when he goes down the stairs and into the kitchen. There’s the gush of water through the p…| This Reading Life
Sunlight floods the room from the bay windows, reflects off the wide, honey-coloured floorboards and casts an emerald glow over the perforate leaves of a monstera shaped like a cloud. After I finis…| This Reading Life
Throughout the latter part of the morning buggies kept turning in from the highway and wheeling up the quarter-mile of elm-arched drive to the farm – surreys and democrat wagons, an occasiona…| This Reading Life
It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife. I have reread Pride and Prejudice so many times I have lost count, but we must b…| This Reading Life
This year I have been quite taken with the International Booker selection, so I was delighted to see that the two books I’ve read so far (and thoroughly enjoyed, reviews to come) are now on t…| This Reading Life
Jane Austen is not my secret friend – although in my latest novel Jane Austen and Shelley in the Garden I made her a bothering companion to my heroine. Here in this book I try to stay with he…| This Reading Life
© Brona’s Books 2025 | Autumnal sunset in the Blue Mountains March was all about Pride and Prejudice as both myself and Mr Books revisited one of the books we studied at high school. On t…| This Reading Life
We travel for various purposes — to explore the culture of soils — to view the curiosities of art — to survey the beauties of nature — and to learn the manners of men; their different polities, and…| This Reading Life
Heaven is never-ending light. It is jasper and crystal, pearls and gold. It is lightning and rainbos and a great, rushing river. It is white horses and doves and angels singing holy holy holy and t…| This Reading Life
It began in every town and every city at the same time, in every dark and twisted corner of our world. One third of the earth’s citizens were asleep at the time. Their awakening was marked by…| This Reading Life
For Cathy’s Reading Ireland month I determined to read a few more of the short stories from Edna O’Brien’s Mrs Reinhardt and other stories (1978) as it also happens to intersect n…| 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 small village of Kolotovka once belonged to a lady known in the neighbourhood by the nickname of Skin-flint, in illusion to her keen business habits (her real name is lost in oblivion), but has…| This Reading Life
OutsideDid you knowthat seahorseshave two skeletons:one on the insideand one on the outside?Imagine being able towear your skeleton on the outsidelike armour,making sure that predators knownot to c…| This Reading Life
During her short lifetime, which ended prematurely at the the tender age of forty-one, Jane Austen gifted the world with six timeless novels, each bearing the indelible imprint of her literary geni…| This Reading Life
Photo by Fleur on Unsplash After writing my recent post about Louisa Lawson and the elegant new statue now on display in her hometown of Mudgee (NSW), I found myself wondering how ma…| This Reading Life
Blackboards chalked ‘Positions Vacant’ hang against the wall. She feels like she has walked all morning to get here. She hurries past loiterers with worn faces and sagging hats. They sp…| This Reading Life
They found him through an advertisement on Gumtree. “For sale: nine-week-old fawn-coloured male mini lop in search of his forever home. Lovely temperament, well handled. Comes with transition…| This Reading Life
They drove out of the town at half past eight in the morning. The road was dry, the wonderful April sun was very warm, but there was still snow in the ditches and the woods. The fierce, dark, long …| This Reading Life
US cover UK & Aust cover St. Louis is a big city, a cold one, and it has a population of 800,000…Working men and women, lots of Negroes, it’s the city of 100,000 Negroes. The Missis…| This Reading Life
It’s hard to believe this photo was taken a few days before the wretched incident. The three of them looked really happy, at ease with one another, as if there was a bond of mutual trust amon…| 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
You were the one who told me about the town. On that summer evening we were heading up the river, the sweet fragrance of grass wafting over us. We passed over several little weirs that held back th…| This Reading Life
When in 1926 Robert Chapman published his edition of James Edward Austen-Leigh’s biography of his aunt Jane Austen the Times Literary Supplement chiefly welcomed its reissue not for the life …| This Reading Life
It’s time for another Classics Club spin. This is the Classics Club’s 40th CC Spin…and mine. Yes you read that correctly. I have participated in EVERY single Classics Club spin. What is…| This Reading Life
For the past couple of years, Fanda @Classiclit has been hosting an Agatha Christie short story readalong. The idea is to read two AC short stories each month (you can see her selections for each m…| This Reading Life
In the autumn of 1996 my daughter, the writer Anne Giardini, and I travelled to Richmond, Virginia, to present a joint paper at the Jane Austen Society of North America, an organisation that compri…| This Reading Life
