Letter to the author Dear Mira, I understand I should start a letter with some polite nothings but I’ve just finished this book and all I want to do is scream. How dare you write good characters, sucker me in to liking them and then leave them hanging at the ...
"You can never get a cup of tea large enough or a book long enough to suit me." C.S. Lewis
Est. 2009
This is the book I’ve been reading the past few weeks. It’s been many years since I’ve concentrated solely on the one book and it’s taken me this long to read it. It’s not entirely because it’s so long, but also because it’s short stories, and also because the stories ...
I love anthologies. Generally, it’s because I get to read stories by lots of different authors. This book is full of stories by Nikolai Gogol, a celebrated Russian author who had a huge influence on Russian, and also world literature. He died at the young age of 42 having only ...
I found myself conflicted by this book. It was written by Patrick White who has received a number of awards for his writing including being named Australian of the Year in 1973. When he was awarded a Nobel Prize in Literature also in 1973 he sent someone else to collect ...
There is always a story. There are two stories I have with this book before I head into talking about the actual book. I did a very small favour for a friend. It was such a small favour and cost me nothing. Annie heads a blog about books, check it ...
This is one of those ‘hold the front page’ books. It was sent to me by Bionic Book Subscription as part of my three month free subscription from them. When I unboxed it on video I looked and sounded doubtful that I would enjoy this book. I want to say, ...
I do not know why I picked up a book about the Rats of Tobruk during a pandemic. Especially as I finished it today in the knowledge that we’d be going into a much stricter lockdown than before. Why am I reading books about war at a time such as ...
Don’t ask me how this treasure got onto my TBR Pile, I have no memories of that. It is the most amazing story, de Waal uses family heirlooms, ones that were thought lost during the Holocaust but were all saved thanks to a beloved and loyal servant, Anna. I name ...
This book has been on my TBR Pile since 2009. I can date it pretty precisely because it comes from my Step-Dad’s library and that’s when he died. I have a number of books from his shelves and a lot of great memories. This book is in the memoir category ...
I picked up this book at the Nunawading Library sale. Why was I at Nunawading Library? I’m not sure, but there was a good reason. I do remember looking at the books on sale and thinking this looked promising. I put it on my TBR pile and left it long ...
This is one of those books that was banned way back when. It came across my desk some time ago but I only opened it recently. I wanted to find out what all the fuss was about without doing lots of research…although, some people might think that reading the entire ...
This is a mixture between detective and romance. I’m using it in the Dymocks Reading Challenge 2021 in the book with more than 400 pages category. Despite the romance I managed to make it through, but I did consider giving up a few times. What kept me going were the ...
This is a condensed version of one of those iconic Australian books that I should have read many years ago, many years ago. Having finally read it I understand why. The writing in this book is not terribly sophisticated but the information revealed does show an incredible amount about Australian ...
This book is an authorised history of the Rothschild family of Europe. I knew some information about the family from a genealogical point of view as it was part of a session at a genealogical conference I attended some years ago, but very little about the actual reach of the ...
This book is part of the Dymocks Reading Challenge for 2021. It goes into the Ask a Dymocks bookseller category. I was walking through Chadstone Shopping Centre three weeks ago before this latest outbreak of Covid shut everything down. I saw Dymocks and had to go in for photos. While ...