Books

(image courtesy Pan MacMillan)   What must it be like to lose your birthday? For the aged titular protagonist in Diana Rosie’s debut novel, Alberto’s Lost Birthday, it has never really been an issue. As a young boy orphaned in the midst of the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939), his life has been one of survival, Continue Reading

  It has been said, quite possibly once too often, that all good things must come to an end. But what if, wonders the titular protagonist in The Heart of Henry Quantum, if they were never all that good to begin with? Of course Henry has always told himself that Continue Reading

  It’s tempting to look at celebrities, even those from what Miranda Hart refers to as the “pretty earthy, budget-constrained variety of show business” (BBC sitcoms), and assume their lives unfold in some sort of gilt-edged ivory tower untroubled by the cares and concerns of our everyday world. But as Continue Reading

  In the West, where sensitivity to free flowing spirituality often finds itself subsumed to logic and consumerism more often than not, the idea of reincarnation is often treated with outright scepticism and ridicule, or at the very least, benign neglect. For some reason, the idea that we are not wholly Continue Reading

  Grief does strange things to people. And try as we might to predict how we will react in circumstances of great loss, you don’t really know how you will cope, or not cope as the case maybe, until the time comes. In the case of Arthur Pepper, the protagonist Continue Reading

(cover via Hachette Australia)   Dreams are often seen as an ephemeral part of life. Necessary yes, for without them where would we draw hope, or be motivated to push beyond ourselves and achieve great things, but hardly the root stock of existence, a necessity for a full and complete Continue Reading

  Adversity often strikes us when we are least expecting it. That’s largely because our natural tendency, the Eeyores among us not withstanding, is to hope for the very best, to let hope spring eternal until such time as it becomes abundantly clear that it has no intention of rewarding Continue Reading

  Joel McHale is a very funny man. Blessed with model-handsome good looks and spot-on comic timing, he has gifted us with humourous performances as Jeff Winger in Community, and 11 years of amusingly satirical hosting of The Soup (2004 – 2015). And now, in keeping with the man’s gifted Continue Reading

  Jason Dessen has it all. Well, almost everything. He hasn’t even come closing to realising the impressive potential he showed at university as one of the most promising astro-physicists to come along in years, a man destined for great things. But while that nags at him, and he wonders Continue Reading