(courtesy Hachette Australia) Is it possible to be funny both funny and incisive about mental health? It is if you’re comedian Susan Calman, who, when she’s not making us laugh from the stage or on TV – her Grand Day Out series is a joy and makes travelling just as Continue Reading
Books
Book review: Goodbye Birdie Greenwing by Ericka Waller
(courtesy Penguin Books Australia) It may not sound like an attractive proposition to be told that a novel will break your heart little-by-little before it breaks it completely but what about if we told you that while all that rending and slow motion rupturing is taking place that some quite Continue Reading
Book review: You Are Here by David Nicholls
(courtesy Hachette Australia) We’re all used to the rom-com idea of love being swift, heavily meet-cutey and complicated just enough to make the reaching of the romantic finish line feel like an earned thing. But the truth is, love isn’t ever really that straightforward, and while we might fall for Continue Reading
Book review: The Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley
(courtesy Hachette Australia) There is a point, when you have read many novels, where you begin if there is truth to the fact that there is nothing new under the sun. It’s not that what you’re reading isn’t clever, heartfelt or imaginative; they often are and they make reading the Continue Reading
Book review: Key Lime Sky by Al Hess
(courtesy Penguin Books Australia) Key Lime Sky was provide as a preview through NetGalley and is due for release in print and digital formats on 13 August 2024. It is always impressive to read a book by an author where an audaciously out-there premise is not only brilliantly and fulsomely Continue Reading
Book review: Sit, Stay, Love by Amy Hutton
(courtesy Simon & Schuster Australia) It goes without saying, and yet of course we are going to stay it still, that romantic comedies come up with a bulging Cupid’s quiver full of tropes, clichés and expectations. That’s not a bad thing necessarily since the reason we love a particular type Continue Reading
#Eurovision cultural festival 2024 book review: Stolen by Ann-Helén Laestadius
(courtesy Bloomsbury Publishing) Stolen by Ann-Helén Laestadius (translated by Rachel Willson-Broyles)is that most universal and yet achingly specific kind of novel. At once a coming-of-age tale of one young Sámi woman battling to find in place in a world that holds obstacles and antagonism within and without, sometimes violently so, she Continue Reading
Book review: Nick and Charlie (A Heartstoper novella) by Alice Oseman
(courtesy Harper Collins Australia) Life all too often feels like a series of endless goodbyes. Or possible goodbyes anyway; just when things seem to have settled into a pleasing and happy pattern, and we feel like this life things is forming itself into some existentially rich and satisfying shapes, along Continue Reading
#StarWarsDay book review: Brotherhood by Mike Chen #MayThe4thBeWithYou
(courtesy Penguin Books Australia) Star Wars is defined in many ways by the relationships which fill it with a space operatic sense of connectiveness that powers the narrative and lends it a great deal more resonance that you might expect what it essentially a galactic Western. Han and Leia and Continue Reading
Book review: Funny Story by Emily Henry
(courtesy Penguin Books Australia) You know what’s so appealing about romantic comedies? No matter how over the top their premise might be or fantastically narrative convenient the narrative powering them might be, they provide a delightfully overpowering sense of comfort that life can be good and wonderful, and if it’s Continue Reading