(courtesy Hachette Australia) One of the great delights of reading, indeed of the consumption of any kind of pop cultured medium, is coming across a story that absolutely reinvents, emboldens and breathtakingly refreshes the genre of which it’s a part. When it happens it constitutes one of those wondrous moments Continue Reading
Books
Book review: Better Than Fiction by Alexa Martin
(courtesy Hachette Australia) Falling in love is sweet in a million different wonderful ways. But how much sweeter, especially if you’re a book lover, is it when it all happens against a backdrop of a bookstore, and concerns said owner of that literary retail establishment and a hunky writer who, Continue Reading
#Eurovision cultural festival 2023 book review: Grey Bees by Andrey Kurkov
War, it almost goes without saying but it likely still needs to be said given the plethora of present horrific conflicts around the world, is a horrifically terrible thing to live through. But what is it like to live war-adjacent? This disorientingly strange limbo of normal is affectingly explored in Continue Reading
UPCOMING READS: The apocalyptically toxic world of Battery Life by Brennan Gilpatrick and Gregory Lang
(courtesy Gizmodo / image (c) Blackstone Publishing) SNAPSHOTWelcome to the Junkyard, a toxic wasteland where humans, machines, and everything in between fight for survival among the ruins of a long-forgotten war. This is where Diane Three-One-Seven finds herself after the arkship Cradle—the only home she’s ever known—falls out of the Continue Reading
Book review: Beyond the Hallowed Sky by Ken MacLeod
(courtesy Hachette Australia) Humanity has, in many ways, got where it’s got because it’s refused to simply take the universe on the terms obviously presented to it. No matter what the issue is or the challenge to be resolved, we have looked all kinds of supposedly set-in-stone realities of the Continue Reading
Long live the fighters: Dune 2 debuts new trailer and poster and some damn fine giant worm riding
(courtesy IMP Awards) SNAPSHOTThe film will explore the continuing journey of Paul Atreides, now united with the Fremen on Arrakis. A boy becomes the Messiah of nomads on a desert planet that has giant worms that protect a commodity called Spice. Spice changes people into travelers, mystics and madmen. What Continue Reading
Book review: The Unlikely Life of Maisie Meadows by Jenni Keer
When life falls apart in comprehensive fashion around you, it is all too tempting, and understandably so, to throw your hands up in despair, dive beneath the doona (duvet) and not emerge for a good long while all while telling yourself life has nothing to offer anymore. But the 25-year-old Continue Reading
Book review: Emma of 83rd Street by Audrey Bellezza and Emily Harding
While we all love an entertaining meet-cute of two people who we know are destined together forever after having never known each other existed – the sense of romantic fate and destiny is palpably sublime and awww-worthy – there’s also something deliciously enticing about a couple who have been friends Continue Reading
Book review: The Mostly True Story of Tanner & Louise by Colleen Oakley
It is possible to find yourself in the most banal of circumstances, but the truth is, most of the big epiphanic moments usually only take place when you’re plucked out of your day-to-day existence and thrust, whether by accident or design, into somewhere wholly and extraordinarily different. For most of Continue Reading
Book review: Celestial by M. D. Lachlan
It’s a tricky business delivering up mystery and explanation in one tight sci-fi storytelling package. Tip too towards the mystery and you end up with Solaris or Arrival, both fine films in their own way which are hampered by the fact that they deliver up far more questions than answers Continue Reading