Books

(courtesy Text Publishing) Life, so youthful expectation dreamily romanticises, is supposed to fall into all kinds of predictable (and, of course, satisfyingly successful) places. But as we all soon discover, some more than others, life is not to be dictated to, benignly and excitedly or otherwise, and so what often Continue Reading

(courtesy Transit Lounge Publishing) Despite this book’s title, The Maskeys, and no, this does not require a spoiler alert, are not the centrepiece of the novel which bears their rather blighted name. Penned by Stuart Everly-Wilson, who brought us the superlatively good Low Expectations, The Maskeys revolves instead around Rodney, Continue Reading

(courtesy Tor Publishing Group) The crime genre, early teenage voracious consumption of Agatha Christie’s entire output aside, has never really compelled this reviewer to sit down and read like, say science-fiction or slice-of-life quirky dramas. While most sections of my favourite bookshops see regular footfall from me, the crime section Continue Reading

(courtesy Hachette Australia) Life can often like a series of existentially testing events, punctuated by rare moments of levity and joy and wrapped in a lifetime of pain, hurt, loss and hard-won gains. That might seem bleak but for most it’s an accurate take on this thing called life, and Continue Reading

(courtesy Pan Macmillan Australia) Plunging into the latest novel by John Scalzi, and fortunate to have read a number of his books before this, I was well aware of just good a writer this man is and how well he imagines realities beyond our own, bringing them to life with Continue Reading

(courtesy Ultimo Press) One of the ways we survive the many vagaries of life is to tell ourselves stories; they’re usually self-serving storylines that reinforce the internal narrative we have long told ourselves to help us make sense of events that would otherwise defy easy categorisation. Are they always truthful? Continue Reading

(courtesy Harper Collins Publishers Australia) Life, we are told, is a series of sliding door moments. Step one way, and your life will head down one, hopefully beneficial and rewarding course; go in the other direction and your trajectory takes on another look and feel entirely. If the choices were Continue Reading

(courtesy Allen & Unwin Book Publishers) Coming to grips with who you are isn’t easy. It’s even less easy when you’re a ten-year-old girl who’s been raised almost in a vacuum of information about yourself and who can tell that the world she inhabits is not only built on convenient Continue Reading