(via Shutterstock) I am a big kid at heart. While I have well and truly grown up and I pay taxes and go the office (thankfully not all the time) and do very adult things, there’s a part of me that loves adventure and fun and busting the day-to-day banality Continue Reading
Books
Book review: Christmas at the Beach Hut by Veronica Henry
Is it possible to tire of Christmas? Or in the case of Lizzy Kingham, who LOVES Christmas with furiously bright red and green twinkling lights, great bundles of tinsel strewn everywhere and a kilo ton of fruit mince pieces for every meal, to tire of all the effort that goes Continue Reading
Christmas book review: The Holiday Switch by Tif Marcelo
(courtesy Penguin Books Australia) Christmas is, no matter how you slice it, a pretty romantic time of the year. Unless your soul is made of concrete and your heart of thickest steel, you can’t help but feel happily uplifted and lightened by all the twinkling lights, the joy and the Continue Reading
Book review: DallerGut Dream Department Store – The Dream You Ordered is Sold Out by Miye Lee (translated by Sandy Joosun Lee)
(courtesy Hachette Australia) There’s a scene in Pixar’s superlatively moving film Inside Out where Joy (Amy Poehler), Sadness (Phyllis Smith) and Bing Bong (Richard Kind) are passing through the part of the mind where dreams are made and Joy tries, and ultimately fails, not to fangirl over Rainbow Unicorn, the Continue Reading
Birthday book review: Queen Bee by Ciara Geraghty
(courtesy Harper Collins Australia) Humanity is weird. We are; while we rightly take pride in our many positives and evolutionarily worthy accomplishments, we are also prone to more than a bit of superstition, twisted, strange belief systems and an enduring idea that certainly quite natural things are taboo in some Continue Reading
Book review: Found in a Bookshop by Stephanie Butland
(courtesy Hachette Australia) We all crave somewhere to belong. Somewhere where people know us, really know us, where we’re valued, our presence welcome and out absence sadly noted, and where, yes U.S. sitcom of legendary fame, everyone does indeed know our name. That’s why we join clubs, churches, volunteer at Continue Reading
Book review: Beatrix & Fred by Emily Spurr
(courtesy Text Publishing) Books that absolutely defy expectations are a gloriously good treat indeed. You read the back blurb in the bookshop, decide that sounds enticing, grab the book and then after a suitable time on the TBR pile, open it up expecting it to dance to a particular narrative Continue Reading
Book review: Earth Retrograde by R. W. W. Greene
(courtesy Angry Robot Books) Coming up with a truly original idea in any genre or medium of storytelling is always a big ask. No matter how brilliantly one-of-a-kind your creatively epiphanic moment might be, it’s tricky not to sound like a thousand other great narrative ideas that have gone before; Continue Reading
Book review: A Mirror Mended (Fractured Fables #2) by Alix E. Harrow
(courtesy Pan Macmillan Australia) Much as we love things as they were written originally, there’s also a great deal of fun to be had, and in this postmodern world of ours we love to indulge it, subverting and playing with all kinds of storytelling forms. While the purists will insist Continue Reading
UPCOMING READS: The Mercy of Gods (Captive’s War #1) by James S. A. Corey
(courtesy Gizmodo (c) Orbit) SNAPSHOTHow humanity came to the planet called Anjiin is lost in the fog of history, but that history is about to end. The Carryx—part empire, part hive—have waged wars of conquest for centuries, destroying or enslaving species across the galaxy. Now, they are facing a great Continue Reading