(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
Books
Book review: Vera, or Faith by Gary Shteyngart
(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
Sci-fi triple: Strange New Worlds S3 E9-10, Foundation S3 E8-10 and Invasion S3 E3-6
(via Shutterstock) STRANGE NEW WORLDS S3 E9-10: “Terrarium” and “New Life and New Civilizations” (courtesy IMP Awards) It’s been a wildly inconsistent season for Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, something which has been directly commented upon by co-showrunners Akiva Goldsman and Henry Alonso Myers who are promising far more consistent Continue Reading
Book review: The Five Sorrowful Mysteries of Andy Africa by Stephen Buoro
(courtesy Bloomsbury Publishing) Coming-of-age stories are known for asking big questions about life. The novels usually feature a protagonist going through the messy business of sorting out who they are, how they it into the world around them and what matters to them, not just in the moment but in Continue Reading
Book review: Anxious Hearts by Guy Sigley
(courtesy Echo publishing) When you are consumed by anxiety, the kind that eats you alive in endlessly exhausting ways and turns even the simplest of moments into existential hell, can there even be room for love? That’s the question that consumes lifelong friends Kelly O’Mara and Finn aka Finely Walsh,protagonists Continue Reading
CHRISTMAS PREVIEW: The vivaciously funny festive joy of Christmas Karma
(courtesy First Showing) SNAPSHOTAn early Xmas gift… Christmas Karma sees ones of the greatest novels – Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol – transformed into a joyous, colourful, feel-good Christmas musical that celebrates modern-day London and all of its communities and cultures. Told from Chadha’s unique point of view and in Continue Reading
Frankenstein with a delightful twist … trailer drops for adaptation of beloved book series (and graphic novel), Stitch Head
(courtesy IMP Awards) SNAPSHOTHigh above the little town of Grubbers Nubbin, in a castle laboratory, the maddest of all mad professors brings monstrous creations to (almost) life… and then promptly forgets all about them. So, who runs the castle? Who keeps the monsters in line, so the townsfolk don’t form Continue Reading
Book review: The Expert System’s Brother by Adrian Tchaikovsky
(courtesy Pan Macmillan Australia) World-building is everything when it comes to science fiction aka sci-fi and one writer who absolutely excels in this department is Adrian Tchaikovsky, who stands as one of the genre’s most talented writers of the moment. His ability to conjure up a sense of a plant Continue Reading
CHRISTMAS PREVIEW: The Secret Mistletoe Promise (The Secret Bookshop, Book 2) by Cressida McLaughlin
(courtesy Harper Collins Publishers) SNAPSHOTIs a new beginning waiting for her this Christmas? When Imogen leaves her fiancé at the altar and escapes to her grandmother’s cottage by the sea, the only thing she wants to do is disappear. But in a village curious about their new arrival, Imogen finds Continue Reading
Book review: Tenderfoot by Toni Jordan
(courtesy IMP Awards) We all know growing up is tough. But for some people growing up is even tougher, with a bewildering array of issues to navigate and circumstances to survive, and no real emotional support to get through it all. Just how daunting it can be is explored with Continue Reading