(courtesy Penguin Books Australia) In a great many seasonally redemptive romcoms, tragedy is usually just the curtain raiser to something good and wonderful down the track. Sure, the person’s heart is torn in two and terrible changes are wrought in the fabric of their life, but by and large, the Continue Reading
Books
Conquering the TBR like a mountaineer: My top 25 books of 2024
(via Shutterstock) I’m not going to sugarcoat – this has been a tough year. Not because someone died or my world imploded dramatically in some way; it just felt like all the pressures of work, which was ridiculously and unrelentingly frenetic, ganged up on me, to the point where I Continue Reading
Merry pop culture Christmas to all … and to all a good streaming-reading-listening night! (Bonus The Penguins of Madagascar Christmas Special)
(courtesy Pinterest (c) Peanuts) Merry pop culture Christmas everyone! Another year has somehow zoomed right through, around and past us, offering up far too many books and movies and TV/streaming show and songs and graphic novels to consume in one lifetime, but reminding us as we gobbled what we could Continue Reading
Festive children’s book review: The Christmas Carrolls: The Christmas Competition by Mel Taylor Bessent
(courtesy Harper Collins Publishers Australia) Is it possible to celebrate Christmas too much? That’s not something the titular characters from Mel Taylor-Bessent’s The Christmas Carrolls might ever have said; after all, they mark the most wonderful time of the year every single day with endless roast dinners, legions of Christmas Continue Reading
On 12th day of Christmas … I read Christmas at the Little Bookshop by the Sea by Eliza J. Scott
(courtesy Storm Publishing) Whenever you plunge into a festive romcom, you rightly expect that you will feel like you’ve given the warmest and cosiest of hugs. One made of love and redemption and healing and all the trappings of the season from decorations and mulled wine, snowmen and wreaths string Continue Reading
Festive book review: Finding My Elf by David Valdes
(courtesy Harper Collins Publishers) Life crises, especially those of a more existential variety, are never a loot of fun. All of the things you once took as gospel, the certainties you could count on in a world not exactly sporting them in profusion, are suddenly well and truly up in Continue Reading
On 9th day of Christmas … I read The Merry Matchmaker by Sheila Roberts
(courtesy Harper Collins Canada) If you’re going t do a festively fun take on a novel as loved and revered as Jane Austen’s Emma, then you need to be up to the task of doing it justice. Thankfully, Sheila Roberts is more than up to the task with her new Continue Reading
Santa Bilby saves the day in a very unusual Aussie Christmas!
(courtesy Scholastic Australia) SNAPSHOTWhen Santa gets stuck delivering Christmas presents, he calls his friend the Easter Bilby to help! Can Bilby deliver all the presents before Christmas morning, or will her wild approach to gift-delivery create all kinds of hilarious Christmas Eve chaos? (courtesy Scholastic Australia) Poor Santa! He’s done Continue Reading
Roar ho ho ho! It’s time for A Very Dinosaur Christmas by Adam Wallace
(courtesy Harper Collins Publishers Australia) Now, if dinosaurs hadn’t died out some 65 million years ago when a rather big life-ending asteroid – well, almost life-ending; clearly the mammals dodged a bullet there – hit the earth, then it’s highly possible yoy might have been able to invite them to Continue Reading
On 6th day of Christmas … I read Nick and Noel’s Christmas Playlist by Codi Hall
(courtesy Sourcebooks Casablanca) Reading a series of books, festive or otherwise, in other than the intended order, is always a risk. If the author is good at their craft, then plunging into books two then three before bouncing back to book one, isn’t even remotely the end of the world; Continue Reading