Well, hello and goodbye to 2021, thank you very much! As I sat writing my brief thoughts for 2020 on last year’s Christmas Eve post, I thought we were free and clear of COVID; well, not completely obviously since an outbreak and partial city lockdown in Sydney meant we couldn’t Continue Reading
Books
Hope sustains the season: The Christmas Eve Tree by Delia Huddy (illustrated by Emily Sutton)
Hope is such a powerful thing. Even in the very worst of circumstances, it empowers us to expect, no, believe, that terrible things can get better, that the irredeembale can find positive change and that the dispossessed and alone can find somewhere to belong. Just how transcendentally powerful it can Continue Reading
Book review: A Cross-Country Christmas by Courtney Walsh
Who doesn’t love a second chance? They’re what we live for, crave, want and need, and we endlessly romanticise them in countless ways and by numerous means, hoping against hope that the mistakes of our past can be fixed in some way by wise choices and some grace and forgiveness Continue Reading
On 10th day of Christmas … I read Merry and Bright by Debbie Macomber (book review)
What does Merry Smith want for Christmas? Well, she’ll take time with her gorgeous, close-knit family including quality time baking cookies with her 18-year-old brother Patrick (who has Down syndrome) and looking after Mum Robin who has multiple sclerosis, shopping for delicious treats in amongst the normal weekly grocery shop Continue Reading
Book review: Stringers by Chris Panatier
ARC courtesy Chris Panatier – release date 12 April 2022. Release the dung beetles of imagination my friends! Never heard of them? Well, that won’t be a problem once Chris Panatier is done with you via the mad, manic and hilariously affecting delights of his second novel, Stringers, which spends Continue Reading
#Christmas book review: The Christmas Cookie Club by Ann Pearlman
If you take a close look at many Christmas stories, songs, TV shows and movies, a prevailing theme is that of connectedness, something we all want and crave but which becomes all the more important during the festive season when being with the ones you love becomes as critical to Continue Reading
Book review: Harlem Shuffle by Colson Whitehead
It is never any easy thing straddling the chasm-like divide between heritage and intent. Some people, of course, make it look effortless, bringing together who they were raised to be with who they innately are, or at least, desire to be, their lives barely raising a ripple of existential tension. Continue Reading
Book review: The Girl Who Saved Christmas by Matt Haig
Christmas is as wondrous and magical as life gets. A giant, and often much-welcome step away from the same-old banality of the everyday, which is often not awful, just not that great, Christmas promises that everything, at least for a while, will be sparkly bright, awash in contentment, love, and Continue Reading
Book review: Spidertouch by Alex Thomson
ARC courtesy Angry Robot Books – release date 14 December in UK and 16 March 2022 Australia. There are some books that, when you plunge eagerly into them – hope always springs eternal when it comes to each and every new novel – come rapidly alive, so well-expressed and vibrant Continue Reading
Book review: Light Chaser by Peter F. Hamilton and Gareth L. Powell
One of the great appealing aspects of any science fiction worth it’s slave planet-mined salt is the imaginative audacity of the premise on which it sits. Time and again if you read or otherwise consume brilliant sci-fi, it’s hard not to sit back and gasp in wonder at the ideas Continue Reading