Books

While current events might suggest otherwise, most people are inclined to a romantic optimism when it comes to love and belonging, preferring to err on the side of eternal hope rather perpetually-smouldering pessimism. Part of this buoyant outlook on life, one that is enshrined in innumerable fairytales and thus Disney Continue Reading

There is this overly-romantic idea out there that the moment someone close to you is in some kind of mortal danger that you somehow ascend to a hitherto unglimpsed level of sainthood. It is as if how much you love that person is an inert mass of little to no Continue Reading

SNAPSHOT There is something Poe Blythe, the 17-year-old captain of the Outpost’s last mining ship, wants far more than the gold they tear from the Serpentine River. Revenge. Poe has vowed to annihilate the river raiders who robbed her of everything two years ago. But as she navigates the treacherous Continue Reading

Have you ever had one of those friends who found themselves a new religion or transformative way of thinking, one so powerful that it completely changed and profoundly the way they approached life that they talked about nothing else every time you saw them? Even worse, so enthusiastic was their Continue Reading

There are many predictable, known things in this life but grief, alas, is not one of them. The form it takes is as individual as the person grappling with it, a contrary beast that demands different things of different people, and which is never, ever left behind, though its impact Continue Reading

(cover image courtesy Penguin Australia) SNAPSHOT Set in the landscape of the Australian bush the stories recount a series of conflicts between the lazy, destructive Bottersnikes and good-natured, hardworking Gumbles. Inspiration for the series came from the emerging environmental movement. The two species were intended to represent opposing attitudes towards Continue Reading

Michael Ausiello is a brave man. Though I have never met the highly-respected US entertainment journalist, and know him only by his work on TVLine, which he founded, I have come to this opinion based solely on the heartbreakingly-hilarious book Spoiler Alert: The Hero Dies (A Memoir of love, loss Continue Reading

It will surprise precisely no one that the world is a dark and violent place with little of the storied justice so beloved of the sorts of Hollywood thrillers which, by law, must now star only Liam Neeson. That is not to say though that the world is without some Continue Reading