(courtesy Hachette Australia) After watching far too many books sit trapped in my To Be Read (TBR) pile for years and years, I decided it was high time a month was devoted to rescuing them from the reading void and diving into their promising stories. So, for October, each book Continue Reading
Songs, songs and more songs #114: Charli XCX, Tobtok & Hanne Mjøen, Jamie xx and The Avalanches, BOVIY + Meg Smith
(via Shutterstock) We are always in motion; it’s the nature of being alive. But how often do we truly cut loose, surrender ourselves to beat and lyrics and just let our heart and feet take us where they will? Not often enough; there’s usually too much motion of the humdrum Continue Reading
Movie review: Wolfs
(courtesy IMP Awards) Life almost never comes with do-overs. If you stuff up, and pretty much all us do in ways big and small, you have to live with the mess and the chaos, the consequences of your ill-judged actions hanging around your neck like a medieval seafaring albatross. But Continue Reading
Festive book review: Christmas Actually by Lisa Darcy
(courtesy Bloodhound Books) Of all the seasons about which we section off and mark the calendar year, Christmas is supposed to be the one where all the good and perfect things happen, where all the drab and challenging realities of life are pushed happily aside by roasting chestnuts, peace & Continue Reading
Fall hard, love harder: Thoughts on Heartstopper season 3
(courtesy IMP Awards) Watching a new season of Heartstopper, just like reading the graphic novels upon which they are based, feels like coming home. That may sound like an extravagantly sentimental thing to say, but Alice Oseman’s wondrously inclusive creation feels, even at its darkest and most seriously contemplative (and Continue Reading
Movie preview: Out of My Mind (trailer + poster)
(courtesy First Showing (c) Disney) “Let them hear you.” Melody Brooks (starring Phoebe-Rae Taylor), a sixth grader with cerebral palsy, has a quick wit and a sharp mind, but because she is non-verbal and uses a wheelchair, she is not given the same opportunities as her classmates. When a young Continue Reading
Book review: The Life Impossible by Matt Haig
(courtesy Allen & Unwin Book Publishers) As you gaze upon the twisted vista of the current world, it’s all too easy to feel that there is nothing good or magical left anywhere for us to discover. Driven out by neoliberalism and the ceaseless quest for more, more, more, whether it’s Continue Reading
Graphic novel review: Alice Ever After by Dan Panosian (writer) and Giorgio Spalletta (artist)
(courtesy BOOM! Studios) SNAPSHOTAlice first visited Wonderland as a child. Now grown up, it’s become her only escape from a cold, harsh world that feels even less real—a distant family, a tormented lover, and a father with secrets he’ll do anything to protect. But in order to return to her Continue Reading
Christmas preview: Character poster art for Red One
(courtesy IMP Awards) SNAPSHOTAfter Santa Claus (starring J.K. Simmons as the Big Man) – Code Name: RED ONE – is kidnapped, the North Pole’s Head of Security (Dwayne Johnson) must team up with the world’s most infamous bounty hunter (Chris Evans) in a globe-trotting, action-packed mission to save Christmas. Red Continue Reading
Book review: Gabriel’s Moon by William Boyd
(courtesy Penguin Books Australia) Something superlatively wonderful happens when truly beautiful writing comes together with an arrestingly clever narrative. In an ideal world, this would happen in every single book you read, but it’s not always the case and so, when masterfully executed writing and a beguiling storyline rich in Continue Reading