(courtesy IMP Awards) They were heady days back in the late ’90s. Back before there were omnipresent online ads enticing you impulsively and immediately purchase you didn’t know you wanted, or Twitter became a bonfire of shouted opinions or inboxes became a stressful hallmark of cubicle serfdom, receiving an email Continue Reading
Valentine’s Day
Valentine’s Day book review: Better Than the Real Thing by Brooke Crawford
This book was read at Kalimna, Yeranda cottages, near Dungog in early January 2026 “Life,” declares the front cover tagline of Brooke Crawford’s debut novel, Better Than the Real Thing, “is messy.” The central character of this rawly emotionally honest romcom, which serves up a potential fairytale ending but not Continue Reading
Songs, songs and more Valentine’s Day songs #133: MIKA, Go-Jo, Harry Styles, St. Lucia + Maisie Peters
(via Shutterstock) Ain’t love grand? It is, it absolutely is, but it’s also confusing and complex and hard and wondrous and alive and dying and full of hope and crushed by loss. It’s so many things, and while it’s ultimately a good and powerful thing, it needs songs that speak Continue Reading
Valentine’s Day book review: Swept Away by Beth O’Leary
(courtesy Hachette Australia) As premises go, the one what washes through Swept Away by Beth O’Leary is a doozy. We are meant to believe, and honestly you will trust us, that two people can retire to a houseboat for a one-night stand and find themselves, the next day, floating to Continue Reading
Valentine’s Day rom-com review redux: While You Were Sleeping
(courtesy IMP Awards) This review was first published on 25 November 2025 Given they’re about love, longing and the good feelings that make life worth living, it’s easy to assume that romantic comedies aka rom-coms are full to the brim with real, actual emotionality, the kind that sears the soul, Continue Reading
Valentine’s Day book review: The Rom-Commers by Katherine Center
(courtesy Hachette Australia) Not all romantic comedies (rom-coms) are created equal. Yes, they all share certain near-inviolable tropes and tick a certain set of boxes that guarantee love will win the day no matter what comes against it, but it’s the deployment of these expected elements that influences whether the Continue Reading
Book review: The Greatest Love Story Ever Told by Megan Mullally and Nick Offerman #ValentinesDay
It needs to be said right from the start that I have fallen hopelessly and irrevocably in love with Nick Offerman (Parks and Recreation) and Megan Mullally (Will & Grace) over the course of reading their delightfully-candid and hilariously funny book The Greatest Love Story Ever Told. So you can Continue Reading
The short and the short of it: An Ode to Love – one man, an island and some sticks
An Ode To Love, written and directed by Matthew Darragh and produced by Suzie Belton & Danielle Considine with music by Stefan French, and made with the generous support of Filmbase and RTE, tells the story of a man on a desert island who falls in love with a stick. Continue Reading
Valentine’s Day with Friends: Ross, Rachel and love worth waiting for
Ah, love sweet sitcom-engineered love. Ross and Rachel were the emotional will-they-won’t they centrepiece of the Friends sitcom, which ran from 1994 to 2004. While you could argue that theirs was a wholly unhealthy dynamic, those of us with a more romantic view of the world, including hosts Debra Minoff Continue Reading
Love, true fictional love: My favourite couples from the pages of literature
* This post originally appeared on writingbar.com* Love, it has been said, is a “many-splendoured thing”, and while that sentiment was uttered in the context of the 1955 film and song of the same name, it holds true for literature too. With the exception of dystopian storytelling, where romance Continue Reading