Barbara Kingsolver is one of my favourite novelists. An American writer with a scientific background, she writes with a deftness of touch and absorbing storylines about serious issues like the questionable impact of missionaries, the impact of climate change on the natural world, and the attraction people feel for strong leaders even if those leaders […]
Last week the shortlisted writers for the National Biography Award gathered in the State Library of NSW. Congratulations to the winner, Behrouz Boochani for his book No Friend but the Mountains, written on Manus Island where he has been detained as a Kurdish refugee for six years. No Friend but the Mountains also took out
I heard about Amor Towles’ A Gentleman in Moscow from a visiting American whose book group had just read it. “You will love it!” she said. As I was about to set off on a solo drive up the coast, I thought I would experiment with listening to A Gentleman in Moscow as an audiobook.
At a First Friday Club meeting this year at Writing NSW in Rozelle, one of the aspiring writers in the audience asked Angela Mayer, the speaker and a publisher, to give advice about submitting manuscripts. Her response was: “It’s not so much a matter of beautiful writing. I look for narrative tension. The first pages
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One of the big questions of our time is how to overcome loneliness. When I’ve had to spend time away from my family, I always take my Kindle or a book or two. When I feel lonely, I read. It’s like a conversation with the author, even if it’s one-sided. It’s a form of human
Isolation and connection Read More »
I love to talk about books but sometimes people I don’t know will talk books to me. Yesterday I went to the doctor’s. She took my blood pressure and checked my pulse. Then she started. She told me she was reading a book every girl in Australia should read. And the boys too, she added.