Category Archives: Uncategorized

Book group starts in ten days time – but the CAE was slow sending out the boxes –  and I only picked this up on Thursday. I finished yesterday! This is an amazing feat, since all of last year I … Continue reading →

I like reading poetry, but don’t do it enough. It’s very concentrated reading. Sometimes, hard work. Over the years, I’ve found that anthologies work best for me and I’ve picked up many of them from various Opportunity Shops. Some were … Continue reading →

Despite my anti-colonial and republican tendencies, I’m feeling quite English at present. It’s not just my obsession with the weather (it’s going to be 38 degrees here today, but a late cool change should see a drop of around 10 … Continue reading →

These past days have been so hot that I’ve been spending most of my time – when not actually at work –  sitting close to the air conditioner and reading. In an attempt to cheer myself up and change the … Continue reading →

Where do writers learn their best moves? They learn them from a technique I call X-ray reading. They read for information or vicarious experience or pleasure, as we all do. But in their reading, they see something more. It’s as … Continue reading →

Hot weather goes on. Attention span slides. Summer reading continues. A delightfully slack day in front of the air conditioner, and I’m nearly finished Liane Moriarty’s latest, Nine Perfect Strangers. Once again I marvel at the clever way she creates … Continue reading →

I’m obviously very much behind in my reading, because I until Friday I hadn’t read the first of Robert Galbraith’s (AKA J K Rowling) crime novels while right now the fourth, Lethal White, is selling like hot cakes. Or, more … Continue reading →

In the past, at the end of the year, it’s been fun to count how many books I read, and in what genres, and to note the balance of male to female and Australian to overseas writers, and which books … Continue reading →

Last year, I sent Christmas wishes with a cocky in a plum tree. I didn’t get around to anything original this year, and instead from a cache of rather musty-smelling art postcards from the 1960s, found sufficient madonnas and child … Continue reading →

I’m not sure when or where or even why I scribbled this down. In the King James Version of the bible, Hebrews 13:2 reads: Be not forgetful to entertain strangers: for thereby some have entertained angels unawares. On the other … Continue reading →