Up the Country – Miles Franklin

The winner of the Miles Franklin Literary Award for 2021 was announced just a few days ago with the prize going to Amanda Lohrey for her novel The Labyrinth. I haven’t actually read any of the books on the shortlist, which is quite normal for me, as I generally tend to catch up with recommended …

Australian Women’s History – Notorious Australian Women

A few months ago I started a short series on Australian Women’s History. After completing the first three parts, Come In Spinner, Follow the Rabbit-Proof Fence, and the Memoirs of Tilly Aston, life kind of hit, and part four has been languishing on my to-do list ever since. My original idea was to explore women …

Conspiracy Theory

They say, if it doesn’t rain, it pours. In Toowoomba of late it has been pouring. We have been blessed with some wonderful rain - our tanks are full, the gutters were overflowing, and the weeds are growing well. But in my neck of the woods, it has been pouring in more than one way. …

#BookSnapSunday – Lady Audley’s Secret

Love, which is a madness, and a scourge, and a fever, and a delusion, and a snare, is also a mystery, and very imperfectly understood by every one except the individual sufferer who writhes under its tortures. Lady Audley’s Secret by Mary Elizabeth Braddon is the perfect book for Valentine’s Day - love, deception, conspiracy, …

Women and Girls in Science

Today is the International Day of Women and Girls in Science. Over the last couple of decades there has been a dedicated push to encourage more women and girls to study science, and yet science still remains a male dominated field. Less than 30% of researchers are women and only 30% of girls choose to …

#BookBingo – Travelling Back in Time

This year I am joining in once again with Book Bingo hosted by Theresa, Amanda and Ashleigh and this round I am checking off Travelling Back in Time with The Dictionary of Lost Words by Pip Williams. It was a bit of a struggle to think of a time I would like to travel back …

#BookSnapSunday – The Dictionary of Lost Words

"Words - so innocent and powerless as they are, as standing in a dictionary,  how potent … they become in the hands of one who knows how to combine them!"  Nathaniel Hawthorne The Dictionary of Lost Words by Pip Williams In 1901, the word bondmaid was discovered missing from the Oxford English Dictionary. This is …

#BookSnapSunday & Gaia 2020 – The Birdman’s Wife

Melissa Ashley’s book The Birdman’s Wife has been on my mind for quite a while as a candidate for both Book Snap Sunday and the Gaia Reading challenge. The novel is a fictionalised account of the life of Elizabeth Gould, the wife of taxidermist and naturalist John Gould. While John garnered most of the attention …

#BookSnapSunday – A Thousand Splendid Suns

I am currently rereading A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini, which is set in Afghanistan and centres on the lives and relationship between two women, Mariam and Laila. Afghanistan is a country I knew little about, apart from war and the Taliban, until I read Hosseini. I have enjoyed several of his books because he gives …

#BookBingo2020 – A Classic I’ve Never Read

This year I am joining in once again with the Book Bingo Reading Challenge hosted by Theresa, Mrs B and Ashleigh (The Book Muse). It’s been simplified this year with just 12 squares, one for each month of the year, and a range of themes which could be easily applied to both fiction and non-fiction. …