![]() ![]() ![]() Killian is a dark, brooding and at the same time funny hero that you really cannot resist. I never tired of Libby’s one-liners, she is funny and tough. I was surprised on the slant it took and when we first met Libby, I can’t say anymore without spoiling things. Will the relationship survive? Idol is no different. Of course, the inevitable dilemma of a rock star romance is how is the heroine going to fit into the heady world of sex, drugs and rock and roll. And when we get to the actually get to the relationship part it’s smoking. Rock god versus sharp tongued country bumpkin Libby was a delight to read and my favourite part of the book. Callihan built the tension, the relationship and the banter up between Killian and Libby perfectly. ![]() ![]() The build up of the romance was quite frankly un-put-downable. I was hooked straight away and at a certain time at night had to give myself a talking to to put the book down otherwise there was a good chance I would have read it until it was finished, sleep be damned. The start of the book is cracking, drunk rock star passed out in a heap on the heroine’s lawn, what does the heroine do, hose him down. Idol by Kristen Callihan was recommended to me on Amazon a little while ago, clever little thing that Amazon algorithm and I couldn’t resist a one-click pre-order. For some reason it’s even more compelling if said woman has absolutely no idea who said rock star is. I cannot resist the allure of a sexy, famous rock star falling for an ordinary person. Rock star romances have become my thing lately. ![]()
0 Comments
![]() ![]() ![]() “It’s nice to actually be out,” he says as we decide on our meals: he orders confit of duck and a beer, and it’s chicken schnitzel with Italian coleslaw and a white wine for me. He’s well-accustomed to the medium, having sometimes done three a day during lockdown, promoting other books he released in 2020, and attending online board meetings with his local Aboriginal community. ![]() Pascoe is in the big smoke to talk about his new book, Loving Country, A Guide To Sacred Australia, which he co-authored with artist and photographer Vicky Shukuroglou after lunch he’s off to Readings for a book launch – over Zoom. “Melbourne seems to be enjoying itself already.” “It’s a bit busier than Mallacoota,” Pascoe remarks. But even at 3pm, the City Wine Shop and the CBD are bustling, post-lockdown. When I meet Bruce Pascoe before Christmas for lunch, it’s a late one, as he’s flown in from Mallacoota, where he lives on his 65-hectare farm. ![]() ![]() The third person point of view shifts from character to character and through time and place in a somewhat incoherent manner, perhaps mirroring the turmoil facing individuals and the country. Hozar’s cast of characters is vast although each one has an effect on Aria, and to some degree is affected by her. ![]() While the baby is saved from death in the freezing Tehran night, her childhood is full of abuse from her new mother Zahra. Abandoned as a newborn under a mulberry tree by her mother Mehri, who fears the baby’s father will kill her, Aria is found by a man who takes her home to his wife. Nazanine Hozar’s debut novel tackles the chaos of Iran from 1953 to 1981 by focussing on the life of its title character, Aria. ![]() On March 12, 2020, Hozar’s Aria was one of five books shortlisted for the 2020 Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize of the BC and Yukon Book Prizes - Ed. Toronto: Penguin Random House (Knopf Canada) ![]() ![]() ![]() While I will not include spoilers, it will not surprise readers to learn that Minutes after finishing the last page of The Last List of Miss Judith Kratt. But in the South, we embrace our oddballs and listen to their tales.” Weighed in on Southern storytellers: “Every region has their oddballs, for Of course, other areas of the country and other cultures do too. Maybe.” She hedges a bit there, but we know Southerners do love telling You get it all.” She continues by saying storytelling is “unique to the South And when you live in a small town where you know everybody In Jackson, is good for any writer because we are a nation of talkers, listeners,Īnd storytellers. That ‘relished’ storytelling.” She further explained that “growing up in Mississippi, To go completely off track onto another path only to wander back to the With tidbits thrown in to explain or further enhance the main story. ![]() Rarely straightforward, each story ambles on its way These authors tell stories that remind me of family stories and of the McCullers, Margaret Mitchell, Alice Walker, and Kate Chopin come quickly to William Faulkner, Zora Neale Hurston, Flannery O’Connor, Walker Percy, Carson ![]() The story is set inīound, South Carolina, in the present-day with narrator Judith Kratt, 75, harkeningīack to her youth in memory to give readers the complete story. Last List of Miss Judith Kratt by Andrea Bobotis. Me to a book I have found fascinating and can recommend wholeheartedly: The ![]() ![]() ![]() Out-of-story, Brent Spiner felt that he was getting too old to play the ageless android character of Data and wanted to stop. ![]() ![]() In-story, there were reasonable ways for Data to get out alive, as David Mack points out in The Persistence of Memory. I was very disappointed when Data died in Star Trek: Nemesis, sacrificing his life to save the Enterprise, especially since it was done for silly reasons in a mediocre movie. All of these books focus on one of my favorite Star Trek characters, Data. I recently picked up the Cold Equations Trilogy by David Mack because they were billed as a sequel to a previous novel I really enjoyed, Immortal Coil. However, there have been a few that interested me over the years. Just like Star Wars, I never got really deep into the hundreds of books written for the various Star Trek series. ![]() ![]() ![]() On a flight from California to France, Rosalyn Acosta, a widow and wine rep, meets an Australian, Emma Kinsley. Lucie’s story is one of a region’s resilience as the women still work to bring in the grapes, to make a Victory Vintage in the hopes that each year will mean the end of the war. There they shelter, have school, tend the sick and injured, drink champagne. By day, women, and children, the elderly and infirm hide in the caves under the Champagne region of France. In 1916, a young woman named Lucie Marechal tells of the shelling of Reims by the Germans. ![]() ![]() She and Emile Paul Legrand correspond as he tells his marraine de guerre, his “war godmother”, the story of the ugly, brutal life in the trenches during World War I. In 1914, a wealthy Australian widow, Doris Whittaker, writes her first letter to a young solder from Reims, France. Blackwell has dug into her own heart to reveal a painful story of loss and resilience. However, The Vineyards of Champagne, a story of grief and love, history and vineyards, is a book with a remarkable, moving voice. I’ve read most of Juliet Blackwell’s mysteries, and all of her novels. ![]() ![]() ![]() She has spent her life repressing it, preparing herself for having it cut off by a group called The Binders when she turns sixteen, in order to protect herself from all of its dangers. Threadneedle is about a teenage witch named Anna, who has been raised by her aunt to detest and fear her own magic. ![]() That day was a while ago, but I was (for once) organised enough to write my thoughts as soon as I finished. I don’t think I’ve ever been so blessed by the book gods in my entire life and obviously, in the midst of my excitement, I had to read this entire book in a day. I saw it on Twitter, realised that I would die for a copy, and received an email the following day inviting me to review on Netgalley and giving me an automatic-approval link to it (so thank you so much to HarperVoyager for the e-ARC). I’ve decided that my reading of this book was fated. ![]() ![]() ![]() “Clegg's (The Halloween Man, etc.) collection of 13 tales takes risks and is full of passions that sometimes burst forth violently…Clegg's use of innovative metaphors catapults each story beyond a landscape crowded with the horror genre's usual monsters and madmen into a territory he alone can claim.” – Publisher’s Weekly “Clegg brings his stories together with a chilling fictive conceit.The effect is dangerously seductive.” - Locus From New York Times bestselling author Douglas Clegg comes the Bram Stoker Award-winning collection The Nightmare Chronicles - 13 spine-tingling tales of dark mystery, supernatural thrills and twisted horror which "can chill the spine so effectively that the reader should keep paramedics on standby, " says bestselling author Dean Koontz. ![]() ![]() ![]() Save up to 80 versus print by going digital with VitalSource. ![]() in Canadian Literature from McGill University. Memoirs of Montparnasse is written by John Glassco and published by NYRB (RHP). This subterfuge contributes to establishing Glassco's distinctive position in Canadian literary history, that of a twentieth-century successor to the literary dandies, aesthetes, and decadents of nineteenth-century England and France. Literary subterfuge pervades not only the premise on which Memoirs of Montparnasse is founded, but also the dialogue, the plot structure, the characterizations, and the events that are supposed to have happened. Like Frederick Philip Grove and Grey Owl, Glassco too has transformed himself into a person of his own creation. With the narrative energy of a psychological detective story, it compares the published book to its holograph manuscript. ![]() His Memoirs of Montparnasse (1970), much-praised for its truthful evocation of an. Memoirs of Montparnasse by John Glassco, 1973, Oxford University Press edition, in English. John Glassco's Richer World shows that Memoirs of Montparnasse is not the honest reminiscence Glassco presents it to be. After dropping out of McGill, frustrated poet John Buffy Glassco. ![]() ![]() The book is a raw and beautiful story that navigates the fraught territory of the experiences of the dying partner and that of the one who is left to grieve. Now I sit at a computer trying to carve shape and substance into the cold marble of memory On Valentine’s Day, February 14 th, 1988, Barbara Rosenblum died. Rosenblum was diagnosed with advanced breast cancer at the age of 42, following several egregious misdiagnoses. It is a hybrid collection of journal entries, letters and essays written jointly by Butler and Rosenblum, a lesbian couple experiencing the end stages of life and the impact of loss. We’ve listed three of our favourites below.Ĭancer in Two Voices (Sandra Butler and Barbara Rosenblum)Ĭancer in Two Voices, was published in 1988. Books written by queer authors are rarer. ![]() There are thousands of books written about the cancer journey. While many things are similar, the emotional and physical impact a cancer diagnosis brings distinctive challenges for LGBTQ2S+ people. ![]() May is “Get Caught Reading” month! What are you reading at the moment? ![]() |