Books and Reading
-
My 2019 Sydney Writers’ Festival: A Wrap Up!
2019 was my first Sydney Writers’ Festival! Well, actually… it was my first writers’ festival, period. Which of course made it even more of a super interesting and exciting time that it would already have been. If you read my post recently about writing organisations, you’ll know that I’m on the hunt for connection with other writers, in any form… And while I don’t really feel that I achieved that at the 2019 SWF, I did learn a lot. And I still have hopes of one day finding the ‘right fit’ semi-local writers’ group! Of course, I had huge plans for going to everything under the sun. But with 5…
-
Writers… Should You be Reading More?
There’s really no doubt reading is an important part of being a writer. Take five minutes to google ‘writer’ and ‘reading’ in almost any combination, and you’ll be inundated with support for that statement. (And our guest writer, Jennifer Worrell, reminded us of it yesterday, too!) So, on the basis of that assessment, the answer is (probably) yes. Of course, our reading metrics vary (My 2018 in Non-fiction is testament to this!), but it seems safe to say: we can always aim for more. But reading more can be a big ask: between working, families, friends, hobbies–and, of course, writing–there aren’t a lot of free hours in the day. Add…
-
My 2018 in Fiction
What amazing #fiction did I #read in 2018? Click to find out, and maybe get some new options for your 2019 'to read' list!
-
My 2018 in Non-Fiction
I really enjoyed the opportunity to share my 2017 in Non-Fiction, enough that I decided it worth repeating for 2018! So, my 2018 in reading… where to begin?! I had some pipe dream about getting this non-fiction post up right before New Years, or, at the latest, on the first Friday of 2019… But we got kittens. So, here we are! One of my big goals for 2018 was to read more nonfiction, and though 11 out of 65 total books isn’t really that many, it’s still an improvement over 6 out of 88 in 2017. So there’s that. Plus, I’m part way through two non-fiction books at the moment,…
-
My 2017 in Non-Fiction
Since I managed to spit out a ‘My Year in Fiction’ post last week, i thought it might be a good idea to create ‘My Year in Non-Fiction’ and, voila, here it is! To my shame, I didn’t read quite as many nonfiction books as I did fiction last year (I’m endeavouring to read more nonfiction this year, especially since I have a biography to write!), so I don’t have twelve to share. Instead, I thought I’d share just three of the six or so that I read—in part because I’m in Hawaii and I’m lazy and not overly keen to write a billion-word blog post, but also because there…
-
My 2017 In Fiction
Hellloooo everyone! As we’re now firmly ensconced in 2018, by about 5 days—holy jeewillikers, how is that possible??—I thought it would be a really great opportunity for me to review some of the amazing books I’ve read in the past twelve months. Especially because James and I are currently winging our way to Hawaii (Hawaii everyone!), and I need to post more regularly this year (damn uni). I decided, when I conceived the idea for this post, that I would pick 12 total books to discuss (y’know, because there are 12 months in the year and that kind of symmetry just works for me)… And then I subsequently cursed myself…
-
Of Human Bondage
Welcome to the middle of the week! First off, my apologies to anyone who read the title of this post and got excited about the topic: in all likelihood, you’re probably about to be subsequently disappointed. I really racked my brains over what to write for today’s post. For a while there, I strongly considered just letting it go and not doing a post: tempting. Verrrrry tempting. But then I thought about having recently (finally) finished Somerset Maugham’s ‘Of Human Bondage’, and wanted to report back on the experience. Mainly because, despite the fact that it was pretty long and sometimes a bit slow, there were a lot of…
