tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-90050373790643297612024-03-14T01:06:34.219+11:00ALPHA readermy solo book clubDaniellehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08440460463119645788noreply@blogger.comBlogger1473125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9005037379064329761.post-82834441416698862892024-03-04T19:48:00.005+11:002024-03-04T19:48:43.282+11:00'Unruly: A History of England's Kings and Queens' audiobook read by author, David Mitchell<p style="text-align: center;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg2hR9qVHlyQWmv233pWbgOlo08e-e8T6yLMDQUDjGC1NQ6LyosxrUPrGDqe6CsXuOyxNz-QpCxY4OzSadDytFHR-ZGgdZ3n2VdCcmpcb6skzIrhOqJoOEAHD0OWYAAFMTAM-WZdMDfXBXaIksH8G1oV2gHnCbliaw0IFwyZbpfAQiqmmCYBoKpzWXFiwHQ/s500/418RC3Um+PL._SL500_.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="500" data-original-width="500" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg2hR9qVHlyQWmv233pWbgOlo08e-e8T6yLMDQUDjGC1NQ6LyosxrUPrGDqe6CsXuOyxNz-QpCxY4OzSadDytFHR-ZGgdZ3n2VdCcmpcb6skzIrhOqJoOEAHD0OWYAAFMTAM-WZdMDfXBXaIksH8G1oV2gHnCbliaw0IFwyZbpfAQiqmmCYBoKpzWXFiwHQ/w400-h400/418RC3Um+PL._SL500_.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br /> <p></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><b>From the BLURB: </b></span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 33px;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><i>A seriously FUNNY, seriously CLEVER history of our early kings and queens by one of our favourite comedians and cultural commentators.</i></span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 33px;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><i>This will be the most refreshing, entertaining history of England you'll have ever read.</i></span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 33px;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><i>Certainly, the funniest.</i></span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 33px;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><i>Because David Mitchell will explain how it is not all names, dates or ungraspable historical headwinds, but instead show how it's really just a bunch of random stuff that happened with a few lucky bastards ending up on top. Some of these bastards were quite strange, but they were in charge, so we quite literally lived, and often still live, by their rules.</i></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><i><span class="c-book-details__keynote" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box;"></span><span style="background-color: white;"></span><span style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box;"></span></i></span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 33px;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><i>It's a great story. And it's our story. If you want to know who we are in modern Britain, you need to read this book.</i></span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 33px; text-align: center;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #4d5156; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; text-align: left;"> ♛</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #4d5156; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; text-align: left;"> </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #4d5156; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; text-align: left;">♛</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #4d5156; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; text-align: left;"> </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #4d5156; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; text-align: left;">♛</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #1e1915;">This just *delighted* me and had me running to find any other audiobooks of David Mitchell's on my Library's BorrowBox app (and yes, I am forever disappointed when somebody says "David Mitchell" and means the bloke who wrote </span><i style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #1e1915;">Cloud Atlas</i><span style="background-color: white; color: #1e1915;">. I want 'Peep Show' David Mitchell, 'Upstart Crow' David Mitchell - and this book proves why!)</span><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #1e1915; margin: 0px;" /><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #1e1915; margin: 0px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #1e1915;">I listened to this while I walked the dog, and I must have looked like a King George III-level maniac laughing and guffawing as I picked up his poo (with a bag) and walked blithely along, nodding and laugh/crying ... but it was truly just *that* good!</span><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #1e1915; margin: 0px;" /><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #1e1915; margin: 0px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #1e1915;">David Mitchell's injections and rants are next-level (at one point he manages to tie in the absurdity of awards for art; like the year that the theme song for 'Shaft' was up against 'The Age of Not Believing' from 'Bedknobs and Broomsticks' for best song at the Oscars, to which he says you may as well compare a fish-finger to a ladder for all the good it does to categorise and quantify two pieces of art like that ... and he's not wrong!)</span><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #1e1915; margin: 0px;" /><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #1e1915; margin: 0px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #1e1915;">Mitchell only takes the book up to King James-ish because he says that was the last time that monarchy had true, absolute power before Parliament, Prime Ministers, foreign Governments and such started interfering with what the royals had bamboozled England into thinking was "divine rule," ... I do hope he decides to write a second-book about the waning royals (is it too much to ask that he give a full-throated debate on why a Republic would be better? Throughout the listening of this I could feel his tension to rein in what could have been an 11-hour long rant on the subject!)</span><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #1e1915; margin: 0px;" /><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #1e1915; margin: 0px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #1e1915;">As such, this was perhaps the most enjoyable new read I've encountered this year so far. Amazing!</span></span></p><p><span style="background-color: white; color: #1e1915;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">5/5</span></span></p>Daniellehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08440460463119645788noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9005037379064329761.post-85995757099046548782024-01-21T10:46:00.002+11:002024-01-21T10:46:20.749+11:00'Witch of Wild Things' by Raquel Vasquez Gilliland<p style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"> </span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEir71k-zKUvARBsnSy5bR92z2tbskSelYdKZbWN7p45TCcclQ6-hYOwv8tizIWOoAFCYbLAS4AWdCRa6NPuP3QuCtOsfmjUj7XrdC9-vqBCg_jaaf4xJuJ9Bx_eycOBhaenimNFd97H-i1KuSXLqW701vtxblWSnnnY05O6Wdw9tWgYhytItOU0wzkdw2fV/s450/9780593548578.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><img border="0" data-original-height="450" data-original-width="292" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEir71k-zKUvARBsnSy5bR92z2tbskSelYdKZbWN7p45TCcclQ6-hYOwv8tizIWOoAFCYbLAS4AWdCRa6NPuP3QuCtOsfmjUj7XrdC9-vqBCg_jaaf4xJuJ9Bx_eycOBhaenimNFd97H-i1KuSXLqW701vtxblWSnnnY05O6Wdw9tWgYhytItOU0wzkdw2fV/w260-h400/9780593548578.jpeg" width="260" /></span></a></div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span><p></p><p><b><span style="font-family: georgia;">From the BLURB: </span></b></p><p style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-family: georgia;">Legend goes that long ago a Flores woman offended the old gods, and their family was cursed as a result. Now, every woman born to the family has a touch of magic. </span></b></p><p><i><span style="font-family: georgia;">Sage Flores has been running from her family—and their “gifts”—ever since her younger sister Sky died. Eight years later, Sage reluctantly returns to her hometown. Like slipping into an old, comforting sweater, Sage takes back her job at Cranberry Rose Company and uses her ability to communicate with plants to discover unusual heritage specimens in the surrounding lands. </span></i></p><p><i><span style="font-family: georgia;">What should be a simple task is complicated by her partner in botany sleuthing: Tennessee Reyes. He broke her heart in high school, and she never fully recovered. Working together is reminding her of all their past tender, genuine moments—and new feelings for this mature sexy man are starting to take root in her heart. </span></i></p><p><i><span style="font-family: georgia;">With rare plants to find, a dead sister who keeps bringing her coffee, and another sister whose anger fills the sky with lightning, Sage doesn’t have time for romance. But being with Tenn is like standing in the middle of a field on the cusp of a summer thunderstorm—supercharged and inevitable.</span></i></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">I am a seasonal reader, and that’s a very hard thing to be in Melbourne at the moment where we’re swinging between heatwaves and downpours. So I find it interesting that in a bit of a reading slump, I randomly decided to reach for a witchy book that includes a character whose mood can change the weather … </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">This is my first read by Gilliland - and it’s her third book, but first adult romance. Her second YA book - ‘How Moon Fuentez Fell in Love with the Universe’ - won and was shortlisted for a slew of awards, and was already on my radar. But TikTok actually put me onto ‘Witch of Wild Things’ - about a Mexican woman who returns to her hometown where her dead sister haunts her, another curses her, and the boy who made her swoon over AOL until he broke her heart has grown into a hot man with forearm tattoos.</span></p><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0 0 0 40px; padding: 0px;"><p style="text-align: left;"></p><blockquote><i><span style="font-family: georgia;">The fact that we come from dirt, and eventually turn to dirt, is spooky and incredible to think about it at the same time. My sister is dirt by now, surely. All of our ancestors are, too. This must make dirt holy, holy enough for the old gods to walk upon it from time to time. Holy enough that Nadia gives it a little cup of espresso to drink every single morning.</span></i></blockquote><p></p></blockquote><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"> I’m so glad I started with this book because it *hit the spot* - was lovely and spicy, but also made me weepy and tender-hearted. Our protagonist Sage has a particular story-arc about being the oldest sibling to her two sisters, and defaulting to a parental responsibility role that’s so rarely explored in fiction like this … imagine Luisa Madrigal’s ‘Surface Pressure’ song from ENCANTO, made into a novel. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">It’s also very ‘Practical Magic’ by Alice Hoffman (BUT - it’s actually more of the 1998 Sandra Bullock/Nicole Kidman classic movie ‘Practical Magic,’ with its cottagecore-comfy and whimsy, whereas the book is … not? It’s darker. So if you prefer movie ‘Practical Magic’ then *this* is the book for you … not the actual Hoffman book, FYI and lol) </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">You can *kinda* tell that this book struggled to find a strong plot, however. And </span><span style="font-family: georgia;">Gilliland hints at this in her acknowledgements, where she talks about a severe bout of writer's block from which this story was borne, from the scraps of an abandoned and unworkable idea. It does have a little bit of that feeling, like; she was immersed in this town and this family, the universe, and an actual strong through-line of story had to be somewhat shoehorned in. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">So while I loved this - I maybe would have liked a few threads to be more deeply explored and wrapped up, and *maybe* it got slightly too easy by the end … but those are minor quibbles in an otherwise very sparkly and lovely book.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">4/5</span></p>Daniellehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08440460463119645788noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9005037379064329761.post-69259070481231924392024-01-16T11:07:00.001+11:002024-01-16T11:07:24.150+11:00'Everyone and Everything' by Nadine J. Cohen<p style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"> </span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhau-rs8oVF2uw6iqLa8unbBImtcqhyphenhyphenzzeIvB0NlfTptbiamUZWunYXgwWdTK1V7Buvkh_imITohIT5NLldG2yn_GParksv-RLJ_8qOJFG57ZekszuN0kAZOHu3lRqZdNT9RbXQtVudZexfOq1YYF3qM6w_HYaj4wwv3q1zNzXfAzDSDjOp32yCU52TZ9NF/s5086/Everything-and-Everything-high-res.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><img border="0" data-original-height="5086" data-original-width="3318" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhau-rs8oVF2uw6iqLa8unbBImtcqhyphenhyphenzzeIvB0NlfTptbiamUZWunYXgwWdTK1V7Buvkh_imITohIT5NLldG2yn_GParksv-RLJ_8qOJFG57ZekszuN0kAZOHu3lRqZdNT9RbXQtVudZexfOq1YYF3qM6w_HYaj4wwv3q1zNzXfAzDSDjOp32yCU52TZ9NF/w261-h400/Everything-and-Everything-high-res.jpg" width="261" /></span></a></div><p></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></p><p><b><span style="font-family: georgia;">From the BLURB: </span></b></p><p><i><span style="font-family: georgia;">When Yael Silver’s world comes crashing down, she looks to the past for answers and finds solace in surprising places. An unconventional new friendship, a seaside safe space and an unsettling amount of dairy help her to heal, as she wrestles with her demons – and some truly terrible erotic literature. </span></i></p><p><i><span style="font-family: georgia;">Funny and tender, Everyone and Everything is about friendship, grief and the deep, frustrating bond between sisters. It asks what makes us who we are and what leads us onto ledges. Perfect for fans of Meg Mason, Nora Ephron and Victoria Hannan, this is an intimate, wry and wise exploration of one woman’s journey to the brink and back.</span></i></p><p style="text-align: center;"><i><span style="font-family: georgia;">---</span></i></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">'Everyone and Everything' is the 2023 debut by Australian author, Nadine J. Cohen - from <a href="https://www.panterapress.com.au/product/everyone-and-everything/" target="_blank">Pantera Press</a>.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">I've just come off an absolute roll with a certain type of new (millennial?) women's fiction. I've been calling it 'Fleabag'-esque. I don't like the term "well-dressed and distressed," for how some of the covers are often stylised - but I'd take "Women's Fiction with Bite." So I was in a bookshop the other day with a legit legend bookseller (Jaci from Hill of Content) who knows I have devoured '<a href="https://alphareader.blogspot.com/2023/07/crushing-by-genevieve-novak.html" target="_blank">Crushing</a>' by Genevieve Novak, 'A Light in the Dark' by Allee Richards,' and 'Search History' by Amy Taylor ... when we were browsing the shelves and she just gently placed Nadine J. Cohen's debut into my hands and said; "Trust me," and reader - she was right. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">This is the story of Yael Silver who joined the 'orphan's club,' far too young, and when the book begins has just made an unsuccessful attempt to end her life because of her latent grief over the deaths of both her parents and Nanna, an f-boy who emotionally wrecked and ghosted her and a general feeling like she's become a burden to her older sister, Liora. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Yael is on a long and slow pathway to recovery that largely begins in earnest when she starts regularly visiting the McIver's Ladies Baths in Coogee - perched on a cliff-face and offering her a scenic place to cry and read bad erotic fiction in peace. Until she meets older woman Shirley and they form an odd and healing friendship. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">At one point Liora asks Yael; 'Is that what it's like in your head all the time?' after she shares another random and disturbing thought, to which Yael replies; 'Yup.' And this is essentially the book, too. Chapters are broken down by months spanning a whole year, but they're made up of almost vignette fragments; wisps of memory and tangents (sometimes deeply emotional, recounting her childhood or the lead-up and come-down of her Nanna, mother and father's deaths - other times pop-culture heavy; <i>"Pacey Witter cures all ills."</i>) It's all cogent, I must stress, and brilliantly done for reading like a patchwork of a healing mind, and the memory-squares amounting to so much insight as to who Yael is as a person. She's deeply funny and relatable (from Cher Horowitz praise to 'Gilmore Girls' marathons, she reads like a friend) but also very broken and fragile, and I found myself both smiling and crying in equal measure. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Jewish identity is also tenderly touched on in this book in a way that I really don't feel like I've read much in contemporary Australian fiction. Like how Yael looks back on her Nanna, mother and father's mental states at various times in their lives - how she retrospectively wonders what her grandparents being Holocaust survivors must have done to those lines of generational trauma;</span></p><p><i><span style="font-family: georgia;"></span></i></p><blockquote><i><span style="font-family: georgia;">I think about her often fraught relationship with mum, who, like all children of survivors, grew up with irrevocably damaged parents, and six million ghosts. </span></i></blockquote><p></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">... and musing on how comfortable Jewish people are with death, compared to gentiles. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">I absolutely adored this book. It wasn't easy, but it was beautifully wrought and Yael was a fine companion.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">5/5</span></p>Daniellehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08440460463119645788noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9005037379064329761.post-29492625816042540762024-01-08T09:30:00.006+11:002024-01-08T09:30:48.901+11:00'Gwen and Art Are Not in Love' by Lex Croucher<p style="text-align: center;"> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEie_tnsNNCIBqKxrquzGBhGQj1cReSYkqyVMpBtSUQRvbpI7Kjr7pMs_FFJ6HixaBSf07rhyD3vYgkhv0vMXrtagE0UOsWij1h9o1RXW887YLKAwfZDEB95k6QV0Qm4DX7w9SebkaaLIafhaStgnPLikS9JdafPzkrk-7sH8-3y2QQMB3aDcxuTjmKYVON3/s873/9781526651778.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="873" data-original-width="568" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEie_tnsNNCIBqKxrquzGBhGQj1cReSYkqyVMpBtSUQRvbpI7Kjr7pMs_FFJ6HixaBSf07rhyD3vYgkhv0vMXrtagE0UOsWij1h9o1RXW887YLKAwfZDEB95k6QV0Qm4DX7w9SebkaaLIafhaStgnPLikS9JdafPzkrk-7sH8-3y2QQMB3aDcxuTjmKYVON3/w260-h400/9781526651778.jpg" width="260" /></a></div><p></p><p><br /></p><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><b>From the BLURB: </b></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /><i>Gwen, the quick-witted Princess of England, and Arthur, future lord and general gadabout, have been betrothed since birth. Unfortunately, the only thing they can agree on is that they hate each other. </i></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><i><br />When Gwen catches Art kissing a boy and Art discovers where Gwen hides her diary (complete with racy entries about Bridget Leclair, the kingdom's only female knight), they become reluctant allies. By pretending to fall for each other, their mutual protection will be assured. </i></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><i><br />But how long can they keep up the ruse? With Gwen growing closer to Bridget, and Art becoming unaccountably fond of Gabriel, Gwen's infuriatingly serious, bookish brother, the path to true love is looking far from straight …</i><br /><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">'Gwen and Art Are Not in Love' by Lex Croucher is; "an outrageously entertaining take on the fake dating trope."</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">I know, I know - I am forever forgetting about my first bookish social platform love, my blog. I can't promise I'll be any better about updating on here in 2024, but I don't want to let the cobwebs entirely take over so I wanted to at least shout out a *little* something.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">This 2023 YA historical queer title is my first Lex Croucher read, but it won't be my last by the British author because I absolutely fell head-over-heels in love with this book! </span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">It exists in a post-King Arthur world, where the legend of Camelot and the Round Table still live on as myth and legend and the latest crop of teenage young royals are dealt the unfortunate blow of being politically and patriotically moulded into the second-coming of that once-great reign. Down to the political marriage alliance between princess Gwen and wealthy Lord, Arthur - who have been betrothed since childhood, and hated each other since then too. </span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Their feelings towards each other are particularly clouded because both are queer and develop feelings for others throughout the timeline of a tournament that Gwen's father has thrown to highlight the prosperity of new Camelot. </span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">For Arthur, it's Gwen's brother and the next King of England - Gabriel - who perhaps feels the weight of Arthur Pendragon more than anyone. For Gwen, it's the only female knight competing, Bridget LeClair. </span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">I cannot stress enough how much I loved this book; not least for the wide themes it addresses about weight of expectation, what history highlights and hides, and how much of courage takes fear. </span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><i><blockquote>'To be truly brave, first you must be afraid—and to be afraid, you must have something you cannot bear to lose.' </blockquote><blockquote> </blockquote></i></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">There's also plenty in here about how cruel families can be, and how your chosen family can come to mean more and see you so much clearer than you see yourself; </span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><i><blockquote>‘You know … fathers aren’t always right, just by virtue of being fathers. Or even … just by virtue of being king.’</blockquote></i></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">This was also a deeply, deeply funny book. One of my favourite character's was Arthur's steward, Sidney and the brotherly/jovial relationship they had with one another. </span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">But hands-down, the romances are stand-out. I was swept up in Bridget and Gwen, Arthur and Gabriel and every heart-palpitating glance, kiss, up-against-a-wall make-out session ... all of it! I actually loved them all so much, I'd have been fully onboard had Croucher announced this as an ongoing series following the foursome as they stand to rule over a very new England. </span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Alas, she's moving on to another queering of a beloved myth next; <i><a href="https://www.bloomsbury.com/au/not-for-the-faint-of-heart-9781526651846/" target="_blank">Not for the Faint of Heart</a></i>, a Robin Hood re-do! *squeeeeee*!</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhgLqpFM_ZO4NNhwicIfpmW9Bv4dwJuQC_lam9bpqmYTDH8b538mlS0kAfkw-VqjS4SCqFDkfdWdvpHUq1va0CD3pTKVXh05GOp_bLaJSv9sYyA7dgpwBUVxlh0v-fJzOJUIsb2ZOx6Iofi66dkbUss6O9SYrCCbD0cmTiO4GHM98y8APHQGt3-0m9v_64L/s866/9781526651846.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="866" data-original-width="568" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhgLqpFM_ZO4NNhwicIfpmW9Bv4dwJuQC_lam9bpqmYTDH8b538mlS0kAfkw-VqjS4SCqFDkfdWdvpHUq1va0CD3pTKVXh05GOp_bLaJSv9sYyA7dgpwBUVxlh0v-fJzOJUIsb2ZOx6Iofi66dkbUss6O9SYrCCbD0cmTiO4GHM98y8APHQGt3-0m9v_64L/w263-h400/9781526651846.jpg" width="263" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">I can't wait! </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">5/5</div><br /><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div>Daniellehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08440460463119645788noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9005037379064329761.post-74740642964632150642023-09-10T09:52:00.000+10:002023-09-10T09:52:07.505+10:00'Falco: The Complete BBC Radio Collection' by Lindsey Davis <p style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"> </span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhWB1rWZCgsVs1uU8xEvetZogIsoaoh1JC-xNHODZSXWPi6e1-2K2n9eAED2dsTmJ2vd8J0VWty5UlWkNI7pBK_aLcDQCNLFf5UHhNtlz0oZ0ocNg-O7nHFYWfOTjfDvPUdlEngYmd-esYgoaXG5TjOE0g85EQX-ZxjHAr4PoIWYSf7Z-IWlo1sHEhiJRx3/s500/9781787534223-jacket-large.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><img border="0" data-original-height="500" data-original-width="500" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhWB1rWZCgsVs1uU8xEvetZogIsoaoh1JC-xNHODZSXWPi6e1-2K2n9eAED2dsTmJ2vd8J0VWty5UlWkNI7pBK_aLcDQCNLFf5UHhNtlz0oZ0ocNg-O7nHFYWfOTjfDvPUdlEngYmd-esYgoaXG5TjOE0g85EQX-ZxjHAr4PoIWYSf7Z-IWlo1sHEhiJRx3/w400-h400/9781787534223-jacket-large.jpg" width="400" /></span></a></div><p></p><p><b><span style="font-family: georgia;">From the BLURB: </span></b></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Full-cast BBC Radio 4 dramatisations of the first five Falco novels by Lindsey Davis, starring Anton Lesser as Marcus Didius Falco.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><i>The Silver Pigs</i>:</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"> One fine day, AD 70, Sosia Camillina quite literally runs into Marcus Didius Falco on the steps of the Forum. It seems Sosia is on the run from a couple of street toughs, and after a quick and dirty rescue, PI Falco wants to know why. Hoping for future favours from Sosia's powerful uncle, Falco embarks on an intricate case of smuggling, murder, and treason that reaches into the palace itself.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><i>Shadows in Bronze</i>:</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"> Rome, AD 71. Against his better judgment, Marcus Didius Falco secretly disposes of a decayed corpse for the Emperor Vespasian, then heads for the beautiful Bay of Naples with his friend Petronius. But this will be no holiday: they have been sent to investigate the murderous members of a failed coup, now sunning themselves in luxurious villas and on fancy yachts in Neapolis, Capreae, and Pompeii. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><i>Venus in Copper</i>:</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"> A small accounting error has left Marcus Didius Falco sharing a cell with a large rat. But the Roman Empire's most hard-done-by investigator is finally bailed out and promptly accepts a commission to help a family of freed slaves fend off a professional bribe....</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><i>The Iron Hand of Mars</i>:</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"> Falco is dispatched to one of the most hostile parts of the empire to deliver a new standard, an iron hand, to one of the legions. Germania is cold, wet, dismal and full of dark forests inhabited by bloodthirsty barbarians, but Falco has an even bigger problem to worry about: he has forgotten Helena Justina's birthday, and she is being pursued by the Emperor's son Titus Caesar. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><i>Poseidon’s Gold</i>:</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"> Returning to Rome after his mission to Germania, Falco finds that his mother is being harassed by a centurion named Censorinus, who says he is chasing a debt owed to him by Falco's late brother, Festus. When Falco refuses to cough up the money, he and Censorinus end up fighting...and later, the centurion turns up dead. Under suspicion of murder, Falco must confront his past and uncover his brother's secrets before he can clear his name and solve the mystery.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">These funny and fast-moving adaptations are a treat for all Falco fans.</span></p><p style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">***</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Ahhhhh!!</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Okay, I started listening to the first X5 'Marcus Didius Falco' books by Lindsey Davis, adapted for BBC radio (Dramatised by Mary Cutler, Directed by Peter Leslie Wild) because my library had them on the BorrowBox app.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">I'd been vaguely aware of this series as a great recommendation of a Historical Crime - but given that they were first published in 1989 and there's currently 32-instalments across two series, it just seemed like a huge investment of time, money and resources .... step in local library and BorrowBox, not to mention how entertaining and *wonderful* this condensed BBC Radio Play was!</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">I think this series is absolutely brilliant; a gumshoe Roman-noir detective series set in AD-70 and featuring a wiry, jaded and sleazy 30-something ex-soldier who is somewhat scarred from his time fighting against the Boudica-uprising.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">The first book in the series 'Silver Pigs' has Falco getting entangled with a Senator's family with a missing daughter whom Falco stumbled across and tried to help ... this has him becoming embroiled in a far great conspiracy scandal against the Roman Empire that Falco finds himself being hired to investigate (difficult, since he's also an avowed Republican - given he still has memories of Rome under psychotic Nero).</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">From the first book he meets the missing girl's cousin, Helena Justina - and she becomes his HEA and one-true-love throughout the rest of the series. I absolutely *love* this aspect, since I can only get invested in ongoing crime-series if there are relationships and romances established from the jump (hello, Karin Slaughter) and I rather love that Helena is far too good for Falco (and he knows it) but she sees and brings out the best in him, and the two spar and sizzle on the page.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Lindsey Davis does a marvellous job of bringing Rome to life and moulding her crime-of-the-week plot-lines around fascinating tidbits of Roman history; from their Legions to their love of art and culture, all within the seedy underbelly of Rome - the literal centre of the universe and first Empire. It has actually made me want to visit Italy for the first time, if only because the history Davis paints is so vivid I feel compelled to reach out and touch what's left of it ...</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">The BBC Radio Play truly is marvellous, and with a rich acting list;</span></p><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Falco — Anton Lesser</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Helena — Fritha Goodey/Anna Madeley</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Petronius — Ben Crowe</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Ma — Frances Jeater</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Pa — Trevor Peacock</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Vespasian— Michael Tudor Barnes</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Titus —Jonathan Keeble</span></p></blockquote><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">I cannot even begin to tell you how awks it is that I found Anton Lesser's voice to be so sexy in this (he who played Qyburn in 'Game of Thrones') and now that I'm getting deeper into Falco fandom, I also appreciate that many of them Fan-Cast Andrew Scott in the role, if it is ever adapted (and that is *spot-on*!)</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">I do know some fans were disappointed that to condense the books down to 2-4 hour radio-plays, much of Falco's interiority got cut for pacing - and that's apparently where he truly shines, and we see his cleverness and humour - so I am most looking forward to hunting down secondhand copies of ALLLLLLLL these books (R.I.P. my wallet) and getting stuck into a book-reading of the series to properly meet un-edited Falco. I might skim-read the first 5 books, just to make sure the BBC put me in good-standing and foundation for the rest of the series, but overall I'm just so grateful that they offered me a taster into this far-reaching and epic series and now I know for sure that it's right up my alley.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">5/5</span></p>Daniellehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08440460463119645788noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9005037379064329761.post-77594672355113519022023-07-05T18:56:00.008+10:002023-07-05T18:56:52.073+10:00'Dirt Town' by Hayley Scrivenor<p style="text-align: center;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgthzk8jVWdCRzMvrLc7dV5z_qKehtknfpeEnYT9jQRw_c2a-ue2P3X73qHQcy0DEHwqAPb6xFPfh2k230lGF4rc0Zw4UTFUJpHwnD_tRCuRjji52GS0K3mrJ3vHa7kuzVh9L4pH8UZRllFbSqNHf8p1ov-FhodlxAxobL914SNJSzYFlqLxruAdZQjI7sQ/s500/9781760987190.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="500" data-original-width="335" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgthzk8jVWdCRzMvrLc7dV5z_qKehtknfpeEnYT9jQRw_c2a-ue2P3X73qHQcy0DEHwqAPb6xFPfh2k230lGF4rc0Zw4UTFUJpHwnD_tRCuRjji52GS0K3mrJ3vHa7kuzVh9L4pH8UZRllFbSqNHf8p1ov-FhodlxAxobL914SNJSzYFlqLxruAdZQjI7sQ/w268-h400/9781760987190.jpg" width="268" /></a></div><br /><div style="text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: georgia;">From the BLURB: </span></b></div><p></p><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><i>My best friend wore her name, Esther, like a queen wearing her crown at a jaunty angle. We were twelve years old when she went missing. </i></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><i><br /></i>On a sweltering Friday afternoon in Durton, best friends Ronnie and Esther leave school together. Esther never makes it home. </span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br />Ronnie's going to find her, she has a plan. Lewis will help. Their friend can't be gone, Ronnie won't believe it. </span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br />Detective Sergeant Sarah Michaels can believe it. She has seen what people are capable of. She knows more than anyone how, in a moment of weakness, a person can be driven to do something they never thought possible. </span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br />Lewis can believe it too. But he can't reveal what he saw that afternoon at the creek without exposing his own secret. </span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br />Five days later, Esther's buried body is discovered. </span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><i>What do we owe the girl who isn't there?</i></div></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><i><br /></i><span style="background-color: white;">I am so late to reading this novel that came out with Pan Macmillan last year, but after hearing author Hayley Scrivenor speak about it at Brisbane Writers Festival I simply had to dive in.</span></span></div><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="background-color: white;">And - wow! - I was blown away.</span><br style="background-color: white;" /><br style="background-color: white;" /><span style="background-color: white;">This is the tale of Esther Bianchi; who goes missing from her small Australian country community, called Durton ('Dirt Town' to the local kids). We follow various characters in town - including Esther's best friend Ronnie, Detective Sergeant Sarah Michaels who has come to town to try and solve the mystery, Lewis another friend of Esther's with a big secret and abusive father ... and then interspersed throughout their accounts are the 'We' chapters - a Greek chorus of Durton children which is how Scrivenor came to write this story in the first place. She wrote her PhD in creative writing in 2016 all about collective narration, and this (from what I gathered at BWF) largely influenced 'Dirt Town' and the 'We' of Durton children who are an omniscient, playful and secretive Greek Chorus to the events unfolding ... it's an eerie and imaginative overtone to the whole tale which works so perfectly, and harmonises beautifully with the over-arching mystery.</span><br style="background-color: white;" /><br style="background-color: white;" /><span style="background-color: white;">I absolutely loved this; having listened to the audiobook via BorrowBox and narrated by Sophie Loughran, it totally consumed me for a couple of weeks and was a brilliant walking and train-riding companion.</span><br style="background-color: white;" /><br style="background-color: white;" /><span style="background-color: white;">Scrivenor is a real talent, and I'm sure she'll be compared to Jane Harper for the small-town-Australia angle ... but I think she has a particularly beautiful and distinct wandering eye to dying rural communities and claustrophobic townships, and especially the angle of how this sociology impacts the next generation. This is the real over-arching thread in the book - "what do we owe the girl who isn't there?" - and what wounds are we inflicting by our actions or silence?</span><br style="background-color: white;" /><br style="background-color: white;" /><span style="background-color: white;">I'll be so keen to read whatever Scrivenor writes next. I do wonder if it will be more Sarah Michaels or another Greek chorus overseeing a mystery as the thing that hinges her books together. But no matter - I'll be there.</span></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">5/5</span></span></p>Daniellehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08440460463119645788noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9005037379064329761.post-36146821521456782792023-07-01T14:06:00.005+10:002023-07-01T14:06:29.786+10:00'Crushing' by Genevieve Novak<p style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"> </span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiwWbOLDoko-2kRzRVr25_69sl52m_yD1LeitXDfJoyhJLrA6nWPYb0AqdYqz-4QZ5xFI-1VznBp2WOL0_iBpXBvOmIIWKhSRpSuV5X4mHkqDDHzqLV8mnzFMAtbdcLb6q3g5vkT8m9hQVZmGmGCmz6JCZjYhYd-3BnxQBBZlVyQxCIio83RCKRYUOemiXI/s648/y648.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><img border="0" data-original-height="648" data-original-width="424" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiwWbOLDoko-2kRzRVr25_69sl52m_yD1LeitXDfJoyhJLrA6nWPYb0AqdYqz-4QZ5xFI-1VznBp2WOL0_iBpXBvOmIIWKhSRpSuV5X4mHkqDDHzqLV8mnzFMAtbdcLb6q3g5vkT8m9hQVZmGmGCmz6JCZjYhYd-3BnxQBBZlVyQxCIio83RCKRYUOemiXI/w261-h400/y648.jpg" width="261" /></span></a></div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span><p></p><p><i><span style="font-family: georgia;">From the BLURB; </span></i></p><p style="text-align: center;"><b><i><span style="font-family: georgia;">Getting over someone is not that difficult. All you have to do is focus on every negative thing about them for the rest of your life until you forget to stop actively hoping for their slow and painful death, then get a haircut ...</span></i></b></p><p><i><span style="font-family: georgia;">Serial monogamist Marnie is running late to her own identity crisis. After a decade of twisting herself into different versions of the ideal girlfriend, she's swearing off relationships for good. Forever. Done. No more, no thank you.</span></i></p><p><i><span style="font-family: georgia;">Pretty inconvenient time to meet Isaac: certified dreamboat and the only man who has ever truly got her. It's cool, though, they're just friends, he's got someone else, and she has more important things to worry about. Like who she is, what she wants, and what the hell she ever saw in the love(s) of her life in the first place.</span></i></p><p><i><span style="font-family: georgia;">Flanked by overwhelmed new mum Nicola, terminally single Claud, and eternal pessimist Kit, Marnie reckons with the question: who are we when we're on our own?</span></i></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">'<a href="https://www.harpercollins.com.au/9781460761854/crushing/" target="_blank">Crushing</a>' is the new adult fiction novel from Australian author, Genevieve Novak. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">I absolutely adored this book.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">It was not on my radar, but I went into a cute little indie bookshop called '<a href="https://www.headsandtalesbooks.com.au/" target="_blank">Heads and Tales</a>' in Barwon Heads (Victoria, Australia) and literally just asked "what's good?" and had 'Crushing' handed to me and THANK GOODNESS!</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">So ... look; I've been a romance reader for a while now. I read every genre of romance (save for, maybe, medical romances?) and I get my reading-recs from authors and booksellers I love who frequently and generously share their TBR's. Blogs ('Smart Bitches, Trashy Books' being a fave). General chatter on socials and Goodreads ... but nothing - NOTHING - would prepare me for what a garbage-fire of spicy chilis the TikTok algorithm's thoughts on "romance" would be.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">I've struck out on that app with its BookTok recs so many times now - *especially* in romance. It's bad, bland, or downright disturbing (and yes, my generation had 'Fifty Shades of Grey' so everything is a wheel and Colleen Hoover's spoke is currently at the top, but hopefully it'll topple soon)</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Why am I mentioning this?</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Well, because I think 'Crushing' is a little sneak-attack for female readers especially, who need their imaginations subverted and stretched. And this is the book to do it, as we follow a nearly 30-something protagonist called Marnie who has just been dumped. Again. And this one has hit so hard it's made her look inward and acknowledge the ways she doesn't know herself. How she's warped and pretzel'ed herself into being the type of woman each one of her ex's wanted - to the point that alone again, naturally, she doesn't actually know herself.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Marnie decides to move in with a new roommate - the fabulous and instant-bestie Claud - and start filling her spare days not-working at a little inner-city (Pellegrini's-esque) cafe, with any amount of classes and gym routines until she begins to meet herself for the first time in decades.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">The one spanner in Marnie's plan is the appearance of Isaac. A bloke who is definitely off-limits because he has a girlfriend, but who Marnie connects with instantly ... how can she juggle this need to find herself, while she's also keeping her eyes-peeled on Isaac? That's the 'Crushing' conundrum of it all.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">So I feel like this is probably a book being called a Melburnian 'Fleabag' and if that wets your whistle and gets you onboard, then - YES! - it's a Melburnian 'Fleabag' revelling in what it means to be young and messy, not-feminist-enough, self-deprecating, isolated and isolating, and not know what to do and where to put all this love you have ... it's definitely that, and more Season 2 than Season 1 vibes to boot.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">But god DAMN, is it more complex and fun than that too.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">The fact that I want to press this book into the hands of so many female friends and family members, for the ways that Marnie's crisis of identity has her seeing clearly (for the first time) the way that other women in her life short-change themselves constantly;</span></p><p></p><blockquote><p><i><span style="font-family: georgia;">She tugged on the arm she was holding, and Jesse was pulled into frame.</span></i></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><i>I felt guilt before I'd even identified why: my first thought when I saw him was </i>Oh<i>.</i></span></p><p><i><span style="font-family: georgia;">Nothing prepared you for the distinct blandness of someone else's boyfriend. After all their gushing and mooning, you began to expect a prince. Reality and more objective eyes eventually revealed that they were ... just some guy.</span></i></p></blockquote><p></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Which is SUBLIME and has the same energy as @hellolanemoore's September 2020 Tweet; "every one of my female friends is too good for her boyfriend. I don't know how to explain it, but even if I had a female friend who was just a pile of rats on a step ladder she'd still be too good for Brandon"</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">I don't think this is a romance book (but I also don't think it's a bad thing if readers come to this under that misapprehension either) I do think it's a very pure and glorious form of Women's Fiction ... one that will by its very virtue of sneak-attacking under the premise of endlessly pursuing romantic love; raise the bar for the genre and the reader. You'll be surprised, delighted, stretched and challenged reading this one - without feeling "ripped off" for no neat HEA by 'The End'. Because that's kinda the point. And it's a crafty point that Novak is making - with humour and heart in the right place.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Like I said; I want to press this book into so many women's hands.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">5/5</span></p>Daniellehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08440460463119645788noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9005037379064329761.post-36244396025626235932023-06-03T22:06:00.005+10:002023-06-03T22:06:45.904+10:00'Yellowface' by Rebecca F. Kuang<p style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"> </span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiwzzgF8A8QU6_P-Ozqs94E0Z_sDk8dtwB9SoGMIYVA4n3Sl0nnFZLU1hPdm9hxjZpOAXjWK-2a813NUF9-5799BjEpPD4XTY56mWM5iF-BVVdteYCCNWdrFom2ZPkJeNHmJI_dUnoU6wWkSyiofNFlGisNp_kK5dFym5Ibf2OCAzjFcr24G6WMcbExcw/s648/y648.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><img border="0" data-original-height="648" data-original-width="421" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiwzzgF8A8QU6_P-Ozqs94E0Z_sDk8dtwB9SoGMIYVA4n3Sl0nnFZLU1hPdm9hxjZpOAXjWK-2a813NUF9-5799BjEpPD4XTY56mWM5iF-BVVdteYCCNWdrFom2ZPkJeNHmJI_dUnoU6wWkSyiofNFlGisNp_kK5dFym5Ibf2OCAzjFcr24G6WMcbExcw/w260-h400/y648.jpg" width="260" /></span></a></div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span><p></p><p><b><span style="font-family: georgia;">From the BLURB: </span></b></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><i>Authors June Hayward and Athena Liu were supposed to be twin rising stars: same year at Yale, same debut year in publishing. But Athena’s a cross-genre literary darling, and June didn’t even get a paperback release. Nobody wants stories about basic white girls, June thinks. </i></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><i>So when June witnesses Athena’s death in a freak accident, she acts on impulse: she steals Athena’s just-finished masterpiece, an experimental novel about the unsung contributions of Chinese laborers to the British and French war efforts during World War I. </i></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><i>So what if June edits Athena’s novel and sends it to her agent as her own work? So what if she lets her new publisher rebrand her as Juniper Song—complete with an ambiguously ethnic author photo? Doesn’t this piece of history deserve to be told, whoever the teller? That’s what June claims, and the New York Times bestseller list seems to agree. </i></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><i>But June can’t get away from Athena’s shadow, and emerging evidence threatens to bring June’s (stolen) success down around her. As June races to protect her secret, she discovers exactly how far she will go to keep what she thinks she deserves.</i></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></p><p style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">•<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><i>Yellowface</i> is the new novel from American author R.F. Kuang – or, Rebecca F. Kuang – it is already a New York Times Bestseller and being touted as *the* book of the year. And for good reason. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">First and foremost – no, I don’t know how I was able to read this via an ebook loan from my library (and I happen to know one of my besties was listening to the audiobook last week!) so it looks like the electronic versions have been out in ANZ (Australia New Zealand) since May 16 – but the paperback is not out until June 7? Baffling! </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">So why is this *THE* chosen novel of the year? Why are you going to keep seeing that instantly-iconic yellow cover with the cartoonish eyes everywhere – and even that title <i>Yellowface</i> (used to refer to the practice of wearing make-up to imitate the appearance of an East Asian person, typically as part of a performance. This practice is generally regarded as offensive) is pure genius at every story-level and for discoverability. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Why? </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Well. I first got wind of this novel coming, around the time last year of the <a href="https://www.themarysue.com/one-of-2022s-best-selling-authors-joins-harpercollins-workers-on-strike/" target="_blank">Harper Collins union strike</a> – when R.F. Kuang was one of the biggest-selling authors to come out in solidarity with the striking workers (against her own publisher, btw!), and it was alluded to that hers was a natural affiliation, given that her next novel would be a departure from her betselling-fantasy, to an epic contemporary take-down of the publishing industry. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Pardon?!</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">So my interest was piqued given that I am part of the book publishing industry, and everyone in my circle was gearing up for a spilling of tea. And now that I’ve had the privilege of reading ‘Yellowface’ I can confirm, the tea is piping hot … </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">The actual plot is a clever conduit to discuss much larger issues. The idea of two writing friends – one successful, one considerably less so – and what happens when the bestseller dies, leaving behind her conveniently only written out on a typewriter; pages of her next sure-to-be smash-hit novel … ripe for the taking. It’s an idea that’s been explored (like in the 2012 Bradley Cooper movie <i><a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1840417/" target="_blank">The Words</a></i> – and no doubt there are other examples) but Kuang brings an important layer to the ethical and moral dilemma, because the dead bestseller was of Asian background, and her fabulous idea was all about Chinese labour workers in World War I … and the thieving writer is white. So this isn’t just a plagiarism story for the ages – exploring intellectual property and copyright, but big-time cultural appropriation. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Kuang’s nuances in this discussion are too numerous to list, and clever to do a summary injustice. But something I loved was the repeated instances when our white protagonist author (June Hayward … writing as Juniper Song – her full first-name, and the middle-name her once-hippie mother gave her) finds herself in book-promotion predicaments where she’s invited to speak to Asian-American readers or on diaspora panels … as a white woman, who wrote a historical fiction novel inspired by Chinese history. A white woman with a deliberately ethnically-ambiguous name, and new author photos that have also given her a slight tan – to aid the confusion. This is something so rarely discussed in matters of cultural appropriation in art. You may well have done the research and had a heart in the right place – but what happens when people from the minority background you mined and stepped into, come calling and want to hear you speak? Well; </span></p><p><i><span style="font-family: georgia;"></span></i></p><blockquote><p><i><span style="font-family: georgia;">For the first time since I submitted the manuscript, I feel a deep wash of shame. This isn’t my history, my heritage. This isn’t my community. I am an outsider, basking in their love under false pretences. It should be Athena sitting here, smiling with these people, signing books and listening to the stories of her elders. </span></i></p></blockquote><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Juniper is a deliciously awful character. Not so cartoonishly villainous throughout that your teeth are constantly grinding – but it’s a melting into awfulness, a slow oozing that starts to stick and gum up the page; making you feel faintly nauseous (like when she has a real “are we the bad-guys?” moment, upon discovering that right-wing media pundits are rallying behind her when she’s accused of cultural appropriation.) And how magnificent that as I was reading, I kept thinking how brilliantly Kuang gets into this white-woman’s head. She has us read to rights and filth; and I found that my instinct to guffaw and say “we’re not all that way though,” was part of the wonderful ploy at play. The moment you feel the urge to say; ‘not all white women,’ it’s a stark reminder, right? </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">But as I was reading, I was really trying to think how others would read it. Particularly for the minutiae of publishing which Kuang also hits with an absolute bullseye. From capturing the neuroses of writers; </span></p><p><i><span style="font-family: georgia;"></span></i></p><blockquote><p><i><span style="font-family: georgia;">People always describe jealousy as this sharp, green, venomous thing. Unfounded, vinegary, mean-spirited. But I’ve found that jealousy, to writers, feels more like fear. </span></i></p><p><i><span style="font-family: georgia;">Jealousy is the spike in my heart rate when I glimpse news of Athena’s success on Twitter – another book contract, awards nominations, special editions, foreign rights delas. Jealousy is constantly comparing myself to her and coming up short; is panicking that I’m not writing well enough or fast enough, that I am not, and never will be, enough. Jealousy means that even just learning that Athena’s signing a six-figure option deal with Netflix means that I’ll be derailed for days, unable to focus on my own work, mired by shame and self-disgust every time I see one of her books in a bookstore display. </span></i></p><p><i><span style="font-family: georgia;">Every writer I know feels this way about someone else. Writing is such a solitary activity. You have no assurance that what you’re creating has any value, and any indication that you’re behind in the rat race sends you spiralling into the pits of despair. ‘Keep your eyes on your own paper,’ they say. But that’s hard to do when everyone else’s papers are flapping constantly in your face. </span></i></p></blockquote><p><i><span style="font-family: georgia;"></span></i></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">To saying the quiet part out loud; that (especially in America) 1% of authors get 99% of a publisher’s time, effort and budget – by design; </span></p><p><i><span style="font-family: georgia;"></span></i></p><blockquote><i><span style="font-family: georgia;">… author efforts have nothing to do with a book’s success. Bestsellers are chosen. Nothing you do matters. You just get to enjoy the perks along the way. </span></i></blockquote><p></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">And then the occasional thought that feels *very* inside-jokey. Case-in-point, that I marked this line as getting a real laugh-out-loud moment from me (because it’s so true); </span></p><p><i><span style="font-family: georgia;"></span></i></p><blockquote><p><i><span style="font-family: georgia;">We’ve sold rights in Germany, Spain, Poland, and Russia. ‘Not France, yet, but we’re working on it,’ says Brett. ‘But nobody sells well in France. If the French like you, then you’re doing something very wrong.’</span></i></p></blockquote><p></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">… but I wondered; will regular people care? </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">No. Sorry. When I say “regular people,” I don’t mean that like a bad thing. I mean people who are not close to book-publishing in any way, beyond enjoying what it produces. I wondered if Kuang’s book was too close to the bone, and regular readers wouldn’t be able to appreciate the forest for the trees? The literary equivalent of; we’re too online. I also wondered this because I have noticed that on BookTok (what did I just say about ‘too online’?) I did notice that criticism of the book is largely about slow-pacing, and it being boring? But I didn’t get that, at all. I found it to have a cracking pace and brilliant plotted set-up … much of which took place in corporate emails that gave me second-hand anxiety for the very realistic and awful conversations I know are being had behind closed doors, and they are alluding to. I wonder if these micro-aggressions and corporate blunders are too mired in the world of book-publishing to be of significance to people outside of it? </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">But then I thought; I loved Gabrielle Zevin’s ‘Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow’ which is about developing video-games (which I know nothing about). Also that I loved TV show ‘Succession,’ and just nodded along whenever they spoke of corporate take-overs and what the stock-market was doing or whatever. I’d gloss over it as “business stuff,” and get the gist. Andrew Sean Greer’s ‘Less’ is also about the sad side to literary life, and that got a wonderful critical and commercial reception. For a few months there so many people were obsessed with Caroline Calloway and the ghost-writing friend who broke her silence; everyone got the broad brush-strokes of that scandal, and I am sure they will in ‘Yellowface’ too? They might come away thinking complaining about book-publishing is all a bit “my glass slippers are too tight,” bourgeois clap-trap and we are all chronically online, but … I mean; yeah. Kind of. Accurate. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">But to the online of it all – my other question was how future-proof <i>Yellowface</i> would prove to be? Already the novel delves deeply into Book Twitter fuelling scandals and gossip, and already it reads slightly outdated for the weight Juniper ascribes to “blue-check mark” Tweeters … which; Elon Musk has ruined. There’s lots of name-dropping of current social media apps and the indiscretions and pile-on’s they’ve fuelled; and as writers, we’re constantly told not to do that, because it will age a book. And I think that’s true here, but – does it matter? Kuang is commenting in a very zeitgeist-y way on art, culture, media, and illusions of community happening *right now* and the book being touted as The Read of the Year means it’ll be read in a timely it-just-hit-shelves-and-I-have-to-read-it fashion. It’s Kuang very much capturing ~a moment~ in time, and if it ends up reading more like a time-capsule that might be baffling to future-readers in a decade; is that a bad thing? Maybe not? </span></p><p><i><span style="font-family: georgia;"></span></i></p><blockquote><i><span style="font-family: georgia;">But Twitter is real life; it realer than real life, because that is the realm that the social economy of publishing exists on, because the industry has no alternative. Offline, writers are all faceless, hypothetical creatures pounding our words in isolation from one another. You can’t peek over anyone’s shoulder. You can’t tell if everyone else is really doing as dandy as they pretend they are. But online, you can tune into all the hot gossip, even if you’re not nearly important enough to have a seat in the room where it happens. Online, you can tell Stephen King to go fuck himself. Online, you can discover that the current literary star of the moment is actually so problematic that all of her works should be cancelled, forever. Reputations in publishing are built and destroyed, constantly, online. </span></i></blockquote><p></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">I loved this book. I inhaled it – even as I squirmed, and it made me look uncomfortably inward at the gate-keeping role I play in the very industry Kuang is bemoaning, and beloved by. I honestly think it’s a very special book precisely because it feels like absolutely nobody else could have written it – and how ironic, given the plot! – but it feels like a right place, right time, right author type of deal … and it reads kismet and electric; you absolutely feel that pulse on the page of “ohhhhh, this is almost unbearably special.” I’ve never felt such second-hand, heart-palpitating anxiety while reading, or such painful self-reflection that it felt like a cleansing of sorts. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">I’m only still on-the-fence about how “outsiders” will perceive it, and how future-readers might be baffled by the weight we placed on an app that is currently being run into the ground by a maniacal Musk. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">But my gosh … what a feast of hot-tea. What a wake-up call that my industry needs, and only this author could deliver in such a decisive and well-packaged blow. What an ‘American Dirt’ meets John Hughes plagiarism, Caroline Calloway ghost-written, Mary Hallock Foote being stolen, James Frey, and ‘The Hand that Signed the Paper’ (I could go on) what a gem of a book. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">4.5/5 </span></p><div><br /></div>Daniellehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08440460463119645788noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9005037379064329761.post-58722224849908823152023-05-20T17:20:00.003+10:002023-05-20T17:20:14.169+10:00'We Could Be Something' by Will Kostakis<p style="text-align: center;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjxJWSDMOYIkq6QsKJww1G-SMCIn-fjoQK013Gm5i8OP2LJ-qqi8ZaewyTxNFegejvD0oEqCeS_c86Rr7sHMFgQPjYGQs0EA6CNU2YmlqjSpJYBaliQkwilHc_3GB-xNQyB0zMXlRQkKK8-fGUqV7Ah-6nfvb5sXkd_qca8IhzPi2q9jUNWhHCDenClUQ/s533/9781761180170.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><img border="0" data-original-height="533" data-original-width="345" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjxJWSDMOYIkq6QsKJww1G-SMCIn-fjoQK013Gm5i8OP2LJ-qqi8ZaewyTxNFegejvD0oEqCeS_c86Rr7sHMFgQPjYGQs0EA6CNU2YmlqjSpJYBaliQkwilHc_3GB-xNQyB0zMXlRQkKK8-fGUqV7Ah-6nfvb5sXkd_qca8IhzPi2q9jUNWhHCDenClUQ/w259-h400/9781761180170.jpg" width="259" /></span></a></div><span style="font-family: georgia;"> </span><p></p><p><b><span style="font-family: georgia;">From the BLURB: </span></b></p><p><i><span style="font-family: georgia;">Part coming-out story.</span></i></p><p><i><span style="font-family: georgia;">Part falling-in-love story.</span></i></p><p><i><span style="font-family: georgia;">Part falling-apart story.</span></i></p><p><i><span style="font-family: georgia;">Harvey's dads are splitting up. It's been on the cards for a while, but it's still sudden. Woken-by-his-father-to-catch-a-red-eye sudden. Now he's restarting his life in a new city, living above a cafe with the extended Greek family he barely knows.</span></i></p><p><i><span style="font-family: georgia;">Sotiris is a rising star. At seventeen, he's already achieved his dream of publishing a novel. When his career falters, a cute, wise-cracking bookseller named Jem upends his world.</span></i></p><p><i><span style="font-family: georgia;">Harvey and Sotiris's stories converge on the same street in Darlinghurst, in this beautifully heartfelt novel about how our dreams shape us, and what they cost us.</span></i></p><p><i><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></i></p><p style="text-align: center;"><i><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: large;"></span></i></p><blockquote><i><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: large;">The sun sets on a bonfire in Leichhardt.</span></i></blockquote><p></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Back from Brisbane Writers Festival, and I finally sent something off that was overdue - which means my brain had been freed up to treat myself to some books I’ve been hoarding and *desperate* to read.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Top of that pile was Will Kostakis’ new #LoveOzYA from Allen & Unwin - ‘<a href="https://www.allenandunwin.com/browse/book/Will-Kostakis-We-Could-Be-Something-9781761180170/" target="_blank">We Could Be Something</a>’</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Now, before I can give my opinion you need to know that Will Kostakis got his first book-deal before he graduated high school, and his debut ‘Loathing Lola’ released when he was 19.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Now do you get it?</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Never mind that I know and greatly respect Will - I was a fan first, but now I know him as an artist and friend too - and part of me wondered if my knowing how much this story is drawing on his own experiences would cloud my reading?</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Never fear.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Because this book *walloped* me in the best ways. Humour and heart that I already knew Will could do, but a reckoning and sharing on the page that’s so generous and tender from him as an artist.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">He really is grappling with voice here, amongst these characters - how they’re finding theirs, when Will’s as author has never been clearer, is pretty spectacular … he’s touching on some complex and wrought discussions about young people breaking away and finding out who they are, how they tear off pieces of themselves to give to other people - and what do they keep or hide for (and from) themselves. There’s a lot happening and all of it is brilliant and feels like a levelling-up in YA, particularly Aussie queer lit for teens. I don't want to give anything away; but I think Will Kostakis is giving people what they *think* they want from Queer YA, and then in the most loving way he's saying "actually, this is what we need." He's pulling it into a new era, and I agree.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">No wonder this book has been heralded as a clear front-runner for the sweep of awards that’s sure to come. And I must say - I agree.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Not to mention - the writing within is just … *gorgeous*. It’s a voice cut to the bone, with such clarity that sighs and sings on the page. In particular (because I’m a sucker for them!) some of his opening and closing chapter lines - particularly those setting location - were just stunning!</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">It’s the kind of writing that feels effortless, but has clearly been honed and carefully considered so you don’t notice the effort. That’s hard to do. Will’s slam-dunked it here.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">The whole thing just delighted me. I KNEW it would be good, but this? Was *exceptionally* good.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">5/5</span></p><p style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;"><i></i></span></p><blockquote><span style="font-size: large;"><i><span style="font-family: georgia;">I abandon my cup. I leave a bonfire in Leichhardt.</span></i></span></blockquote><p></p>Daniellehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08440460463119645788noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9005037379064329761.post-79907795950877120192023-04-22T13:20:00.006+10:002023-04-22T13:20:56.877+10:00'Love in the Library' By Maggie Tokuda-Hall, Illustrated by Yas Imamura<p style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"> </span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjI9DLtUIXwghYEj_6scCNonPzHjruWKsv-i7LfMB0jIxEqL_xpgQFPQMx_88jhd4JubsSX1B3rbp-d9YbR5E9HQ5oXsnFmrBIkB1nK6SO1IsKBs-nhNIKrdj806mqV7t3Ta4a3B5HxQy4oxY9VWxDT3Own5aAljN98zcUcL0jlrtC63QUW2ykyu3ac9w/s1000/57699005.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="893" data-original-width="1000" height="358" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjI9DLtUIXwghYEj_6scCNonPzHjruWKsv-i7LfMB0jIxEqL_xpgQFPQMx_88jhd4JubsSX1B3rbp-d9YbR5E9HQ5oXsnFmrBIkB1nK6SO1IsKBs-nhNIKrdj806mqV7t3Ta4a3B5HxQy4oxY9VWxDT3Own5aAljN98zcUcL0jlrtC63QUW2ykyu3ac9w/w400-h358/57699005.jpeg" width="400" /></a></span></div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span><p></p><p><b><span style="font-family: georgia;">From the BLURB: </span></b></p><p style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-family: georgia;">Set in an incarceration camp where the United States cruelly detained Japanese Americans during WWII and based on true events, this moving love story finds hope in heartbreak. </span></b></p><p><i><span style="font-family: georgia;">To fall in love is already a gift. But to fall in love in a place like Minidoka, a place built to make people feel like they weren’t human—that was miraculous. </span></i></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">After the bombing of Pearl Harbor, Tama is sent to live in a War Relocation Center in the desert. All Japanese Americans from the West Coast—elderly people, children, babies—now live in prison camps like Minidoka. To be who she is has become a crime, it seems, and Tama doesn’t know when or if she will ever leave. Trying not to think of the life she once had, she works in the camp’s tiny library, taking solace in pages bursting with color and light, love and fairness. And she isn’t the only one. George waits each morning by the door, his arms piled with books checked out the day before. As their friendship grows, Tama wonders: Can anyone possibly read so much? Is she the reason George comes to the library every day? Maggie Tokuda-Hall’s beautifully illustrated, elegant love story features a photo of the real Tama and George—the author’s grandparents—along with an afterword and other back matter for readers to learn more about a time in our history that continues to resonate.</span></p><p style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #202124;">⦿</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #202124;">⦿</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #202124;">⦿</span></span></p><p><span style="color: #202124; font-family: georgia;">Probably surprising nobody, I picked this book up (in Australia) when I saw that Booktopia had copies in-stock and after ready author Maggie Tokuda-Hall's <a href="https://www.prettyokmaggie.com/blog/2023/4/11/scholastic-and-a-faustian-bargain" target="_blank">brave blog post</a> Scholastic, and a Faustian Bargain . In that post, she detailed US publisher Scholastic's attempt at censoring this book by asking Tokuda-Hall to edit her author's note at the end, removing mentions of and the word "racism" in her description about how 'Love in the Library' is based on the true story of how her maternal grandparents met; while both were in a Japanese internment camp in Idaho, during WWII.</span></p><p><span style="color: #202124; font-family: georgia;">Scholastic is not the original publisher of this book (that would be <a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/688897/love-in-the-library-by-maggie-tokuda-hall-illustrated-by-yas-imamura/" target="_blank">Candlewick Press</a>, and kudos to them) but Scholastic wanted to license the book for sale in their catalogue and at the infamous Scholastic Book Fairs that they run in schools the world over. However, their condition on this licensing was for Tokuda-Hall to remove much of her 'Letter to the Reader' at the end, in which she provides the true-history context to the Internment of Japanese Americans (including her grandparents) - she refused, and Scholastic rescinded their offer (making abundantly clear that it was contingent on her whitewashing and silencing of this aspect in the book).</span></p><p><span style="color: #202124; font-family: georgia;">I am happy to see that Tokuda-Hall being brave enough to detail this publisher interaction has garnered her a lot of support, and the story has been shared widely (and Scholastic, rightly, shamed);</span></p><p><span style="color: #202124; font-family: georgia;">⦿<i><b> <a href="https://www.slj.com/story/Got-Values-Then-Live-Them-Its-time-for-publishers-to-operationalize-their-ideals-editorial-racism-Scholastic" target="_blank">Got Values? Then Live Them. It’s time for publishers to operationalize their ideals</a></b></i></span></p><p><span style="color: #202124; font-family: georgia;">⦿ <b><i><a href="https://abc7news.com/love-in-the-library-book-maggie-tokuda-hall-scholastic-racism-censorship-books/13145614/" target="_blank">Bay Area author refuses Scholastic's suggested revision to cut 'racism' references in book</a></i></b></span></p><p><span style="color: #202124; font-family: georgia;">⦿ <b><i><a href="https://www.npr.org/2023/04/15/1169848627/scholastic-childrens-book-racism" target="_blank">Scholastic wanted to license her children's book — if she cut a part about 'racism'</a></i></b></span></p><p><span style="color: #202124; font-family: georgia;">What this has thrown a light on, however, is the insidious idea with far-reaching ramifications that publishers are acquiring books (or, not) and being led by book-ban and censorship pushes that are sweeping across America;</span></p><p><span style="color: #202124; font-family: georgia;">⦿ <b><i><a href="https://pen.org/press-release/new-report-28-rise-in-school-book-bans-over-first-half-of-2022-23-school-year/" target="_blank">New Report: 28% Rise in School Book Bans Over First Half of 2022-23 School Year</a></i></b></span></p><p><span style="color: #202124; font-family: georgia;">We know of Tokuda-Hall's brush with censorship because she was brave enough to talk openly about it - and the editor had laid out the publisher's thinking behind requesting it ... but how much censorship is happening behind closed doors and in acquisitions meetings, and taking the form of no offers coming in for a book that is seen to be too "risky" for a publisher? How much is it manifesting as books that won't ever see the light of day, authors going unpublished? Tokuda-Hall's shining a light on this one manifestation is highlighting the potential ramifications the world-over (New York is the centre of publishing, given that the North American is the biggest English-language market ... they choose the trends and blockbuster titles, they have Hollywood and Silicon Valley to help make a book go truly viral. Americans are the ones who have the most control over the future of book-publishing, and in light of this that thought is more worrying than ever).</span></p><p><span style="color: #202124; font-family: georgia;">I loved 'Love in the Library,' and I'm frustrated at the thought that it could have reached an even bigger audience in the country that would most benefit from reading it, if only a children's publisher had been braver.</span></p><p><span style="color: #202124; font-family: georgia;">The story of Tokuda-Hall's maternal grandparents is a tender and tough one; to have met and started their family in the Minidoka internment camp in Idaho is a testament to love conquering so much, in the face of xenophobia that still exists and persists to this day. Artist Yas Imamura's almost art-deco illustrations are gorgeous; muted tones, and always with the guard-tower looming (out a window, the corner of the page) they've done a brilliant job of balancing the soft with the hard visually, the same way Tokuda-Hall has done in the uplifting tone but serious-subject matter.</span></p><p style="text-align: center;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjjBWAYQioaVCWE3h33_A56n_3_N51uWOYzun1Nnl_0tC1wUBnCgPGe4kFU_EHPhieF0P7qwFY1Fa4hIwRGlwcrHVt82R6JcRAK8_Dt2orbN2nn6bO84M-X5FicxGLBQ02YPcQsGuCYU5CrEiw6-aD6FjyG-uJgQiAjFDWh3bDL9KW4tQ09CjGt6abLMQ/s980/Love%20in%20the%20Library%20Film.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="435" data-original-width="980" height="178" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjjBWAYQioaVCWE3h33_A56n_3_N51uWOYzun1Nnl_0tC1wUBnCgPGe4kFU_EHPhieF0P7qwFY1Fa4hIwRGlwcrHVt82R6JcRAK8_Dt2orbN2nn6bO84M-X5FicxGLBQ02YPcQsGuCYU5CrEiw6-aD6FjyG-uJgQiAjFDWh3bDL9KW4tQ09CjGt6abLMQ/w400-h178/Love%20in%20the%20Library%20Film.jpeg" width="400" /></a></div><br /><span style="color: #202124; font-family: georgia;"><br /></span><p></p><p><span style="color: #202124; font-family: georgia;"><span style="background-color: white;"></span></span></p><p><span style="color: #202124; font-family: georgia;">This book is marvellous and I highly-recommend everyone invest in a copy. For a local classroom, school library, personal collection - anything.</span></p><p><span style="color: #202124; font-family: georgia;">5/5</span></p><div><br /></div>Daniellehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08440460463119645788noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9005037379064329761.post-41628702032771614332023-04-15T10:03:00.008+10:002023-04-15T10:03:52.721+10:00'The Garden at the End of the World' by Cassy Polimeni, illustrated by Briony Stewart<p style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"> </span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhz-Yo4_iVNp5esczR4kqE-cJiyLUQ7Fxp7_5fCDdb9LnkWkkIo7jSIwIZOIQ9bn9V18RDKKrI6K0uZyIwP4lt39HQ4U1z3-_RqdcxXJTlqFjBgCMudm1Msr8_6gxAQo1KQDsknAmnuWjK_4sg2NpHdchMwrxgIYrr_x5N_iP8aQaQ-tGWMGM1CYxIMcw/s1260/RGB_Garden-at-the-End-of-the-World_FINAL-COVER_9780702265693_smaller-file.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1260" data-original-width="1000" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhz-Yo4_iVNp5esczR4kqE-cJiyLUQ7Fxp7_5fCDdb9LnkWkkIo7jSIwIZOIQ9bn9V18RDKKrI6K0uZyIwP4lt39HQ4U1z3-_RqdcxXJTlqFjBgCMudm1Msr8_6gxAQo1KQDsknAmnuWjK_4sg2NpHdchMwrxgIYrr_x5N_iP8aQaQ-tGWMGM1CYxIMcw/w318-h400/RGB_Garden-at-the-End-of-the-World_FINAL-COVER_9780702265693_smaller-file.jpeg" width="318" /></span></a></div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #1e1915;">Full-disclosure; Briony Stewart is repped by my agency, Jacinta di Mase Management. However, my colleague oversaw Briony's hiring to illustrate this book - not me.</span><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #1e1915; margin: 0px;" /><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #1e1915; margin: 0px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #1e1915;">'The Garden at the End of the World' is written by Cassy Polimeni, illustrated by Briony Stewart and has just been released by University of Queensland Press (UQP). It's about; Isla and her mother going on an enchanting journey to the Global Seed Vault in Norway to discover a garden waiting at the end of the world.</span><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #1e1915; margin: 0px;" /><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #1e1915; margin: 0px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #1e1915;">The Global Seed Vault opened in 2008, and is apparently opened three times a year to visitors - which is what kicks this story off, when young girl Isla finds a special seed to donate from her home in Australia. It's such a complex and important backstory presented really harmoniously and brilliantly. Like when Isla's mother explains; </span><i style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #1e1915;">'They're ordinary seeds that can live for hundreds of years and turn into food. I suppose that is magical. The mountain protects them so children who haven't even been born yet will be able to grow and eat the foods we love.'</i><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #1e1915; margin: 0px;" /><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #1e1915; margin: 0px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #1e1915;">This is a really fascinating and important humanitarian endeavour, and I love that Polimeni and Stewart have found such a loving and wonderful way to present it so that kids (and grown-ups reading to them!) understand what's at stake, and what is being achieved.</span><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #1e1915; margin: 0px;" /><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #1e1915; margin: 0px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #1e1915;">A note on the Global Seed Vault at the end lays out exactly what an important topics this is;</span><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #1e1915; margin: 0px;" /><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #1e1915; margin: 0px;" /><i style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #1e1915;">The first withdrawal was made in 2015 to replace seeds lost when a gene bank near Aleppo, Syria, was destroyed by civil war.<br style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px;" /><br style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px;" />In a rapidly changing world, the vault helps promote food security and crop diversity by providing protection for the earth's most important natural resources. So there will always be a garden at the end of the world, waiting to be planted.</i><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #1e1915; margin: 0px;" /><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #1e1915; margin: 0px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #1e1915;">And the illustrations are absolutely beautiful; cool-toned and magnificent, and on some pages (like the gorgeous end-papers) Stewart has used a combo of ink and printmaking to lay gauzy hints of leaves, ferns, and twigs as an overlay to the solid illustrations, and it gives certain pages a real sense of growth and germination. A silent, text-less spread showing the green shimmer of the Northern Lights is particularly impressive. But the whole book truly is, and a must-read for classrooms to kick-off what I'm sure will be important and fascinating discussions.</span><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #1e1915; margin: 0px;" /><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #1e1915; margin: 0px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #1e1915;">I'd so love it if Polimeni and Stewart made a little series of these topics - looking at the ways humanity is preserving nature for future generations (the gentle foreshadowing here is of course; climate change, but not presented in a scary way for too-young kids to feel that worry too soon).</span><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #1e1915; margin: 0px;" /><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #1e1915; margin: 0px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #1e1915;">I'd love, for instance, a book about </span><a href="https://www.nationalarboretum.act.gov.au/home" rel="nofollow noopener" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px;">Canberra's National Arboretum</a><span style="background-color: white; color: #1e1915;">; '... designed to be a place of peace, beauty, recreation, research, and education. With 44,000 rare, endangered, and culturally significant trees from Australia and around the world, it is a living seedbank of international significance.'</span></span></p><p><span style="background-color: white; color: #1e1915;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">5/5</span></span></p>Daniellehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08440460463119645788noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9005037379064329761.post-43240436389069155002023-04-15T10:01:00.007+10:002023-04-15T10:01:36.024+10:00'I'm Glad My Mom Died' audiobook by Jennette McCurdy<p style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"> </span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhle65lU1rKjBQb6gIqzxqBpYpTBc65gnJ8av8qZqnYw-5Sa3Vs6K-lS-Q0GtNfuClnN8LAimh74I9KNGl-PxHOOE3-uik5woYa7OiaXBxKZebRGiFbNsY6sfnCmMDIRKiaCpCn4Z3fwJwclRm2Ms0h0j99tDJs41nukkzfEg6wvqllmWe0RlNYCYKjhA/s500/41clGmWQP6L._SL500_.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><img border="0" data-original-height="500" data-original-width="500" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhle65lU1rKjBQb6gIqzxqBpYpTBc65gnJ8av8qZqnYw-5Sa3Vs6K-lS-Q0GtNfuClnN8LAimh74I9KNGl-PxHOOE3-uik5woYa7OiaXBxKZebRGiFbNsY6sfnCmMDIRKiaCpCn4Z3fwJwclRm2Ms0h0j99tDJs41nukkzfEg6wvqllmWe0RlNYCYKjhA/w400-h400/41clGmWQP6L._SL500_.jpg" width="400" /></span></a></div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></p><p><b><span style="font-family: georgia;">From the BLURB: </span></b></p><p><i><b><span style="font-family: georgia;">A heartbreaking and hilarious memoir by iCarly and Sam & Cat star Jennette McCurdy about her struggles as a former child actor—including eating disorders, addiction, and a complicated relationship with her overbearing mother—and how she retook control of her life. </span></b></i></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><i>Jennette McCurdy was six years old when she had her first acting audition. Her mother’s dream was for her only daughter to become a star, and Jennette would do anything to make her mother happy. So she went along with what Mom called “calorie restriction,” eating little and weighing herself five times a day. She endured extensive at-home makeovers while Mom chided, “Your eyelashes are invisible, okay? You think Dakota Fanning doesn’t tint hers?” She was even showered by Mom until age sixteen while sharing her diaries, email, and all her income. </i></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><i>In </i>I’m Glad My Mom Died<i>, Jennette recounts all this in unflinching detail—just as she chronicles what happens when the dream finally comes true. Cast in a new Nickelodeon series called iCarly, she is thrust into fame. Though Mom is ecstatic, emailing fan club moderators and getting on a first-name basis with the paparazzi (“Hi Gale!”), Jennette is riddled with anxiety, shame, and self-loathing, which manifest into eating disorders, addiction, and a series of unhealthy relationships. These issues only get worse when, soon after taking the lead in the iCarly spinoff Sam & Cat alongside Ariana Grande, her mother dies of cancer. Finally, after discovering therapy and quitting acting, Jennette embarks on recovery and decides for the first time in her life what she really wants. </i></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><i>Told with refreshing candor and dark humor, I’m Glad My Mom Died is an inspiring story of resilience, independence, and the joy of shampooing your own hair.</i></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">I listened to the audiobook of 'I'm Glad My Mom Died,' read by McCurdy herself. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #1e1915;">I went into this totally none the wiser about who Jennette McCurdy was. I was 20 when 'iCarly' premiered, so I totally missed the boat on this being my childhood. But when I was in New York in August last year, *this* book had just come out and was ~the~ talk of the town. I took pictures of it in bookstore window displays - kinda amused by the title, and very intrigued by the throwback Babysitters Club bubblegum cover - and was assured by booksellers in Australia that it was likewise launching here, and was (based on preorders) already a hit.</span><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #1e1915; margin: 0px;" /><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #1e1915; margin: 0px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #1e1915;">And indeed, hit it is. It won a Goodreads Choice award, according to Wikipedia has sold 200K copies (but I'd say that's now an outdated estimate, and was probably US-only. Based on buzz, I'd expect this to have reached 1-million sales worldwide).</span><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #1e1915; margin: 0px;" /><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #1e1915; margin: 0px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #1e1915;">What compelled me to finally listen to the audiobook was word of mouth amongst my friends, and seeing snippets of McCurdy appearing on the Drew Barrymore show. If Drew endorses, I do too.</span><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #1e1915; margin: 0px;" /><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #1e1915; margin: 0px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #1e1915;">I was therefore though, totally unprepared for what a WALLOP this book is.</span><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #1e1915; margin: 0px;" /><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #1e1915; margin: 0px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #1e1915;">Yes, it's about the toxicity of child-stardom (and a must-read for all those parents currently running social-media family accounts), but it's also detailing McCurdy's mental health fight and war through various eating disorders. It's also about her years of childhood sexual abuse at the hands of her mother, which I was really not expecting and took me completely off-guard.</span><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #1e1915; margin: 0px;" /><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #1e1915; margin: 0px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #1e1915;">Listening to this in audiobook - hearing McCurdy's voice crack through certain chapters - was such an emotionally wringing experience. Hearing her bring a certain charisma to chapters in which she presents events back in her childish innocence stage, of defending her mother's horrendously weighted and projected child-star expectation on her was really disarming. Even more so when McCurdy details that sexual abuse, but again presents it in the child-like way she used to reason her mother's actions to herself. And the chapters in which McCurdy's mother teacher her daughter how to calorie-count, and gives her a blueprint for eating disorders ... again; it's McCurdy tapping back into her old mindset when she very matter-of-factly recounts these moments - and that makes them all the more confronting and terrifying.</span><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #1e1915; margin: 0px;" /><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #1e1915; margin: 0px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #1e1915;">This book was brilliant. I am so glad I listened to the audiobook though, because I think without McCurdy's warm, humorous voice carrying through the dark and sinister moments, I would probably have put this book down and decided 'too hard, not in the right mood,' - and I'd have really been missing out on what has become a truly important moment for celebrity memoir, and a deeply cathartic and honest read in its own right.</span></span></p><p><span style="background-color: white; color: #1e1915;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">5/5</span></span></p>Daniellehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08440460463119645788noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9005037379064329761.post-34380393868334082952023-04-09T12:25:00.006+10:002023-04-09T12:31:20.316+10:00'Anne Frank’s Diary: The Graphic Adaptation' by Anne Frank, adapted by Ari Folman, illustrated David Polonsky<p style="text-align: center;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiYhkvebj6yC0GwtZ5yw6aUTg60BKAIM5G6A7xoxSl0d1LPRJzFmXRKsw-uLtYaAhsTaM6y8ngB53BJ2ZAOxsj2E3Hsvtu_h_p0JFwkaSyh2k-98AY_eizjtKYs4cf7Whins7o7zy4No48HEs-iCC9af85qzHquhh3Fc1whZ2pgm2aMmCOx0ETsthRNVQ/s5000/9780241978641.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><img border="0" data-original-height="5000" data-original-width="3423" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiYhkvebj6yC0GwtZ5yw6aUTg60BKAIM5G6A7xoxSl0d1LPRJzFmXRKsw-uLtYaAhsTaM6y8ngB53BJ2ZAOxsj2E3Hsvtu_h_p0JFwkaSyh2k-98AY_eizjtKYs4cf7Whins7o7zy4No48HEs-iCC9af85qzHquhh3Fc1whZ2pgm2aMmCOx0ETsthRNVQ/w274-h400/9780241978641.jpeg" width="274" /></span></a></div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /> </span><p></p><p><b><span style="font-family: georgia;">From the BLURB:</span></b></p><p style="text-align: center;"><b><i><span style="font-family: georgia;">The graphic adaptation of one of the world's most-loved books</span></i></b></p><p><i><span style="font-family: georgia;">'June, 1942: I hope I will be able to confide everything to you, as I have never been able to confide in anyone, and I hope you will be a great source of comfort and support.' </span></i></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">In Amsterdam, in the summer of 1942, the Nazis forced teenager Anne Frank and her family into hiding. For over two years, they, another family and a German dentist lived in a 'secret annexe', fearing discovery. All that time, Anne kept a diary. The Diary of a Young Girl is an inspiring and tragic account of an ordinary life lived in extraordinary circumstances that has enthralled readers for generations. Anne Frank's Diary: The Graphic Novel is a stunning new adaptation of one of the greatest books of the last century.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">‘<a href="https://www.penguin.com.au/books/anne-franks-diary-the-graphic-adaptation-9780241978641" target="_blank">Anne Frank’s Diary: The Graphic Adaptation’</a> by Anne Frank, adapted by Air Folman and illustrated by David Polonsky, came out with Penguin Random House in 2018. As of this month – the book is <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/anne-frank-book-removed-florida-school-b2316103.html" target="_blank">removed and banned from some Florida schools</a>. Because a group of parents linked to the Republican Party, who complained over its ‘sexually explicit’ material, and a suggestion that it minimizes the events of the Holocaust. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">I’ve owned this edition for a long time, as someone who read Anne Frank’s diary when I was about the same age Anne was – 13 – when she started writing it. It’s one of those books that I think fundamentally changed me, and opened up the history of World War II in such a way as to hammer home the horrors of it, for regular people. I’ve seen most of the film and TV adaptations, and can vividly remember being shown the Elizabeth Taylor 1959 film in school. Anne Frank’s Diary, her story, remains one of those that remade me as a human-being, and set my moral compass from an early age. I have deep wells of joy, respect and grief for this book and its author, and I always will. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">I even visited the Anne Frank Museum in Amsterdam in 2008, a truly remarkable experience I’m privileged and grateful to have marked – because it had been something I’d longed to do since I was a young girl reading this other young girl’s thoughts, feelings, and memories for the first time. While there, I replaced my battered childhood copy with the 60th anniversary edition. </span></p><p style="text-align: center;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhytve37_Lpo_qHQ7SYuTmYmvCtINi5Qddo9mDrObkkPOMEs-X5ZkeZztQWgjbi762PRYd4CTGNKHUIXk3xLCQgGdi4GwJQ7AGfI-mH7TxBgeRN49y-Bl3u50kVeUUOG---di4Xb8ufWV0gag_0XkCBEbJZtF-M-I355EIEeg7sIqdp44lDkr47-D5CuQ/s2699/IMG_7226.JPG" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2699" data-original-width="1859" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhytve37_Lpo_qHQ7SYuTmYmvCtINi5Qddo9mDrObkkPOMEs-X5ZkeZztQWgjbi762PRYd4CTGNKHUIXk3xLCQgGdi4GwJQ7AGfI-mH7TxBgeRN49y-Bl3u50kVeUUOG---di4Xb8ufWV0gag_0XkCBEbJZtF-M-I355EIEeg7sIqdp44lDkr47-D5CuQ/w275-h400/IMG_7226.JPG" width="275" /></a></div><br /><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">When I heard that there was a graphic novel coming out, I thought it was a wonderful idea. A way to bring Anne Frank’s story to a new generation – and in vivid, visual colour. Yes, it would be interpreting Anne’s words with images she herself did not draw – but it would add new dimensions to her very personal diary, and make it accessible in an entirely new way and for even more readers; something I think Anne (a great lover of movies and magazines, who cut out images and posters and stuck them to her annexe wall) would have delighted in. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">And this graphic novel is – it must be said – stunning. I should really stop being surprised at how the graphic format elevates and opens up a text; the way it makes for a deeper, more critical intertextual reading because it’s asking you to marry text with images (something we all do on the daily) but the ways your brain has to fire up to connect what you’re reading and seeing, to sometimes realise that the images bely the text … that’s especially true here, and done masterfully. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">For one; David Polonsky is illustrating a great deal of rumour, imagination, and heady cocktails of fear informed by fantasy on behalf of Anne, both before she goes into hiding with her family and after. For instance; when her uncle arrives in Amsterdam from Hamburg, bringing word of how horrific life is for Jews in Germany now. Because this scene and its panels are Anne listening to her uncle recounting his first-person and firsthand experiences of the night of Kristallnacht, and the mass book-burnings; the drawings do reflect what we’ve seen in history books, and from photographs of the time. But very cleverly when the same uncle mentions rumours of a labor camp in Dachau (which he hasn’t seen, only heard about) and where people who are “not German enough,” are being sent - Anne says she can only imagine. And here Polonsky draws on and interprets that imagination – he uses Anne’s Jewish background to fill in the aspects of this horrific rumour that her mind can barely comprehend; and we see a call back to time before the Biblical story of Exodus, with modern-day Jews building a pyramid in the image of The Reichsadler ("Imperial Eagle") being overseen in their slavery by an SS guard. It’s a clever encapsulating of Anne’s currently childlike understanding of the bounds of human cruelty … looking at it with our modern knowledge though; of how truly barbaric Dachau was, part of a Nazi plan to solve ‘the Jewish question’ – this image is also working to signal that people in Amsterdam, upon the German invasion in 1940, really had no idea what was coming. </span></p><p style="text-align: center;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhWuBKjou02UZrjD_HKTsMMLI9eL_H2-Yfl7ywnwSLF7CmARzQPFdcBS4VPjy7-ePzDA7mUV8gU5BV5i3eVF0joLyIH94RTFtiepM9RANFImNMeKcsifxDNyiv8WlAGq6MUlBnw-usrazMBvsFPPQ6WOK6hgCub1SSeFaCulH6FQ7HfRdXp515v5dtTfg/s2834/IMG_7216.JPG" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2834" data-original-width="1770" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhWuBKjou02UZrjD_HKTsMMLI9eL_H2-Yfl7ywnwSLF7CmARzQPFdcBS4VPjy7-ePzDA7mUV8gU5BV5i3eVF0joLyIH94RTFtiepM9RANFImNMeKcsifxDNyiv8WlAGq6MUlBnw-usrazMBvsFPPQ6WOK6hgCub1SSeFaCulH6FQ7HfRdXp515v5dtTfg/w250-h400/IMG_7216.JPG" width="250" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgiDwGF7cqiELo6n1g4VONIWhJZdSOjRTBhbmXRqF5akeJWRduF9AVClWSfQuqG3GRhqeutgdbCds5xESysXH2Sp9m2J3dxos8VdSN7CLVtSE1QKJ5wgtbuDTNU83uncpKdIXuJyOsERx53ErVsjS7EN4uMDTa_MFXybYiRzoi9HkIxosdox9_nMEENDQ/s1754/IMG_7217.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1392" data-original-width="1754" height="318" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgiDwGF7cqiELo6n1g4VONIWhJZdSOjRTBhbmXRqF5akeJWRduF9AVClWSfQuqG3GRhqeutgdbCds5xESysXH2Sp9m2J3dxos8VdSN7CLVtSE1QKJ5wgtbuDTNU83uncpKdIXuJyOsERx53ErVsjS7EN4uMDTa_MFXybYiRzoi9HkIxosdox9_nMEENDQ/w400-h318/IMG_7217.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br /><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">This happens again, when one of the ‘annexe angels’ – Miep Gies – who helped the families in their hiding, recounts seeing one of her Jewish neighbours being taken away by soldiers. She also says that she met someone who’d managed to escape from a concentration camp – who tells her that the neighbour has probably been herded into one of the cattle trains to Westerbork … again; at this point, Anne and her family have no knowledge of what happens once these Jews go to the transit and concentration camps. She writes in her diary of them getting little food and water, of the poor lavatory conditions – alongside these musings, Polonsky has drawn an image of people snaking off one of these cattle trains, and lining up for food being served by white-hat chefs – this is as far as Anne’s knowledge and imagination can go, conceiving of terrible conditions. And to see this page is a gut-punch, because it’s so clearly the imagination of a girl who has no idea how bad things can get, will get. Polonsky has put a small dent in Anne’s too-innocent interpretation of what these “camps” can be – by placing gas tanks in the corner, with hoses running to the innocuous bunk houses. But it’s just off the page – in the corner – a creeping sense of dread and foreshadowing. </span></p><p style="text-align: center;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhwOzVQkW0fRRs1b3-HjgfIi5pNHDoqPmWQLnOf4YyMnv5rptyls0P8nQXiSx5nbFZ1Ba9ZLERCOyWeRP-rE8K65d4ri2C-5hSKEAmfpc0mCdB515X7cmCFPwxNatW-AlmyGZq8fTX4wXvL0ObThjtBkeCm0n1QOsQcA4BGw7U0TKquspcs2dU8w-kScQ/s2856/IMG_7220.JPG" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2856" data-original-width="1757" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhwOzVQkW0fRRs1b3-HjgfIi5pNHDoqPmWQLnOf4YyMnv5rptyls0P8nQXiSx5nbFZ1Ba9ZLERCOyWeRP-rE8K65d4ri2C-5hSKEAmfpc0mCdB515X7cmCFPwxNatW-AlmyGZq8fTX4wXvL0ObThjtBkeCm0n1QOsQcA4BGw7U0TKquspcs2dU8w-kScQ/w246-h400/IMG_7220.JPG" width="246" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjUrcQaGuRakolkPfOo6xSIQcp5oDAIyG4vXqprRS2gkb25PfAeiayZL0mzrh9RUu_Bx5FzV0b3PNYasQR9YIBms0tLboZMcvDWSKIFtYX3jNOAGG987tV5ge8w-XpIlzqwLINtDIFeEzb3rqy1HAPZGVuk6nNGybyx_phOQxa06nBP2cImbDIPapN8rA/s2863/IMG_7221.JPG" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2863" data-original-width="1753" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjUrcQaGuRakolkPfOo6xSIQcp5oDAIyG4vXqprRS2gkb25PfAeiayZL0mzrh9RUu_Bx5FzV0b3PNYasQR9YIBms0tLboZMcvDWSKIFtYX3jNOAGG987tV5ge8w-XpIlzqwLINtDIFeEzb3rqy1HAPZGVuk6nNGybyx_phOQxa06nBP2cImbDIPapN8rA/w245-h400/IMG_7221.JPG" width="245" /></a></div><br /><p></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Ari Folman and Polonsky has done a brilliant job of condensing Anne’s diary into the quicker pace necessary for a graphic novel – for instance, Anne’s many passages and pages feeling inadequate in comparison to her older, kinder, smarter, more beautiful (to her mind) sister Margot, are eloquently and silently rendered in a page of comedic comparisons between the two – the silence, the absence of text, here also works for the annexe setting, where Anne says they spend much of their day paranoid about not making a noise (and even her pen scratching in her diary sets the other residents on-edge, for fear that they’ll be found out because of it – and even worse, that the diary exists as tangible proof and account of their subterfuge, and that of their co-conspirators and saviours). </span></p><p style="text-align: center;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhQLiUdQvlEBlokU3JJqrWjLoYaDpjTGhcU0a6SgJ7SXqWTFoq_Adm2nOAzodIWdD1V3NB5OFc1JNljYrbI6kqy3i3eQ4Wsk6fg68KeL8cevDLdjTwJMZAdMDaR4Hpp1F3RiIGbjBZR4ZtLoWJhZ4iIUU-ze1jCP3AoFrIwCr9uIgbIMN9gcmdw76K_xg/s2844/IMG_7218.JPG" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2844" data-original-width="1764" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhQLiUdQvlEBlokU3JJqrWjLoYaDpjTGhcU0a6SgJ7SXqWTFoq_Adm2nOAzodIWdD1V3NB5OFc1JNljYrbI6kqy3i3eQ4Wsk6fg68KeL8cevDLdjTwJMZAdMDaR4Hpp1F3RiIGbjBZR4ZtLoWJhZ4iIUU-ze1jCP3AoFrIwCr9uIgbIMN9gcmdw76K_xg/w248-h400/IMG_7218.JPG" width="248" /></a></div><br /><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Something else that Folman and Polonsky do exceedingly well here is mapping Anne’s evolution of girlhood and womanhood. Yes, they’ve edited the original diary text and they haven’t included *everything* (because to do so would equate from a text-only of 400 or so pages, to roughly double that becoming 800 pages if they had to diligently interpret all of that and transpose text plus images …) but they’ve kept in what is most crucial. And Anne’s maturing and explorations of her body, her feelings, and her mind are incredibly intrinsic to the spirit of the Diary, and Anne herself. So they have kept in the passages of her recounting asking her friend Jacque if they could show each other their breasts, and her desire to kiss her – of her saying that she finds statues of female nudes, throw her into ecstasy … they also include her developing a close friendship and romance with fellow annexe-dweller, Peter – while also pining for the boys she used to flirt and go with before the war. </span></p><p style="text-align: center;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgwpy3rP4Qk2B9xOM4h7fD_uhvBVO9ztSDSIjsqW-s0kL5LsA0leXTsUxZDudOderfMljQo4iVKFJPv5lap-i0F0wnsq1xHJ8J23-7H0wPLjdHOmbzxAh2C31EOG-U2P4QbvoxvC7-EoH9oNUNoeYzvq-f_kuxi6g-hzb-FeXjEjc5evNnpB2zaTf1mtQ/s2815/IMG_7223.JPG" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2815" data-original-width="1782" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgwpy3rP4Qk2B9xOM4h7fD_uhvBVO9ztSDSIjsqW-s0kL5LsA0leXTsUxZDudOderfMljQo4iVKFJPv5lap-i0F0wnsq1xHJ8J23-7H0wPLjdHOmbzxAh2C31EOG-U2P4QbvoxvC7-EoH9oNUNoeYzvq-f_kuxi6g-hzb-FeXjEjc5evNnpB2zaTf1mtQ/w254-h400/IMG_7223.JPG" width="254" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjx79o00NYezvp5LLm3B95fmDHDPiQbKwhqi4JfLI2cyAvRNaa5-JWbPWAdz0-aDdic-xwBBKj0gP5xroP50Be8jwVL6hFFodvA8KysvKN0eu04JEQ_eFPDY883eQTgdnDLhG5hpMJw1PZbiupsA9DWi9d4-ls5OaFl71oDSNKLCZa6_2pRjgcHnzkH9w/s2709/IMG_7224.JPG" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2709" data-original-width="1853" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjx79o00NYezvp5LLm3B95fmDHDPiQbKwhqi4JfLI2cyAvRNaa5-JWbPWAdz0-aDdic-xwBBKj0gP5xroP50Be8jwVL6hFFodvA8KysvKN0eu04JEQ_eFPDY883eQTgdnDLhG5hpMJw1PZbiupsA9DWi9d4-ls5OaFl71oDSNKLCZa6_2pRjgcHnzkH9w/w274-h400/IMG_7224.JPG" width="274" /></a></div><br /><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Why? Why is Anne’s budding sexuality and this sense of self so important to the story? </span></p><p style="text-align: center;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh6QlkBR4JpK7glPgET1hLEGzMQUxYcH0C9K9FQzEmgWWhHmq1d-0RPbZdirdik0o12SeP63dln3PjCt3eS6Ghnpp0t8QTTswKoKY6reTrb9h2DPXIjk2Hlmu5y5AHVQpakhiESyvyy3YzUCYqLLqvuCYDau3e79lZihzIIk8JHMuNx4oUsDy489XNhqA/s2668/IMG_7225.JPG" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2668" data-original-width="1881" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh6QlkBR4JpK7glPgET1hLEGzMQUxYcH0C9K9FQzEmgWWhHmq1d-0RPbZdirdik0o12SeP63dln3PjCt3eS6Ghnpp0t8QTTswKoKY6reTrb9h2DPXIjk2Hlmu5y5AHVQpakhiESyvyy3YzUCYqLLqvuCYDau3e79lZihzIIk8JHMuNx4oUsDy489XNhqA/w283-h400/IMG_7225.JPG" width="283" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><i><b><u>the same text, from the 60th Anniversary edition of the Diary</u></b></i></span></div><br /><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">I’d argue because it makes her human. Not some out-of-reach martyr but a regular girl with perfectly normal and relatable thoughts and feelings – who desired to spend a year in London and Paris one day, more than she yearned to settle down and get married … but who died in February or March of 1945 at the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, at the age of 15.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">And this is the true beauty and tragedy of Anne Frank’s Diary. What I first discovered it as a teenage girl, roughly the same age Anne was when she wrote it – the knowledge that a girl who sounded like me; who had the same thoughts, fears, frustrations, curiosities, worries, and desires as me, despite us living decades apart – that that same girl could be vilified and died, all because of her faith … it hits so much harder. She was one person amongst the six million European Jews, and at least five million prisoners of war, Romany, Jehovah’s Witnesses, homosexuals, and other victims of the Holocaust – and to get to know her via the diary, was to lose her. To feel the loss of someone so vibrant and funny, bratty and capricious, talented and brave. It’s almost too much to think of what – and who – was lost in the Holocaust, who was brutally taken and what the world would look like today if this travesty had been avoided. We compartmentalise, to a degree, and think of Anne Frank – one among millions – taken too soon, and what a loss to humanity that is. ‘Anne’s diary ends here,’ are among some of the most tragic words in modern literature. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Otto and Anne Frank knew the power of her own words too. He knew that his daughter’s diary was one way to put a human face on the tragedy of the Holocaust – because that became Anne’s intention too. In my 60th anniversary edition, the foreword mentions that one night in the annexe and using their secret radio – the families heard Gerrit Bolkestein (a member of the Dutch government-in-exile, broadcasting from London) spoke about wanting to gather eyewitness accounts of the suffering of the Dutch people under German occupation. All eyes turned to Anne (and she recounts this in her diary) – to which she starts going back and adding in passages to what she’s already written, tidying up certain sections, and crossing-out more mundane entries. This creates a second diary, effectively, so we have Diary A and Diary B. </span></p><p style="text-align: center;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhh0FYLFwiA1ggpKEpMSpIsRfAnUa0OmxBl-gYqDK5b0N9GNH5wVUAx-XSBvt_vwVBt7KZ_iRmMdGCcRr6lvKzdLaVZDIUaWrNY_gx-g9t18Bwo5ynURPZDkRlFiJ3t2aPTfuvQekGsAKytsVwp82EEzqfKxJyGa00pPyw4ZUaRWqHN6ehfNmJdcCqW3w/s2771/IMG_7215.JPG" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2771" data-original-width="1811" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhh0FYLFwiA1ggpKEpMSpIsRfAnUa0OmxBl-gYqDK5b0N9GNH5wVUAx-XSBvt_vwVBt7KZ_iRmMdGCcRr6lvKzdLaVZDIUaWrNY_gx-g9t18Bwo5ynURPZDkRlFiJ3t2aPTfuvQekGsAKytsVwp82EEzqfKxJyGa00pPyw4ZUaRWqHN6ehfNmJdcCqW3w/w261-h400/IMG_7215.JPG" width="261" /></a></div><br /><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">When Otto Frank returns to Amsterdam – the sole survivor of the annexe – he discovers that Miep Gies has saved Anne’s diaries, never having read them. Otto decides to honour Anne’s wishes, and edits the diaries with the intention of sending them to a Dutch publisher – he particularly edits out real names of people who don’t wish to be included, he doesn’t transpose certain pages about Anne’s mother (whom she had a fraught relationship with) and the more vicious takes she had on the likes of Mrs Van Daan and Albert Dussel (a combination of Anne’s signature quick-wit and quicker temper, made more volatile by living in close-quarters). And because this was a conservative time still, Otto edits out the more sexually-charged passages – since it’s really not the fashion to mention sex at all (don’t be shocked by this – there’s literally a British obscenity trial held in 1960, over the publication of ‘Lady Chatterley's Lover’ by D. H. Lawrence). The version that Otto collates becomes ‘version C’ of the diary. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">The Dutch version is published in 1947, but it’s not translated into English until 1952 (if you want some idea of what a slow-sensation it was, it definitely had a slow-burn, word-of-mouth and rose in popularity). But it absolutely made an impact once it was translated more widely – again in my 60th anniversary edition, a quote from Martin Gilbert (one of the world's pre-eminent historians of the Holocaust); ‘Her story came to symbolize not only the travails of the Holocaust, but the struggle of the human spirit in adversity … Bergen-Belsen was liberated by British troops in April 1945. One of them wrote to me recently: “I was too late to save Anne Frank.” That shows the impact that her story has made, and will continue to make.’ </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">And make no mistake; there was power in releasing the Diary, not least because antisemitism and post-war propaganda abounded, and this somewhat combatted it. As much antisemitism as existed in the years leading up to, and during World War II, it didn’t just evaporate with VE Day. And post-war lies started as soon as Germany fell; the idea that regular Germans didn’t know what was happening to Jews and other minorities and intellectuals targeted by the Nazis? A post-war lie. Heck, even upon publication, rumours began that Anne Frank’s diary was a hoax; to the point that when he died in 1980, Otto Frank willed his daughter’s manuscripts – the diaries – to the Netherlands Institute for War Documentation, who ordered a thorough investigation into their authenticity … and found them to be the real deal. And in fact from the versions a, b and c a new edition – ‘The Critical Edition’ was released, which also contains biographies of the annexe families and the Frank’s in particular. And it has become a legacy of both the Anne Frank Foundation, and Anne Frank Museum to spread the word of Anne Frank’s life and Diary, to ensure the text is as widely accessible as possible, for all time. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">So imagine my horror when I hear that Jennifer Pippin, the chair of the Indian River chapter of "Moms for Liberty," <a href="https://www.thepinknews.com/2023/04/07/florida-moms-for-liberty-anne-frank-comic-ban-school-library/" target="_blank">opposed the graphic novel in Florida school libraries</a> for ‘sexually explicit,’ material and – my blood boiling at this point – an accusation that it “minimizes” the Holocaust. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Such accusations are baseless and cowardice. It suggests a lack of literacy and common-sense that could only be course-corrected by listening more, and speaking less. But to be clear; Moms for Liberty is a conservative nonprofit that portrays itself as a grassroots parent organisation, but in reality has numerous ties to the Republican Party – and ulterior motives galore. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">This banning and the accusations heaped on the text are not about preserving young, innocent minds or ensuring a robust education about the horrors of the Holocaust. You know how I know it’s not about that? Because after ‘Adolf Hitler,’ Anne Frank’s name is probably the most-associated with the true horrors of WWII and the human travesty and shame of the Holocaust. Anne Frank and her diary have done more to spread awareness about antisemitism (that still rages to this day) and put a human face to the unfathomable grief and horror of that war, than anyone else in human history … It’s not about this graphic novel. There is nothing shameful or sinister in Ari Folman and David Polonsky’s version. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Moms for Liberty – when that word means; ‘the state of being free within society from oppressive restrictions imposed by authority on one's way of life, behaviour, or political views.’ What a noxious and pathetic lot they are. The only shame here exists for Jennifer Pippin and “Moms for Liberty,” who have more in common with Anne Frank’s captors and tormentors, than with Anne herself. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">The graphic novel is a glorious read that delights in showing the funny, robust, capricious and captivating life of Anne Frank during the darkest of times in human history – bringing her to life for a whole new generation, and in a newly accessible, visual format. ‘Anne’s diary ends here,’ but the lessons of it continue and will reach far and wide – if we fight for it. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">5/5 </span></p><p><br /></p>Daniellehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08440460463119645788noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9005037379064329761.post-21035760732838976672023-04-02T11:20:00.005+10:002023-04-02T11:20:34.858+10:00'how to make a basket' by Jazz Money<p style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"> </span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjl9HZ7b4EOvA4y5kEhauFKa3w7sPmwCno7LvaRjD4DfG-8Qb5dfX94KAYKRuwATg-sfg-IiMCj0GFCwj1FnoJcbbZnsP8plyk2SPAPlZdHUi4mruNqYpg48IlOvbwqaqNX-9u37yP19UfBN30dv-T3cFzxks8R-mFt7ryuLG_hLLzuO5mKjigPeJWwnw/s1465/RGB-digital-Cover_how-to-make-a-basket_9780702263385.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1465" data-original-width="1000" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjl9HZ7b4EOvA4y5kEhauFKa3w7sPmwCno7LvaRjD4DfG-8Qb5dfX94KAYKRuwATg-sfg-IiMCj0GFCwj1FnoJcbbZnsP8plyk2SPAPlZdHUi4mruNqYpg48IlOvbwqaqNX-9u37yP19UfBN30dv-T3cFzxks8R-mFt7ryuLG_hLLzuO5mKjigPeJWwnw/w273-h400/RGB-digital-Cover_how-to-make-a-basket_9780702263385.jpeg" width="273" /></span></a></div><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><b>From the BLURB: </b></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Simmering with protest and boundless love, Jazz Money’s David Unaipon Award-winning collection, <i>how to make a basket</i>, examines the tensions of living in the Australian colony today. By turns scathing, funny and lyrical, Money uses her poetry as an extension of protest against the violence of the colonial state, and as a celebration of Blak and queer love. Deeply personal and fiercely political, these poems attempt to remember, reimagine and re-voice history. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Writing in both Wiradjuri and English language, Money explores how places and bodies hold memories, and the ways our ancestors walk with us, speak through us and wait for us.</span></p><p><i><span style="font-family: georgia;"></span></i></p><blockquote><span style="font-family: georgia;"><i>it starts with smoke, it always starts with smoke</i> ... </span></blockquote><p></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">I was in the city the other day and knew I'd have time to burn, so I took Jazz Money's 2021 University of Queensland Press poetry collection with me, and went to the Fitzroy Gardens to read. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">I am long-overdue in coming to the page here, though I bought the book when it first came out. But I am glad that I waited for the right time and feeling to be open to this remarkable collection - and it did indeed feel cathartic and prophetic to read it when I did, on a bright Melbourne day in the Fitzroy Gardens ... </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">And how accurate in a collection about "the tensions of living in the Australian colony today," that I did read it in those Gardens - near where Cooks' Cottage (a house where the parents of James Cook lived, brought from England in the 1930s) presides, in tribute to the coloniser. In the gardens where blue gums were removed to make way for sweeping lawns and ornamental flowerbeds (to look like some place other than here, it seems). Don't get me wrong, it's beautiful but - it's colony. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">And just as Money's collection opens with smoke and the <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-54700074" target="_blank">Djab Wurrung sacred birthing trees</a> in Victoria (<i>mother burred at the belly swollen as the great trees come to this place</i>) which the Andrews government bulldozed to make way for a new highway in 2020, ... they - we - lost something, to the colony. To progress and control. Infrastructure and destruction. Money is exploring this constantly in beauty and horror throughout the collection, and it's an absolute powerful and masterful gut-punch. </span></p><p><i><span style="font-family: georgia;"></span></i></p><blockquote><p><i><span style="font-family: georgia;">Lilac sky swollen </span></i></p><p><i><span style="font-family: georgia;">lights. A slick black car </span></i></p><p><i><span style="font-family: georgia;">on slick black roads. </span></i></p></blockquote><p> </p><blockquote><p><i><span style="font-family: georgia;">Stars don't shine in this town </span></i></p><p><i><span style="font-family: georgia;">only satellites </span></i></p><p><i><span style="font-family: georgia;">humankind's wandering wonders. </span></i></p><p><i><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></i></p><p><i><span style="font-family: georgia;">I'd rather wish on circuits</span></i></p><p><i><span style="font-family: georgia;">than lost black stars </span></i></p><p></p></blockquote><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Outstanding.</span></p>Daniellehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08440460463119645788noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9005037379064329761.post-13791604881716945922023-03-26T14:08:00.008+11:002023-03-26T14:08:57.357+11:00'Gender Queer: A Memoir' Deluxe Edition by Maia Kobabe<p style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"> </span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjlGoXWYMJizB6pqsTf0Q7had-sbporg5PLn62rRv4octywVmYBRciTJBRzhUStUcswNpjyJUWgntDRe3MO7oC0Sqm7r9FCVUSvqJytaM00elHgg1P9DSlxo-V7M5-hVPJYvIk-_aFhkj-3zkJqeqM1fRW_jHcd3GKhmGVglQ3SysHgn1YcbFVWtp9EAg/s900/gender-queer-a-memoir-deluxe-edition-9781637150726_xlg.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><img border="0" data-original-height="900" data-original-width="635" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjlGoXWYMJizB6pqsTf0Q7had-sbporg5PLn62rRv4octywVmYBRciTJBRzhUStUcswNpjyJUWgntDRe3MO7oC0Sqm7r9FCVUSvqJytaM00elHgg1P9DSlxo-V7M5-hVPJYvIk-_aFhkj-3zkJqeqM1fRW_jHcd3GKhmGVglQ3SysHgn1YcbFVWtp9EAg/w283-h400/gender-queer-a-memoir-deluxe-edition-9781637150726_xlg.jpeg" width="283" /></span></a></div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><b>From the BLURB: </b></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><i><span style="background-color: white; color: #0a0a0a;">In 2014, Maia Kobabe, who uses e/em/eir pronouns, thought that a comic of reading statistics would be the last autobiographical comic e would ever write. At the time, it was the only thing e felt comfortable with strangers knowing about em. Then e created </span><span style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; color: #0a0a0a;">Gender Queer</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #0a0a0a;">. Maia’s intensely cathartic autobiography charts eir journey of self-identity, which includes the mortification and confusion of adolescent crushes, grappling with how to come out to family and society, bonding with friends over erotic gay fan fiction, and facing the trauma and fundamental violation of pap smears. Started as a way to explain to eir family what it means to be nonbinary and asexual, </span><span style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; color: #0a0a0a;">Gender Queer</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #0a0a0a;"> is more than a personal story: It is a useful and touching guide on gender identity—what it means and how to think about it—for advocates, friends, and humans everywhere.</span><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; color: #0a0a0a;" /></i></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">'Gender Queer: A Memoir' by American graphic novelist Maia Kobabe came out in 2019, and has been on my radar since then, but I just never got around to getting my hands on it ... until an incident happened at a Queensland (Australian) public library that put the book back in my periphery in a big way; <i><a href="https://www.9news.com.au/national/maia-kobabe-gender-queer-a-memoir-book-under-review-classification-board-faces-potential-ban/13afc8b4-5e78-4989-857b-38ffb8fee9da" target="_blank">Gender identity memoir removed from Queensland library shelf, referred to classification board</a></i></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">The book is (as of March 26, 2023) still with the Australian Classifications Board (ACB) as far as I know and has been reported by the media here; </span><span style="font-family: georgia;"><i><a href="https://www.9news.com.au/national/gender-queer-maia-kobabe-book-under-review-by-australian-classification-board/2a246513-cf7a-4b56-9fb0-e2fa09328daf" target="_blank">Clock ticking on 'Gender Queer' censorship decision</a></i>. </span><span style="font-family: georgia;">And now having read the beautiful deluxe hardcover edition, for the first time ... I can only hope with my whole heart that common-sense and common-good prevails; and some of that bending towards justice happens, because this book is glorious and to deny the opportunity of young readers in particular to find the generosity of Kobabe sharing their story within its pages, would be an absolute travesty. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Maia Kobabe uses e/em/eir pronouns – also referred to as Spivak pronouns - they are nonbinary, and queer and 'Gender Queer' is the memoir of how they fit the pieces of themselves together like a puzzle over the course of their child and young adulthood. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">What is particularly wonderful and connecting in the story, and makes the possible censorship ban in Queensland (and elsewhere, since the novel has been challenged in many schools across the US too) that much more saddening, is the fact that Kobabe really acknowledges the roles that pop-culture and fandom played in them figuring out who they are. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">I mean; 'Gender Queer' is a veritable *feast* of geekery - I myself was delighted to see references made to 'Strangers in Paradise' by Terry Moore, Archive of Our Own FanFiction writing, Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett, NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Mont), 'Supernatural,' Tamora Pierce, 'Lord of the Rings,' One Direction, and David Bowie plus many, many more ... and perhaps - ironically, painfully - is the inclusion of how much the 'Harry Potter' fandom meant to Kobabe. It was a desire to finish those novels faster than their mother was reading one-chapter-a-night that pushed them to become a truly independent reader. But a figuring out of themselves via the media they consume plays such a big part in the story. </span></p><p style="text-align: center;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjuNgGbQ7UiHLfC2ZrNgLvMQdOErWDgsCOn3TC-DzdLEQ0ZYTTTidZ-oKRhBvxn_nkC6JLxdSGYklGaWu-YVNzjUol_P9Qlh2U8aaYAzfkG_WvTbQlBBmflQnNBjDAWOeNLk5ABWRqqYox77bwYgj_5evA_SCLa_ZKO5d0bMc938vE7CxqdIGHbfguQaQ/s4032/IMG_6304.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="4032" data-original-width="3024" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjuNgGbQ7UiHLfC2ZrNgLvMQdOErWDgsCOn3TC-DzdLEQ0ZYTTTidZ-oKRhBvxn_nkC6JLxdSGYklGaWu-YVNzjUol_P9Qlh2U8aaYAzfkG_WvTbQlBBmflQnNBjDAWOeNLk5ABWRqqYox77bwYgj_5evA_SCLa_ZKO5d0bMc938vE7CxqdIGHbfguQaQ/w300-h400/IMG_6304.JPG" width="300" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgcDDTFedyECNunSjG08d6dzbjJmdTL8BX8JbuibraMlWipkf5urbWWAneqCKHR7wzMNmPrutyv6g04ejZpfmja3PHInJHt30wRyAGdR5K7vwST2vOXUmTYXGKQOTIwrdp14U-n6vWJTQkdVLPh8ZGwPdNiOG8BtGNIb3GsLaZvSTrVY0je8ZmedpEzqw/s4032/IMG_6305.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="4032" data-original-width="3024" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgcDDTFedyECNunSjG08d6dzbjJmdTL8BX8JbuibraMlWipkf5urbWWAneqCKHR7wzMNmPrutyv6g04ejZpfmja3PHInJHt30wRyAGdR5K7vwST2vOXUmTYXGKQOTIwrdp14U-n6vWJTQkdVLPh8ZGwPdNiOG8BtGNIb3GsLaZvSTrVY0je8ZmedpEzqw/w300-h400/IMG_6305.JPG" width="300" /></a></div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Of Bowie's music for instance, Kobabe write; <i>Bowie's music was the first that felt like mine</i>, within a joyous illustration of their teenage-self vibing to the music in the middle of outer-space with the sun blazing as hot as their new passion, a rocket-ship zooming by and planet Earth waiting to welcome them back down with this fundamental new understanding of themselves, that Bowie has just gifted them ... YES! That's exactly what art can do.</span></p><p style="text-align: center;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgHZ1kZ-QwWsaqQhQlUG5cS1BJNwJGC2hlyCHKImbtwwuy-WiNJQ4CdG1aM0mJKioFSlNiN6z8Onjn9LXdPZrUgiPO__CbbbXFCp4qA2XNum68WtciCnO2zvbMOfYOZoA8SnQChWzib3ivM9PfOv9WZVe8aPT6biAb0h4QFC4AwSD3mp52dRbua6O8cYA/s4032/IMG_6308.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="4032" data-original-width="3024" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgHZ1kZ-QwWsaqQhQlUG5cS1BJNwJGC2hlyCHKImbtwwuy-WiNJQ4CdG1aM0mJKioFSlNiN6z8Onjn9LXdPZrUgiPO__CbbbXFCp4qA2XNum68WtciCnO2zvbMOfYOZoA8SnQChWzib3ivM9PfOv9WZVe8aPT6biAb0h4QFC4AwSD3mp52dRbua6O8cYA/w300-h400/IMG_6308.JPG" width="300" /></a></div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Art changes people, and people change the world and I genuinely believe - I know! - that so many kids, parents, guardians, teachers, anyone! would be touched by this novel and have their understanding of gender and the binary lovingly, powerfully expanded through this tender tale. It's Kobabe rifling through their old diaries, fandoms, obsessions, crushes, and painful moments of body-awareness and self-discovery ... so generously gifted to the reader, and I myself was very thankful for the ways that they found to articulate and illustrate the complicated thoughts and feelings they were experiencing. I may not have had them myself, but I feel like I understand them because Kobabe writes with such patience and fortitude, I feel like my sympathy has grown. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">To deny the opportunities this book could bring would be the far greater injustice. It is perfectly aimed at older-teens in the young adult space, and to suggest it is inappropriate would be far more harmful. To all the young people who will see themselves within the pages, and no doubt feel the same sense of galaxy-bursting relief and happiness that Kobabe did upon hearing David Bowie for the first time.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">C'mon, ACB - <i>Let the children lose it, Let the children use it, Let all the children boogie</i> ...</span></p><p>5/5</p>Daniellehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08440460463119645788noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9005037379064329761.post-16370759833486086372023-03-18T11:14:00.004+11:002023-03-18T11:14:24.828+11:00'My Baba's Garden' By Jordan Scott, Illustrated by Sydney Smith<p><span style="font-family: georgia;"> </span></p><p style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj4adGt27FEIr3oxDfLDb1FkNXRnAQDESmvo9bd2LkMwbXuKIPpdrxrvUVYHhOVzsmjwrsSCMI9X86Jg0FPaPO5JZXWEP-wvvNO5EQHo4U0wL15Zsidif5tDFl6zStrJLogf_oZR9HmsslLfpeqH_x20bfin5fXBJGpvTrM5Zglu5xINBRJ_wK4scPmVw/s700/9780823450831.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><img border="0" data-original-height="700" data-original-width="700" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj4adGt27FEIr3oxDfLDb1FkNXRnAQDESmvo9bd2LkMwbXuKIPpdrxrvUVYHhOVzsmjwrsSCMI9X86Jg0FPaPO5JZXWEP-wvvNO5EQHo4U0wL15Zsidif5tDFl6zStrJLogf_oZR9HmsslLfpeqH_x20bfin5fXBJGpvTrM5Zglu5xINBRJ_wK4scPmVw/w400-h400/9780823450831.jpeg" width="400" /></span></a></p><p><b><span style="font-family: georgia;">From the BLURB: </span></b></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><i>The special relationship between a child and his grandmother is depicted in this sumptuous book by an award-winning team. </i></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><i>Inspired by memories of his childhood, Jordan Scott’s My Baba’s Garden explores the sights, sounds, and smells experienced by a child spending time with their beloved grandmother (Baba), with special attention to the time they spent helping her tend her garden, searching for worms to keep it healthy. He visits her every day and finds her hidden in the steam of boiling potatoes, a hand holding a beet, a leg opening a cupboard, an elbow closing the fridge, humming like a night full of bugs when she cooks. </i></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><i>Poet Jordan Scott and illustrator Sydney Smith’s previous collaboration, </i>I Talk Like a River<i>, which received a Boston Globe-Horn Book Award expored a cherished memory shared between a father and son. In their new book, they turn that same wistful appreciation to the bond between a boy and his grandmother. Sydney Smith’s illustrations capture the sensational impressions of a child’s memory with iconic effect.</i></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">In 2020 I read author Jordan Scott and illustrator Sydney Smith's debut picture-book together, <i><a href="http://alphareader.blogspot.com/2021/03/i-talk-like-river-written-by-jordan.html" target="_blank">I Talk Like a River </a></i>- about a young boy frustrated with his stutter, being taken on a day-trip by his Dad to reconnect with nature and learn to go slow, and take it easy on himself. </span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">That book - beautiful, gentle and empathetic - ended up winning the Schneider Family Book Award, and it has lived in me ever since. It was a perfect picture-book, and all the more powerful for being based on Scott's childhood which he wrote about in a short letter at the back of the book; about how is Dad would pick him up from school on "bad speech days," and how now as an adult he sees his stutter as a beautiful part of himself and how he communicates. </span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">I have been waiting for a second book from the duo ever since, and now it's finally here in 'My Baba's Garden' and it's just as stunning and powerful. </span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">This time in a letter at the start, Scott writes about 'My Baba' - explaining that this tale is also from his own childhood; of a young boy and his Polish grandmother who emigrated to Canada with her husband, the boy's Dziadek, after the terrible World War. The boy would be taken to his Baba's house (a renovated chicken coop beside a freeway) every day and she'd walk him to school; on rainy days being sure to pick up worms the weather scattered on the pavement, to be put to use in her beautiful and lush garden. </span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">The kicker - and connection to 'River' - is that the boy's Baba does not speak English, and he does not speak Polish. They communicate through touch, laughs, facial expressions and little rituals - like kissing food that's fallen on the floor, and then eating it immediately. </span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">This is another beautiful and timeless tale of communication and finding grace in ourselves and each other, the natural world, and little sacred rituals in the ever day to ground and connect us. Sydney Smith's darker illustrations with pops of red and yellow to draw the eye serve the story so beautifully, particularly in the rain-soaked pages where even droplets on windows are captured beautifully. </span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">I hope these two have more books in them, because I absolutely love being floored by the power and art in a story of such big ideas presented so tenderly through a child's lens. These two and their tales are *magical*!</span></div><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">5/5</span></p>Daniellehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08440460463119645788noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9005037379064329761.post-17761158827294455532023-02-19T11:48:00.006+11:002023-02-19T14:11:58.280+11:00'Compulsion' by Kate Scott<p style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"> </span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh42DIPdWmHSMZ9GbqrQ_C2gGGX41gGNqKWj9U3rTfzIjjZ3032jYQEaJCQH0HMVF3OloPTrCO09qCyVuoZ5bwqw_jbGGxDiYK2-wsOZrjMOFRifgys0NRH6wDlBV2WipMrjEzdCywK6fI-SJ20bBIvGXatHJTn8vjB2rG0AN5a7A05y_z1RLWuedpmCA/s2784/9781761046551.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2784" data-original-width="1825" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh42DIPdWmHSMZ9GbqrQ_C2gGGX41gGNqKWj9U3rTfzIjjZ3032jYQEaJCQH0HMVF3OloPTrCO09qCyVuoZ5bwqw_jbGGxDiYK2-wsOZrjMOFRifgys0NRH6wDlBV2WipMrjEzdCywK6fI-SJ20bBIvGXatHJTn8vjB2rG0AN5a7A05y_z1RLWuedpmCA/w263-h400/9781761046551.jpeg" width="263" /></span></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><i><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: x-small;">This novel was gifted to me by the publisher </span></i></div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><b>From the BLURB; </b></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><i>It’s the turn of the new millennium, and the bright young things are partying like it’s the end of the world. Dark glamour and debauched music reign, gigs culminating with everyone on stage – or undressed. Lucy, editor of a music magazine, is at the blazing neon centre, ecstatically seeking oblivion. But as her life (featuring a stalker, a not-quite ex-husband, and an affair with a cold, charismatic musician) veers from complicated to chaotic, she burns it all down, decamping to the remote seaside town of her childhood – to start again. </i></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><i>In Abergele, Lucy recreates her old existence in hothouse miniature. Past friends and compulsions reappear, along with new fascinations. One of them is Robin, photographer and lonely son of a famous producer. Recognising in each other a fellow exile and a rich source of distraction, they fall into step on daily rambles across the cliffs. Their charged conversations about music and philosophy function as both high-stakes flirtation and a stealth mechanism for understanding themselves, resulting in an intense bond that disarms them both. </i></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><b>Compulsion<i> is a razor-sharp debut about the transcendence of new highs, the allure of new lows, and the relentless power of our obsessions. Music, sex, food, drugs, fashion and nature coalesce to overwhelm the senses on every page.</i></b></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818;">'<a href="https://www.penguin.com.au/books/compulsion-9781761046551" target="_blank">Compulsion</a>' is the debut adult-fiction novel by Australian author Kate Scott, published by Penguin Random House and released in January of 2023.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818;">I was very kindly gifted this copy while I was attending a meeting at PRH, and getting a squiz at their new Melbourne office location. I had this one pressed into my hands as a great read if I wanted some Y2K nostalgia, given that this novel is set in 2003 and 2004 and very much speaking to my millennium young-adulthood (I also loved its purple </span><a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5960374/?ref_=nm_flmg_c_8_act" rel="nofollow noopener" style="background-color: white; color: #00635d;"><i>Vox Lux<i></i></i> </a><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818;">vibes!)</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818;">I don't know if the way I want to describe this novel is one the author will appreciate. Because I'm going to make a very millennial reference as a teenager of the early-00s that is such a specific pop-cultural definition of "cool" because it was so far removed from my actual life and youth (and yet I think the author was an *actual* cool person of the time, so might cringe at me reaching for this). Here it goes; ... imagine if </span><a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0840196/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0" rel="nofollow noopener" style="background-color: white; color: #00635d;"><i>Skins</i> </a><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818;">continued into the character's early-adulthood and their 20s. I'd also say there's a way I'd categorise this as a millennial </span><i style="background-color: white; color: #181818;">The Great Gatsby</i><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818;"> if the 'green light' everyone reaches for is the bygone era of the 80s which, they're all convinced had better music, drugs, and sex ... even as in the most meta-way possible they're currently toiling in a novel about nostalgia for the early-naughties (and so we all beat on). Maybe this is a Y2K </span><a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0181875/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0" rel="nofollow noopener" style="background-color: white; color: #00635d;"><i>Almost Famous<i> </i></i></a><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818;">in which some characters are trying to grasp at the new music-scene, the new way of talking, and writing about said scene.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818;">I don't know. There's a lot in here - but if you cook it all down, that logline is pretty accurate; </span><i style="background-color: white; color: #181818;">Set against the backdrop of the new millennium, a seductive summer read about obsession, sex, friendship and music from an exciting new talent.</i><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818;">It's basically a novel revolving around the characters of Lucy and Robin who find themselves in their hometown of Abergele, in Wales - Lucy is a music magazine editor trying to write her first book, and fleeing some toxic romantic entanglements, who retreats to the seaside town of her childhood. Robin is a photographer and son of a famous music producer, back in town to be by the bedside of a sick relative. They stumble and slide into each other (Robin happens to be maybe-dating one of Lucy's ex-classmates and mean girl-ish nemeses who still lives in town). They form a walking-friendship and then Lucy forms a little cohort of friends old and new who come to her dining table at least once a week for lavish dinners, deep-and-meaningfuls, drugs, booze, and rapid-fire music listacles.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818;">A good chunk of the novel is revelling in their revelry, getting across some hyper-specific and niche music opinions that kinda feels like those intense pop-culture asides in a Tarantino movie ... but eventually the path reveals itself, and there's a love story buried in here as Robin and Lucy flit and fumble towards some semblance of connection they're both clearly craving.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818;">Straight up; if you're not in the mood for this novel, it'll piss you off (but isn't that true of most things?) I just mean; this is a novel that is buoyed by language and nostalgia. Maybe because I was in that "this is </span><i style="background-color: white; color: #181818;">Skins</i><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818;">!" headspace, but reading the novel's thirst for nostalgia even as the characters are living in the moment, I was reminded of this bit by UK comedian Simons Amstell where he talks about being a teenager and running screaming through the streets with his friends and even then thinking; "this is fun, this is what being young looks like, I better remember this because this is definitely what being a teenager is all about," in this never-ending paranoia narration of remembering not to forget, and not living enough in the moment while you're trying to imprint the moment;</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818;" /><i style="background-color: white; color: #181818;"></i></span></p><blockquote><span style="font-family: georgia;"><i style="background-color: white; color: #181818;">Robin is struck by how beautiful everyone looks in the sky's humid matt-black embrace. He mustn't forget this, he thinks; he mustn't forget how young they are tonight.</i></span></blockquote><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818;">The novel is almost lackadaisical in its plotting, but manic in its language and dialogue - some of which is so *lush* and delectable. Some sentences made me gulp, they were so delicious on the page; </span></span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><i style="background-color: white; color: #181818;"><br /></i></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"></span></p><blockquote><span style="font-family: georgia;"><i style="background-color: white; color: #181818;">The air outside crackled and rasped. Our cab pulled away from the curb, and Anika opened the windows to drink in the dissolving afternoon. It carried the perfume of jasmine, frangipanis on the edge of rot, and trace elements of promise. The sunset gathered like a flock of flamingos and broke apart with fanfare.</i></span></blockquote><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818;">See, I read that as an Aussie ‘Weetzie Bat,’ some real Francesca Lia Block vibes. And I dig it!</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818;">But even as I admired and loved some of this writing, even I can admit - it gets a little overwrought (especially when the plot itself is so languid) and huge chunks of the novel do indeed read like whatever tome and ode to music that Lucy is working on for her manuscript, but I really could have just done without (the descriptions of a song could be beautiful, but rapid-fire espousals on niche and obscure musical references just made me feel deeply uncool and head-spinny).</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818;">The other part of this novel that I didn't get (but just rolled with) is ... it's set in Abergele - why? Like, the whole time I was thinking that it *sounds* Australian. I could picture this all happening in an Aussie seaside town. The characters sound Australian, to me. The early-00s being drawn is the Y2K I remember living through (and I grew up on the Mornington Peninsula) ... but then I'll be walloped over the head with "actually, this is Wales." And I'm not sure *why*? The author (I don't think?) has ever lived in Wales? (I see she's lived in Newcastle and Brisbane though, and YES! - that's what this place reads like!) Was Abergele just to settle my "this-is-an-ode-to-</span><i style="background-color: white; color: #181818;">Skins</i><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818;">" opinion even more? Maybe the songs and artists being referenced were mostly European (I honestly could not tell you, most of the references were over my head) so they thought that music-diet should inform location? Was it so that Lucy could more easily scoot over to Berlin to write about the concert scene over there?</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818;">The setting isn't really drawn out overly (like I said: I read most of this thinking it was Australia) and apart from Lucy casually throwing off a fisherman's jumper or the author outright saying she needed to return to Abergele, I really wasn't getting "Wales" from it? And it's a shame. I think this novel could have had a whole new life and appreciation had the author accepted and promoted it as a Gatsby does millennial Brisbane.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818;">Overall I really liked this when I was in the mood to pick it up. On a language and syntax level some of it is overwrought, but GOSH - is it fun! The author has a real talent that I look forward to tracking. Maybe 'Compulsion' is a little navel-gazey and too focused on sounding clever (much like the characters), and some aspects sound good on blurb but read empty on the page (like the aforementioned Abergele setting - nothing against Wales! But ... you're an Aussie author, embrace it!)</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818;">But as a debut I'm pretty impressed that the author has such a voice on them. I'm also not in the least surprised to discover the Kate Scott has come from the Zeitgeist Agency stable, who I think are very voice-y literary agents and tend to nail it (brava). This one rather tickled me, but maybe I'm just a millennial chasing that nostalgia-hit that Scott blows out so prettily ... if that sells it to you, then; this is like a </span><i style="background-color: white; color: #181818;">Skins</i><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818;"> redux for millennial adults.</span></span><p></p><p><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">4/5</span></span></p>Daniellehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08440460463119645788noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9005037379064329761.post-32235713512220013842023-01-15T12:21:00.001+11:002023-01-15T12:21:11.988+11:00'Spare' by Prince Harry, The Duke of Sussex audiobook (read by the author) ghost-writer, J.R. Moehringer <p style="text-align: center;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg6mogR8n9xb6xTOhFH80X8fY_Q5FGTvGK5F6zxHF6nA6K_k2JpMERuLdedSK4XRSL_RYr4_jsGIAweHQ6O1hSTWJ3YyOllcdG_Fw8yIa2QjD5kWFaBzzPeCQCKsbwlYxZFJ2sEcyGj6rDhHy5RFQb1IPvfMprryoGEgwfafyudYnFZgE-_vGkfIaxwRQ/s500/41sfJhqYs-L._SL500_.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="500" data-original-width="500" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg6mogR8n9xb6xTOhFH80X8fY_Q5FGTvGK5F6zxHF6nA6K_k2JpMERuLdedSK4XRSL_RYr4_jsGIAweHQ6O1hSTWJ3YyOllcdG_Fw8yIa2QjD5kWFaBzzPeCQCKsbwlYxZFJ2sEcyGj6rDhHy5RFQb1IPvfMprryoGEgwfafyudYnFZgE-_vGkfIaxwRQ/w400-h400/41sfJhqYs-L._SL500_.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br /><br /><p></p><p><b><span style="font-family: georgia;">From the BLURB:</span></b></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><i>It was one of the most searing images of the twentieth century: two young boys, two princes, walking behind their mother's coffin as the world watched in sorrow - and horror. As Diana, Princess of Wales, was laid to rest, billions wondered what the princes must be thinking and feeling - and how their lives would play out from that point on.</i></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><i>For Harry, this is that story at last.</i></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><i>With its raw, unflinching honesty, Spare is a landmark publication full of insight, revelation, self-examination, and hard-won wisdom about the eternal power of love over grief.</i></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><i>Prince Harry wishes to support British charities with donations from his proceeds from Spare. The Duke of Sussex has donated $1,500,000 to Sentebale, an organisation he founded with Prince Seeiso in their mothers' legacies, which supports vulnerable children and young people in Lesotho and Botswana affected by HIV/AIDS. Prince Harry will also donate to the non-profit organisation WellChild in the amount of £300,000. WellChild, which he has been Royal patron of for fifteen years, makes it possible for children and young people with complex health needs to be cared for at home instead of hospital, wherever possible.</i></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818;">‘Spare’ is indeed, the sensational memoir by Prince Harry – ghost-written by Pulitzer-prize winning author and journalist, J.R. Moehringer – and which is currently the fastest-selling nonfiction book of all time (according to Guinness World Records) having sold 1.43 million copies on its first day, unseating Barack Obama’s memoir record.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818;">With my agent hat on too; Harry's non-fiction book is also giving a good news boost to the most beleaguered bookish format of the pandemic, which desperately needed it (from 2022 roundup<a href="https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/bookselling/article/89818-is-the-book-sales-boom-finally-over.html" target="_blank">, </a></span><span style="color: #00635d;"><span style="background-color: white;"><a href="https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/bookselling/article/89818-is-the-book-sales-boom-finally-over.html" target="_blank">Publishers Weekly</a></span></span><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818;"><a href="https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/bookselling/article/89818-is-the-book-sales-boom-finally-over.html" target="_blank">; </a>"...with the largest drop coming in the industry’s biggest category, adult nonfiction, where print sales fell 10.3%.") A rising tide floats all boats, and the same way the Obama's memoirs boosted non-fiction sales the world over, so too is Harry's when the form has been floundering. Bravo, and many thanks!</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818;">I listened to the audiobook (which was a phenomenal experience in itself, highly recommend - and not just because at AUD$23 the iTunes audiobook is way cheaper than the RRP hardback at indie bookstores, a AUD$60 whopper!)</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818;">What immediately struck me about ‘Spare’ is how well-written it is. Once the Spanish translation dropped a week ahead of embargoed release, and the press (largely driven by the British media pack) started picking it apart with their teeth, they very much implied that it was a salacious piece of ‘Mommie Dearest,’-esque tat. But it’s not that. It’s ghost-written by J.R. Moehringer who is a Pulitzer prize-winning journalist, and it shows in evocative and haunting writing (early on there are descriptions of a childhood at Balmoral, like it’s a Highland Disneyland – full of beloved ghosts and legends – and from those evocative pages you just know you’re in very good storytelling hands.)</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818;">Moehringer also gifts ‘Spare’ with an important journalistic structure; that there is an argument and thematic through-line to the entire thing … which is; the breakdown of the 4th estate for their embedded relationship with the royal family, and the toxicity of the press – particularly the British tabloid press.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818;">For all that people have been making fun of frozen todgers and Freudian Elizabeth Arden that’s also in the pages, it is actually a book with a lot of subtle layers and connections made throughout, and I was genuinely impressed at the literary prowess and strong argument at the heart of ‘Spare.’ And I’m also not surprised that the same press pushing the salaciousness are doing so to avoid Harry’s true grievance and message which is; a large corner of the British press, owned by Rupert Murdoch (who Harry takes repeated and named aim at), is not fit for purpose. He’s taking the angle of how this has almost become like an abusive relationship the royals have wandered into and now can’t get out of (on his father Charles’s relationship to the press; “He hated their hate, but oh - how he loved their love!”) but I read it and more see the implication that if a large cohort of the media are in bed with the royals, and can be bribed with leaks and tattle-tale from their comms teams, to swap out weighted stories for clickbait … then who is *actually* holding one of the most powerful families and institutions to account, if it’s not the 4th estate – who are seemingly bought and paid for, by the royal family?</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818;">I’m sure that’s not the actual message Harry intended people to take away – but it’s there for the taking, certainly. And this is probably closer to the real reasons the royals, their ‘true believer’ staff, and the cottage-industry of media who make money off their backs - are really disgruntled with Harry – because if you start tugging on one thread of his story, the whole institution starts to unravel with his revelations.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818;">This happens a few times throughout, actually – Harry gets pretty close to a deeper understanding, but keeps it at the personal and somewhat surface-level and refrains from taking it out-wide into the ramifications for the monarchy.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818;">In fact; Harry’s ongoing support for monarchy is a small mark against the book overall, in my opinion – but I understand, the same way that 13-year-old Harry recounts travelling to Africa with his father and hearing an oral historian recount the Zulu War, which Harry listens to intently and only reveres the ‘red coats’ mentioned in the battle … I get it; he’s had more conditioning and indoctrination than most, and it’ll take longer and a lot more to break those bonds that have been ingrained and sold for him as a birthright and history to be proud of. I can appreciate that he’s signalling he needs to put more work in (and he admits as much; he looks back on that memory of hearing about the Zulu war, and can now see the glitch in his thinking).</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818;">The other mark against the book for me was the war chapters (yes I'm anti-war, but I know why Harry included them for his ongoing work with veterans and mental health - which makes a very good case for inclusion in the book) ... no, it's more because I was bored listening to how a helicopter works. Total snooze-fest!</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818;">Grief is the other big theme of this book – and love. Those two, always together and entwined. Harry really sadly speaks of being in his early 20s and certain he’ll be a “young dad” – marry young and start a family. It’s pretty clear that his own family is not close and overly-affectionate and he wants to start that for himself, have that and build it. But he’s constantly thwarted – girlfriends are scared off by the media and he’s lonely. That also rings very, hurtfully, true. He’s a lonely kid who grows up to be a lonely young man, wayward and a little lost most of the time. Especially after the media also help in cutting-short his army career (leaks mean his position in Iraq and Afghanistan are signalled to the enemy - an Australian woman's magazine is actually the first to break an embargo and print his whereabouts - putting him and many around him in danger. FFS, it happens so often throughout - he's utterly warranted in hating them, the bogeymen of his childhood grown to being his adult tormentors).</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818;">It's why the Meghan chapters feel like a turning-point in so many ways - because what is absolutely undoubted is how much he loves her. He's absolutely head-over-heels, and frankly I get it. She's *gorgeous* and charming, intelligent and thoughtful ... a real "ohhhhhh," moment comes early in their relationship, when Harry recounts a small argument they had, inconsequential - but he responds with too much rage and tone that the situation does not call for. Meghan calmly slips away, Harry goes to find her once he's also more centred and she says - in no uncertain terms - that she won't be spoken to that way, ever, and this will not be how they go about arguing (with rage). Harry sheepishly apologises, and Meghan asks him if there's a reason he thinks that's the way adults settle arguments (this is also when she gently asks him if he's ever had therapy - to which Harry says he tried, but it didn't work. Meghan probably saves his life when she says, "try again.")</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818;">I see a lot of people mocking his constant references to “mummy,” and the many times he looks for spiritual connections and signs from her (at one point even speaking to a spirit-medium, which he’s pretty sure is bunk, but is also desperate enough for connection to at least give it a go.)</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818;">I’m very happy for the people who’ve never lost a loved one, making fun of all this stuff in the memoir and trying to push Freudian connections. Congratulations to them. I just read it as a deep well of grief that keeps painfully contracting and expanding. Listening to this on audiobook, it was a wholly wrenching and wonderful listening experience – not least because deep missing and love for Diana rings through his voice, as does his grief. Harry is at once self-deprecating and serious when he details what he believes to be signs from Diana, and it’s hard to fault him on this when - for instance - Tyler Perry even surprisingly says the reason he offered to help Harry and Meghan settle in America, is Diana (his late mum was a fan) or Archie fixating on an old-looking painting at Perry’s house, which upon closer-inspection has a plaque stating that it is a depiction of goddess Diana – on the hunt. I do get it, the spiritual medium stuff *is* odd, but it’s also … grief. I’ve patiently listened to family who’ve detailed signs they’ve received from our loved ones who passed, and I believe that they believe it because they need to. That’s all.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818;">The big thing that surprised me in this book was, I came away with a better opinion of William and Kate Middleton (I KNOW! Who'd have thunk?) For all that the press have glommed onto they physical altercations and intimidation between the Heir and the Spare, I think Harry actually highlights a few realities of royal life I was unaware of and works to show the ways that his whole family - but maybe his older brother especially - are trapped by this cycle that Charles and Camilla in particular, welcomed into the royal roster (that is; the hiring of ex-Government and media spin-doctors in comms teams, a precedent of leaking against each other and an unhealthy obsession with tracking their popularity as catalogued by the media ...) The fact that the only other person around who can understand William's unique and difficult position is his own father, who is obsessed with one-upping his son as the next in line to the throne. I genuinely got the impression that William is stuck, and lashing out because of it - and has little to no interest in the Crown whatsoever, but is playing the part he's been assigned.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818;">What's missing from 'Spare' seems to be a surprising amount. Namely to do with the Queen and Prince Philip who are both really missing from its pages ... I'd suggest that might have been a decision after both their deaths, and in respect to the fact that they couldn't respond to any of Harry's claims. There's a part of me - personally - that wonders if a big thread that was cut out, is whether or not the Queen in her later-years was not as "with it" when it came to these machinations with the press and day-to-day decisions of her office? I'd say that's likely, and I would not be surprised if royal employees (like the Bee, Wasp and Fly who Harry aliases from her comms teams) and maybe under permission of Charles & Co. over-stepped, lied, and did as they thought best, knowing the Queen wasn't as hands-on as she'd previously been. “Is he in the room with you, granny?” Harry asks his grandmother at one point, after he's been thwarted in seeing her by one of her courtiers (after she'd encouraged him only the day before, to come and see her since she had the whole day free.)</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818;">Mmmmm. I think it’s possible that what was left out of ‘Spare’ could have been questions about the Queen’s capacities in her final years, and maybe how some people in her circle took advantage of her diminished health …</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818;">'Spare' has been made out to be a bit of a circus. It's not that. It's Harry, I think, providing his own historic record and ensuring that one primary product of the press (stories about him, and his wife) are depleted by him, and him alone (yes, for profit - which is another revenge against those who've been profiting off their story and tragedy for years.)</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818;">He's taking all the air out of his own tale, so that it is devalued for those people who've plagued him - and his family - their whole lives. In doing so he's also taking a considerable amount of shine off the Crown jewels, for sure. Showing that at the end of the day, they're just people - as dysfunctional as most others.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818;">Once this historic family of Harry's held onto their divine right by blood and battle - now the battlefield has changed to the press and social media, but there's still a war being raged and if nothing else, Harry is taking himself and his family off the chess-board once and for all. A spare pawn, no more.</span></span></p><p><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">4.5/5</span></span></p><div><br /></div>Daniellehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08440460463119645788noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9005037379064329761.post-35530204054331712642023-01-09T12:51:00.005+11:002023-01-09T12:52:46.441+11:00'Olympus, Texas' by Stacey Swann<p style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"> </span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgsfUTNgvKNCh5oyFkwjvcG5MrYEWVXYAH55FEHvgpui3JnrEYX9jVliCLoa3BrydWf6rYJHgHfxbMklpNc_HayCsrYTVxDArkadb9aDSwr7RfTr66HN16oGdwNmziiWaZE9M9wNBbKAoh-ItKv4HweIFFt0orZ4IuF6AyyTBiaAOfWF2ni9Vh3LgFNvA/s685/9781474612449.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><img border="0" data-original-height="685" data-original-width="440" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgsfUTNgvKNCh5oyFkwjvcG5MrYEWVXYAH55FEHvgpui3JnrEYX9jVliCLoa3BrydWf6rYJHgHfxbMklpNc_HayCsrYTVxDArkadb9aDSwr7RfTr66HN16oGdwNmziiWaZE9M9wNBbKAoh-ItKv4HweIFFt0orZ4IuF6AyyTBiaAOfWF2ni9Vh3LgFNvA/w258-h400/9781474612449.jpeg" width="258" /></span></a></div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span><p></p><p><b><span style="font-family: georgia;">From the BLURB: </span></b></p><p style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">A bighearted debut with technicolor characters, plenty of Texas swagger, and a powder keg of a plot in which marriages struggle, rivalries flare, and secrets explode, all with a clever wink toward classical mythology. </span></p><p><i><span style="font-family: georgia;">When March Briscoe returns to East Texas two years after he was caught having an affair with his brother's wife, the Briscoe family becomes once again the talk of the small town of Olympus. His mother, June, hardly welcomes him back with open arms. Her husband's own past affairs have made her tired of being the long-suffering spouse. Is it, perhaps, time for a change? Within days of March's arrival, someone is dead, marriages are upended, and even the strongest of alliances are shattered. In the end, the ties that hold them together might be exactly what drag them all down.</span></i></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818;">'<a href="https://www.hachette.com.au/stacey-swann/olympus-texas" target="_blank">Olympus, Texas</a>' by Stacey Swann came out in 2021, and I’ve had the book (kindly sent to me by Hachette Australia at the time) on my TBR ever since.</span></span></p><p><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: georgia;">It’s the second week of 2023 and I think I’ve already had one of my best reading experiences, and a new fave book.</span><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818;">The way I’d describe it is … if ‘<a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0368530/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1" target="_blank">One Tree Hill</a>’ had been developed by HBO. This would be it. ‘Olympus, Texas’ is basically southern gothic, Greek myth, soap-opera. If you liked ‘<a href="http://alphareader.blogspot.com/2021/06/early-morning-riser-by-katherine-heiny.html" target="_blank">Early Morning Riser</a>’ by Katherine Heiny, you’ll dig this. And yes there's obviously Greek Mythology inspo throughout, but look me in the eye and tell me Mount Olympus wasn't just the first Coronation Street, Dallas, or Summer Bay ...</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818;">It’s all about the Briscoe family of Olympus whose patriarch Peter (the Zeus-esque character) had three children out of wedlock, on top of the three he had in his marriage to matriarch, June (or, Hera). And all the kids were raised in small town Olympus; one with the secret of their paternity, while twins of Peter’s mistress were welcomed into the Briscoe family fold.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818;">When we meet this twisty family - the stars of small-town gossip - it’s spanning a couple of tumultuous weeks in their lives, kicked off when Peter and June’s middle son March returns home after two years of exile, for sleeping with his brother’s wife.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818;">Everything is a powder-keg ready to explode as this family and the people who orbit them keep repeating generational traumas and mistakes. It’s delicious. I gasped, I laughed, I cried.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818;">Of course people are going to come to this and read more of the Greek Myth overtones - Peter's mistress was Lee who had twins called Artie and Arlo that were permitted to be half-siblings to the "official" Briscoe children; which is the Leto being seduced by Zeus and giving birth to Apollo and Artemis thread. March - the troubled brother who slept with his sister-in-law - is Hades, cast out of the family for his indiscretions and temper, returned when the story begins (with two big dogs in tow, veritable Cerberus). That's totally cool if you want to connect-the-dots with all the wonderful Greek Myth keynotes, but I got a lot of enjoyment out of the book by not going too hard-eyed into that side, I really took it at face-value as Soap Opera (which is all the Geek Myths are anyway, lol - Aphrodite cheated on Hephaestus with Ares, you what!)</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818;">Ultimately this is a really beautifully-written book, so compelling as to feel like you’re reading a tightly-choreographed dance, or the entirety of a first season of prestige television … it’s that southern charm with gothic undertones, stories about people using each other as weapons to make themselves feel better and how we all play certain characters to appease our families and communities.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818;">Whew. I’m gonna be thinking about this one for a LONG time, and recommending it far and wide!</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">5/5</span></p>Daniellehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08440460463119645788noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9005037379064329761.post-87069298388383936362023-01-02T18:46:00.006+11:002023-01-02T18:46:53.698+11:00'The Ninth Life of a Diamond Miner: A memoir' by Grace Tame<p style="text-align: center;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjqtckOk3lPq20hSzYK8c1BnpmWxhO5FbXcFrzQPsdlF_wFNIuvDJB9EdMKX532-IU7R14StiqaqEv5l2TX9rkbtz498y0Iux6lwD4HF1OPmgQmp7cyoLxKtMp16r6AQAFFkXn5o4h9SvJ0avoUAl19roFo_AoDwyf-oTN6dK85Bo_iUHKHhKyOIF61tA/s2861/9781760988050.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2861" data-original-width="1881" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjqtckOk3lPq20hSzYK8c1BnpmWxhO5FbXcFrzQPsdlF_wFNIuvDJB9EdMKX532-IU7R14StiqaqEv5l2TX9rkbtz498y0Iux6lwD4HF1OPmgQmp7cyoLxKtMp16r6AQAFFkXn5o4h9SvJ0avoUAl19roFo_AoDwyf-oTN6dK85Bo_iUHKHhKyOIF61tA/w263-h400/9781760988050.jpeg" width="263" /></a></div><span style="font-size: x-small;"><div style="text-align: center;"><i>Received from the publisher </i></div></span> <p></p><p><b><span style="font-family: georgia;">From the BLURB; </span></b></p><p><i><span style="font-family: georgia;">Grace Tame has never walked on middle ground. </span></i></p><p><i><span style="font-family: georgia;">From a young age, her life was defined by uncertainty - by trauma and strength, sadness and hope, terrible lows and wondrous highs. As a teenager she found the courage to speak up after experiencing awful and ongoing child sexual abuse. This fight to find her voice would not be her last. </span></i></p><p><i><span style="font-family: georgia;">In 2021 Grace stepped squarely into the public eye as the Australian of the Year, and was the catalyst for a tidal wave of conversation and action. Australians from all walks of life were inspired and moved by her fire and passion. She was using her voice and encouraging others to use theirs too. </span></i></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">The Ninth Life of a Diamond Miner <i>is Grace's story, in Grace's words, on Grace's terms. Here she returns, again and again, to the things that have driven and saved her: love, connection and radical, unwavering honesty. Like Grace, this book is sharply intelligent, deeply felt, wildly unexpected and often blisteringly funny. And, as with all her work, it offers a constructive and optimistic vision for a better future for all of us.</i></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818;">I spent the day reading ‘The Ninth Life of a Diamond Miner: A memoir’ by Grace Tame - kindly gifted by PanMacmillan.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818;">*Deep breath*</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818;">I found this to be both pulverising and illuminating.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818;">As a memoir it stretches and reverberates. Grace jumps around in her own timeline, sometimes - and she can give a long-eyed gaze over her lifetime, and then snap it short when she pleases. This is her right, and it makes it sound more like *her* - and the way her actually autistic mind works.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818;">In reading, I was relieved to discover that I didn’t actually know a lot about the trial relating to Grace Tame as the survivor of ongoing childhood sexual abuse. I had more knowledge of her work post-trial in which her abuser was convicted, and she became an activist (and Australian of the Year) speaking out on behalf of victims and campaigning for better respect for them, particularly by and in the media.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818;">So I’m glad that I really only have Grace’s account, but I - of course! - still found her writing about the schoolteacher who groomed and abused her to be horrific. It’s hard to read. Of course it is. But she writes it at once with such clear-eyed memory, intricately layered with tender context and knowledge of how abuse looks, feels and how predators work. I can’t imagine how hard it must have been to recount - alongside her abuse as a child too, and her anorexia as a result of ongoing trauma. But I found her recounting to be necessarily forthright, while still retaining a tender sadness for the girl she was. I also thought the way she kept survivors front of mind in the narrative was subtle but hugely powerful.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818;">And then I was deeply disturbed (but not surprised) by the many ways Grace was failed. Particularly by her school - who have since had many more survivors come forward with accusations against that rock spider of a creeper teacher, Nicolaas Bester.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818;">Even recently, Grace recalls how she was vilified for refusing to smile in photographs with then Prime Minister Scott Morrison - who failed survivors at every turn of his Prime Ministership. She isn’t unaware of the fact that she did everything “right” - her abuser even boasted of his crimes and was convicted - but she is still hated and disbelieved. Because she lives in the light. Because she has challenged institutions and powerful individuals, and always will.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818;">At one point, Grace writes that she feels certain she’ll write more books than just this one. She talks about her life lived with art (and indeed, she illustrated the incredible front cover!) - some of her sentences and thoughts within are so prickly and perfect (“That sticky, sticky voice.”) and I too feel certain that she is just beginning. I know she is. It’s all ahead of her - but even knowing that, I was grateful for the balm of this book, and Grace showing people what survivorship can look like. Imperfect. Chaotic. Messy. Unrelenting. Ongoing.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818;">Grace doesn’t owe the public anything. But I am glad for a generous spirit and decision to share her story many times over. She keeps reaching out in the dark, and I feel very strongly that those who need to - will keep finding her. This book is just another beacon.</span></span></p><p><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">5/5</span></span></p>Daniellehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08440460463119645788noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9005037379064329761.post-75213191618257651792022-11-15T11:30:00.002+11:002022-11-15T11:31:59.692+11:00'Scattered Showers' by Rainbow Rowell <p style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"> </span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://www.rainbowrowell.com/scattered-showers" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;" target="_blank"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2266" data-original-width="1500" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhRrp2WnuOvubyH2Cr9hQEDx-9Le6AwlD0xSg0eFooDIQZLhO6wobkuLRZSfidf0pOB5eyQw9KFAtOHQfQr9cb8QUupMC91XqjJeIjk7SnYDBqh3wiA6CHdmvH_8NIld_-zSb2CU9lpoAigGHN8pJfuUO8--mfzTegSBBj92-e2x4NYSNvS9r5pBl_kNg/w265-h400/Scattered+Showers_HC.jpeg" width="265" /></span></a></div><p></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818;">'Scattered Showers' is an Anthology collection of nine Rainbow Rowell short-stories, five of which are brand-new created for this collection.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818;">Many have appeared elsewhere; like the first story 'Midnights' from the 2014 Stephanie Perkins edited YA anthology collection 'My True Love Gave to Me: Twelve Holiday Stories', which is about two friends who we first meet at a 2014 New Years Eve party and then follow through many NYE parties right through to their first year home after college.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818;">'Midnights' also appeared in a hardcover gift '<a href="http://alphareader.blogspot.com/2017/11/almost-midnight-two-short-stories-by.html" target="_blank">Almost Midnight: Two Festive Short Stories</a>' alongside the second story in the new 'Scattered Showers' collection, 'Kindred Spirits' - which is about unacquainted teenagers in 2015 waiting in line across 4 days, for the new Star Wars movie 'The Force Awakens.'</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818;">These two stories really set the pace of the whole collection, and Rainbow Rowell's biggest theme throughout all her works which is; duos. Sets. Two people, soulmates or mates for right now ... truly her biggest thread through all Rowell stories from 'Simon Snow' to the 'Pumpkinheads' graphic novel is the dyadic - a focus on two people. For this reason I really wish they'd called this collection 'Double Rainbow,' but I understand a quite literal Rainbow/Rainbow may have been confusing over-kill.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818;">We have the new short-story 'Winter Songs for Summer' - about a girl getting over a break-up, and her downstairs college neighbour who helps her grief maturate with mix-tapes.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818;">'The Snow Ball' is another newbie, a very Taylor Swift-feeling short about a guy friend getting ready to attend a school dance with a girl who is not his best female friend, and the ways they talk circles around one another to figure out how they both feel about that.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818;">'If the Fates Allow' is a 'Fangirl' prequel which did release as an Amazon Original Story in 2021, and features the character of Reagan home for the first times during Covid and having back-porch chats with her neighbour during uncertain times.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818;">'The Prince and the Troll' is another original and the weirdest one in this collection, to me - it's a fantastical allegorical (I want to say climate-fiction?) short story that felt a little like it wants to be 2017 film 'The Shape of Water' but mostly reads like a commercial for Starbucks?</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818;">'Mixed Messages' made it up to me though, as it's a short-story featuring the characters from Rowell's debut (and my fave!) novel, the 2011 'Attachments'! It's a real-time glimpse into where these characters ended up, and I delighted in it! I also think it's a great prompt for anyone that isn't aware of Rowell's debut novel, to go back and discover it!</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818;">'Snow for Christmas' is a 'Simon Snow' short story, which I did not read because I haven't yet been able to get into that series. I'm sorry! I will, eventually - one day!</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818;">And finally, another fave for me was 'In Waiting' ... which is a delightfully trippy and heartfelt meta short-story which felt very much like the 2006 Will Ferrell movie, 'Stranger than Fiction.' It's about quite literally a new character called James, who has been dropped into the between-place where (presumably) Rainbow Rowell's ideas hang out, her not-quite-yet fully-formed and outlined characters hang in limbo until she knows what to do with them ...</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818;" /><i style="background-color: white; color: #181818;"></i></span></p><blockquote><span style="font-family: georgia;"><i style="background-color: white; color: #181818;">He got excited when he realized they were both from Nebraska.<br />"That's nothing," she said. "We're all from Nebraska. It's like how Stephen King's characters are all from Maine."</i></span></blockquote><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818;">... and the longest-serving character in this stable is Anna, who has grown up in this place and who Rowell seemingly can't let go of, but won't slot her into a novel yet either (God Forbid she be used in a short-story though.) This one was a little 'The Good Place' too and I absolutely loved it.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818;">Overall I think Rowell's short-story talent is on display here; certainly the stories that she maybe had more time to develop (like those previously published) are the strongest, while her forays into genre-fiction and metaphor fell flat for me, except in the Rainbow Rowell metaverse of character limbo 'In Waiting.'</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818;">I do love that all of these short stories collected in one beautiful, hardcover place (with illustrations by Jim Tierney) - and how they solidified for me, Rowell's ongoing obsession with duality and soul-mates, two peas in a pod and the dyad of it all.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818;">I'm glad I own this, because I am a fan ('<a href="http://alphareader.blogspot.com/2011/12/attachments-by-rainbow-rowell.html" target="_blank">Attachments</a>' remains my fave, followed closely by '<a href="http://alphareader.blogspot.com/2019/10/pumpkinheads-by-rainbow-rowell.html" target="_blank">Pumpkinheads</a>' graphic novel, and '<a href="http://alphareader.blogspot.com/2013/10/fangirl-by-rainbow-rowell.html" target="_blank">Fangirl</a>' - but the 'Midnights' short-story is also up there) and I do think I'll keep coming back to this collection and these little tasters of growing up, coming-of-age, friction and fragility, connection and love ... one example of this is a line in 'Midnights,' when a group of friends have re-gathered at their annual NYE basement party the first year they've (mostly) all returned home from first-year at college;</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818;" /><i style="background-color: white; color: #181818;"><blockquote>"Is it weird being in Omaha?" Simini asked her. "Now that everybody's left?"<br />"It's like walking through the mall after it closes," Mags said. "I miss you guys so much."</blockquote></i></span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">4/5</span></p>Daniellehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08440460463119645788noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9005037379064329761.post-11883314009923299012022-09-07T08:43:00.002+10:002022-09-07T08:43:47.808+10:00'Soul Taken' Mercy Thompson Book 13 by Patricia Briggs<p style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgQieJM4-FlDzq7ucMUr2f8-ef8LTQRlRsSl-OEJ04pJDROG8VBEzxKEqOq2KtLoW7aDc1SSB6q7h_bBqwGQODYNwd59YijzZCoJ08VBjDu-NNenyIuVW2LpP25cGxorTfMTgfsv6HT6rNUqkBp-Te29hkEoiPEoC8jqucZq6HlI5d3acRM1dA-mtg5LQ/s688/9780356513645.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="688" data-original-width="440" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgQieJM4-FlDzq7ucMUr2f8-ef8LTQRlRsSl-OEJ04pJDROG8VBEzxKEqOq2KtLoW7aDc1SSB6q7h_bBqwGQODYNwd59YijzZCoJ08VBjDu-NNenyIuVW2LpP25cGxorTfMTgfsv6HT6rNUqkBp-Te29hkEoiPEoC8jqucZq6HlI5d3acRM1dA-mtg5LQ/w256-h400/9780356513645.jpg" width="256" /></a></span></div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"> </span><b style="text-align: left;">From the BLURB: </b></div></span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><i><span style="color: #363636; font-variant-ligatures: normal; orphans: 2; text-decoration-thickness: initial; widows: 2;">The vampire Wulfe is missing. Since he's deadly, possibly insane, and his current idea of "fun" is stalking Mercy, some may see it as no great loss. But when he disappears, the Tri-Cities pack is blamed. The mistress of the vampire seethe informs Mercy that the pack must produce Wulfe to prove their innocence, or the loose alliance between the local vampires and werewolves is over.</span><br style="color: #363636; font-variant-ligatures: normal; margin: 0px; orphans: 2; padding: 0px; text-decoration-thickness: initial; widows: 2;" /><br style="color: #363636; font-variant-ligatures: normal; margin: 0px; orphans: 2; padding: 0px; text-decoration-thickness: initial; widows: 2;" /><span style="color: #363636; font-variant-ligatures: normal; orphans: 2; text-decoration-thickness: initial; widows: 2;">So Mercy goes out to find her stalker - and discovers more than just Wulfe have disappeared. Someone is taking people from locked rooms, from the aisles of stores, and even from crowded parties. And these are not just ordinary people but supernatural beings. Until Wulfe vanished, all of them were powerless loners, many of whom quietly moved to the Tri-Cities in the hope that the safety promised by Mercy and Adam's pack would extend to them as well.</span><br style="color: #363636; font-variant-ligatures: normal; margin: 0px; orphans: 2; padding: 0px; text-decoration-thickness: initial; widows: 2;" /><br style="color: #363636; font-variant-ligatures: normal; margin: 0px; orphans: 2; padding: 0px; text-decoration-thickness: initial; widows: 2;" /><span style="color: #363636; font-variant-ligatures: normal; orphans: 2; text-decoration-thickness: initial; widows: 2;">Who is taking them? As Mercy investigates, she learns of the legend of the Harvester, who travels by less-trodden paths and reaps the souls that are ripe with a great black scythe . . .</span></i></span></p><p><span style="color: #363636; font-variant-ligatures: normal; orphans: 2; text-decoration-thickness: initial; widows: 2;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-variant-ligatures: normal; text-decoration-thickness: initial;">'Soul Taken' is the 13th book in Patricia Briggs' urban fantasy 'Mercy Thompson' series (which was recently optioned by </span><a href="https://www.facebook.com/OfficialPatriciaBriggs/posts/741175304038242" rel="nofollow noopener" style="background-color: white; color: #00635d; font-variant-ligatures: normal;" target="_blank">Amazon Prime</a><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-variant-ligatures: normal; text-decoration-thickness: initial;">!)</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-variant-ligatures: normal; text-decoration-thickness: initial;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-variant-ligatures: normal; text-decoration-thickness: initial;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-variant-ligatures: normal; text-decoration-thickness: initial;">So this book literally picks up where we last left off, following the events of '<a href="http://alphareader.blogspot.com/2020/03/smoke-bitten-mercy-thompson-12-by.html" target="_blank">Smoke Bitten</a>' and what went down with the witch Elizaveta ... it also ties together the most recent instalments concerning a kidnapping to Italy, new treaties with the Gray Lords and Underhill, and Mercy & Adam's Columbia Basin Pack breaking with the Marrok to form their own little national of werewolves.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-variant-ligatures: normal; text-decoration-thickness: initial;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-variant-ligatures: normal; text-decoration-thickness: initial;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-variant-ligatures: normal; text-decoration-thickness: initial;">'Soul Taken' actually goes pretty intense into the most recent backstory, and while Briggs does helpfully fill out the background and provide a refresher on context, it is still *quite* overwhelming and I was just never sure where to look in this plot. Are ... are we meant to be focusing on the Gray Lords treaties? Is the break with the Marrok the thing here? Is it the uneasy alliances between wolves, goblins, witches, and vampires - oh my! And here's the thing; it's kinda ALL OF IT. Which is slightly chaotic messy overwhelming to read. It's also a little hard to follow because a lot of those involve machinations of diplomacy and there's a lot of ~talking~ and planning and thinking. Not necessarily a whole lot of action.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-variant-ligatures: normal; text-decoration-thickness: initial;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-variant-ligatures: normal; text-decoration-thickness: initial;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-variant-ligatures: normal; text-decoration-thickness: initial;">I will say; there's a really interesting development with the new werewolf Sherwood. This seems promising. Dare I say; I would potentially even like a novella, short-story or spin-off for Sherwood? Maybe in the same way we got Charles & Anna in 'Alpha & Omega'? At various times in this series I've been desperate for an Asil spin-off, and before his disappointing mate Ariana came on the scene (I'm SORRY, but that was a cop-out of a plot-point) I'd hoped for Samuel to get his own story-focus too. I wonder if Sherwood could fill that hole I have to further explore the werewolf world? I'd be down for it, 100%! Especially if he got some sort of HEA out of it.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-variant-ligatures: normal; text-decoration-thickness: initial;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-variant-ligatures: normal; text-decoration-thickness: initial;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-variant-ligatures: normal; text-decoration-thickness: initial;">Speaking of Samuel; something was established in the last 'Alpha & Omega' book '<a href="http://alphareader.blogspot.com/2021/05/wild-sign-alpha-and-omega-6-by-patricia.html" target="_blank">Wild Sign</a>' that I said would probably crossover into Mercy's world ... and it looks like it *might* but not in an overly big way. HOWEVER: the mention of it in 'Soul Taken' suggests it'll be the focus of Anna & Charles's next book. Keen!</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-variant-ligatures: normal; text-decoration-thickness: initial;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-variant-ligatures: normal; text-decoration-thickness: initial;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-variant-ligatures: normal; text-decoration-thickness: initial;">Final thoughts on 'Soul Taken' are ... I like that we're seeing Adam & Mercy as a strong unit. And actually, this book reminds us that the Columbia Basin Pack are as strong as they are, as independent as they are, because Mercy has always had ties and been willing to treatise and compromise with all supernatural (from fae to vampires, humans and anyone in-between) we're now seeing the wider implications and benefits of that playing out within the politics of this world. And it just goes to show how much reach Mercy has had, and how much Adam benefited from it - is better because of it, and her. It's really nice and a surprisingly lovely way to get a bird's eye view of this series that's been going since 2006(!!!!!)</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-variant-ligatures: normal; text-decoration-thickness: initial;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-variant-ligatures: normal; text-decoration-thickness: initial;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-variant-ligatures: normal; text-decoration-thickness: initial;">Adam & Mercy remain the absolute best, and I always love coming back to them in their books. Fingers-crossed for a TV series! I also can't wait for Anna & Charles' new book, but Adam & Mercy still just .... hit the right spot!</span></span></span></p><p><span style="color: #363636; font-variant-ligatures: normal; orphans: 2; text-decoration-thickness: initial; widows: 2;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-variant-ligatures: normal; text-decoration-thickness: initial;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">3/5</span></span></span></p>Daniellehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08440460463119645788noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9005037379064329761.post-14584017104383947792022-08-31T19:41:00.010+10:002022-08-31T19:52:58.304+10:00'So Far, So Good: On connection, loss, laughter and the Torres Strait' by Aaron Fa'Aoso, with Michelle Scott Tucker<p style="text-align: center;"><br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhXUr8wUwX1bz_T-wPgrnyxXZDzg1nJpB35mNaI8m155M7cPAIbD-s3aUt-KM0-T9bCpastSQiLgqUre9S6-Ej7Uyx-jYhkjrA9raWlOZ1ReANI-cgoCk1PwQ3GIfhKnWFlgytAuR9shHmg_l5QfzzcV-pGxDa9ffYbBl7EScNhN-TwL3v2FNRz9eLiXQ/s7007/So-Far-So-Good-High-Res.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="7007" data-original-width="4555" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhXUr8wUwX1bz_T-wPgrnyxXZDzg1nJpB35mNaI8m155M7cPAIbD-s3aUt-KM0-T9bCpastSQiLgqUre9S6-Ej7Uyx-jYhkjrA9raWlOZ1ReANI-cgoCk1PwQ3GIfhKnWFlgytAuR9shHmg_l5QfzzcV-pGxDa9ffYbBl7EScNhN-TwL3v2FNRz9eLiXQ/w416-h640/So-Far-So-Good-High-Res.jpg" width="416" /></a></div><br /><p></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><b>From the BLURB: </b></span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: normal; margin: 0px; orphans: 2; text-align: center; text-decoration-thickness: initial; widows: 2;"><span style="box-sizing: inherit; font-weight: 700;"><em style="box-sizing: inherit;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"></span></em></span></p><blockquote><em style="box-sizing: inherit;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">‘I am a descendant of the Samu and Koedal clans of Sabai Island. My people are warriors, but we are storytellers too.’</span></em></blockquote><p></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: normal; margin: 0px; orphans: 2; text-decoration-thickness: initial; widows: 2;"><span style="box-sizing: inherit; font-weight: 700;"><em style="box-sizing: inherit;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></em></span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: normal; margin: 0px; orphans: 2; text-decoration-thickness: initial; widows: 2;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><i>On his long path to success – from aspiring professional footballer to actor, director and producer – for every opportunity Aaron Fa’Aoso had, there were setbacks and heartache.</i></span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: normal; margin: 0px; orphans: 2; text-decoration-thickness: initial; widows: 2;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><i>He was six when his father and grandfather both died. His fiercely proud mother and even fiercer grandmother dug deep to raise Aaron and his brothers. Belief in himself as a warrior – literally and metaphorically – made him into a fighter, for better and for worse.</i></span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: normal; margin: 0px; orphans: 2; text-decoration-thickness: initial; widows: 2;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><i><br /></i></span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: normal; margin: 0px; orphans: 2; text-decoration-thickness: initial; widows: 2;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><i>A month into Aaron’s second marriage, and just as his acting career was flourishing, his new wife took her own life. In the dark years that followed, Aaron eventually found strength and meaning in his family and in his beloved Torres Strait community.</i></span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: normal; margin: 0px; orphans: 2; text-decoration-thickness: initial; widows: 2;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><i><br /></i></span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: normal; margin: 0px; orphans: 2; text-decoration-thickness: initial; widows: 2;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><i>In </i><span style="box-sizing: inherit;">So Far, So Good</span><i>, he talks frankly about love, pain, making mistakes and finding happiness again, as well as the impacts of racism and the challenges of remote communities. A rich and vivid reflection on life told with generosity, humour, emotion and optimism.</i></span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: normal; margin: 0px; orphans: 2; text-decoration-thickness: initial; widows: 2;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: normal; margin: 0px; orphans: 2; text-align: center; text-decoration-thickness: initial; widows: 2;">⦿⦿⦿</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: normal; margin: 0px; orphans: 2; text-decoration-thickness: initial; widows: 2;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></p><div class="m8h3af8h l7ghb35v kjdc1dyq kmwttqpk gh25dzvf n3t5jt4f" style="background-color: white; font-variant-ligatures: normal; margin: 0px; orphans: 2; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-decoration-thickness: initial; white-space: pre-wrap; widows: 2;"><div dir="auto"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Let me tell you; I am so proud of this book. In a career of highlights (which tends to happen when you get to work with books!) — seeing this memoir out in the world is a stand-out for me. </span></div></div><div class="l7ghb35v kjdc1dyq kmwttqpk gh25dzvf jikcssrz n3t5jt4f" style="background-color: white; font-variant-ligatures: normal; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; orphans: 2; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-decoration-thickness: initial; white-space: pre-wrap; widows: 2;"><div dir="auto"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><i><a href="https://www.panterapress.com.au/product/so-far-so-good/" target="_blank">So Far, So Good: On connection, loss, laughter and the Torres Strait</a></i> by Aaron Fa'Aoso, with Michelle Scott Tucker. </span></div><div dir="auto"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div dir="auto"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Jacinta (<a href="https://www.jacintadimase.com.au/" target="_blank">di Mase</a>) </span><span style="font-family: georgia;">and I met Aaron many moons ago, we sat before him and basically said - we want your story. It took a while, but eventually he came around and once </span><a style="cursor: pointer; font-family: georgia;" tabindex="-1"></a><span style="font-family: georgia;">glorious Michelle Scott Tucker </span><span style="font-family: georgia;">signed up to do the telling, the project ignited. </span></div></div><div class="l7ghb35v kjdc1dyq kmwttqpk gh25dzvf jikcssrz n3t5jt4f" style="background-color: white; font-variant-ligatures: normal; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; orphans: 2; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-decoration-thickness: initial; white-space: pre-wrap; widows: 2;"><div dir="auto" style="color: #050505; font-family: inherit; font-size: 15px;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, system-ui, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgRlbjmDeW3nRToVQkOqwADNRpP-zOSdnQdpAxQzzxOQsir32eWJK4eJgoY0bbGvFrSUjmGkSlRx2v5Fq0jZIc3Q-Z5jC8McrVhjaqiWFTxdCLW4gx8cWdpE5WXic1Xb2RmV1bLIwHBqBWk2ywSaq4OAwsr90tFia8R1RiXsD5Ibz6W0zXlXBaRFvo7Rg/s2048/302001532_10160069191137179_1916788291774388661_n-1.jpg" style="font-family: -webkit-standard; margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center; white-space: normal;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="2048" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgRlbjmDeW3nRToVQkOqwADNRpP-zOSdnQdpAxQzzxOQsir32eWJK4eJgoY0bbGvFrSUjmGkSlRx2v5Fq0jZIc3Q-Z5jC8McrVhjaqiWFTxdCLW4gx8cWdpE5WXic1Xb2RmV1bLIwHBqBWk2ywSaq4OAwsr90tFia8R1RiXsD5Ibz6W0zXlXBaRFvo7Rg/w400-h400/302001532_10160069191137179_1916788291774388661_n-1.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><div dir="auto" style="color: #050505; font-family: inherit; font-size: 15px;"></div></div><div class="l7ghb35v kjdc1dyq kmwttqpk gh25dzvf jikcssrz n3t5jt4f" style="background-color: white; font-variant-ligatures: normal; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; orphans: 2; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-decoration-thickness: initial; white-space: pre-wrap; widows: 2;"><div dir="auto"><span style="font-family: georgia;">It’s the first memoir by a Torres Strait Islander to be released by a commercial publisher, in <a href="https://www.panterapress.com.au/product/so-far-so-good/" target="_blank">Pantera Press</a>. They have also generously donated to Seed Indigenous Youth Climate Network and the Indigenous Literacy Foundation via their Pantera Press Foundation, in the book’s honour. </span></div></div><div class="l7ghb35v kjdc1dyq kmwttqpk gh25dzvf jikcssrz n3t5jt4f" style="background-color: white; font-variant-ligatures: normal; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; orphans: 2; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-decoration-thickness: initial; white-space: pre-wrap; widows: 2;"><div dir="auto"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><i>So Far, So Good</i> absolutely undid me. It’s such a generous story - and in fact, Michelle Scott Tucker on her blog recently wrote about Aaron’s internal fight to reach inside himself for this story and his truth. I love this memory <a href="https://michellescotttucker.com/2022/08/30/so-far-so-good-publication-day/" target="_blank">Michelle shares</a>, when speaking with Aaron as he really decided and committed to unearthing his life for the page; <i>“One thing I’ve learnt,” Aaron continued, “is that if you tell the truth, it remains in your past. Tell a lie, and it’s always going to haunt your future. And I have enough ghosts in my life already.”</i></span></div></div><div class="l7ghb35v kjdc1dyq kmwttqpk gh25dzvf jikcssrz n3t5jt4f" style="background-color: white; font-variant-ligatures: normal; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; orphans: 2; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-decoration-thickness: initial; widows: 2;"><div dir="auto" style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">That’s all here. His grief at a young age, losing his father and grandfather and being raised by the women in his life. The ways early pathways and cultures tried to shape him - like the football career he took initially, and then the media once he decided to become an actor - only to be cast as a villain, a bikie, a thug and criminal, constantly … until he decided to change things himself, write his own screenplays. The way grief followed him. His commitments now to telling the history of his family and the Strait, and that they are on the frontline of climate catastrophe. </span></div><div dir="auto" style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div dir="auto" style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">For teachers & librarians, I'd also say this is a very good text for older teens. For a history of the Torres Strait. A look at the frontlines of climate catastrophe. And for someone of Aaron’s stature to have a really honest talk with young men in particular, about the paths they choose.</span></div><div dir="auto" style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div dir="auto" style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">That's all in the book. And, I cannot even begin to tell you how much more is here, and what reading it will do to you - open in you. You have to read it for yourself. It’s a beautiful and bruising story, a groundbreaking one too.</span></div><div dir="auto" style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div dir="auto" style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">It's out now. And the audiobook (which Aaron narrates) will be out on October 1.</span></div><div dir="auto" style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div dir="auto" style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><div style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "PT Serif", Constantia, "Lucida Bright", Lucidabright, "Lucida Serif", Lucida, "DejaVu Serif", "Bitstream Vera Serif", "Liberation Serif", Georgia, serif; font-variant-ligatures: normal; text-decoration-thickness: initial; white-space: normal;">Audible: </span><a href="https://adbl.co/3pvU9Vg" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #dc0078; font-family: "PT Serif", Constantia, "Lucida Bright", Lucidabright, "Lucida Serif", Lucida, "DejaVu Serif", "Bitstream Vera Serif", "Liberation Serif", Georgia, serif; font-variant-ligatures: normal; text-decoration: none; touch-action: manipulation; white-space: normal;" target="_blank">https://adbl.co/3pvU9Vg</a></span></b></div><b><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "PT Serif", Constantia, "Lucida Bright", Lucidabright, "Lucida Serif", Lucida, "DejaVu Serif", "Bitstream Vera Serif", "Liberation Serif", Georgia, serif; font-variant-ligatures: normal; text-decoration-thickness: initial; white-space: normal;"><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-variant-ligatures: normal; text-decoration-thickness: initial;">Apple Books: </span><a href="https://apple.co/3ps1NQH" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #dc0078; font-variant-ligatures: normal; text-decoration: none; touch-action: manipulation;" target="_blank">https://apple.co/3ps1NQH</a></div></span><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "PT Serif", Constantia, "Lucida Bright", Lucidabright, "Lucida Serif", Lucida, "DejaVu Serif", "Bitstream Vera Serif", "Liberation Serif", Georgia, serif; font-variant-ligatures: normal; text-decoration-thickness: initial; white-space: normal;"><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-variant-ligatures: normal; text-decoration-thickness: initial;">Google Play: </span><a href="https://bit.ly/3SYXREp" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #dc0078; font-variant-ligatures: normal; text-decoration: none; touch-action: manipulation;" target="_blank">https://bit.ly/3SYXREp</a></div></span><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "PT Serif", Constantia, "Lucida Bright", Lucidabright, "Lucida Serif", Lucida, "DejaVu Serif", "Bitstream Vera Serif", "Liberation Serif", Georgia, serif; font-variant-ligatures: normal; text-decoration-thickness: initial; white-space: normal;"><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-variant-ligatures: normal; text-decoration-thickness: initial;">Kobo: </span><a href="https://bit.ly/3T1GDGI" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #dc0078; font-variant-ligatures: normal; text-decoration: none; touch-action: manipulation;" target="_blank">https://bit.ly/3T1GDGI</a></div></span></span></b></div><div dir="auto" style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div dir="auto"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">My heart is exceptionally full of this book, and I hope it will fill you up too. </span></span></div><div dir="auto" style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div></div>Daniellehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08440460463119645788noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9005037379064329761.post-69528890093501115112022-08-24T18:20:00.004+10:002022-08-24T18:24:18.361+10:00'Go Tell the Bees That I Am Gone' Outlander #9 by Diana Gabaldon <p style="text-align: center;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj6LrQrrcjOpSEprljyWjB2RvAEZq8vAqCkWnaSnZglJPHLsV3qMrLEOcmCH69zO6Y16HRumL4lCE5DehLRc37dorWXqLHgUo9q23JJ3LagXJSSxcyV5pp6mSsFmM-jHwUO0JQt-FxnE-IrFNG_94iLJdLdYnAifCovMwWbiFXnwIkFWujxCrBk1IeY3g/s2835/9781780894140.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2835" data-original-width="1843" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj6LrQrrcjOpSEprljyWjB2RvAEZq8vAqCkWnaSnZglJPHLsV3qMrLEOcmCH69zO6Y16HRumL4lCE5DehLRc37dorWXqLHgUo9q23JJ3LagXJSSxcyV5pp6mSsFmM-jHwUO0JQt-FxnE-IrFNG_94iLJdLdYnAifCovMwWbiFXnwIkFWujxCrBk1IeY3g/w260-h400/9781780894140.jpg" width="260" /></span></a></div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span><p></p><div><b><span style="font-family: georgia;">From the BLURB: </span></b></div><div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div><i><span style="font-family: georgia;">Jamie Fraser and Claire Randall were torn apart by the Jacobite Rising of 1745, and it took them twenty years to find each other again. Now the American Revolution threatens to do the same.</span></i></div><div><i><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></i></div><div><i><span style="font-family: georgia;">It is 1779 and Claire and Jamie are at last reunited with their daughter, Brianna, her husband, Roger, and their children on Fraser's Ridge. Having the family together is a dream the Frasers had thought impossible.</span></i></div><div><i><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></i></div><div><i><span style="font-family: georgia;">Yet even in the North Carolina backcountry, the effects of war are being felt. Tensions in the Colonies are great and local feelings run hot enough to boil Hell's tea-kettle. Jamie knows loyalties among his own tenants are split and the war is on his doorstep. It's only a matter of time before the shooting starts.</span></i></div><div><i><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></i></div><div><i><span style="font-family: georgia;">Not so far away, young William Ransom is still coming to terms with the discovery of his true father's identity - and thus his own. Lord John Grey also has reconciliations to make and dangers to meet . . . on his son's behalf, and his own.</span></i></div><div><i><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></i></div><div><i><span style="font-family: georgia;">Meanwhile, the Southern Colonies blaze, and the Revolution creeps ever closer to Fraser's Ridge. And Claire, the physician, wonders how much of the blood to be spilt will belong to those she loves.</span></i></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">***</span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;">‘Go Tell the Bees That I Am Gone’ is the 2021 and ninth book in Diana Gabaldon’s ‘Outlander’ epic series – of romance, time-travelling, historic novels that have moved us from the Jacobite uprising in Scotland, to the American Revolutionary War unfolding … the last time we joined these characters was in ‘<a href="http://alphareader.blogspot.com/2014/06/written-in-my-own-hearts-blood.html" target="_blank">Written in My Own Heart's Blood</a>’ from 2013, so it’s been very welcome indeed to finally be back with the Fraser’s, Murray’s, Grey’s and assorted others after eight odd years absence. </span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;">However; at 902-pages I was quite intimidated (and too weak-wristed, literally sitting up in bed with this thing! … and yes, I know audiobook and ebook exist but I started this series as a 19-year-old uni student in paperback and I intend to finish that way darn it!) to jump into this book when it released in November 2021. I did start out strong and flew through a good 200-pages, but then I flagged and set it aside and only got back into a rhythm to finish it in August 2022 (despite being very keen and excited to know what was happening to some of my favourite characters in a favourite series of mine, that I’ve been reading since I was 19!) </span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;">But finished I have! And I did make notes and collected my thoughts as I read, which I shall now present to you in sub-headers because otherwise I don’t quite know how to articulate my feelings about this sprawling EPIC. </span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;">And, look, because this is the ninth book in a series that began in 1991 … expect that there are spoilers ahead (especially as I post this in August 2022 for a book that came out in November 2021!) I’m going to be delving into where these characters have come from and are going, so if you’re unfamiliar with the series (or, on the flipside, if you don’t want speculations on what might be coming!) this is probably not the review for you; </span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><h3 style="text-align: left;"><b><u><span style="font-family: georgia;">Character Motivations </span></u></b></h3><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;">I am in two minds about this. ‘Bees’ begins in 1779, and ends in 1781. The American Revolutionary War ends in 1783. A big part of me just wants everyone to stay safe on Fraser’s Ridge and not move until the war is over. And at times reading this evoked the same feelings as watching a horror movie where you just want to scream WHAT ARE YOU DOING?! STAY TOGETHER! NO – NO! DO NOT GO UP THE STAIRS ALONE! Because of course, in a 902-page novel, nobody is staying put and nobody is playing it safe in the lead-up to war because *of course not* this is fiction and it needs tension and drama. </span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;">That being said – I do think Gabaldon found good character motivations for everyone to, at times, get off the Ridge and venture out into the great (and much more dangerous!) unknown. I think of all the motivations however, Young Ian Murray had the best – when he gets word from Indian friends that his ex-wife Emily was involved in a massacre and her husband killed but they don’t know of her whereabouts or health, nor those of her three children (one of whom is likely Ian’s own son). Given that Ian’s Quaker wife Rachel has just given birth (to placeholder-named ‘Oggy’) and she’s not thrilled with the idea of him traipsing off to check on his ex and the child they had together (benevolent as she is as a Quaker, she has her limits), so she insists on going with him. And since Jamie Fraser’s sister Jenny has come to the Americas and is living with Ian and Rachel and she doesn’t intend to see her grandson go off without her – she’ll tag along too. That’s a good motivation, I can definitely see Ian being compelled to check on his kin and people (no matter that Emily ‘put him out,’ and left him) and it’s a nice full-circle moment for him. </span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;">Brianna, Roger and their children Jem and Manda also have pretty decent impetus in the form of a painting commission that Lord John Grey orchestrates for Brianna … which will conveniently take her to Savannah where Lord John Grey and his adopted son (Brianna’s half-brother, Jamie’s illegitimate son) William is also stationed. John Grey and William (though he recently handed in his officer’s commission) are part of the British army, Jamie and Claire knowing what’s coming think it’s a good idea for Brianna to see her brother before the war escalates … and if she can do some surreptitious gun-running and fund-raising while in Savannah, the better! Also if Roger can finally be officially ordained as a minister – it becomes a right old family affair! </span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;">These are all good motivations, I still just wanted to tie everyone up in cotton-wool but, alas!, it’s a book and that will not do. </span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><h3 style="text-align: left;"><b><u><span style="font-family: georgia;">The Hubris of Time Travellers</span></u></b></h3><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;">Partly why we believe these people are willing to take risks throughout the novel – even knowing what’s coming on the horizon of history! – is indeed that (false?) sense of security the time-travellers amongst them have, and have given. Brianna in particular is the daughter of a historian, married another, was raised with an American education recounting the war of independence and she assures herself that she knows the big players and moments in time. So when she goes to Savannah just as it’s about to be under siege, she constantly comforts everyone around her that she knows it will not fall. It will hold. </span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;">Gabaldon makes a very clever couple of villains much clearer in this novel especially; one of them being everyone’s hubris, which is delightfully manifested also in the form of a history book written by Claire’s late first husband, and Brianna’s adoptive father, Frank Randall that Roger and Bri smuggled back with them through the stones. Frank (rather knowingly) made a name for himself studying the history of Scots in America, and particularly during the Revolutionary War. </span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;">Jamie Fraser is convinced that this novel Frank wrote about exactly that, is talking to him specifically. He thinks Frank knew that Jamie lived, and that Bri and Claire would go back to him, so he made it his mission to study the history they’d be stepping into … ah. But; will Frank tell them the truth? Or is he hurt and bitter at the thought of his wife and adopted child returning to the man who – seemingly – took everything from Frank? </span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;">OR; can history be altered? Is it set in stone? </span></div><h3 style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><b><u><br /></u></b><b><u>The True Villain is Time … or is it? </u></b></span></h3><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;">I also think the reappearance of Frank has been cleverly done, where he looms like a spectre in the form of a history book he wrote and which Jamie is certain was written for him. Ah, we’re back to; “is Frank Randall friend or foe?” And I always think it’s worthwhile remembering that a big theme of the whole series is ~Legacy~ it creeps into everything (even the POV chapters we read — it’s Jamie and Claire’s blood-relations. ‘Blood of my blood.’) Even Frank; we first meet him when he’s tracking down his ancestors who fought for Queen & Country after he himself did the same in the Second World War. But we also know that Frank can’t father children. The line ends with him. How does he feel that Jamie has more left an imprint on history - world and family? - than Frank ever will? Is he bitter? Vengeful? How much of the Randall has been passed down … blood of my blood?</span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;">These are great, wispy, conceptual villains pottered throughout the novel. As a history nerd myself, I loved them and I loved wondering how I would be in the past … cocky and cock-sure of my place in time and ability to manipulate and read those tea-leaves? Would that be my downfall? Who knows? But I love how the Battle of Culloden playing out exactly as history remembered it, is now giving everyone a false sense of security about history always being stagnate and fixed.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><h3 style="text-align: left;"><b><u><span style="font-family: georgia;">Aforementioned </span></u></b></h3><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;">Gabaldon keeps great time in this book (I say, with one eyebrow raised at the behemoth 902-pages of it all!) but truly … I think it’s been very well done — time — Gabaldon has the Fraser’s in particular reminding us of the ticking timer (“two years until Yorktown,” as well as Jem and Germain’s ages - as though that will save them from the frontlines) it’s a very subtle and clever device to remind us where the goal-posts and finish line are right now. Especially guessing as we all have been, that Herself (Gabaldon) probably intends to wrap this series up with the next and tenth book. We’re all waiting for that moment that will surely signal the end – Jamie’s ghost below Claire’s window. When will it come, and what will it mean – who knows? </span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;">I also appreciated that since the last book came out, ‘Hamilton’ the Musical has given me a mini-history lesson and every time I saw ‘Yorktown’ written down, I heard the line ‘battle of Yorktown …’ in the back of my mind. </span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><h3 style="text-align: left;"><b><u><span style="font-family: georgia;">Oh, <i>William</i>. </span></u></b></h3><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;">William Ransom is the secret illegitimate son of Geneva Dunsany and Jamie Fraser. And just as he’s pretty much been from the jump … he remains a bit of a wet-blanket. Definitely the weak-link in the series. And in more ways than one does William really miss out here.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;">His chapters are such a bore - something about being tasked with finding his cousins’ body after he’s reportedly dead? I barely paid attention. He’s the descendant I care the least about and I only worry that I think his purpose is to set him on a collision course with Jamie during this war … I was partly looking forward to reading William get a love-interest (after loving his little triangle with Ian and Rachel Hunter) and feeling majorly bummed that he fell for prostitute Jane who sadly took her own life in the last book (bummed because she dies, not because she’s a prostitute – to be clear!) </span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;">William kinda gets a love-interest in ‘Bees’. The bad news is; it also sucks. Her name is Amaranthus (thanks, I hate it) I wish he got to be more dashing and suave and have an epic love story like everyone else got, but … I guess William is a walking, talking case-study in Nature vs. Nurture? </span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;">Lord John Grey and his brother Hal also take up a lot of William’s chapters and I literally only cared when he and Brianna’s stories converged. BUT – there’s a glimmer of hope in the cliff-hanger ending for William. </span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><h3 style="text-align: left;"><b><u><span style="font-family: georgia;">The MVPs, The Murray’s! </span></u></b></h3><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;">Rachel Hunter and Ian remain my faves (that aren’t Jamie and Claire!). I just love them; Young Ian is one of my favourite characters in any book of all time EVER and I continue to crave as much of him and Rachel Hunter as possible! We got a fairly good chunk here, *however* I was frustrated that the storyline of Ian taking his family to go and find Emily (and his son) really had Rachel questioning a few things about them and their relationship (which she believes in, of course she does!) but I wanted some outward declarations from Ian and I reckon he’s more perceptive and attuned to Rachel than he is here, where he left a lot unsaid. And I wanted more sexy times for them. </span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;">I also felt like the focus on their story ended rather abruptly, probably because it’ll be revisited in the next book – but I really felt like in the last quarter they were barely mentioned, after having a fairly exciting and exhilarating journey that carried a lot of the middle of ‘Bees’. </span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;">But, look, I recognise that because they’re my faves I will always want more, more, more. </span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><h3 style="text-align: left;"><b><u><span style="font-family: georgia;">Comedic Timing </span></u></b></h3><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;">Totally random; but I did not think I’d get such a laugh out of a prolapsed uterus and hand-crafted pessary scene. Which … hats-off to you, Gabaldon. That was gold. </span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><h3 style="text-align: left;"><b><u><span style="font-family: georgia;">All Filler? </span></u></b></h3><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;">I’ve glanced at a few YouTube reviews of ‘Bees’ where I can see people’s biggest complaint is that it is rather ‘boring’ and not a lot happens. And, look, yeah. Like I said – Gabaldon is keeping time in this book and wanting to give us that impending joy (or doom?) that the war is nearly at its end. Two years. Two years. Two years. But in the interim we have – this. A book in which she moves all the players where they need to be on the board, but we get very much a sense that the game hasn’t yet started in earnest. And that feeling permeates ‘Bees,’ … I wonder if Avengers: Endgame and Infinity War have conditioned all of us to brace for the worst in the one *before* The End, that I think we went into ‘Bees’ expecting more heightened stakes and drama to carry us through to the likely finale tenth instalment? But we really don’t get that here. We get a lot of … moving around on that chess-board. We get a lot of set-up and it is somewhat toothless. Case-in-point is the literal last 50-pages or so is a Hail Mary! reminder of threats from previous books who are now coming home to roost. But I feel like my memory was not sufficiently jogged for them and I got whiplash from being forced to see them as high-stakes danger. </span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><h3 style="text-align: left;"><b><u><span style="font-family: georgia;">Finale </span></u></b></h3><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;">Look, I think a lot of ‘Bees’ hinges on how the next book is looking … I think the more conceptual ‘villains’ of this book being time (and Frank Randall’s documenting of it?) are going to be the tricky aspects that upon re-reading when the series is properly concluded, will most impress readers for the groundwork Herself was laying. But for now; it is a somewhat placid instalment in one of my (still) favourite series. </span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;">I am still sorry that I was so long to get around to reading, but – therein lies the rub! – I’ve changed a lot since ‘Written in my Own Heart’s Blood’ came out and even more since I was that uni student reading a second-hand copy of ‘Outlander’ for the first time. When ‘Own Heart’s Blood’ came out I wasn’t yet a published author or even working as a literary agent. Now, I am. My time is more finite … I wish I could have spent a fortnight lounging around in a Melbourne summer to read this behemoth book when it first came out, the way I used to, but – the passage of time is a funny thing, I feel like I don’t have as much of it anymore. </span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;">But it is nice to know that when I do find my reading-groove with this series (and a comfortable reading position!) I can fall into this story and these characters so easily. Like I’ve never been away, and they’ve always been right there – waiting for me to return. </span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;">3.5/5</span></div></div><div><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='515' height='427' src='https://www.blogger.com/video.g?token=AD6v5dxjuyyP3B7pI9fqowGNj8JbotBjR6f6-B6fAlWag1gBSbSYhuasjqxLRl8zNIwGH--RiLmwDTlBbtL84uFUXg' class='b-hbp-video b-uploaded' frameborder='0'></iframe></div><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div>Daniellehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08440460463119645788noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9005037379064329761.post-25362606531864969082022-08-02T13:42:00.002+10:002022-08-02T13:42:30.982+10:00'The Bodyguard' by Katherine Center<p style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgLZy9QDjpm1R7ovvzYjSrLOZ57PM8sR_guqXPut_qCXp6n-I103FgZeE3hUFr2J-PAP5_hrrJZgkM0qocbMHo2-P-QQA5lsGSkvGnYwokP5lOIO0parjdxMEuewRqNP-e-vydv2w97RRtK0_5TbkYrKHbj66SYZecMN1ZnODZrkcjfR3RugHGOVtZmcA/s1368/58724801.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1368" data-original-width="900" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgLZy9QDjpm1R7ovvzYjSrLOZ57PM8sR_guqXPut_qCXp6n-I103FgZeE3hUFr2J-PAP5_hrrJZgkM0qocbMHo2-P-QQA5lsGSkvGnYwokP5lOIO0parjdxMEuewRqNP-e-vydv2w97RRtK0_5TbkYrKHbj66SYZecMN1ZnODZrkcjfR3RugHGOVtZmcA/w264-h400/58724801.jpg" width="264" /></a></span></div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /> </span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">From the BLURB: </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="border: 0px; box-shadow: none; box-sizing: border-box; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><em style="border: 0px; box-shadow: none; box-sizing: border-box; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-position: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">She’s got his back.</em></span><br style="box-shadow: none; box-sizing: border-box;" />Hannah Brooks looks more like a kindergarten teacher than somebody who could kill you with a wine bottle opener. Or a ballpoint pen. Or a dinner napkin. But the truth is, she’s an Executive Protection Agent (aka "bodyguard"), and she just got hired to protect superstar actor Jack Stapleton from his middle-aged, corgi-breeding stalker.<br style="box-shadow: none; box-sizing: border-box;" /><br style="box-shadow: none; box-sizing: border-box;" /><span style="border: 0px; box-shadow: none; box-sizing: border-box; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><em style="border: 0px; box-shadow: none; box-sizing: border-box; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-position: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">He’s got her heart.</em></span><br style="box-shadow: none; box-sizing: border-box;" />Jack Stapleton’s a household name—captured by paparazzi on beaches the world over, famous for, among other things, rising out of the waves in all manner of clingy board shorts and glistening like a Roman deity. But a few years back, in the wake of a family tragedy, he dropped from the public eye and went off the grid.<br style="box-shadow: none; box-sizing: border-box;" /><br style="box-shadow: none; box-sizing: border-box;" /><span style="border: 0px; box-shadow: none; box-sizing: border-box; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><em style="border: 0px; box-shadow: none; box-sizing: border-box; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-position: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">They’ve got a secret.</em></span><br style="box-shadow: none; box-sizing: border-box;" />When Jack’s mom gets sick, he comes home to the family’s Texas ranch to help out. Only one catch: He doesn’t want his family to know about his stalker. Or the bodyguard thing. And so Hannah—against her will <em style="border: 0px; box-shadow: none; box-sizing: border-box; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">and</em> her better judgment—finds herself pretending to be Jack’s girlfriend as a cover. Even though her ex, like a jerk, says no one will believe it.<br style="box-shadow: none; box-sizing: border-box;" /><br style="box-shadow: none; box-sizing: border-box;" /><span style="border: 0px; box-shadow: none; box-sizing: border-box; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><em style="border: 0px; box-shadow: none; box-sizing: border-box; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-position: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">What could possibly go wrong???</em></span><br style="box-shadow: none; box-sizing: border-box;" />Hannah hardly believes it, herself. But the more time she spends with Jack, the more real it all starts to seem. And there lies the heartbreak. Because it’s easy for Hannah to protect Jack. But protecting her own, long-neglected heart? That’s the hardest thing she’s ever done.</span></p><p style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">***</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">'The Bodyguard' is US author <a href="http://alphareader.blogspot.com/search/label/Katherine%20Center" target="_blank">Katherine Center</a>'s ninth published book, a contemporary romance stand-alone. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">We follow Executive Protection Agent (aka "bodyguard") Hannah Brooks as she experiences among the worst months of her life - her mother dies after a long battle with alcoholism, her boyfriend dumps her the day after the funeral, and her work-life is on the line as she's up for a big promotion that all of these personal hurdles could get in the way of. And Hannah is someone who very much prioritises work-life over home-life, and is in a real tail-spin as all of that is upended. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Her one chance to redeem herself comes with a new job-offer that her boss, Glenn, assigns her to. But it's not the international jaunt she was hoping for; rather it's a home-base Texas job for international movie-star heartthrob, Jack Stapleton, who apparently has a corgi-breeding stalker on his tail right when he's trying to return home and be with his family as his Mum receives cancer-treatment. Also because it's a delicate home-life situation, part of Hannah's job will be to pose as Jack's girlfriend ... so as not to alarm the family. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Rom-com ensues.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">This was great, and I really enjoyed it and appreciated that Center in an author's note at the back says she wrote this in the thick of Covid pandemic and lockdowns, so she reached for the fluffiest and swooniest of stories to occupy her mind. And this is very much that! It's fun, flirty, carefree. Not a hard-hitter like some of Center's other books have been (my personal favourite that I think tugs on heart-strings as well as keeps heart fluttering is 'Things You Save in a Fire' but I am also a huge fan of 'Happiness for Beginners'). </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">'The Bodyguard' (despite the Costner/Houston title!) reminds me strongly of Mhairi McFarlane's 'Who's That Girl?', with a dash of new book 'Funny You Should' by Elissa Sussman, and 'The View Was Exhausting' by Mikaella Clements and Onjuli Datta. All in that famous-person dates an ordinary rom-com niche (very 'Notting Hill'!) and Center does it very well! </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Does it get *slightly* ridiculous with the high-hilarity and unlikely situations? Yeah, sure. The final half especially felt tonally "off" in a way I think is hard to explain, and I just don't think she quite nailed the dénouement. I also keep wanting Center to write like .5% more spice. Not full-blown, still 'cut-away-to-the-curtains,' but just a *pinch* more paprika to bring her in line with a Beth O'Leary or Mhairi.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">But those are niggling little thoughts I had, and also that this wasn't my favourite of Center's books ... it's very much low of the middle for me, in rankings. But I think plenty of readers will have LOTS of fun with this one! </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">3/5</span></p>Daniellehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08440460463119645788noreply@blogger.com0