Shambolic Living

Reading This Week – Worse Things Happen At Sea – William McInnes, Sarah Watt

Janine — Sun, 09 Apr 2017 21:33:52 +0000

Anyone who has survived a long-term relationship (and I’m talking decades, not just a year a two) knows it is an adventure in joy, despair and resilience combined with equal parts humour and anger. This memoir of family life by Aussie Actor/Writer, William McInnes, and his Film Director/Animator wife, Sarah Watt, captures the nuances of daily...

Reading This Week – The Happiest Refugee – Anh Do

Janine — Wed, 04 Jan 2012 18:30:48 +0000

In Australia there is a long-running debate on what to do about asylum seekers. In particular, the people who pay money to people smugglers to take to the open sea in a bid to seek refuge in Australia. It’s a political hot-potato, with the issue whipped into a frenzy by a variety of shock-jocks and...

Reading This Week – There Should Be More Dancing – Rosalie Ham

Janine — Tue, 20 Dec 2011 22:55:42 +0000

Margery Blandon, an uptight 79-year-old, is on the 43rd floor of the Tropic Hotel debating whether to jump over the edge. How she came to get there is the basis of There Should Be More Dancing by Rosalie Ham. Ham, the author of The Dressmaker, portrays a darkly humorous look at the process of aging,...

Reading This Week – Bereft – Chris Womersley

Janine — Fri, 25 Nov 2011 05:43:10 +0000

The new novel by Chris Womersley is a dark tale with Gothic sensibilities. Womersley portrays a world of sadness and pain, set in 1919 in the aftermath of the First World War and in the midst of the Spanish Flu epidemic. Ten years earlier Quinn Walker had fled his hometown of Flint when he was...

The List of Books to Read

Janine — Sun, 13 Nov 2011 00:13:37 +0000

Over in Twitter world Booktopia asked followers to take a picture of the books in their To Be Read pile. I gathered mine together, a motley collection of library books (must remember to return them), bargain basket buys (OK everyone else read them ages OK but I paid $5 instead of $32 to get ’em),...