February 18, 2025 · 3:29 pm

My favourite Mistake – Marian Keyes

My Favourite Mistake – Marian Keyes

According to Amazon, I bought this novel in April 2024. It then languished in my TBR and finally I decided to listen to it (Marian Keyes is the narrator!).

Here’s the blurb …

Anna has just lost her taste for the big apple . . .

Anna has a life to envy. An apartment in New York. A well-meaning (too well-meaning?) partner. And a high-flying job in beauty PR. Who wouldn’t want all that? Anna—it turns out.

Turning a minor mid-life crisis into a major life event she packs it in, heads back to Ireland, and gets a PR job for a super-high-end coastal retreat.

Tougher than it sounds. Newsflash: the locals hate it. So much so, there have been threats—and violence.

Anna, however, worked in the beauty industry. There’s no ugliness she hasn’t seen. No wrinkle she can’t smooth over. Anna’s got this.

Until she discovers that leaving New York doesn’t mean escaping her mistakes.

Once upon a time she’d had a best friend. Once upon a time she’d loved a man. Now she has neither. And now she has to face them.

We all make mistakes.
But when do we stop making the same one over and over again?

This was great! It was witty, kind and well-written. In particular, I liked all of the references to menopause and peri-menopause, not enough is said about them as if it is some how shameful to be aging. Maumtully was delightful with a cast of quirky secondary characters. It is about being alive and fallible, but trying to do better next time. It is also about knowing things will get better.

I am going to have to add ‘feathery stroker’ to my vocabulary.

A review

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February 14, 2025 · 2:46 pm

Anne of Green Gables, My Daughter & Me – Lorilee Craker

Anne of Green Gables, My Daughter & Me – Lorilee Craker

I am a super-fan of L. M. Montgomery. I have read all of the books (by her and about her), seen the various adaptations, completed a cross stitch, and visited Green Gables (and given that I live in Australia that is quite the journey). I also like a book memoir – for example this one, or this one, or this one. This book was perfect for me.

Here’s the blurb …

A charming and heartwarming true story for anyone who has ever longed for a place to belong.“Anne of Green Gables,” My Daughter, and Me is a witty romp through the classic novel; a visit to the magical shores of Prince Edward Island; and a poignant personal tale of love, faith, and loss.

And it all started with a simple question: “What’s an orphan?” The words from her adopted daughter, Phoebe, during a bedtime reading of Anne of Green Gables stopped Lorilee Craker in her tracks. How could Lorilee, who grew up not knowing her own birth parents, answer Phoebe’s question when she had wrestled all her life with feeling orphaned—and learned too well that not every story has a happy ending?

So Lorilee set off on a quest to find answers in the pages of the very book that started it all, determined to discover—and teach her daughter—what home, family, and belonging really mean. If you loved the poignancy of Orphan Train and the humor of Mennonite in a Little Black Dress, you will be captivated by “Anne of Green Gables,” My Daughter, and Me. It’s a beautiful memoir that deftly braids three lost girls’ stories together, speaks straight to the heart of the orphan in us all, and shows us the way home at last.

This was beautifully written – very heartfelt. I enjoyed how the personal bits interleaved with the Anne of Green Gables bits. It’s about finding family (biological and chosen), and making peace with life’s difficulties.

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February 13, 2025 · 8:01 pm

A Fatal Grace – Louise Penny

A Fatal Grace – Louise Penny

I read the twelfth novel in this series (A Great Reckoning) and was enthralled, so I have started reading the series. I listened to Still Life on holiday (so no blog), but I have just finished listening to A Fatal Grace.

Here’s the blurb …

Welcome to winter in Three Pines, a picturesque village in Quebec, where the villagers are preparing for a traditional country Christmas, and someone is preparing for murder.

No one liked CC de Poitiers. Not her quiet husband, not her spineless lover, not her pathetic daughter—and certainly none of the residents of Three Pines. CC de Poitiers managed to alienate everyone, right up until the moment of her death.

When Chief Inspector Armand Gamache, of the Sûreté du Québec, is called to investigate, he quickly realizes he’s dealing with someone quite extraordinary. CC de Poitiers was electrocuted in the middle of a frozen lake, in front of the entire village, as she watched the annual curling tournament. And yet no one saw anything. Who could have been insane enough to try such a macabre method of murder—or brilliant enough to succeed?

With his trademark compassion and courage, Gamache digs beneath the idyllic surface of village life to find the dangerous secrets long buried there. For a Quebec winter is not only staggeringly beautiful but deadly, and the people of Three Pines know better than to reveal too much of themselves. But other dangers are becoming clear to Gamache. As a bitter wind blows into the village, something even more chilling is coming for Gamache himself.

We’re back in Three Pines with the usual locals, and a new and very complicated murder. It’s winter and I love all of the wintery references (it’s Summer and hot here). Gamache and his wife are delightful as are the residents of Three Pines (apart from Ruth). Reading these novels (despite the murders) is like having a cosy holiday.

The novel is beautifully written, and the sense of place is extraordinary. I also like being in different characters heads – Yvette Nicole is quite something.

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February 5, 2025 · 2:20 pm

Camille’s Bread – Amanda Lohrey

Camille’s Bread – Amanda Lohrey

I bought this one in Tasmania (Hobart). I wanted something by a Tasmanian author and I had previously read The Labrinth, so I was familiar with her work.

Here’s the blurb …

After too many nights of takeaway pizzas, Marita wants just one year off to look after her daughter, Camille. then she meets Stephen, a public servant in the complex process of reinventing himself, training as a shiatsu masseur. As their relationship grows, so does the drama of parenting Camille, in this elegantly crafted, warmly appealing novel of contemporary Australian life.

This was a very thoughtful book about relationships; with one’s self, with a romantic partner, parenting, step-parenting, and friendship. It is also about compromise or the lack of compromise.

Stephen is very rigid in his views of the best way to live. He is trying to find ‘poise’ and he thinks it is to do with the body and the body’s energy – how you feed it and how you treat it. He thinks words are the enemy. Marita, on the other hand, is all about words. She has a personal project where she records people talking (telling stories etc.) and then she listens to them and tries to rework them into some kind of prose. Stephen finds Camille’s love of trashy white bread horrifying (all that dead white flour) and is always trying to improve their (Marita and Camille) diet.

Here’s a quote that sums it up for me

In bed that night, Stephen ponders the question of cake. It’s that nurturing hysteria again. Eve took the apple from the Serpent and she’s been making up for it ever since by feeding everyone cake. But when we bake flour it becomes oxidised and oxidation is the Ling process, the beginning of death … of rust, and breaking down. Once again this is a strong materialist position, of the kind Sanjay had warned him against. Of late, he has modified his thinking on this and is inclined to argue now that it’s not the cake as such but what goes into it, the quality of the energy, which includes not only the character of the ingredients but the energy of the cook as well. Marita believes it to be the other way around – what is important is not the reality but the idea.

It’s beautifully written with a visceral sense of place. The minor characters are fabulous and add heft to the story.

A review

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February 4, 2025 · 5:29 pm

A Short History of Nearly Everything – Bill Bryson

A Short History of Nearly Everything – Bill Bryson

I was looking for something to listen to in my husband’s audible library and came across this. I missed the bit about it being a rough guide to science. Which is not a problem – I have a science degree, so I still found it fascinating.

Here’s the blurb …

Bill Bryson describes himself as a reluctant traveller, but even when he stays safely at home he can’t contain his curiosity about the world around him. “A Short History of Nearly Everything” is his quest to understand everything that has happened from the Big Bang to the rise of civilisation – how we got from there, being nothing at all, to here, being us. The ultimate eye-opening journey through time and space, revealing the world in a way most of us have never seen it before.

This is very entertaining and informative – I enjoyed Bryson’s writing style. And I feel more informed on geology, chemistry, biology, anthropology, etc. Although, it seems the more we know the less we understand. I found the narrator to be annoying (and his Australian accent was terrible) not to mention the way her pronounces Himalayas.

It is probably a little bit dated after Covid and the current state of climate change.

A review.

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February 3, 2025 · 4:43 pm

The Bad Bridesmaid – Rachael Johns

The Bad Bridesmaid – Rachael Johns

I found this at the Launceston airport and read half of it on the flight home. I enjoyed The Other Bridget, and I had been waiting for this one to be released.

Here’s the blurb …

When serial dater Winifred Darling – Fred – is asked to be the maid of honour at her mother’s sixth wedding, she’s determined to do everything in her power to stop it. As the author of a forthcoming book called 21 Rules for Not Catching Feelings, she knows better than most about the perils of falling in love.
On arrival at the island wedding destination, Fred is delighted to discover that the groom’s hot muso son Leo is just as set against the wedding as she is. Together, they come up with ‘Operation Break-Up’ to prevent their parents from making what they believe will be a catastrophic mistake.
But as Fred and Leo get to know each other better, their unexpected feelings for each other create further complications, and Fred is forced to rethink her own rigid rules about romance and family. Maybe not every relationship has to play by the book, and could Fred become the star in a romcom of her own?
A heart-warming friends-to-lovers romance about the magic and mayhem of weddings – and what happens when everything you thought you knew about love is turned upside down.

I do like a friends-to-lovers romance. I live in Perth, so I enjoyed all of the references to Perth and Fremantle (and I could appreciate the very long flight to London!). It is witty, well-written, and I like the fact that Fred is a ‘player’ and Leo wants to find true love (just flipping the stereotype around a bit).

The Other Bridget is still my favourite, but I thoroughly enjoyed this one.

A review.

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February 2, 2025 · 4:06 pm

My Inconvenient Duke – Loretta Chase

My Inconvenient Duke – Loretta Chase

I was very keen to read this novel (I pre-ordered it) I enjoyed the first two books in the series (A Duke in Shining Armour and Ten Things I Hate about the Duke). In these books Alice and Blackwood are estranged (or appear to be so) and I wanted to know their story.

Here’s the blurb …

Of all the dukes in all the world, why does it have to be him?

Lady Alice Ancaster needs a husband, and fast, because her reckless brother is going to get himself killed, leaving the dukedom—and her future—in their repellent cousin’s clutches.

The Duke of Blackwood has known Alice since childhood, and they’ve always had a special connection. But years ago he broke it, when he chose a riotous life with his two best friends instead of a reasonable one with her.

The trouble is, the tall, dark, sardonic rogue keeps turning up exactly when needed, and ready—though he sometimes needs a push—to play the hero, if only for as long as it takes.

Being irresistibly drawn to the Wrong Man is not convenient, but when events come to a crisis, Alice has to make a choice. The question is, can she live with it?

This is not the novel I was expecting (which is not a bad thing). The first two thirds are before the first two novels and it shows the start of their relationship and their marriage. The last third shows that they were never really estranged they were both just busy with other duties that took them away from each other.

It’s witty, well-written, and well-researched. If you’re not familiar with the first two novels, then I think you will enjoy this one, but I was hoping for a book about a relationship that had gone sour being re-ignited.

A review.

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February 1, 2025 · 5:55 pm

Dusk – Robbie Arnott

Dusk – Robbie Arnott

I was going to Tasmania for a holiday and I wanted to read a Tasmanian author (I think Robbie Arnott is from Launceston). I read The Rain Heron, so I was familiar with his work.

Here’s the blurb …

In the distant highlands, a puma named Dusk is killing shepherds. Down in the lowlands, twins Iris and Floyd are out of work, money and friends. When they hear that a bounty has been placed on Dusk, they reluctantly decide to join the hunt. As they journey up into this wild, haunted country, they discover there’s far more to the land and people of the highlands than they imagined. And as they close in on their prey, they’re forced to reckon with conflicts both ancient and deeply personal.

This is set in Australia because there are kangaroos, but I couldn’t say where. I laughed about the pumas being imported to hunt something else introduced, but preferring to eat the sheep instead – very Australian, cane toads anyone?

The descriptions of the landscape are magnificent, and I particularly enjoyed Iris’s connection to the highlands (her sense of peace and stillness).

The conflict between pastoralists and nature, pastoralists and the first people is a feature of this novel, but not in an overt manner (we’re not being beaten over the head here).

It does have an ambiguous ending, but I am imagining everyone happily living in Brazil.

Some quotes

And perhaps it was this mixture of wine and song; perhaps it was the hours spent in the company of cold mountains and still water, perhaps it was her lingering awareness of the ghostly grove surrounding the tavern; perhaps it was because she was momentarily free of Floyd, while knowing he was safe; perhaps it was the fatigue at the end of a hard day; perhaps it was all of it combined that made Iris lean back on her stool and feel a thin but taut connection to these things that were new to her, that were bright and strange, that she did not understand.

But it was not a claustrophobic feeling; there was pleasure in moving through it all, as if she was slowly discovering the right way – or perhaps just her way – to move through an old world.

She felt like a broom had been pulled through her, stiff bristles raking her straight, clean, her mind filling with a sense of unhurried purpose.

That last one in particular! How good is he at putting words together?

A review

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January 18, 2025 · 10:52 am

Offshore – Penelope Fitzgerald

Offshore – Penelope Fitzgerald

The theme for my book club this time is Rivers. I loved There are Rivers in the Sky by Elif Shafak and I will definitely talk about that novel, but I wanted to read something else as well. I googled novels about rivers and this came up. I have read and watched The Book Shop, so this was the perfect choice.

Here’s the blurb …

Penelope Fitzgerald’s Booker Prize-winning novel of loneliness and connecting is set among the houseboat community of the Thames, with an introduction from Alan Hollinghurst.

Offshore is a dry, genuinely funny novel, set among the houseboat community who rise and fall with the tide of the Thames on Battersea Reach. Living between land and water, they feel as if they belong to neither…

Maurice, a male prostitute, is the sympathetic friend to whom all the others turn. Nenna loves her husband but can’t get him back; her children run wild on the muddy foreshore. She feels drawn to Richard, the ex-RNVR city man whose converted minesweeper dominates the Reach. Is he sexually attractive because he can fold maps the right way? With this and other questions waiting to be answered, Offshore offers a delightful glimpse of the workings of an eccentric community.

As I haven’t read the introduction yet, I might be missing some of the more literary or subtle points.

I stayed in Battersea on my recent trip to London, and suffice to say this stretch of the Thames has been gentrified.

This is one of my photos – from the Chelsea side of the river

I would call this an ensemble novel, no one major character or view point. For a short period of time we follow the lives of a small house boat community – the boats (apart from one) are all a bit battered as are the people by life and circumstances, but they are kind and look out for each other.

The writing is beautiful, evocative of the place and time, insightful, and, at times, witty.

Here are some of my favourite quotes

And each one of them felt the patches, strains and gaps in their craft as if they were weak places in their own bodies.

I’m afraid I can’t claim to know much about knitting

Tilda cared nothing for the future, and had, as a result, a great capacity for happiness.

She was still at the RSM then, violin first study, and she fell in love as only a violinist can.

A review

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January 15, 2025 · 2:55 pm

A Great Reckoning – Louise Penny

A Great Reckoning – Louise Penny

I came across this while searching my husband’s audible library – I haven’t read any of the previous novels (this is novel 12), so I have probably spoiled the earlier ones for myself. I liked it, I am planning on reading the first one while on a road trip.

Here’s the blurb …

When an intricate old map is found stuffed into the walls of the bistro in Three Pines, it at first seems no more than a curiosity. But the closer the villagers look, the stranger it becomes.

Given to Armand Gamache as a gift the first day of his new job, the map eventually leads him to shattering secrets. To an old friend and older adversary. It leads the former Chief of Homicide for the Sûreté du Québec to places even he is afraid to go. But must.

And there he finds four young cadets in the Sûreté academy, and a dead professor. And, with the body, a copy of the old, odd map.

Everywhere Gamache turns, he sees Amelia Choquet, one of the cadets. Tattooed and pierced. Guarded and angry. Amelia is more likely to be found on the other side of a police line-up. And yet she is in the academy. A protégée of the murdered professor.

The focus of the investigation soon turns to Gamache himself and his mysterious relationship with Amelia, and his possible involvement in the crime. The frantic search for answers takes the investigators back to Three Pines and a stained glass window with its own horrific secrets.

For both Amelia Choquet and Armand Gamache, the time has come for a great reckoning.

Number-one New York Times bestselling author Louise Penny pulls back the layers to reveal a brilliant and emotionally powerful truth in her latest spellbinding novel.

I loved the setting, the characters and the plot. I loved the map and the Three Pines community. The emphasis on kindness and empathy, and not believing everything you think. It’s about second chances and that there is always a road back.

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