Category Archives: Miscellaneous

Anne’s World – A New Century of Anne of Green Gables, edited by Irene Gammel and Benjamin Lefebvre

Anne’s world – A New Century of Anne of Green Gables

I bought this soon after it was published (way back in 2010) and I finally read it. It’s a series of papers written around the time of the 100th anniversary of the publishing of Anne of Green Gables.

Here’s the blurb …

The recent 100 year anniversary of the first publication of L.M. Montgomery’s Anne of Green Gables has inspired renewed interest in one of Canada’s most beloved fictional icons. The international appeal of the red-haired orphan has not diminished over the past century, and the cultural meanings of her story continue to grow and change. The original essays in Anne’s World offer fresh and timely approaches to issues of culture, identity, health, and globalization as they apply to Montgomery’s famous character and to today’s readers.

In conversation with each other and with the work of previous experts, the contributors to Anne’s World discuss topics as diverse as Anne in fashion, the global industry surrounding Anne, how the novel can be used as a tool to counteract depression, and the possibility that Anne suffers from Fetal Alcohol Syndrome. Anne in translation and its adaptation for film and television are also considered. By establishing new ways to examine one of popular culture’s most beloved characters, the essays of Anne’s World demonstrate the timeless and ongoing appeal of L.M. Montgomery’s writing.

It covers a diverse range of topics; from translations to adaptations, bibliotherapy, etc. I skipped some of the chapters – the one on Fetal Alcohol syndrome for example, if anything I think Anne has ADHD. But this was an interesting selection of papers, and made me want to read the novel again and dig into LM Montgomery’s journals.

It is quite an academic book, but don’t let that put you off, it’s easy to read. And there are lots of foot notes you can explorer for extra reading.

I can’t find a review of this book, but here is a link to an article Margaret Atwood wrote about Anne of Green Gables.

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Threads of Life – Clare Hunter

Threads of Life – Clare Hunter

This book has been in my pile for quite some time. I have read Embroidering Her Truth, I think this one just got buried under the pile of new books. Eventually I listened to it.

Here’s the blurb …

A globe-spanning history of sewing, embroidery, and the people who have used a needle and thread to make their voices heard 

In 1970s Argentina, mothers marched in headscarves embroidered with the names of their “disappeared” children. In Tudor, England, when Mary, Queen of Scots, was under house arrest, her needlework carried her messages to the outside world. From the political propaganda of the Bayeux Tapestry, World War I soldiers coping with PTSD, and the maps sewn by schoolgirls in the New World, to the AIDS quilt, Hmong story clothes, and pink pussyhats, women and men have used the language of sewing to make their voices heard, even in the most desperate of circumstances. 

Threads of Life is a chronicle of identity, protest, memory, power, and politics told through the stories of needlework. Clare Hunter, master of the craft, threads her own narrative as she takes us over centuries and across continents—from medieval France to contemporary Mexico and the United States, and from a POW camp in Singapore to a family attic in Scotland—to celebrate the age-old, universal, and underexplored beauty and power of sewing. Threads of Life is an evocative and moving book about the need we have to tell our story. 

It is split into 16 chapters (each chapter is the theme by which the needlework is discussed):

  • Unknown
  • Power
  • Fraility
  • Captivity
  • Identity
  • Connection
  • Protect
  • Journey
  • Protest
  • Loss
  • Community
  • Place
  • Value
  • Art
  • Voice

For example, embroidered banners are discussed in the Protest chapter (mining unions, the women’s suffragette movement)

If you are at all interested in social history and/or textiles, then you will find this book fascinating and inspiring. The research is impressive, but not overwhelming. And there are some personal anecdotes as well, which I always enjoy.

A review

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Filed under 4, History, Miscellaneous, Non-Fiction, Recommended

These Precious Days – Ann Patchett

These Precious Days – Ann Patchett

I bought this as a present for a friend (I don’t think she was that impressed), but I was keen to read it, so when I saw the book on Borrowbox I downloaded it.

Here’s the blurb …

The beloved New York Times bestselling author reflects on home, family, friendships and writing in this deeply personal collection of essays.  

“Any story that starts will also end.” As a writer, Ann Patchett knows what the outcome of her fiction will be. Life, however, often takes turns we do not see coming. Patchett ponders this truth in these wise essays that afford a fresh and intimate look into her mind and heart. 

At the center of These Precious Days is the title essay, a suprising and moving meditation on an unexpected friendship that explores “what it means to be seen, to find someone with whom you can be your best and most complete self.” When Patchett chose an early galley of actor and producer Tom Hanks’ short story collection to read one night before bed, she had no idea that this single choice would be life changing. It would introduce her to a remarkable woman—Tom’s brilliant assistant Sooki—with whom she would form a profound bond that held monumental consequences for them both. 

A literary alchemist, Patchett plumbs the depths of her experiences to create gold: engaging and moving pieces that are both self-portrait and landscape, each vibrant with emotion and rich in insight. Turning her writer’s eye on her own experiences, she transforms the private into the universal, providing us all a way to look at our own worlds anew, and reminds how fleeting and enigmatic life can be. 

From the enchantments of Kate DiCamillo’s children’s books to youthful memories of Paris; the cherished life gifts given by her three fathers to the unexpected influence of Charles Schultz’s Snoopy; the expansive vision of Eudora Welty to the importance of knitting, Patchett connects life and art as she illuminates what matters most. Infused with the author’s grace, wit, and warmth, the pieces in These Precious Days resonate deep in the soul, leaving an indelible mark—and demonstrate why Ann Patchett is one of the most celebrated writers of our time.

I have listened to Ann Patchett on various book programmes and I have read The Dutch House and Commonwealth, so I was keen to read these personal essays. I enjoyed it, particularly the knitting one and the one about the friend with cancer coming to stay.

A review

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The Man Who Died Twice – Richard Osman

The Man Who Died Twice – Richard Osman

I enjoyed the first one, so was keen to read this (even so it languished on the tbr for a while). I think these novels should be made into a TV series, it would be great.

Here’s the blurb…

It’s the following Thursday.

Elizabeth has received a letter from an old colleague, a man with whom she has a long history. He’s made a big mistake, and he needs her help. His story involves stolen diamonds, a violent mobster, and a very real threat to his life.

As bodies start piling up, Elizabeth enlists Joyce, Ibrahim and Ron in the hunt for a ruthless murderer. And if they find the diamonds too? Well, wouldn’t that be a bonus?

But this time they are up against an enemy who wouldn’t bat an eyelid at knocking off four septuagenarians. Can The Thursday Murder Club find the killer (and the diamonds) before the killer finds them?

I am sure I will be reading the third one as well. This one was witty, well-written, with laugh out loud moments. I particularly enjoy Joyce’s diary.

A review.

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Filed under 4, Crime, Fiction, Miscellaneous, Recommended

Essentialism – Greg McKeown

Essentialism – Greg McKeown

I had this on my Kindle for a long time, but I only got to it after reading Four Thousand Weeks. It is like the next step on that journey – maybe a bit more business related rather than life related.

Here’s the blurb …

Have you ever found yourself stretched too thin?
Do you simultaneously feel overworked and underutilized?
Are you often busy but not productive?
 Do you feel like your time is constantly being hijacked by other people’s agendas?

If you answered yes to any of these, the way out is the Way of the EssentialistThe Way of the Essentialist isn’t about getting more done in less time. It’s about getting only the right things done.  It is not  a time management strategy, or a productivity technique. It is a systematic discipline for discerning what is absolutely essential, then eliminating everything that is not, so we can make the highest possible contribution towards the things that really matter. 

By forcing us to apply a more selective criteria for what is Essential, the disciplined pursuit of less empowers us to reclaim control of our own choices about where to spend our precious time and energy – instead of giving others the implicit permission to choose for us.

Essentialism is not one more thing – it’s a whole new way of doing everything. A must-read for any leader, manager, or individual who wants to learn who to do less, but better, in every area of their lives, Essentialism  is a movement whose time has come.

I have started saying no to more things. It is the type of book that you need to read again and then try to implement things slowly.

Another review

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2022 – A Review

All of my 4 and 5 star books

2022 was a good year of reading for me, I read (and listened to) 60 books, which is slightly above my goal of one a week.

My favourite books of the year are (in no particular order)

Next year I want to make it some way through my pile of unread books – I counted, I have 178 unread books (at a book a week that’s three and a half years of reading). I am going to try to limit the book purchasing to 1 maybe 1.5 a month (that works out to be 18 for the year).

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The Jane Austen Remedy – Ruth Wilson

The Jane Austen Remedy – Ruth Wilson

I heard about this book on a book podcast (ABC Book Shelf perhaps?) and I was super keen to read it.

Here’s the blurb

An uplifting and delightfully bookish memoir about an 89-year-old woman who reclaims her life by re-reading each of Jane Austen’s novels.

As she approached the age of seventy, Ruth Wilson began to have recurring dreams about losing her voice. Unable to dismiss her feelings of unexplainable sadness, she made the radical decision to retreat from her conventional life with her husband to a sunshine-yellow cottage in the Southern Highlands where she lived alone for the next decade.

Ruth had fostered a lifelong love of reading, and from the moment she first encountered Pride and Prejudice in the 1940s she had looked to Jane Austen’s heroines as her models for the sort of woman she wanted to become.

As Ruth settled into her cottage, she resolved to re-read Austen’s six novels and rediscover the heroines who had inspired her; to read between the lines of both the novels and her own life. And as she read, she began to reclaim her voice.

The Jane Austen Remedy is a beautiful, life-affirming memoir of love, self-acceptance and the curative power of reading. Published the year Ruth turns ninety, it is an inspirational account of the lessons learned from Jane Austen over nearly eight decades, as well as a timely reminder that it’s never too late to seize a second chance.

It was great – part memoir, part literary criticism. So many books were mentioned! It made me want to re-read all of Austen novels. My only criticism is that there wasn’t an index (or list) of all of the books mentioned.

A review.

A webage at the University of Sydney about Dr Wilson

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Filed under 4, Memoir, Miscellaneous, Non-Fiction, Recommended

2021 – A Review

This year I read 42 books, which seems a bit low, but I do know I stopped reading for a while there (endless scrolling on Instagram).

The image above shows my two five star reads for the year; Still Life and Edie Richter is not Alone.

I also had a lot of four star reviews (and perhaps I have been a bit ungenerous and some of these should be five stars)

I have listened to book podcasts (I listen while I go running, or walking, working in the house and garden)

Now that I have my Instagram addiction under control, I think I will be reading much more next year. I have an enormous pile of to be read books (both physical and digital, and fiction and non-fiction)

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The Wanderers – Tim Pears

The Wanderers – Tim Pears

This is the second book in the West Country Trilogy, I couldn’t wait to get started, after the ending of the first one.

Here’s the blurb …

The powerful second novel in Tim Pears’s acclaimed West Country trilogy. Two teenagers, bound by love yet divided by fate, forge separate paths in England before World War I.

1912. Leo Sercombe is on a journey. Aged thirteen and banished from the secluded farm of his childhood, he travels through Devon, grazing on berries and sleeping in the woods. Behind him lies the past, and before him the West Country, spread out like a tapestry. But a wanderer is never alone for long, try as he might—and soon Leo is taken in by gypsies, with their wagons, horses, and vivid attire. Yet he knows he cannot linger, and must forge on toward the western horizon.

Leo’s love, Lottie, is at home. Life on the estate continues as usual, yet nothing is as it was. Her father is distracted by the promise of new love and Lottie is increasingly absorbed in the natural world: the profusion of wild flowers in the meadow, the habits of predators, and the mysteries of anatomy. And of course, Leo is absent. How will the two young people ever find each other again?

In The Wanderers, Tim Pears’s writing, both transcendental and sharply focused, reaches new heights, revealing the beauty and brutality that coexist in nature. Timeless, searching, charged with raw energy and gentle humor, this is a delicately wrought tale of adolescence; of survival; of longing, loneliness, and love

This was beautiful, and heart breaking and lovely. I can’t wait for the next installment (and I imagine world war one has to be involved as well)

A review

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Phosphorescence – Julia Baird

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Phosphorescence – Julia Baird

It was a hard year last year – I know that was the case for many people, but I had breast cancer as well. I was keen to read ‘on awe, wonder and things that sustain you when the world goes dark’. And this book definitely did that.

Here’s the blurb…

A beautiful, intimate and inspiring investigation into how we can find and nurture within ourselves that essential quality of internal happiness – the ‘light within’ that Julia Baird calls ‘phosphorescence’ – which will sustain us even through the darkest times. Over the last decade, we have become better at knowing what brings us contentment, well-being and joy. We know, for example, that there are a few core truths to science of happiness. We know that being kind and altruistic makes us happy, that turning off devices, talking to people, forging relationships, living with meaning and delving into the concerns of others offer our best chance at achieving happiness. But how do we retain happiness? It often slips out of our hands as quickly as we find it. So, when we are exposed to, or learn, good things, how do we continue to burn with them? And more than that, when our world goes dark, when we’re overwhelmed by illness or heartbreak, loss or pain, how do we survive, stay alive or even bloom? In the muck and grit of a daily existence full of disappointments and a disturbing lack of control over many of the things that matter most – finite relationships, fragile health, fraying economies, a planet in peril – how do we find, nurture and carry our own inner, living light – a light to ward off the darkness? Absorbing, achingly beautiful, inspiring and deeply moving, Julia Baird has written exactly the book we need for these times.

I have been recommending this book to anyone who is having a hard time – as a way of finding a bit of comfort or joy, or even just to learn something interesting.

A review

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