Category Archives: Recommended

June 22, 2023 · 3:11 pm

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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June 8, 2023 · 2:41 pm

Still Life – A S Byatt

Still Life – A S Byatt

After listening to The Virgin in the Garden I was keen to continue this series and downloaded this one from Borrowbox.

Here’s the blurb …

From the author of The New York Times best seller Possession , comes a highly acclaimed novel which captures in brilliant detail the life of one extended English family-and illuminates the choices they must make between domesticity and ambition, life and art.

Stephanie Potter gives up a promising academic career to marry Daniel Orton, while her sister, Frederica, enters Cambridge, and her brother, Marcus, begins recovering from a nervous breakdown

This one is a bit sadder than the first – Byatt does write grief well, but it still has all the lovely art and literature references. And I love how we get snippets from several characters’s view points – Alexander, Stephanie, Marcus and, of course, Frederica.

I am looking forward to the next one Babel Tower, which is also on Borrowbox.

A review

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April 25, 2023 · 3:45 pm

Any Ordinary Day – Leigh Sales

Any Ordinary Day – Leigh Sales

I have become a fan of listening to books on Borrowbox and I noticed that this one was available (years ago I gave it to someone as a gift). The audio books is read by Leigh Sales, so it feels like you’re just having a chat with her.

Here’s the blurb

As a journalist, Leigh Sales often encounters people experiencing the worst moments of their lives in the full glare of the media. But one particular string of bad news stories – and a terrifying brush with her own mortality – sent her looking for answers about how vulnerable each of us is to a life-changing event. What are our chances of actually experiencing one? What do we fear most and why? And when the worst does happen, what comes next?

In this wise and layered book, Leigh talks intimately with people who’ve faced the unimaginable, from terrorism to natural disaster to simply being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Expecting broken lives, she instead finds strength, hope, even humour. Leigh brilliantly condenses the cutting-edge research on the way the human brain processes fear and grief, and poses the questions we too often ignore out of awkwardness. Along the way, she offers an unguarded account of her own challenges and what she’s learned about coping with life’s unexpected blows.

Warm, candid and empathetic, this book is about what happens when ordinary people, on ordinary days, are forced to suddenly find the resilience most of us don’t know we have.

Terrible things happen to people (losing your entire family, losing both your first and second wives) and some people bounce back and get on with living and others don’t. What does it take to keep going after an enormous, life change? This book tries to answer that question. She also reflects on her role as a journalist and the times when she might have, inadvertently, done harm. Which is something we should all think about.

What I took away from this book is that terrible events are random and unexpected (also reasonably rare), so its probably best to appreciate the moment right now.

A review.

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April 16, 2023 · 5:39 pm

The Year of Reading Dangerously – Andy Miller

The Year of Reading Dangerously – Andy Miller

I listen to the backlisted podcast and have done so for a few years, so I bought this book on my Kindle (Andy Miller is one of the presenters) and it languished and finally I decided to listen to it. Andy is the narrator and I highly recommend listening to it.

Here’s the blurb

A working father whose life no longer feels like his own discovers the transforming powers of great (and downright terrible) literature in this laugh-out-loud memoir.

Andy Miller had a job he quite liked, a family he loved, and no time at all for reading. Or so he kept telling himself. But, no matter how busy or tired he was, something kept niggling at him. Books. Books he’d always wanted to read. Books he’d said he’d read that he actually hadn’t. Books that whispered the promise of escape from the daily grind. And so, with the turn of a page, Andy began a year of reading that was to transform his life completely.

This book is Andy’s inspirational and very funny account of his expedition through literature: classic, cult, and everything in between. Beginning with a copy of Bulgakov’s Master and Margarita that he happens to find one day in a bookstore, he embarks on a literary odyssey. From Middlemarch to Anna Karenina to A Confederacy of Dunces, this is a heartfelt, humorous, and honest examination of what it means to be a reader, and a witty and insightful journey of discovery and soul-searching that celebrates the abiding miracle of the book and the power of reading.

I think this is quite a masculine selection of novels, but are we all going to agree on what makes a book great? I enjoyed this personal approach to reading and I particularly enjoyed the more personal sections – how his parents took him to the library on Saturday mornings, all his meetings with Douglas Adams, he and his wife reading War and Peace together.

If you enjoy reading, and reading about reading, then you will enjoy this reading adventure.

A review

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April 10, 2023 · 5:37 pm

Patchwork – Claire Wilcox

Patchwork – A Life Amongst Clothes – Clare Wilcox

I have had this book on my Kindle for quite some time, but I am making a concerted effort to read some of my digital pile. My Kindle is easy to take around with me, so I don’t know why it has taken me so long to read it.

Here’s the blurb

An expert and intimate exploration of a life in clothes: their memories and stories, enchantments and spells.

A linen sheet, smooth with age. A box of buttons, mother-of-pearl and plastic, metal and glass, rattling and untethered. A hundred-year-old pin, forgotten in a hem. Fragile silks and fugitive dyes, fans and crinolines, and the faint mark on leather from a buckle now lost.

Claire Wilcox has worked as a curator in Fashion at the Victoria & Albert Museum for most of her working life. Down cool, dark corridors and in quiet store rooms, she and her colleagues care for, catalogue and conserve clothes centuries old, the inscrutable remnants of lives long lost to history; the commonplace or remarkable things that survive the bodies they once encircled or adorned.

In Patch Work, Wilcox deftly stitches together her dedicated study of fashion with the story of her own life lived in and through clothes. From her mother’s black wedding suit to the swirling patterns of her own silk kimono, her memoir unfolds in luminous prose the spellbinding power of the things we wear: their stories, their secrets, their power to transform and disguise and acts as portals to our pasts; the ways in which they measure out our lives, our gains and losses, and the ways we use them to write our stories.

This book is a memoir told in terms of textiles. Musings about various events in her life – both personal and professional. The writing is beautiful and the chapters are the perfect length (I kept thinking just one more).

A Youtube of an interview with Claire Wilcox.

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April 6, 2023 · 2:45 pm

1599 A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare – James Shapiro

1599 A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare – James Shapiro

I first heard about this book from the Baillie-Gifford Prize podcast (The Read Smart podcast). I found a copy at the library.

Here’s the blurb …

599 was an epochal year for Shakespeare and England

Shakespeare wrote four of his most famous plays: Henry the Fifth, Julius Caesar, As You Like It, and, most remarkably, Hamlet; Elizabethans sent off an army to crush an Irish rebellion, weathered an Armada threat from Spain, gambled on a fledgling East India Company, and waited to see who would succeed their aging and childless queen.

James Shapiro illuminates both Shakespeare’s staggering achievement and what Elizabethans experienced in the course of 1599, bringing together the news and the intrigue of the times with a wonderful evocation of how Shakespeare worked as an actor, businessman, and playwright. The result is an exceptionally immediate and gripping account of an inspiring moment in history.

This was fascinating. I particularly enjoyed the sections where Shapiro put the plays into historical context. It was very easy to read, Shapiro wears his wealth of knowledge lightly.

A review

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March 22, 2023 · 8:32 pm

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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March 16, 2023 · 2:32 pm

A Perfect Equation – Elizabeth Everett

A Perfect Equation – Elizabeth Everett

We had a long weekend (Labour Day?) and I wanted something fun to read. A Love by Design was recommended, but that hasn’t been released in Australia yet, so I went with this, the second novel of The Secret Scientists of London series (having not read the first one, but that didn’t matter).

Here’s the blurb …

How do you solve the Perfect Equation? Add one sharp-tongued mathematician to an aloof, handsome nobleman. Divide by conflicting loyalties and multiply by a daring group of women hell-bent on conducting their scientific experiments. The solution is a romance that will break every rule.

Six years ago, Miss Letitia Fenley made a mistake, and she’s lived with the consequences ever since. Readying herself to compete for the prestigious Rosewood Prize for Mathematics, she is suddenly asked to take on another responsibility—managing Athena’s Retreat, a secret haven for England’s women scientists. Having spent the last six years on her own, Letty doesn’t want the offers of friendship from other club members and certainly doesn’t need any help from the insufferably attractive Lord Greycliff.

Lord William Hughes, the Viscount Greycliff cannot afford to make any mistakes. His lifelong dream of becoming the director of a powerful clandestine agency is within his grasp. Tasked with helping Letty safeguard Athena’s Retreat, Grey is positive that he can control the antics of the various scientists as well as manage the tiny mathematician—despite their historic animosity and simmering tension.

As Grey and Letty are forced to work together, their mutual dislike turns to admiration and eventually to something… magnetic. When faced with the possibility that Athena’s Retreat will close forever, they must make a choice. Will Grey turn down a chance to change history, or can Letty get to the root of the problem and prove that love is the ultimate answer?

This was great; witty, well-written, obviously well-researched. I’m looking forward to the next one.

A review

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February 27, 2023 · 7:22 am

Dodger – Terry Pratchett

Dodger – Terry Pratchett

I listened to this book while driving to and from Albany and then finishing it off at home.

Here’s the blurb …

A storm. Rain-lashed city streets. A flash of lightning. A scruffy lad sees a girl leap desperately from a horse-drawn carriage in a vain attempt to escape her captors. Can the lad stand by and let her be caught again? Of course not, because he’s…Dodger.

Seventeen-year-old Dodger may be a street urchin, but he gleans a living from London’s sewers, and he knows a jewel when he sees one. He’s not about to let anything happen to the unknown girl–not even if her fate impacts some of the most powerful people in England.

From Dodger’s encounter with the mad barber Sweeney Todd to his meetings with the great writer Charles Dickens and the calculating politician Benjamin Disraeli, history and fantasy intertwine in a breathtaking account of adventure and mystery.

Beloved and bestselling author Sir Terry Pratchett combines high comedy with deep wisdom in this tale of an unexpected coming-of-age and one remarkable boy’s rise in a complex and fascinating world.

This was fabulous and the narrator, Steven Briggs was great too. It’s witty and compelling, but touches some serious (and dark) topics as well. Also, I feel like I have learnt some history as well; about London’s drains, philanthropy, poverty and community.

A review

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February 20, 2023 · 3:15 pm

The Nonesuch – Georgette Heyer

The Nonesuch – Georgette Heyer

I do like a good regency romance and no one does it better than Georgette Heyer. A friend mentioned that had recently read this one, and I thought I must re-read it.

Here’s the blurb …

At the age of five-and-thirty, Sir Waldo Hawkridge, wealthy, handsome, eligible, illustrious, and known as the nonesuch for his athletic prowess, and when he comes north to inspect his unusual inheritance at Broom hall in the West Riding, his arrival leads to the most entertaining of ramifications. When they learned that Sir Waldo was coming, the village gentry were thrown into a flurry. The famed sportsman himself! Heir to an uncounted fortune, and a leader of London society! The local youths idolized “the Nonesuch”; the fathers disapproved; and the mothers and daughters saw him as the most eligible–and elusive–man in the kingdom.

While there, he meets Tiffany Wield, a positively dazzling young heiress who is entirely selfish and possessed of a frightful temper, as well as her far more elegant companion-governess. Twenty-eight year old Ancilla Trent had put away any and all thoughts of romance when she became a governess, and at first she could only be amused at the fuss over Sir Waldo. Can Sir Waldo convince the practical Miss Trent that it is not above her station as a governess to fall in love with him?

This is one of her novels where the heroine is a bit older (26 as opposed to 18) and sensible, which I prefer to the young flighty heroines. It has all the things that makes a Heyer novel so good; regency slang, beautiful heiresses, worried mothers, and beautiful manners.

A review

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