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Text of the page (random words):
nd a coming of age story about a piano tuner from a remote mountain region in hokkaido had all the right ingredients for me one as a former very amateur piano enthusiast and two as a recent visitor to japan it was beautifully elegantly written with gorgeous chapter illustrations showing a piano slowly being returned to the wild nature naturalness and nurturing were ideas that ran through the piece it s tone was pianissimo softly softly it s tempo larghissimo as slow as possible oh dear another forgettable book that failed to really capture my imagination although as we now all know march was the month that the news about a certain virus racing around the world hit the headlines we had also had a mini disaster at work with a flood in mid feb i was off work for just over a month while everything was being renovated april the covid chronicles 2 i left you at the end of the covid chronicles 1 heading off into the wild wild west with mr books our first stop was to visit my parents this was the first time we found ourselves considering how social distancing might work in the real world as we drove into town we realised that we shouldn t hug my parents hello or even shake their hands the news was full of images showing prince charles bowing to people to avoid shaking hands so we waved and bowed too during my time off work thanks to the flood see march mr books and i decided to go on a roadtrip to the south australian wine regions concerns about a certain virus kept us from going overseas and our roadtrip consisted of listening to dr norman swan s coronacast updates during the final days of our trip we had to do a sprint to get back across the stateline into nsw just hours before the borders closed at this time i had the idea of writing my own covid updates the covid chronicles were born may talking to my daughter about the economy yanis varoufakis nonfiction talking to my daughter about the economy took me ages to finish and now even longer to review i want to be the kind of person that is informed about financial stuff but honestly the word economy just makes my eyes glaze over and my brain go numb keeping daily accounts and a family budget yep got that managing things like home loans savings accounts superannuation paying bills yep can do but as soon as you go down that old rabbit hole of world markets capitalism and economic stimulus you lose me every single time yikes yet another book that failed to live up to expectations my aim for 2021 is to post reviews about books i love at the beginning of the month instead june book stop given that we cannot travel outside our home state let alone the country at the moment i thought i might indulge my bookish instincts with my itchy feet and explore the world via bookshops a new meme was one of the many ways i tried to beat the blogging blues this year i ve only managed to post two book stop editions so far but i have three more in the wings july claris the chicest mouse in paris megan hess picturebook every time i see these very chic very elegant picture books i want to say cla reece i have an acquaintance called cla reece however to read these stories i have to make a huge mental effort to say paris claris in my head a few times to find the rhyme picture books are my cheats way of joining in a blogging event when i have not planned ahead well enough in 2021 i will do better i will plan ahead august maigret and the killer georges simenon parisinjuly a big part of the reason i love reading maigret s so much is the glimpse into life in paris in the middle of the 20th century maigret and the killer opens with mrs maigret and her man dining out with friends discussing the merits of the madame pardon s unparalleled boeuf bourguignon filling yet refined provincial cookery that was born of necessity whilst finishing off the meal with the obligatory coffee and calvados i have come to love my time with maigret during paris in july thankfully there are so many titles in the series i will be able to participate in this particular blogging event for many more years to come september the end of 20 books of summer winter another community blogging event completed even if i do feel seasonally challenged the whole time october 1001 books update booklist my edition of the 1001 books you must read before you die is a 2009 reprint by harper collins australia with a preface by australian journalist and book lover jennifer byrne back in february 2016 i spent one ghastly heatwave weekend going through this book and compiling my read and to be read lists with the idea that i would constantly refer back to it and update it another post reflecting my ongoing covid blogging malaise i read steadily throughout the year but i struggled to maintain my blogging mojo recycled posts featured more than ever during the later half of 2020 november ausreadingmonth 2020 master post welcome to ausreading month 2020 now in it s eighth year ausreading month is all about reading and talking about australian literature november is my biggest blogging month with ausreading month non fiction november novellas in november and margaret atwood reading month december ausreadingmonth wrap up post as they say in show business that s a wrap folks ausreading month is tucked away for another year ausreading month is a huge time for me i start planning for it in september so that i can have enough posts for every second day leaving some spots for the weekly non fiction november posts the first week of december has become a time of putting my feet up and having a little blogging break and as you can see here the rest of the month becomes a time of reflection and meme participation what do your first lines reveal about you posted by brona labels a year in first lines meme 5 comments at 17 12 20 email this blogthis share to x share to facebook share to pinterest tuesday 15 december 2020 my life in books the 2020 edition annabookbel has posted her annual my life in books meme it s a fun way to finish the reading year and a nice opportunity to look back over all the books read during 2020 the rules are simple using only books you have read this year 2020 answer these prompts try not to repeat a book title links in the titles will take you to my reviews where they exist in high school i was some tame gazelle people might be surprised by life after truth i will never be the parisian my life in lockdown was like one hundred years of solitude my fantasy job is elizabeth and her german garden at the end of a long day i need the spare room i hate being the red head by the side of the road wish i had the pull of the stars my family reunions are the tempest at a party you d find me with girl woman other i ve never been to cherry beach a happy day includes humankind motto i live by how we live now on my bucket list is a month in siena in my next life i want to have the secret library of hummingbird house posted by brona labels 2020 lists meme my life in books 6 comments at 15 12 20 email this blogthis share to x share to facebook share to pinterest sunday 13 december 2020 life after truth ceridwen dovey aww i had the pleasure of hearing ceridwen dovey talk about her latest book life after truth at a recent work event the youtube recording of the event can be found here by the time she had finished speaking i knew this would be my next read i m not sure why i ve found it so hard to write up my review for this book though i thoroughly enjoyed it and highly recommend it as a great holiday read so instead of talking about my journey with the book i will focus on what i learnt from the author talk which then informed how i read the story ceridwen evoked a lovely reading memory for me when she talked about one of her inspirations for writing a story about a 15 year reunion at harvard university like me she had devoured erich segal s harvard stories the class 1985 and doctors 1988 way back when i read the class in the early 1990 s i remember loving the huge rollicking epic nature of the story as we followed the fates and fortunes of five or six harvard undergrads during their college days and into their adult lives back then the chunkier the book the better was my motto when i googled the book to refresh my memory i was amazed at how simply seeing the names andrew eliot jason gilbert jr theodore lambros daniel rossi and george keller again brought back so much of the story the second inspiration for ceridwen was her very own 15 yr class of 2003 reunion in 2018 all her friends and class mates were approaching 40 and various mid life crisis were on show emotional hormonal intellectual financial and philosophical the class of 2003 had some interesting graduates besides dovey natalie portman and jared kushner for starters mark zuckerberg was in the following year ceridwen stresses that none of her characters are based on real life people however she was drawn to using the polar opposite characters of a movie star and the son of a president in her story as she found the contrast appealing thanks to her social anthropology background she likes to write not so much what she knows but towards what she wants to know which is how do people make meaning from their daily lives or how do live the second half of your life differently to the first half for anyone who has read dovey s earlier books it is noticeable that the voice is very different in this story it was a deliberate choice although also slightly out of ceridwen s hands as she finds that writing in different voices and styles comes naturally to her she considers life after truth to be some kind of self help novel written in a fog of insomnia she tried submitting and getting one of her books published under a different name to reflect the different voice she had used but the publishers were not keen for a pseudonym and neither was dovey as she feels that what she does is closer to the literary concept of heteronyms the publishers were even less keen to go with this idea recently she got around this by creating a story for audible originals called once more with feeling it was a story she wrote in what she describes as a warmer more accessible voice purely with how it would sound read aloud in mind apparently she has a whole linen cupboard full of such stories written in different voices that she doesn t know what to do with as for life after truth dovey considers this her attempt to document the post truth world we all now live in as well as a little nod towards the harvard motto veritas and what life is like for it s students after graduation epigraph the love god golden haired stretches his charmed bow with twin arrows and is aimed at happiness the other at life s confusion euripides iphigenia in aulis first line jomo günter riehl address 200 church street apartment 7a tribeca new york 10013 occupation founder director of gem acquisitions house of riehl luxury jewelers gradutae degrees mba university of california berkeley 13 last time i wrote one of these updates it was to brag about my life facts one of dovey s favourite poets is fernando pessoa famous for his use of heteronyms she studied social anthropology at harvard my reviews of her other works so far only the animals in the garden of fugitives australianwomenwriters posted by brona labels 2020 aust women writers friendship harvard university heteronym usa no comments at 13 12 20 email this blogthis share to x share to facebook share to pinterest thursday 10 december 2020 the living sea of waking dreams richard flanagan ausfiction i know there is a lot of love for the living sea in waking dreams out there already it s not that i didn t love it or even admire what flanagan was trying to achieve but it s not easy to read a book where you feel like you re being smashed over the head not just with a hammer but with the biggest heaviest mallet that flanagan could find on every single page at every single turn with such a convoluted title i was expecting more nuance and intellectual word play instead i got whack after whack of anger flanagan has a lot to be angry about last summer was ghastly for all of us in australia the bush fires were the worst we d ever experienced our skies were grey with smoke and ash for month after month the smell was inescapable the heat was oppressive the news catastrophic it was easy to feel like it was the beginning of the end or the end of the beginning writing a book while all of this is happening around you can take its toll it can be hard to find perspective it can be hard not to rave and rant in absolute frustration it can be hard to resist a good old preachy sermon flanagan did not resist there was nothing subtle in his story about vanishing body parts a dying mother and a world in flames the ghastly siblings anna terzo who refused to let their mother die with any dignity or grace were so implausible i struggled to spend my time with them their brother tommy was much nicer company and more realistically drawn as was anna s son gus but then tommy was the actual carer he was on hand in tasmania to care for their ailing mother while the other two simply jetted in and out whenever there was a problem to be solved and gus response to a world on the brink of catastrophic climate change is to withdraw into a world of gaming and youtube videos flanagan ranted several times about social media and smartphone use clearly he is not someone who properly understands these online tools nothing about the way his characters engaged with their online world actually reflected anyone i know he had all the right words but just like mr books i discussing tiktok or snapchat or memes with our boys we show our ignorance at every turn much to their amusement i feel like i m the one ranting now i didn t not like the book it was an interesting read and an interesting concept with all the vanishings that nobody noticed that spoke for or to something even bigger and scarier that nobody is noticing either however i felt no emotional connection to anyone in the story except pity a huge amount of pity in fact for the undying lingering suffering decaying mother i found myself talking out loud to flanagan throughout the book telling him to get out of the way of his own story i love it though when i discover the title in the story it wasn t enough for terzo that their mother had not died it wasn t enough that she lived in her sea of waking dreams in terzo s view she had to live like us rationally in a rational universe except of course terzo s world or his idea of living were not as rational as he thought in the end though the occasional insights and beautiful writing were not enough for me to rate the living sea of waking dreams particularly highly it astonished her that he had a view as deeply held felt as hers and yet entirely opposite and which he held with an equal conviction and in the face of someone who would not be persuaded by her she did not seek to see the world for a moment as he saw it but instead was simply angry with him that his w...