The Hating Game by Sally Thorne

February 14, 2018 by Christina

Fiction — print. William Morrow, 2016. 384 pgs. Library copy.  Lucy Hutton hates Joshua Templeman. He sits across from her every Monday through Friday wearing a static rotation of shirts — white with blue stripes to black — and making obscure markings in his paper planner. Both Lucy and Joshua work for the co-CEOs of a small publishing firm in Australia — co-CEOs who also hate one another — but Lucy actually wants to work in publishing whereas Joshua? Well, […]

Categories: 2018 Reads, Book Club, Fiction, Oceania • Tags: Sally Thorne

Ten Favorite Reads From 2017

January 5, 2018 by Christina

I took an unplanned (yet needed) extended break from book blogging in 2017, but I thought I’d dust away the cobwebs and share ten of my favorite reads from the past year. I read 69 books in 2017 — a smaller number than is typical for me, but to be expected given how the year went for me. My list of ten includes three nonfiction titles and all but one was published after 2009. Half were actually selected by my […]

Categories: 2017 Reads, Africa, Asia, Bookish Notes, Europe, North America, Oceania, Russia, Scandinavia, United Kingdom, United States, Vietnam • Tags: Amor Towles, Barbara Demick, Bill Browder, Fredrik Backman, Gail Honeyman, Jane Harper, Laurent Binet, Tim O'Brien, Trevor Noah, Yaa Gyasi

The Media and the Massacre by Sonya Voumard

April 6, 2017 by Christina

Nonfiction — Kindle edition. Transit Lounge, 2016. 140 pgs. Purchased. On April 28, 1996, a twenty-eight-year-old from a suburb outside of Hobart, Tasmania murdered two individuals at a guest accommodation site that his father had wanted to purchase. The man then drove to Port Arthur, a tourist site and former convict prison colony, and murdered 33 people and wounded 23 before being captured by police the following day. The Port Arthur massacre was the deadliest mass shooting in Australian history and among the […]

Categories: 2017 Reads, Crime, Nonfiction, Oceania, Stella Prize • Tags: Sonya Voumard

The Light Between Oceans by M.L. Stedman

March 28, 2016 by Christina

Fiction — audiobook. Read by Noah Taylor. Simon & Schuster Audio, 2012. 10 hours, 21 minutes. Library copy. Stationed as the lighthouse keeper on Janus Rock off the coast of Western Australia, Tom Sherbourne and his wife Isabel live largely in isolation. Two miscarriages and one stillbirth have isolated the couple even further — both from their family on the mainland who are anxious for grandchildren and from each other. The arrival of a battered on the shores of Janus Rock […]

Categories: 2016 Reads, Audiobook, Fiction, Oceania, Women's Prize • Tags: M. L. Stedman, Noah Taylor

Big Little Lies by Liane Moriarty

March 5, 2015 by Christina

Fiction — audiobook. Read by Caroline Lee. Penguin Audio, 2014. 16 hours. Library copy. Twenty-four year old, single mother Jane has decided to relocate with her five-year-old son, Ziggy, to the oceanside community of Pirriwee, Australia. Ziggy is excited to start kindergarten at Pirriwee Public, but Jane is apprehensive about how well her son will adjust and, even more so, about how well received she will be received by members of the “Blonde Bob”, a caddy group of mothers who […]

Categories: 2015 Reads, Audiobook, Book Club, Crime, Fiction, Oceania • Tags: Caroline Lee, Liane Moriarty

The Narrow Road to the Deep North by Richard Flanagan

December 28, 2014 by Christina

Fiction — print. Alfred A. Knopf, 2014. 334 pgs. Library copy. Winner of the 2014 Man Booker Prize and nominated for the 2014 Miles Franklin, Flanagan’s novel centers on a single day in a Japanese slave labor camp in August 1943 where Australian prisoners of war struggle to survive horrific and torturous conditions as they are forced to build the Burma Railway. Dorrigo Evans, an Australian doctor, tries desperately to save his follow POWs in the camp while recollections of […]

Categories: 2014 Reads, Asia, Fiction, Oceania • Tags: Richard Flanagan

All the Birds, Singing by Evie Wyld

November 3, 2014 by Christina

Fiction — audiobook. Read by Cat Gould. Blackstone Audio, 2014. 6 hours, 51 minutes. Library copy. Wyld’s novel straddles time and space — its main character Jake Whyte, a woman in the male-dominated sheep industry, lives on an unnamed British island during the odd chapters and spends the even chapters growing up outside of Darwin, Australia. The older Jake lives alone and is distraught to find one of her sheep has been killed by someone — or, something — in […]

Categories: 2014 Reads, Audiobook, Europe, Fiction, Oceania, United Kingdom • Tags: Cat Gould, Evie Wyld

The Husband’s Secret by Liane Moriarty

October 13, 2014 by Christina

Fiction — audiobook. Read by Caroline Lee. Dreamscape Media, 2013. 13 hours, 44 minutes. Library copy.  My darling Cecilia, if you’re reading this, then I have died. Cecilia Fitzpatrick finds a letter addressed to her from her husband instructing her to open the letter upon his death tucked amongst tax returns and receipts from the past twelve or so years of their marriage. Assuming her unorganized husband forgot to pass the letter along to their solicitor, Cecilia is unable to […]

Categories: 2014 Reads, Audiobook, Book Club, Crime, Fiction, Oceania • Tags: Caroline Lee, Liane Moriarty

The Myth of Continents by Martin W. Lewis and Kären E. Wigen

July 14, 2014 by Christina

Nonfiction — print. University of California Press, 1997. 344 pgs. Borrowed. Subtitled “A Critique of Metageography”, Lewis and Wigen offer a critique of the way we divide the world – East versus West, First World versus Third World, the seven (or eight depending on who you ask) continents. Going beyond the argument that holding the “West” above the “East” or assigning countries into rank is racist and paternalistic, Lewis and Wigen argue that topographically the continents of the world do […]

Categories: 2014 Reads, Africa, Asia, Cartography, Europe, Middle East, Nonfiction, Oceania, South America • Tags: Kären E. Wigen, Martin W. Lewis

Wanting by Richard Flanagan

January 9, 2012 by Christina

Fiction — print. Atlantic Monthly Press, 2009. Originally published 2008. 272 pgs. Library copy. Flanagan’s novel is set in Van Diemen’s Land (present-day Tasmania) and intertwined two storylines set over twenty years apart – Sir John Franklin and his wife, Lady Jane, as they adopt an Aboriginal girl named Mathinna during Sir John’s tenure as governor of Van Diemen’s Land and, later, Charles Dickens as he helps refute (at the request of Lady Jane) a popular story that Sir John […]

Categories: 2012 Reads, Fiction, Oceania • Tags: Richard Flanagan

Surprise Island by Barbara Willard

January 11, 2011 by Christina

Willard’s novel was a childhood favorite of either my mother or my father; I cannot recall exactly who now. But within its yellowed pages is a story about Jill and Lambert (known as Limpet), whom in anticipation of winning a South Sea island in a dog food contest, trespass on their neighbor’s estate along with their friend, Brandy the Saint Bernard, to try out island living. Since the book has been on my shelf for years, it qualified for the […]

Categories: 2011 Reads, Fiction, Oceania • Tags: Barbara Willard

The Thorn Birds by Colleen McCullough

August 4, 2009 by Christina

Fiction — print. Avon, 1977. 692 pgs. Received from PaperBackSwap. Last Christmas, while waiting for a table at a restaurant, my dad and I perused the shelves of Barnes & Noble. He was shocked at how many books on display I had read, but he was equally shocked that I had never read nor heard of The Thorn Birds. I ordered a copy off PaperBackSwap and opened to the first page to find a quote that made me aching to […]

Categories: 2009 Reads, Chunkster, Fiction, Oceania • Tags: Colleen McCullough