For Winter Solstice this year, I travelled down to Sydney, with three books in tow, to catch up with Kate Forsyth and get The Puzzle Ring, The Gypsy Crown and Dancing on Knives signed at Dymocks in George Street. It was a buzz, heading down on the train, the books stashed in my bag safely,… Continue reading A Literary Winter Solstice
Category: Books
Revisiting Books
I admit to keeping every book I buy, especially in recent years, and there are books I regret giving away like my Enid Blyton books because finding them in their true form these days is impossible, and there are some that I cannot find anywhere like Poppy and the Outdoors Cat, I cannot recall the… Continue reading Revisiting Books
Common or Uncommon Ground: writing your own or different cultures and ethnicities through time.
To follow on from my discussions of age and gendered writing, I got to thinking about how writers of different races, cultures and ethnicities write, how they represent their cultures, races and ethnicities and how they are thought to do this or what they are supposedly expected to be able to do in terms of… Continue reading Common or Uncommon Ground: writing your own or different cultures and ethnicities through time.
The Puzzle Ring by Kate Forsyth
Title: The Puzzle Ring Author: Kate Forsyth Publisher: Scholastic/Pan Macmillan Category: Historical Fiction/Children's Fiction Published: 1st June 2009 Pages: 409 Price: $16.99 Synopsis: An ancient curse. A ruined castle. A journey back in time. Hannah Rose was not quite 13 years old when she discovered her family was cursed. . . . The arrival of a mysterious letter… Continue reading The Puzzle Ring by Kate Forsyth
Time Slip Novels
Time Slip Novels A time slip novel, according to the UrbanDictionary.com, a novel that transports the main character and therefore the reader from one time to another, such as from the twenty-first century into the sixteenth century. Time slip novels, by my understanding, can combine this element of time travel and historical fiction, and fantasy. It… Continue reading Time Slip Novels
Poisoned Waters by Ermisenda Alvarez
I was lucky enough to read this book as an Advanced Reader’s Copy to help out the author, a fellow Goodreads member. It is the first ARC book I have had the privilege to read and review for the author as part of the blog tour for the book. Poisoned Waters begins innocently enough… Continue reading Poisoned Waters by Ermisenda Alvarez
Book Clubs
The idea behind book clubs has been something of intrigue and interest to me for a long time. I like the idea of chatting about something I have enjoyed reading with a group of friends who also read the book, and I think that they have a place in reading society. Yet there is something… Continue reading Book Clubs
Bitter Greens by Kate Forsyth
Title: Bitter Greens Author: Kate Forsyth Genre: Historical Fiction Publisher: Penguin Ausrtaloa Published: 1st March 2013 Format: Paperback Pages: 576 Price: $22.99 Synopsis: Winner of the 2015 American Libraries Association prize for Historical Fiction. A lovely stew of sex, fairytales and, well, sex really. THE AGE. An exquisite rendering of the story behind the… Continue reading Bitter Greens by Kate Forsyth
Is this Age Appropriate Reading?
Following up on my post about gendered books and reading, I want to write about age appropriate reading. First off, I do acknowledge some books are definitely more appropriate for certain age groups, but perhaps the way we label books as “age appropriate” becomes not redundant, but hazy when children begin to discover their reading… Continue reading Is this Age Appropriate Reading?
Gendered books and reading
On Goodreads recently, someone began a post asking if boys or girls read more, which turned into quite a heated debate on how boys and girls read and what they read. Some people said it was equal, others, such as myself, said it depends on the individual and gender has nothing to do with it,… Continue reading Gendered books and reading
The Book Muse 