I’m an avid follower of The Australian’s A Pair of Ragged Claws blog, a great read put out by Stephen Romei from the Australian Literary Review. It’s not just for lovers of Australian literature: this week the discussion has covered whether or not you could give up books, and exactly what would take priority over books for you. For example ,would you rather live a life without books or without coffee? Without books or without travels? Without books or without TV?
There are two things this post made me think about. …

Ha ha. Tricked myself. I’ve been hunting around on this site for my May book of the month post, taking quite some time to realise there wasn’t one because I didn’t finish any books in May. Oh, how depressing. I did, however, finish a book in June. So I’m combining those months, and giving you an update on my writing progress during that time, all in one (probably pretty brief) post.
The good news is that my beautiful time-drainer has just hit three months of age and is sleeping a lot …

If you happen to have been following my 2010 reading list, you’ll have found it a bit boring recently. After ploughing through a book at least every two days during most of the year, in April my reading came to a bit of a standstill. Which is hardly surprising considering what happened on 2 April. But anyway: my April reading totalled this -

The World Beneathby Cate Kennedy

However, I’m still going to announce The World Beneath as my book of the month, because it really was excellent. If it hadn’t been, …

So March is over and it’s time to look back on my reading and writing for the month … as I warned, there hasn’t been much writing. My poor carpal tunnel fingers just won’t take it, and it should be only two or three weeks until they’re back on board so I’m waiting patiently and trying not to stress them too much.
I did, however, hear the bad news that my novel didn’t make it through to the next round of the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Contest. Boo-hoo! Just this morning I …

I was definitely a voracious reader as a kid, my parents would vouch for that. (And my husband would confirm that it’s no different today). When I was a child, I remember reading at night in bed before I went to sleep, and I even had a notebook where I’d write down words I didn’t know, and my parents would explain the definitions to me when they came to turn out the light.
Thanks to the influence (and book collection) of my mother, I was a mad keen fan of Enid …

First up, the goal-related news … I actually didn’t get much writing at all done in February. Even the posts you saw were mostly written in January, and I’m afraid that’ll be the case for the next couple of months, as I’ve been struck with pregnancy-carpal-tunnel – basically the same as regular carpal tunnel, but a whole lot better, because after I give birth to this kid in April my wrists and hands should return to normal and I’ll be typing away with the best of ‘em. So I’ve had …

I guess that most writers out there are avid readers. I know I certainly am, and that doesn’t just mean I read a lot, but that I acquire books like some people acquire bread and milk, and then I read these books in various rooms of the house at various times and basically make a widespread book mess. And yes, it drives my husband quite mad.
I thought it’d be interesting to do a quick survey of the house and find out where my current reads are. Of course, there are …

Books are not usually the stars of cool photos, but this is really an exception. Recently at Bondi Beach in Sydney (oh, how I wish I could have popped over to Sydney and seen this in person!) a furniture store (one I like, but nonetheless won’t plug on my blog) set up this display of bookshelves and organised a “book swap”. You could bring your own books and swap them for ones on the shelf, or just take a book and give a gold coin donation, with proceeds going to …

It’s the end of January so it’s time to look back on the reading I’ve done this month – this year I’ve decided to pick out a book of the month each time. That’s partly to remind you all of the ongoing reading list I’m keeping, and partly to remind me about the great books I’ve read, since I have a bad habit of not remembering books too well unless I actively think back on them.
So, to sum up quickly, these are the 13 books that I read during January:

Spielby David …

You know I love travelling, but one continent I suspect I may never get to is Antarctica. It fascinates me, of course, but those cold temperatures are not as high on my list as many other places, and since I just finished a great novel set in Antarctica, I am doing a fairly good job of imagining it for myself anyway. That’s thanks to Robyn Mundy who wrote The Nature of Ice, and reminded me of another great novel about a modern Antarctic experience from one of all-time favourite writers, …