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, …

Recently I was listening to a series of radio broadcasts that Bill Bryson made a couple of years back, bundled together with the title Journeys in English – it’s fascinating stuff about the development of the English language, and interesting for me both as a writer and as an English teacher. (Yes, I recommend it!)
Anyhow, while any number of interesting points remained in my mind after listening to the programmes, one fact stuck out that I felt I should have known already. I kind of knew that Shakespeare had invented …

Last time I raved about e-book readers I still had plenty of doubts about whether I would ever be ready to give up my physical books for a file on a reader. That was about eighteen months ago, and of course a year and a half is a really long time in terms of technology.
A friend of mine recently imported a Sony e-book reader and has pretty much fallen in love with it – he says that now he actually prefers it over “real” books (and he is a “real …

It’s the beginning of a new year as I type this, and as I’ve often done, I plan to keep a record of the books I read this year. This time, though, I’ve decided to post it up here on my blog, and update it regularly. And then look back at the end of the year on what I enjoyed the most. So, without further ado, here’s the list.

Spielby David Sornig; set in Berlin, and written by an Australian writer born of German/Austrian parents, there was plenty to interest me …

When it was announced around two years ago that the new government had created the Prime Minister’s Literary Prize worth A$100,000 for the best fiction and non-fiction books of the year, I was pretty impressed. It’s truly nice to see writers getting some monetary recognition of the thousands of hours of work that go into the writing of a novel – or in the case of the 2009 winner, Nam Le, a collection of short stories.
I’ve been having a bit of an ambivalent relationship with short stories recently. I’d like …