Loved this! For those who havent read this, it‘s a novel told in a series of thoughts. You‘re reading this woman‘s thoughts and figuring out that she is entering a relationship, starting a job, struggling with anxiety etc. Its a format that could lose the reader, if the thoughts and fragments werent so beautifully crafted and sharply insightful. Some of the metaphors Offill came up with felt very new and superbly apt. ⬇️

(Images of old pub in Russell)
I finally got around to reading Villette! Poor Lucy Snowe has it tough - and I can imagine Bronte wanted to paint for the world the complex inner life of a plain woman, middle class but fallen on hard times. Both the vulnerability and the strength. Bronte does setting and mood and side characters so well too. I liked that noone was only good or evil, there were many shades of grey.⬇️

My daughter asked me to have a book club with her and I‘d just bought this book so we took turns reading sections. A lovely short classic from 1943 dealing with a love affair and feelings of isolation. From my 50+ yr perspective - it reminded me of other books and ideas - from her 20yo perspective it was utterly new and devastating. Also: spring blossoms!

(Not book related)
So I got a new part time job a few months ago. There‘s a local free magazine (distribution of about 20,000) - I started doing some editing and proof reading, and now Im doing a monthly column and sometimes a feature article. (Local news and not book reviews unfortunately!) Writing an article on bush walks this month, so Ive been doing some new ones. The one on the left has a tree top section that is 18m (59 feet) high!

I kept hearing that Book number 2 is on its way so I thought I‘d better read this. And I loved it! Not at all what I was expecting - I thought it was going to be a slow, atmospheric read about feeling like an outsider. (A vibe I like for sure) But this book runs and jumps and does flips, it has teeth. The “outsider” characters have some fantastically sharp remarks in here, I grinned like a Halloween pumpkin. Have you read this @Reggie ?

For the first couple of chapters, I wondered if the form of this novel was going to become overdone and affected - a POV narrated by a book, disagreeing at times with the boy at the center of the story. But then i relaxed and just let the story wash over me - and I loved it.
This isnt an easy story. Benny and his mother Annabelle are having a very hard time, traumatised by the death of their father/husband, ⬇️

@CarolynM @Reggie our NZ “big sheep” isnt quite as big or as stoic as your one Carolyn! And of course its made out of corrugated iron because why wouldn‘t you?! This is in Tirau - a town everyone stops in on the way to somewhere else. 😜

This was a lovely read - Sybil is determined to never give up the art of letter writing as its brought her joy over many years - we see her relationships with friends, family, penpals and strangers morph and change through the impact of her letter writing. This made me think of Ove a little bit although Sybil isnt quite that prickly! Definitely felt the feels with this one 💕

Finally started this series and it was really good! @CarolynM @TrishB I think it was you two who put this on my radar years ago! I do love a detective novel with interesting character work - and the setting and community was warm and friendly.
This isnt a photo of Three Pines of course - my local beach walk on the other side of the world 😁

Oh I do so love the Cazalets @LeahBergen @Ruthiella I bailed on a couple of books mid August and it was such a relief to pick this up and be absorbed in the familial bonds, heartaches, small and large tragedies of this sprawling family. This is the second volume where World War 2 is under way. Keen to step straight into Vol 3 but so many library holds have come in for me while I was reading this!

Thanks for reviewing this book @Jeg encouraging me to read it. I havent read a book about estranged family members for a long time, and this was just written so well. Hillary is the widowed mother of two daughters who are no longer speaking to each other. We have her POV, Esther and April, the two middle aged daughters, and Lawrence, Esther‘s ex-husband. Each of them are at a crossroads. ⬇️

Here you go @merelybookish this is the very colourful childrens author Margaret Mahy who wrote over 100 picture books as well as a couple of dozen novels. She was also a librarian and dedicated to growing young readers. She would be the most well know author in NZ because everyone (around my age at least) grew up reading her books.

Just a cheery nearly Spring photo from NZ for those of you feeling very hot at the end of Summer! #notbookrelated

I am currently audiobooking Barkskins which is taking me a LONG time.

Hows the season going where you are?

Margaret Forster wrote a biography of Elizabeth Barrett Browning in 1989 and some years later wrote this novel about her Ladys Maid, Lily Wilson, based on the bare few facts that are known about her. Its a really deep imagining of what it was like to be in service in the 19th C and to have an intense and complicated relationship with your frail mistress. Great historical writing, slow moving and character driven - a bit depressing at times! ⬇️

Fell in love with The Tainted Cup so I had to get quickly into the sequel - Drop of Corruption. This is like Holmes and Watson in a fantasy world which also has a complicated Empire, political, class and race issues and a variety of villainry. The relationship between Kol and Ana is full of sarcasm and sass. The mystery is complex and kept me 100% involved - its great world building, character driven, fantasy mystery. My catnip!

I love movies and reading about behind the scenes and Im a Gen Xer too so OF COURSE I was going to enjoy reading Ione Skye‘s memoir. There were so many touchpoints I remembered, movies, music, models. Ione had a wild ride through teen movie stardom and looking back can see the motivations that drove some toxic relationships. She delves into her feelings of abandonment by the father who wouldnt acknowledge her. ⬇️

There is a large black cat in this book so my large black cat thought he should feature. Jasper will be unimpressed that this isn‘t a glamour shot though 😂😂

I love this series, I think this is about Book 10. There‘s a little less of Peter here and a lot more of Abigail (his neice) so that was fun. Plenty of fantastical hi-jinks. Nothing ground breaking for this world and these characters just good solid fun.

This book is going to stay with me because the imagery was so vivid. Bo lives in San Fran in about 2050. The city is flooded - everyone that hasnt evacuated lives in apartment buildings above the third floor. Markets happen on rooftops - you move from building to building across bridges. Why does Bo, a traumatised artist stay, when she could leave? This is a character driven novel, a slow thoughtful novel ⬇️

Been away to a little town with hot springs and they were having a Winter Lights Festival!
Listened to the audiobook. I am a massive Billy Connolly fan and it was a joy listening to his voice. His wife Pamela wrote a biography of Billy which goes into more depth about his childhood abuse. This one stays out of the details - its more anecdotes and memories of a childhood in Scotland. Made me think as well as laugh out loud a number of times. ⬇️

I really enjoyed the premise of this novel - a woman grieving the loss of her teenage son finds herself in a parallel universe where her son is alive, an adult and estranged from her. She spends the novel trying to find out who this alternate version of herself is and how she got to this point. Mesmerising and unsettling! I wish I had figured out more about this woman in the parallel universe and what motivated her decisions in the past ⬇️

Ali Mau is a famous journalist and TV presenter in NZ who led the reporting here on #MeToo and broke stories on abusers. (And is an Australian originally!) This is her memoir about her life, breaking into journalism, and her own childhood abuse which was repressed for many years. She also went through hell in the 90s when the press discovered her same sex relationship. Well written and thought provoking, ⬇️

I finally got around to reading this and LOVED it. Such a huge cast of characters but each one unique. I do love a book that when you change POVs you get insights that change your initial view. I have to say though one man did a thing & Lord I stomped around the house desperate to murder the guy. Fictionally murder him but still.
If you havent heard of this it‘s set just before WW2 with a very extended family gathering for the summer ⬇️

If you‘re a sci fi fan this duology is SO GOOD! It makes me think of that Keri Russell series The Diplomat but the politics are interplanetary. You have a colonising empire, a barbarian non empire station that wants to be left alone and now a new alien species that is creating havoc and looks like a civilisation ending threat. In THIS universe there just may be a possibility of peace.

There is such a good, propelling story at the heart of this book, but for me, that story became a bit overwhelmed with multiple POVs and side characters that didn‘t feel fully fleshed out. I see it was made into a tv series and it felt like it had great bones for something like that. Would be interested in trying this author again.

This is a beautifully written book about three young Japanese women - all struggling with identity, relationship with family, men (oh some terrible men), and trauma. One in the UK, one in Tokyo and one that has moved to London from Tokyo.
I‘m surprised more people havent read this! It‘s a 5 star read IMO, strong emotional pull and I cant say much more without spoiling it - except that i see @squirrelbrain liked it too!

It was this tv show in the late 70s that made me love time travel - being able to visit your grandparents as children in the early 1900s! Time travel novels for me can be escapist fantasy or dystopian sci fi - sometimes a delight, sometimes a disaster - and my tastes have moved from fantasy towards dystopia lately #timetraveltop5 @Ruthiella
1 - The Time Travellers Wife
2 - Outlander
3 - Doomsday Book
4 - Black Out/All Clear
5 - Kindred

You know I like a time travel novel? This is a little more high octane than I usually read, but a lot of fun. January is Head of Security at Paradox - a hotel for the ultra rich who can afford to vacation in a different era because Paradox has an entry into the Time Stream. January used to be one of the people policing the time stream but now she‘s becoming unstuck, seeing things from the past or future flash across her current world. So ⬇️

I bought this knowing nothing about Novalis or Sophie or the Romantics. At first I was a little lost with the many surnames & family honorifics. But quickly, this unusual tale of a dreamy young poet, his tumbledown noble family and his falling in love, won me over and I gobbled it up. Fitzgerald writes in such a simple style here and yet captures so much. I loved how the minor characters had such sharp and wry insights. The Bernhard!

Thank you so much for this book @CarolynM It was such an eye-opening read. Told through the story of Mulanyin in 1855, when his saltwater people are not yet outnumbered by the British, and the story of Winona & Grandma Eddie in 2024. It both confronts the reader with the injustices and atrocities of colonialism while teaching a lot about the culture and beliefs of some of the First Nations Australians. I learnt a lot and enjoyed it a lot too!

I completely loved this. A Sci Fi political intrigue novel with strong mystery elements. Mahit has been sent by her home world as an emergency replacement for their missing ambassador at the centre of the Empire. She needs to find out what has happened to the missing ambassador Yskandr and somehow ensure her homeworld remains out of the empire‘s expansionary plans. Really interesting world building, tech and interplanetary politics. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Thank you for the birthday gifts @CarolynM ! So perfect a choice - this book is exactly in my wheelhouse and I definitely identify myself as a Book Nerd! They arrived the day before my birthday so perfect timing as well 💕 Thank you so much, I so appreciate your thoughtfulness and friendship.

Loved this book, as Ive loved each one in this series. It was wonderful to see Lucy meet Olive and wonderful to hear more about Bob. Amidst all the sad stories, Bob‘s steadfast kindheartedness really spoke to me.

And I wanted to show you the gorgeous flowers in my local cafe. @Reggie this is the cafe that keep giving me extra danishes and banana bread and upending my decisions to avoid sweets! 😝😝

My second Susan Scarlett and at first I thought it was going to be too sweet for my current mood - then along came Freda. 😜 It became a page turner as I raced to see whether her evil plans for our sweet protagonist Annabel would materialise!
A really fun read and I love that we see snippets of early 20th century life that I‘d never heard about. Imagine giving your staff a wee glass of port to help them through a long work day!

Great timing for me to be reading the audiobook of James just as it won the Pullitzer!
I wanted to give a shout out to the narrator Dominic Hoffman. He really is fantastic. I listened to him narrate Homegoing years ago and that book is now burned in my brain. (Please listen to it if you havent read it yet!) He has a gorgeous voice and made the differences in James‘s use of two languages have such an impact on me. This book is thought provoking ⬇️

Look at this! My daughter crocheted me a cover for my Kindle. Hopefully this will get me reading the many unread books I have on there 😊

It turns out one of my favourite crossover genres is mystery-fantasy. (Although maybe this is mystery-scifi? There is no magic but the tech is all plant based)
Anyhow! Everything i love in a mystery with a Holmes style detective plus a strange new world with unusual tech. Our protagonist is Kol, he‘s the level headed Watson to Ana, the temperamental investigator. Ana wears a blindfold and usually stays indoors, to better focus, ⬇️

One of my favourite books is Han Kang‘s novel Human Acts about the Gwangju Uprising and the violence and torture that occurred. In her new novel the protagonist is a writer, Kyungha, who is tormented and depressed by the research she did into a massacre. I wondered how much this reflected Han Kang herself. Kyungha makes a journey to her friend‘s hometown of Jeju, a place with a history of a massacre.
The writing here is incredibly beautiful, ⬇️

Into the foggy streets of Victorian London strides Bridie Devine, a highly competent female private investigator, more than a little experienced with examining dead bodies since she spent her early orphan years travelling with a resurrection man. If that sounds like your thing, let me add in a helpful ghost and a possible mythical water creature. Kidd is an excellent writer - setting and character are fully developed. A joy to read (but TW below)

This is a soft pick. It is incredibly well written, in parts it was over my head with cultural & historical references, sometimes fascinatingly so & sometimes it began to feel too much & meaningless. It did some truly interesting things with form in the second half of the book - with repetition & alternating pov between paragraphs - giving you real time variances between the two protagonists. But the relationship! I felt so disturbed ⬇️

I‘m kicking myself because i had almost finished this book and then the library insisted i bring it back 😂 But it was probably the best collection of short stories I‘ve ever read! That is - if you like authors like Barbara Pym, Anita Brookner, maybe Penelope Lively. These are frequently bittersweet stories where the main character is a woman, often an older woman, and they focus on love and grief and ageing and mistakes and chances lost and ⬇️

I bought this book because I love an octopus and yes, i loved Marcellus. But.. and it‘s not you, book, it‘s me… this was a little too sweet for my tastes and I could predict almost every event in the book a long while before it happened. Would have liked a book 100% from Marcellus‘s point of view! But if you liked The Storied Life of AJ Fikry i think this is a similar level of sweet plus an octopus 🙌 so don‘t let me put you off!

Odille lives in a strangely confined town. Over in the next valley lies Odille‘s town twenty years in the future. To the west in another valley lies the town twenty years in the past. Borders are patrolled relentlessly.
SAH considers the fear created by the fact that any escapee from one valley to the next could create a change obliterating the current existence of the next valley. ⬇️

This was a lovely, quiet and thoughtful book. Reading it felt like a meditation on grief and human connection. Beautifully written and very atmospheric.
Photo is a bunch of miniature roses from a friend 😍

This book was loved by so many friends last year that I didnt think it could live up to the hype. Well it more than did that. I‘ll be surprised if this isnt the best book i read this year. Glorious writing and complex characters, a sprawling old house and a spiralling tension. I thought it was PERFECT.

Very unlike me to be reading something off a prize long list but when i heard it was set in Tudor times I was drawn in. I absolutely loved these characters. Tibb is amazing, foul mouthed and free spirited with uncanny insight. The first few pages of this novel are possibly the strongest and most captivating start to a novel that i have read in a long time. I do have a quibble - i felt the “adventure story” aspect ⬇️

As others have said this is not the book i expected it to be and it hit me harder because of that. I expected a book about tyranny causing violent revolution but what i got was the way that tyranny with one act unmoors and exiles and causes long term trauma. To me so much of this book is the loneliness of exile, how an 18 year old is supposed to somehow forge a life away from his home and family knowing he is watched, knowing he cannot speak.

This book was SO good. A cross country train in 1920s Canada. A young black man - Baxter - is night porter, fighting a lack of sleep, money & food as he attempts to placate a bunch of white passengers & hide his queer identity from the other porters. This novel puts you square in Baxter‘s shoes & its so full of heart, you will root for him to make it. The cover looks a little romantic but this is very realistic, much more about poverty & racism

I absolutely loved this. I think because the character of Adina felt very real to me - a loner, an outsider, living near the poverty line w her solo mum, a child who feels alone & alien growing into an adult that struggles to make more than one or two deep connections. Is Adina really an alien? - she faxes her mother planet with her wry and poignant earth observations. Little nuggets of insight that punctuate the story. ⬇️

Firstly - this photo is from the Christchurch Art Gallery - not the Met Museum! - but on theme 👍

This book is a lovely contemplative piece by Patrick Bringley about being a guard at the Met Museum, about the impact of art on the soul and about specific works of art and what they came to mean to him. Its also about being a guard, one of so many, and behind the scenes at the museum. Beautifully written and incredibly thoughtful. A joy to read.

This was a sweet little book and just what i needed. A little bit like A Man Called Ove but a shorter, simpler read. I seem to be reading a lot of books about elderly people finding connections!

Photo: a lot of folk in the water this weekend for Junior Surf Club.