Caitlin's bookshelf: all en-US Tue, 22 Apr 2025 08:38:29 -0700 60 Caitlin's bookshelf: all 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg The Butterfly Women 223975825
For poor Irishwoman Johanna Callaghan, a job at Papillon could be her ticket to success, but in a time when women's lives are cheap, it also brings great danger. Meanwhile, for respectable women like journalist Harriett Gardiner, Papillon is strictly off-limits, but when a murderer begins stalking the streets of Little Lon, she becomes determined to visit it and find the truth.

As both women are drawn into the hunt for the killer, a long-hidden side of old Melbourne is revealed. Lush, dark and meticulously researched, The Butterfly Women weaves romance and mystery into an unforgettable tale of Australian history, and the women so often erased from it.]]> 400 Madeleine Cleary 1923022407 Caitlin 5 4.45 2025 The Butterfly Women
author: Madeleine Cleary
name: Caitlin
average rating: 4.45
book published: 2025
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2025/04/22
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]]> The Victim 1029114 264 Saul Bellow 014002493X Caitlin 0 books-i-own, to-read 3.47 1947 The Victim
author: Saul Bellow
name: Caitlin
average rating: 3.47
book published: 1947
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/24
shelves: books-i-own, to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Nine and a Half Weeks: A Memoir of a Love Affair (P.S.)]]> 20811451 The classic erotic memoir of an intense and haunting relationship that spawned the film.

This is a love story so unusual, so passionate, and so extreme in its psychology and sexuality that it takes the reader’s breath away. Unlike The Story of O, Nine and a Half Weeks is not a novel or fantasy; it is a true account of an episode in the life of a real woman.

Elizabeth McNeill was an executive for a large corporation when she began an affair with a man she met casually. From the beginning, their sexual excitement escalates through domination and humiliation. As the affair progresses, woman and man play out ever more dangerous and more elaborate sado-masochistic variations. By the end, she has relinquished all control over her body and mind.

With a cool detachment that makes the experiences and sensations she describes all the more frightening in their intensity, Elizabeth McNeill beautifully unfolds her story and invites you to experience the mesmerizing, electrifying, and unforgettablly private world of Nine and a Half Weeks.

]]> 148 Elizabeth McNeill 0062309994 Caitlin 3 read-in-2020 3.58 1978 Nine and a Half Weeks: A Memoir of a Love Affair (P.S.)
author: Elizabeth McNeill
name: Caitlin
average rating: 3.58
book published: 1978
rating: 3
read at: 2020/03/12
date added: 2024/09/12
shelves: read-in-2020
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens and Peter and Wendy]]> 6067325
About the For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the broadest spectrum of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, voluminous notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.]]> 288 J.M. Barrie 0199537844 Caitlin 0 to-read, books-i-own 3.85 Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens and Peter and Wendy
author: J.M. Barrie
name: Caitlin
average rating: 3.85
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/08/07
shelves: to-read, books-i-own
review:

]]> Thunderhead 179844474 A black comedy, set in suburbia, about one woman’s struggle to be free.

When Winona Dalloway begins her day � in the peaceful early hours before her children, that ‘tiny tornado of little hands and feet�, wake up � she doesn’t know that by the end of it, everything in her world will have changed.

On the outside, Winona is a seemingly unremarkable young mother: unobtrusive, quietly going about her tasks. But within is a vivid, chaotic self, teeming with voices � a mind both wild and precise.

And meanwhile, a storm is brewing …]]> 160 Miranda Darling 1761380397 Caitlin 4 books-i-own, read-in-2024 3.51 Thunderhead
author: Miranda Darling
name: Caitlin
average rating: 3.51
book published:
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2024/04/20
shelves: books-i-own, read-in-2024
review:

]]> Stone Yard Devotional 168632462 A deeply moving novel about forgiveness, grief, and what it means to be 'good', from the award-winning author of The Natural Way of Things and The Weekend.

A woman abandons her city life and marriage to return to the place of her childhood, holing up in a small religious community hidden away on the stark plains of the Monaro. She does not believe in God, doesn't know what prayer is, and finds herself living this strange, reclusive life almost by accident.

As she gradually adjusts to the rhythms of monastic life, she finds herself turning again and again to thoughts of her mother, whose early death she can't forget. Disquiet interrupts this secluded life with three visitations. First comes a terrible mouse plague, each day signaling a new battle against the rising infestation. Second is the return of the skeletal remains of a sister who left the community decades before to minister to deprived women in Thailand - then disappeared, presumed murdered. Finally, a troubling visitor to the monastery pulls the narrator further back into her past.

With each of these disturbing arrivals, the woman faces some deep questions. Can a person be truly good? What is forgiveness? Is loss of hope a moral failure? And can the business of grief ever really be finished? A meditative and deeply moving novel from one of Australia's most acclaimed and best loved writers.

"Wood joins the ranks of writers such as Nora Ephron, Penelope Lively and Elizabeth Strout." THE GUARDIAN UK]]> 320 Charlotte Wood Caitlin 3 books-i-own, read-in-2024 3.73 2023 Stone Yard Devotional
author: Charlotte Wood
name: Caitlin
average rating: 3.73
book published: 2023
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2024/02/24
shelves: books-i-own, read-in-2024
review:

]]> The Pearl 23768014 Illuastrated by Vera Jarman]]> 86 John Steinbeck Caitlin 3 books-i-own, read-in-2024 3.17 1947 The Pearl
author: John Steinbeck
name: Caitlin
average rating: 3.17
book published: 1947
rating: 3
read at: 2024/01/10
date added: 2024/01/09
shelves: books-i-own, read-in-2024
review:

]]> Everything We Hoped For 10241394 190 Pip Adam 0864736258 Caitlin 4 read-in-2023 4.21 2010 Everything We Hoped For
author: Pip Adam
name: Caitlin
average rating: 4.21
book published: 2010
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2023/12/29
shelves: read-in-2023
review:

]]> Piano Lessons 6997918 In this remarkable memoir, Anna Goldsworthy recalls her first steps towards a life in music, from childhood piano lessons with a local jazz muso to international success as a concert pianist. As she discovers passion and ambition, and confronts doubt and disappointment, she learns about much more than tone and technique. This is a story of the getting of wisdom, tender and bittersweet.

Anna Goldsworthy was nine years old when she met Eleanora Sivan, the charismatic Russian émigré and world-class pianist who became her piano teacher. Beautifully written and strikingly honest, Piano Lessons is the story of what Mrs. Sivan brought to Anna’s lessons: a love of music, a respect for life, a generous spirit, and the courage to embrace a musical life.

As Anna discovers passion and ambition, confronts doubt and disappointment, and learns about much more than tone and technique, Mrs. Sivan’s wisdom guides her:

"We are not teaching piano playing. We are teaching philosophy and life and music digested.�

“I tell you a secret about Chopin, piano is his best friend. More. He tells piano all his secrets.�

“Never demonstrate. Never beautify Mozart. He is beautiful enough already. He does not need your make-up.�

Piano Lessons takes the reader on a journey into the heart and meaning of music. Piano Lessons reminds us all how an extraordinary teacher can change a life completely. A work that will appeal to all music lovers and anyone who has ever taken a music lesson, Piano Lessons will also touch the heart of anyone who has ever loved a teacher.]]> 240 Anna Goldsworthy 1863954430 Caitlin 5 books-i-own, read-in-2023 3.62 2009 Piano Lessons
author: Anna Goldsworthy
name: Caitlin
average rating: 3.62
book published: 2009
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2023/11/18
shelves: books-i-own, read-in-2023
review:

]]> Year of Wonders 4965
Through Anna's eyes we follow the story of the fateful year of 1666, as she and her fellow villagers confront the spread of disease and superstition.

As death reaches into every household and villagers turn from prayers to murderous witch-hunting, Anna must find the strength to confront the disintegration of her community and the lure of illicit love.

As she struggles to survive and grow, a year of catastrophe becomes instead annus mirabilis, a "year of wonders."

Inspired by the true story of Eyam, a village in the rugged hill country of England, Year of Wonders is a richly detailed evocation of a singular moment in history. ]]> 304 Geraldine Brooks 0142001430 Caitlin 0 to-read, books-i-own 4.00 2001 Year of Wonders
author: Geraldine Brooks
name: Caitlin
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2001
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/11/11
shelves: to-read, books-i-own
review:

]]> Everyone and Everything 175729372
When Yael Silver’s world comes crashing down, she looks to the past for answers and finds solace in surprising places. An unconventional new friendship, a seaside safe space and an unsettling amount of dairy help her to heal, as she wrestles with her demons � and some truly terrible erotic literature.

Funny and tender, Everyone and Everything is about friendship, grief and the deep, frustrating bond between sisters. It asks what makes us who we are and what leads us onto ledges. Perfect for fans of Sorrow and Bliss, Nora Ephron and Victoria Hannan, this is an intimate, wry and wise exploration of one woman’s journey to the brink and back.]]> 308 Nadine J. Cohen 0645757802 Caitlin 4 books-i-own, read-in-2023 4.27 2023 Everyone and Everything
author: Nadine J. Cohen
name: Caitlin
average rating: 4.27
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2023/10/09
date added: 2023/10/08
shelves: books-i-own, read-in-2023
review:

]]> Sweet Days of Discipline 39071724 106 Fleur Jaeggy 1911508180 Caitlin 5 books-i-own, read-in-2023 3.59 1989 Sweet Days of Discipline
author: Fleur Jaeggy
name: Caitlin
average rating: 3.59
book published: 1989
rating: 5
read at: 2023/09/20
date added: 2023/09/20
shelves: books-i-own, read-in-2023
review:

]]> Maurice Guest 15832462 631 Henry Handel Richardson 1922079472 Caitlin 0 to-read, books-i-own 4.33 1908 Maurice Guest
author: Henry Handel Richardson
name: Caitlin
average rating: 4.33
book published: 1908
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/07/31
shelves: to-read, books-i-own
review:

]]> Thirst for Salt 61340225 “A love affair so richly and attentively imagined it carries the grace and gravity of memory itself.� ―Leslie Jamison It’s hard to remember now that I was once that girl, lying in the sand in my red swimsuit and swimming late into the day. Sharkbait , he called me.

It’s in the water where she first sees him: a local man almost twenty years her senior. Adrift in the summer after finishing college, a young woman is on holiday with her mother in an isolated Australian coastal town. Finding herself pulled to Jude, the man in the water, she begins losing herself in the simple, seductive rhythms of his everyday life. As their relationship deepens, life at Sailors Beach offers her the stability she has been craving as the daughter of two drifters―a loving but impulsive mother and an itinerant father. But the arrival of Maeve, a friend from Jude’s past, threatens to rock their fragile, newfound intimacy. And when she witnesses something she doesn’t fully understand, she finds herself questioning everything―about Jude, about herself, about the life she has and the one she wants. A magnetic and unforgettable story of desire and its complexities, and a powerful reckoning with memory, loss, and longing, Madelaine Lucas’s debut novel, Thirst for Salt , reveals with stunning, sensual immediacy the way the past can hold us in its thrall, shaping who we are and what we love.]]> 272 Madelaine Lucas 1953534651 Caitlin 4 books-i-own, read-in-2023 3.81 2023 Thirst for Salt
author: Madelaine Lucas
name: Caitlin
average rating: 3.81
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2023/07/30
date added: 2023/07/29
shelves: books-i-own, read-in-2023
review:

]]> <![CDATA[A Certain Style: Beatrice Davis, a literary life]]> 41966956 A Certain Style introduced this stylish and formidable woman to thousands of readers and told a history of books and publishing in twentieth-century Australia. This reissue has a new introduction and updates throughout as the author presents a compelling account of a contradictory woman and her times.]]> 366 Jacqueline Kent 1742236022 Caitlin 4 books-i-own, read-in-2023 4.50 2001 A Certain Style: Beatrice Davis, a literary life
author: Jacqueline Kent
name: Caitlin
average rating: 4.50
book published: 2001
rating: 4
read at: 2023/07/29
date added: 2023/07/28
shelves: books-i-own, read-in-2023
review:

]]> Sad Girl Novel 123659261
' Stays one step ahead of the reader by critiquing the genre's tropes and trademarks along the way ' Guardian

' A book about finding yourself, losing yourself and everything in between . . . Will have you laughing, crying and wanting more' The Urban

'An irreverent voice that will have you reaching for a pen to underline every second sentence ' Books + Publishing

' While Kimberley Mueller spends a lot of time wondering whether she's talented , Finkemeyer need have no such doubts. Finkemeyer's narrator . . . is a stroke of genius .' Diana Reid, author of Love & Virtue]]> 292 Pip Finkemeyer Caitlin 5 read-in-2023 3.04 2023 Sad Girl Novel
author: Pip Finkemeyer
name: Caitlin
average rating: 3.04
book published: 2023
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2023/07/18
shelves: read-in-2023
review:

]]> Crossing to Safety 9820 335 Wallace Stegner 037575931X Caitlin 4 books-i-own, read-in-2023 4.16 1987 Crossing to Safety
author: Wallace Stegner
name: Caitlin
average rating: 4.16
book published: 1987
rating: 4
read at: 2023/07/15
date added: 2023/07/14
shelves: books-i-own, read-in-2023
review:

]]> Cargo 12044418
Jacob is fourteen and yearns for his brother's life.

Frankie is fifteen and in love with the new deckhand on her father's boat.

As the story of these three desires intertwine over the course of one lazy summer in a small coastal town, Cargo is by turns heart-wrenching, beautiful and explosive.

In a simple time of truth and change, these are characters who do not know themselves, yet through their innocence we come to understand what it means to be young, and have all the troubles in the world.]]> 228 Jessica Au 1405040289 Caitlin 3 books-i-own, read-in-2023 3.48 2011 Cargo
author: Jessica Au
name: Caitlin
average rating: 3.48
book published: 2011
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2023/06/02
shelves: books-i-own, read-in-2023
review:

]]> Girl, Woman, Other 41081373
Girl, Woman, Other follows the lives and struggles of twelve very different characters. Mostly women, black and British, they tell the stories of their families, friends and lovers, across the country and through the years.

Joyfully polyphonic and vibrantly contemporary, this is a gloriously new kind of history, a novel of our times: celebratory, ever-dynamic and utterly irresistible.]]> 453 Bernardine Evaristo 0241364906 Caitlin 5 books-i-own, read-in-2023 4.27 2019 Girl, Woman, Other
author: Bernardine Evaristo
name: Caitlin
average rating: 4.27
book published: 2019
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2023/05/16
shelves: books-i-own, read-in-2023
review:

]]> Shy: A Memoir 22040760 It’s a shy word, a timid little word that begs to remain unnoticed. Only three letters long, and it begins with an exhortation to silence. Shhh.
There’s no authority in it, no control. It’s a blushing, hunching word; a nervous, knock-kneed, wallflower word. A word for children, not grown-ups, because surely grown-ups grow out of shyness.
Don’t they?

SIAN PRIOR has maintained a career in the public eye for more than twenty years. For far longer than that she has suffered from excruciating shyness, only partly alleviated by the security she finds with her famous partner Tom.

Eventually, after bolting from a party in a state of near-panic, she decides to learn about the science of social anxiety. But soon other questions intrude. About grief, intimacy, self-perception and fear; loss and longing and the consequences of love.

Then Tom says he is leaving.

Frank, provocative, remarkable in its clarity and beautifully written�Shy is a book you will be thinking and talking about long after you read the final page.]]> 252 Sian Prior 1922182273 Caitlin 4 read-in-2023 3.54 2014 Shy: A Memoir
author: Sian Prior
name: Caitlin
average rating: 3.54
book published: 2014
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2023/04/26
shelves: read-in-2023
review:

]]> I'd Rather Not 124010551
The unlikely story of how a failed dishwasher, tour guide, cabinet maker, bus driver, bookseller and literary journal publisher became one of Australia's hottest humor essayists

Perfect for fans of humorous, thought-provoking authors like Sloane Crosley, Jenny Lawson, Samantha Irby, and David Sedaris

This wryly subversive book of adventures (and misadventures) offers an original and utterly hilarious take on work, escape, and that something more we all need. 

Robert Skinner arrives in the city, searching for a richer life. Things begin badly and then, surprisingly, get slightly worse. Pretty soon he's sleeping rough and trying to run a literary magazine out of a dog park. His quest for meaning keeps being thwarted, by gainful employment, house parties, ill-advised love affairs, camel trips, and bureaucratic entanglements.

The book's 14 essays/stories can be savored one at a time, or binge

Robert's distinctive voice possesses uncommon immediacy, at once humorous and soulful, self-effacing and wise. Perhaps most important of all, he is endlessly entertaining.]]> 171 Robert Skinner 1586423797 Caitlin 5 books-i-own, read-in-2023 3.70 2023 I'd Rather Not
author: Robert Skinner
name: Caitlin
average rating: 3.70
book published: 2023
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2023/04/23
shelves: books-i-own, read-in-2023
review:

]]> The Man in the Brown Suit 1744148 A diamond robbery. An accidental death at a London Tube station. And the murder of a beautiful woman in a remote country mansion.
Who or What is the connection? Is it the foreigner who claimed to be a doctor and then disappeared? The one the papers called ‘The Man in the Brown Suit�?
Only Anne Beddingfeld, who discovered that strange scrap of paper smelling of moth-balls, believes she can solve the mystery. And her investigation takes her on a danger-fraught ocean voyage to Africa where the real intrigue and adventure begins...]]> 190 Agatha Christie 0586045163 Caitlin 0 to-read, books-i-own 3.67 1924 The Man in the Brown Suit
author: Agatha Christie
name: Caitlin
average rating: 3.67
book published: 1924
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/04/21
shelves: to-read, books-i-own
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Watercress Girl and Other Stories]]> 16103984 208 H.E. Bates Caitlin 0 to-read, books-i-own 3.93 1959 The Watercress Girl and Other Stories
author: H.E. Bates
name: Caitlin
average rating: 3.93
book published: 1959
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/04/15
shelves: to-read, books-i-own
review:

]]> Fleishman Is in Trouble 41880602
But Toby's new life � liver specialist by day, kids every other weekend, rabid somewhat anonymous sex at night � is interrupted when his ex-wife suddenly disappears. Either on a vision quest or a nervous breakdown, Toby doesn't know � she won't answer his texts or calls.

Is Toby's ex just angry, like always? Is she punishing him, yet again, for not being the bread winner she was? As he desperately searches for her while juggling his job and parenting their two unraveling children, Toby is forced to reckon with the real reasons his marriage fell apart, and to ask if the story he has been telling himself all this time is true.]]> 373 Taffy Brodesser-Akner 0525510877 Caitlin 5 read-in-2023 3.61 2019 Fleishman Is in Trouble
author: Taffy Brodesser-Akner
name: Caitlin
average rating: 3.61
book published: 2019
rating: 5
read at: 2023/02/10
date added: 2023/02/10
shelves: read-in-2023
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Practising Simplicity: Small steps and brave choices for a life less distracted]]> 58951070 - from Chapter 7

It is natural to fear uncertainty. But what if you embraced it, listened to your intuition and made the tiny or big decisions to slow life right down? What if you had more space in your life for connection to nature and those around you? What if you stepped off the treadmill and forged a new path?

In Practising Simplicity , author and photographer Jodi Wilson shines a light on all the best things in life that don't cost money and how you can incorporate them into your lifestyle, whatever your circumstances. For her, the simplicity of living in a tiny home on wheels was at first terrifying but ultimately the essential answer to anxiety and overwhelm.

A beautiful, unflinching encouragement to let go of the unnecessary, Practising Simplicity inspires us to celebrate the simple yet extraordinary joys that make life meaningful.]]> 256 Jodi Wilson 1911668412 Caitlin 4 read-in-2023 4.17 Practising Simplicity: Small steps and brave choices for a life less distracted
author: Jodi Wilson
name: Caitlin
average rating: 4.17
book published:
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2023/01/31
shelves: read-in-2023
review:

]]> <![CDATA[THE WIND BLOWS AWAY OUR WORDS by DORIS LESSING (1987-05-03)]]> 2236937 176 Doris Lessing 0330300768 Caitlin 3 books-i-own, read-in-2023 3.77 1987 THE WIND BLOWS AWAY OUR WORDS by DORIS LESSING (1987-05-03)
author: Doris Lessing
name: Caitlin
average rating: 3.77
book published: 1987
rating: 3
read at: 2023/01/24
date added: 2023/01/24
shelves: books-i-own, read-in-2023
review:

]]> The Year the Maps Changed 53112021 'I was eleven when everything started and twelve by the end. But that's another way maps lie, because it felt like the distance travelled was a whole lot further than that.'

Sorrento, Victoria - 1999
Fred's family is a mess. Fred's mother died when she was six and she's been raised by her Pop and adoptive father, Luca, ever since. But now Pop is at the Rye Rehabilitation Centre recovering from a fall; Luca's girlfriend, Anika, has moved in; and Fred's just found out that Anika and Luca are having a baby of their own. More and more it feels like a land-grab for family and Fred is the one being left off the map.

But even as the world feels like it's spinning out of control, a crisis from the other side of it comes crashing in. When 400 Kosovar-Albanian refugees arrive in the middle of the night to be housed at one of Australia's 'safe havens' on an isolated headland not far from Sorrento, their fate becomes intertwined with the lives of Fred and her family, as she navigates one extraordinary year that will change them all.

A middle-grade coming-of-age story about the bonds of family and the power of compassion for fans of The Bone Sparrow, Wolf Hollow and The Thing About Jellyfish.]]> 304 Danielle Binks 0734419716 Caitlin 4 read-in-2023 4.23 2020 The Year the Maps Changed
author: Danielle Binks
name: Caitlin
average rating: 4.23
book published: 2020
rating: 4
read at: 2023/01/11
date added: 2023/01/11
shelves: read-in-2023
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Making Meaning: Inference and Rhetoric in the Interpretation of Cinema]]> 72370
Bordwell systematically maps different strategies for interpreting films and making meaning, illustrating his points with a vast array of examples from Western film criticism. Following an introductory chapter that sets out the terms and scope of the argument, Bordwell goes on to show how critical institutions constrain and contain the very practices they promote, and how the interpretation of texts has become a central preoccupation of the humanities. He gives lucid accounts of the development of film criticism in France, Britain, and the United States since World War II; analyzes this development through two important types of criticism, thematic-explicatory and symptomatic; and shows that both types, usually seen as antithetical, in fact have much in common. These diverse and even warring schools of criticism share conventional, rhetorical, and problem-solving techniques―a point that has broad-ranging implications for the way critics practice their art. The book concludes with a survey of the alternatives to criticism based on interpretation and, finally, with the proposal that a historical poetics of cinema offers the most fruitful framework for film analysis.]]> 328 David Bordwell 067454336X Caitlin 0 currently-reading 4.24 1989 Making Meaning: Inference and Rhetoric in the Interpretation of Cinema
author: David Bordwell
name: Caitlin
average rating: 4.24
book published: 1989
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2022/12/14
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Childless: A Story of Freedom and Longing]]> 59900370 I always wanted to have children. The earth might be in trouble—overpopulated, descending into ecological crisis—but I was always sure my kids would help make the world a better place. I would be a green-feminist supermum, having it all. Nothing turned out the way I expected.

Like many women, Sian Prior arrived at the point where she was ready to start having babies—and found they were not hers to have. Three miscarriages with a supportive partner; a new partner who already had all the children he wanted; step-children; step-grandchildren; the decision to parent solo, followed by many rounds of fertility treatments.

After all this Sian found herself, at fifty, childless and coming to terms. Weighing up the freedoms against the losses. Dealing with the unacknowledged legacy of her own lost father. Observing parenthood itself—how we succeed at it and how we fail—from a perspective outside the trenches.

Compelling, moving, beautifully written and unexpectedly uplifting, Childless is her story.]]> 272 Sian Prior Caitlin 4 read-in-2022 3.97 Childless: A Story of Freedom and Longing
author: Sian Prior
name: Caitlin
average rating: 3.97
book published:
rating: 4
read at: 2022/09/11
date added: 2022/12/08
shelves: read-in-2022
review:

]]> Housekeeping 1069630 Housekeeping is the story of Ruth and her younger sister, Lucille, who grow up haphazardly, first under the care of their competent grandmother, then of two comically bumbling great-aunts, and finally of Sylvie, their eccentric and remote aunt. The family house is in the small Far West town of Fingerbone set on a glacial lake, the same lake where their grandfather died in a spectacular train wreck, and their mother drove off a cliff to her death. It is a town "chastened by an outsized landscape and extravagant weather, and chastened again by an awareness that the whole of human history had occurred elsewhere." Ruth and Lucille's struggle toward adulthood beautifully illuminates the price of loss and survival, and the dangerous and deep undertow of transience.]]> 186 Marilynne Robinson 0140060626 Caitlin 5 books-i-own, read-in-2022 4.09 1980 Housekeeping
author: Marilynne Robinson
name: Caitlin
average rating: 4.09
book published: 1980
rating: 5
read at: 2022/12/08
date added: 2022/12/08
shelves: books-i-own, read-in-2022
review:

]]> Childhood 61403956 Things may have been good for a while, but it didn’t last: they argued fiercely and he left. Weeks later, she tracked him down and said she was pregnant. So he moved back in with her and they prepared themselves for parenthood.

Eleven months later I was born. By the time my father discovered the deception, it was too late.

There is something chastening about this mode of conception, about knowing that, by most standards, your beginning was aberrant.

In this arresting memoir, Shannon Burns recalls a childhood spent bouncing between dysfunctional homes in impoverished suburbs, between families unwilling or unable to care for him. Aged nine, he beats his head against the pillow to get himself to sleep. Aged ten, he knows his mother will never be able to look after him: he is alone, and can trust no-one.

Five years later, he is working in a recycling centre—hard labour, poorly paid—yet reading offers hope. He begins reciting lines from Dante, Keats, Whitman, speeches by Martin Luther King, while sifting through the filthy cans and bottles. An affair with the mother of a schoolfriend eventually offers a way out, a path to a life utterly unlike the one he was born into.

With its clarity of purpose and vividness of expression, Childhood is a powerful act of remembering that is destined to be a classic.]]> 272 Shannon Burns 1922330787 Caitlin 4 books-i-own, read-in-2022 4.01 Childhood
author: Shannon Burns
name: Caitlin
average rating: 4.01
book published:
rating: 4
read at: 2022/11/15
date added: 2022/11/15
shelves: books-i-own, read-in-2022
review:

]]> When it Rains: A Memoir 9747433 Test 256 Maggie MacKellar 174274107X Caitlin 4 read-in-2022 3.90 2010 When it Rains: A Memoir
author: Maggie MacKellar
name: Caitlin
average rating: 3.90
book published: 2010
rating: 4
read at: 2022/11/11
date added: 2022/11/11
shelves: read-in-2022
review:

]]> My Sweet Guillotine 62201847
In the wake of a bizarre, shocking accident in Paris, Jayne finds herself back in the city in a strange limbo. Ignoring the past, she tries to move forward. There is theatre. Love. New friendships. A new neighbourhood. But the accident haunts her, forcing her to confront herself and the experience in ways she could never have predicted.

A tale of survival and the untold joys of life’s curveballs, My Sweet Guillotine captures love and trauma with profound insight. Confronting, funny, strange and real, this is a book about life, death and reinvention, rendered in exquisite prose.]]> 256 Jayne Tuttle 1743797850 Caitlin 4 books-i-own, read-in-2022 4.11 My Sweet Guillotine
author: Jayne Tuttle
name: Caitlin
average rating: 4.11
book published:
rating: 4
read at: 2022/11/04
date added: 2022/11/04
shelves: books-i-own, read-in-2022
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Literary Lion Tamers: book editors who made publishing history]]> 54876142 ‘Writers, their friends, enemies, editors, and publishers began to materialise out of the library’s archive boxes, and I found myself setting off in search of these elusive, eccentric, and often quarrelsome characters.�
In this unique and entertaining blend of memoir, biography, and literary detective work, highly respected former fiction editor Craig Munro recreates the lives and careers of Australia’s most renowned literary editors and authors, spanning a century from the 1890s to the 1990s.

Famous figures featured in this book include A.G. Stephens, who helped turn foundry worker Joseph Furphy’s thousand-page handwritten manuscript into the enduring classic Such Is Life; P.R. Stephensen, who tangled with the irascible Xavier Herbert, working closely with the novelist to revise his unwieldy masterpiece Capricornia; Beatrice Davis, who cut Herbert’s later novel Soldiers� Women in half, and whose lively literary soirees were the talk of Sydney; and award-winning fiction editor Rosanne Fitzgibbon, who was known as a friend and champion to her authors, including the prodigiously talented young novelist Gillian Mears.

Throughout it all, in beguiling and elegant style, Craig Munro weaves his own reminiscences of a life in publishing while tracking down some of Australian literature’s most fascinating and little-known stories. Literary Lion Tamers is a delight for anyone interested in the wild outer edges of the book world.]]> 320 Craig Munro 1925713229 Caitlin 4 books-i-own, read-in-2022 3.89 Literary Lion Tamers: book editors who made publishing history
author: Craig Munro
name: Caitlin
average rating: 3.89
book published:
rating: 4
read at: 2022/10/27
date added: 2022/10/27
shelves: books-i-own, read-in-2022
review:

]]> New Animal 56379083
Maybe being a cosmetician at her family's mortuary business isn't the best job for a young woman. It's not helping her social life. She loves her job, but she's not great at much else. Especially emotion.

And then something happens to her mum and suddenly Amelia's got too many feelings and the only thing that makes any sense to her is running away.

It takes the intervention of her two fathers and some hilariously wrong encounters with other broken people in a struggling Tasmanian BDSM club to help her accept the truth she has been hiding from. And in a final, cataclysmic scene, we learn along with Amelia that you need to feel another person's weight before you can feel your own.

Deadpan, wise and heartbreakingly funny, New Animal is a stunning debut.]]> 240 Ella Baxter 1760877794 Caitlin 3 books-i-own, read-in-2022 3.36 2021 New Animal
author: Ella Baxter
name: Caitlin
average rating: 3.36
book published: 2021
rating: 3
read at: 2022/10/19
date added: 2022/10/19
shelves: books-i-own, read-in-2022
review:

]]> Motherhood 36501611 Motherhood treats one of the most consequential decisions of early adulthood � whether or not to have children � with the intelligence, wit and originality that have won Sheila Heti international acclaim.

Having reached an age when most of her peers are asking themselves when they will become mothers, Heti’s narrator considers, with the same urgency, whether she will do so at all. Over the course of several years, under the influence of her partner, body, family, friends, mysticism and chance, she struggles to make a moral and meaningful choice.

In a compellingly direct mode that straddles the forms of the novel and the essay, Motherhood raises radical and essential questions, about womanhood, parenthood, and how � and for whom � to live.]]> 284 Sheila Heti 1846558379 Caitlin 4 read-in-2022 3.74 2018 Motherhood
author: Sheila Heti
name: Caitlin
average rating: 3.74
book published: 2018
rating: 4
read at: 2022/10/10
date added: 2022/10/10
shelves: read-in-2022
review:

]]> The Garden of Empress Cassia 3163106 112 Gabrielle Wang 0141316497 Caitlin 3 read-in-2022 3.83 2000 The Garden of Empress Cassia
author: Gabrielle Wang
name: Caitlin
average rating: 3.83
book published: 2000
rating: 3
read at: 2022/10/02
date added: 2022/10/02
shelves: read-in-2022
review:

]]> Supper Club 42276433 Devastatingly perceptive, savagely funny and wildly original - the essential coming-of-age story for our times. With the deadpan wit of Fleabag and ruthless insight of Cat Person, Lara Williams tells a tale of rage and joy, hunger and friendship, bodies and the space they take up in the world.

Twenty-nine year old Roberta has spent her whole life hungry - until the day she invents Supper Club.

Supper Club is a secret society for hungry women. Women who are sick of bad men and bad sex, of hinted expectations to talk less, take less, be less. So they gather after dark and feast until they are sick. They drink and dance and roar. And, month by month, their bodies expand.

At the centre of the Supper Club stands Roberta - cynical yet anxious, precocious and lost. She is seeking the answer to a simple question: if you feed a starving woman, what will she grow into?

This is a story about the hunger that never goes away. And it is a story about the people who make us what we are - who lead us astray and ultimately save us. You look hungry. Join the club.]]> 257 Lara Williams 024135031X Caitlin 2 books-i-own, read-in-2022 3.70 2019 Supper Club
author: Lara Williams
name: Caitlin
average rating: 3.70
book published: 2019
rating: 2
read at: 2022/07/27
date added: 2022/07/27
shelves: books-i-own, read-in-2022
review:

]]> Nothing Natural 3368207 240 Jenny Diski 0749390565 Caitlin 0 3.60 1986 Nothing Natural
author: Jenny Diski
name: Caitlin
average rating: 3.60
book published: 1986
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2022/07/12
shelves: currently-reading, books-i-own
review:

]]> Ulysses 40941044 777 James Joyce Caitlin 0 0.0 1922 Ulysses
author: James Joyce
name: Caitlin
average rating: 0.0
book published: 1922
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2022/07/12
shelves: books-i-own, currently-reading
review:

]]> Bear 55922101 Margaret Atwood

Lou is a shy and diligent librarian at the local Heritage Institute. She works monotonous and dusty hours long into the night but she has found nothing � and no one � to go home to. She has resigned herself to passionless sex on her desk with the Director of the Institute.

When she is summoned to a remote island to inventory the estate of Colonel Cary, she takes it as an opportunity to get out of the city, hoping for an industrious summer of cataloguing.

Colonel Cary left many possessions behind, but she didn’t expect the bear. She soon begins to anticipate the bear’s needs for food and company. But as summer blossoms across the island and Lou shakes off the city, she realises the bear might satisfy some needs of her own.]]> 167 Marian Engel 1911547941 Caitlin 4 books-i-own, read-in-2022 3.41 1976 Bear
author: Marian Engel
name: Caitlin
average rating: 3.41
book published: 1976
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2022/04/24
shelves: books-i-own, read-in-2022
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Awakening and Selected Stories]]> 483853 The Awakening was first published in 1899, charges of sordidness and immorality seemed to consign it into obscurity and irreparably damage its author's literary and social reputation. But a century after her death, it is widely regarded as Kate Chopin's great achievement.

Through careful, subtle changes of style, Chopin shows the transformation of Edna Pontellier, a young wife and mother who - with tragic consequences - refuses to be caged by married and domestic life and claims for herself moral and erotic freedom.

In her introduction, Sandra M. Gilbert considers the issues explored in the novel and the stories collected here (including "Emancipation," "At the 'Cadian Ball," and "Désirée's Baby") from their growth out of the feminist literary tradition of the nineteenth century, to their place among other concerns of fin de siècle writers in America and Europe, to their impact on contemporary feminist writing.
--back cover]]> 286 Kate Chopin Caitlin 3 read-in-2019 3.77 1899 The Awakening and Selected Stories
author: Kate Chopin
name: Caitlin
average rating: 3.77
book published: 1899
rating: 3
read at: 2019/06/30
date added: 2022/04/01
shelves: read-in-2019
review:

]]> Breaking Badly 46029653
Within a year Georgie was unemployed, back living with her parents and suffering such crippling anxiety that she ended up in a psychiatric hospital.

Breaking Badly is the story of a nervous breakdown in slow motion � a life that fell apart and what it took to put it back together again. Brutally honest and warmly engaging, it’s a must-read for anyone who sometimes feels close to the edge.

‘Funny, shocking, beautifully written � a fascinating account of one woman’s hand-to-hand combat with her own mind.� Annabel Crabb

‘A magnificent writer � Read this if you have ever suffered from anxiety, from mental illness, from perfectionism or from feeling inadequate.� Lana Hirschowitz]]> 288 Georgie Dent 1925712788 Caitlin 0 3.93 Breaking Badly
author: Georgie Dent
name: Caitlin
average rating: 3.93
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2022/02/26
shelves: currently-reading, books-i-own
review:

]]> No One Is Talking About This 57302775
As this urgent, genre-defying book opens, a woman who has recently been elevated to prominence for her social media posts travels around the world to meet her adoring fans. She is overwhelmed by navigating the new language and etiquette of what she terms "the portal," where she grapples with an unshakable conviction that a vast chorus of voices is now dictating her thoughts. When existential threats—from climate change and economic precariousness to the rise of an unnamed dictator and an epidemic of loneliness—begin to loom, she posts her way deeper into the portal's void. An avalanche of images, details, and references accumulate to form a landscape that is post-sense, post-irony, post-everything. "Are we in hell?" the people of the portal ask themselves. "Are we all just going to keep doing this until we die?"

Suddenly, two texts from her mother pierce the fray: "Something has gone wrong," and "How soon can you get here?" As real life and its stakes collide with the increasingly absurd antics of the portal, the woman confronts a world that seems to contain both an abundance of proof that there is goodness, empathy, and justice in the universe, and a deluge of evidence to the contrary.

Fragmentary and omniscient, incisive and sincere, No One Is Talking About This is at once a love letter to the endless scroll and a profound, modern meditation on love, language, and human connection from a singular voice in American literature.]]> 210 Patricia Lockwood 1526633833 Caitlin 3 read-in-2022 3.39 2021 No One Is Talking About This
author: Patricia Lockwood
name: Caitlin
average rating: 3.39
book published: 2021
rating: 3
read at: 2022/02/27
date added: 2022/02/26
shelves: read-in-2022
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Mammoth Hunters (Earth's Children, #3)]]> 1911083 The Clan Of The Cave Bear and its sequel, The Valley Of Horses, Jean M. Auel continues the breathtaking epic journey of the woman called Ayla. Now, with her devoted Jondalar, Ayla boldly sets forth into the land of the Mamutoi—the Mammoth Hunters, the Others she has been seeking. Though Ayla must learn their strange customs and language, it is because of her uncanny hunting and healing skills that she is adopted into the Mammoth Hearth. Here Ayla finds her first women friends, and painful memories of the Clan she left behind. Here, too, is Ranec, the dark-skinned, magnetic master carver of ivory tusks to whom Ayla is irresistibly drawn� setting Jondalar on fire with jealousy. Throughout the icy winter, Ayla is torn between her two men. But soon will come the great spring mammoth hunt, when Ayla must choose her mate and her destiny —to remain in the Hearth with Ranec, or to follow Jondalar into a far-off place and an unknown future.]]> 784 Jean M. Auel 0340393114 Caitlin 0 to-read, books-i-own 3.80 1985 The Mammoth Hunters (Earth's Children, #3)
author: Jean M. Auel
name: Caitlin
average rating: 3.80
book published: 1985
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2022/02/04
shelves: to-read, books-i-own
review:

]]> Maggie's Going Nowhere 48715887
In one day, she’s dumped by her boyfriend, disinherited by her mum, and kicked off the three-year degree she’d stretched to a decade. And that was before she received the letter saying she owed the government $70,000.

But that’s no reason to grow up, is it?

With a decrepit 1960s caravan to call home, Maggie has to prove to her mother she can survive without a safety net, stop her loyal best friend Jen from marrying a scumbag, and convince her sexy workmate Rueben that she’s not a walking disaster. For someone who’s spent her life avoiding hard work, she sure can move mountains when she’s got a little motivation � just don’t ask her to move the caravan.
]]> 292 Rose Hartley 1760144630 Caitlin 3 read-in-2022 3.59 2020 Maggie's Going Nowhere
author: Rose Hartley
name: Caitlin
average rating: 3.59
book published: 2020
rating: 3
read at: 2022/01/26
date added: 2022/01/26
shelves: read-in-2022
review:

]]> Sisterhood Everlasting 9971366
Despite having jobs and men that they love, each knows that something is missing: the closeness that once sustained them. Carmen is a successful actress in New York, engaged to be married, but misses her friends. Lena finds solace in her art, teaching in Rhode Island, but still thinks of Kostos and the road she didn’t take. Bridget lives with her longtime boyfriend, Eric, in San Francisco, and though a part of her wants to settle down, a bigger part can’t seem to shed her old restlessness.

Then Tibby reaches out to bridge the distance, sending the others plane tickets for a reunion that they all breathlessly await. And indeed, it will change their lives forever—but in ways that none of them could ever have expected.

As moving and life-changing as an encounter with long-lost best friends, Sisterhood Everlasting is a powerful story about growing up, losing your way, and finding the courage to create a new one.]]> 349 Ann Brashares 1742751245 Caitlin 3 read-in-2022 3.74 2011 Sisterhood Everlasting
author: Ann Brashares
name: Caitlin
average rating: 3.74
book published: 2011
rating: 3
read at: 2022/01/26
date added: 2022/01/26
shelves: read-in-2022
review:

]]> Love Objects 56273444
Nic's closest relationship is with her niece Lena. The two of them meet for lunch every Sunday to gossip about the rest of the family and bitch about work (they're both checkout chicks: Lena just for now, Nic until they prise her staff discount card from her cold, dead hands).

One Sunday, Nic fails to turn up to lunch and when Lena calls she gets a disconnection message. Arriving at the house she hasn't visited in years ('Too far for you to come, hon. Let's meet in the middle.') she finds her aunt unconscious under an avalanche of stuff.

Lena is devastated that her beloved aunt has been living in such squalor all this time. While Nic is in hospital, she gets to work cleaning things up for her. Her first impulse is to call in the bulldozers and start searching Gumtree for a roomy caravan. But with the help of her reluctantly recruited brother, Will, she gets the job done.

This heroic effort is not appreciated by the plastered up, crutch-wielding Nic. She returns to an empty, alien place unrecognisable as her home and the unbearable pity of her family who have no idea what they've destroyed. How can she live in this place without safety and peace? And how can she ever forgive the niece who has betrayed her?]]> 400 Emily Maguire 1760878332 Caitlin 0 3.73 2021 Love Objects
author: Emily Maguire
name: Caitlin
average rating: 3.73
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2022/01/26
shelves: books-i-own, to-read, did-not-finish
review:

]]> <![CDATA[SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome]]> 28789711 SPQR, an instant classic, Mary Beard narrates the history of Rome "with passion and without technical jargon" and demonstrates how "a slightly shabby Iron Age village" rose to become the "undisputed hegemon of the Mediterranean" (Wall Street Journal). Hailed by critics as animating "the grand sweep and the intimate details that bring the distant past vividly to life" (Economist) in a way that makes "your hair stand on end" (Christian Science Monitor) and spanning nearly a thousand years of history, this "highly informative, highly readable" (Dallas Morning News) work examines not just how we think of ancient Rome but challenges the comfortable historical perspectives that have existed for centuries. With its nuanced attention to class, democratic struggles, and the lives of entire groups of people omitted from the historical narrative for centuries, SPQR will to shape our view of Roman history for decades to come.]]> 606 Mary Beard 1631492225 Caitlin 0 to-read, did-not-finish 4.04 2015 SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome
author: Mary Beard
name: Caitlin
average rating: 4.04
book published: 2015
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2022/01/26
shelves: to-read, did-not-finish
review:

]]> A Breath of Life 17573208 192 Clarice Lispector 0141197374 Caitlin 0 books-i-own, to-read 4.31 1978 A Breath of Life
author: Clarice Lispector
name: Caitlin
average rating: 4.31
book published: 1978
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2022/01/26
shelves: books-i-own, to-read
review:

]]> Jane Eyre 10210 Alternate editions can be found here and here.

A gothic masterpiece of tempestuous passions and dark secrets, Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre is edited with an introduction and notes by Stevie Davis in Penguin Classics.

Charlotte Brontë tells the story of orphaned Jane Eyre, who grows up in the home of her heartless aunt, enduring loneliness and cruelty. This troubled childhood strengthens Jane's natural independence and spirit - which prove necessary when she finds employment as a governess to the young ward of Byronic, brooding Mr Rochester. As her feelings for Rochester develop, Jane gradually uncovers Thornfield Hall's terrible secret, forcing her to make a choice. Should she stay with Rochester and live with the consequences, or follow her convictions - even if it means leaving the man she loves? A novel of intense power and intrigue, Jane Eyre dazzled readers with its passionate depiction of a woman's search for equality and freedom.]]> 532 Charlotte Brontë 0142437204 Caitlin 0 4.14 1847 Jane Eyre
author: Charlotte Brontë
name: Caitlin
average rating: 4.14
book published: 1847
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2022/01/26
shelves: books-i-own, to-read, did-not-finish
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Beyond Good and Evil: Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future]]> 448894 240 Friedrich Nietzsche 0140445137 Caitlin 0 to-read, did-not-finish 3.78 1886 Beyond Good and Evil: Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future
author: Friedrich Nietzsche
name: Caitlin
average rating: 3.78
book published: 1886
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2022/01/26
shelves: to-read, did-not-finish
review:

]]> The Nigger of the Narcissus 17982439 The Nigger of the Narcissus is a magnificent saga of suspense, compassion, and elemental beauty--the voyage of a trim and gallant sailing ship and the tormented men who sailed her.

Into this tumultuous novel Joseph Conrad crowds some of his most unforgettable characters. There is James Wait--The "Nigger" of the Narcissus--who bullied and beguiled his shipmates with his impending death; Belfast, whose Irish pugnacity and gentle devotion to Wait earned him universal respect; Wamibo, a dreamy and disheveled giant; the Cook who preached hellfire and brimstone to save the Nigger's soul' the venomous Donkin, discoursing on the rights of men; and old Singleton--wise, barbaric, and serene.

Caught in a mortal struggle against the awesome fury of the sea, the Narcissus is the scene of raging hate and unpredictable tenderness, a maelstrom of emotions hurling the crew toward mutiny and disaster.]]> 173 Joseph Conrad Caitlin 0 to-read, books-i-own 3.57 1897 The Nigger of the Narcissus
author: Joseph Conrad
name: Caitlin
average rating: 3.57
book published: 1897
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2021/11/25
shelves: to-read, books-i-own
review:

]]> <![CDATA[We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families]]> 108230 356 Philip Gourevitch 0330371215 Caitlin 5 books-i-own, read-in-2021 4.33 1998 We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families
author: Philip Gourevitch
name: Caitlin
average rating: 4.33
book published: 1998
rating: 5
read at: 2021/10/17
date added: 2021/10/17
shelves: books-i-own, read-in-2021
review:

]]> In Gratitude 30792303 The future flashed before my eyes in all its pre-ordained banality. Embarrassment, at first, to the exclusion of all other feelings. But embarrassment curled at the edges with a weariness �
I got a joke in.
“So--we’d better get cooking the meth,� I said to the Poet.

In July 2014, Jenny Diski was diagnosed with inoperable lung cancer and given “two or three years� to live. She didn’t know how to react. All responses felt scripted, as if she were acting out her part. To find the response that felt wholly her own, she had to face the cliches and try to write about it. And there was another story to write, one she had not yet told: that of being taken in at age fifteen by the author Doris Lessing, and the subsequent fifty years of their complex relationship.

In the pages of the London Review of Books, to which Diski contributed for the last quarter century, she unraveled her history with Lessing: the fairy-tale rescue as a teenager, the difficulties of being absorbed into an unfamiliar family, the modeling of a literary life. Swooping from one memory to the next--alighting on the hysterical battlefield of her parental home, her expulsion from school, the drug-taking twenty-something in and out of psychiatric hospitals--and telling all through the lens of living with terminal cancer, through what she knows will be her final months, Diski paints a portrait of two extraordinary writers--Lessing and herself.

From a wholly original thinker comes a book like no other: a cerebral, witty, dazzlingly candid masterpiece about an uneasy relationship; about memory and writing, ingratitude and anger; about living with illness and facing death.]]> 250 Jenny Diski 1408879913 Caitlin 0 to-read, did-not-finish 3.86 2016 In Gratitude
author: Jenny Diski
name: Caitlin
average rating: 3.86
book published: 2016
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2021/09/27
shelves: to-read, did-not-finish
review:

]]> True Tracks 58483283 True Tracks is a ground-breaking work that paves the way for the respectful and ethical engagement with Indigenous cultures. Using real-world cases and personal stories, award-winning Meriam/Wuthathi lawyer Dr Terri Janke draws on twenty years of professional experience and personal stories to inform and inspire leaders across many industries - from art and architecture, to film and publishing, dance, science and tourism.
How will your project affect and involve Indigenous communities? What Indigenous materials and knowledge are you using? Who owns Indigenous languages?
True Tracks helps answer these questions and many more, and provides invaluable guidelines that enable Indigenous peoples to actively practise, manage and strengthen their cultural life, keeping tracks into the future to empower the next generations.
If we keep our tracks true, Indigenous culture and knowledge can benefit everyone.]]> 432 Terri Janke 1742236812 Caitlin 5 4.33 True Tracks
author: Terri Janke
name: Caitlin
average rating: 4.33
book published:
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2021/09/15
shelves:
review:

]]> Dropbear 55777360 I told you this was a thirst so great it could carve rivers.

This fierce debut from award-winning writer Evelyn Araluen confronts the tropes and iconography of an unreconciled nation with biting satire and lyrical fury. Dropbear interrogates the complexities of colonial and personal history with an alternately playful, tender and mournful intertextual voice, deftly navigating the responsibilities that gather from sovereign country, the spectres of memory and the debris of settler-coloniality. This innovative mix of poetry and essay offers an eloquent witness to the entangled present, an uncompromising provocation of history, and an embattled but redemptive hope for a decolonial future.]]> 112 Evelyn Araluen 0702263184 Caitlin 5 read-in-2021 4.11 2021 Dropbear
author: Evelyn Araluen
name: Caitlin
average rating: 4.11
book published: 2021
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2021/09/04
shelves: read-in-2021
review:

]]> Friends & Dark Shapes 55686936
Sydney’s inner city is very much its own place, yet also a stand in for gentrifying inner-city suburbs the world over. Here, four young housemates struggle to untangle their complicated relationships while a poignant story of loss, grieving, and recovery unfolds.

The nameless narrator of this story has recently lost her father and now her existence is split in two: she conjures the past in which he was alive and yet lives in the present, where he is not. To others, she appears to have it all together, but the grief she still feels creates an insurmountable barrier between herself and others, between the life she had and the one she leads.

Wry, relatable, lyrical, and beautifully told, a book about politics, desire, youth, relationships and friends, Friends and Dark Shapes introduces a bold new Australian voice to American readers.]]> 288 Kavita Bedford 1922330477 Caitlin 3 read-in-2021 3.77 2021 Friends & Dark Shapes
author: Kavita Bedford
name: Caitlin
average rating: 3.77
book published: 2021
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2021/09/04
shelves: read-in-2021
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Rebel Hearts: Journeys Within the IRA's Soul]]> 667816 400 Kevin Toolis 0312156324 Caitlin 5 books-i-own, read-in-2021 4.06 1995 Rebel Hearts: Journeys Within the IRA's Soul
author: Kevin Toolis
name: Caitlin
average rating: 4.06
book published: 1995
rating: 5
read at: 2021/07/24
date added: 2021/07/24
shelves: books-i-own, read-in-2021
review:

]]> A Fig at the Gate 23212464
Following the joyful crafting of her gardens in the Blue Mountains (The Waterlily) and north of Wollongong (Playing with Water), Kate creates a new garden near the sea in Adelaide, planting olives, plums, limes and blood oranges, learning how to keep poultry, setting a duck on eggs. Delight and enrichment come with the learning of new skills, being close to family and old friends, long companionable beach walks, rediscovering old recipes, food and wine.

Wise and joyful, accepting what she cannot change while relishing what she has, Kate shares the beauties and frailties of the human condition and shows us what the gifts of ageing can bring.]]> 320 Kate Llewellyn 1760110884 Caitlin 0 3.61 2014 A Fig at the Gate
author: Kate Llewellyn
name: Caitlin
average rating: 3.61
book published: 2014
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2021/07/22
shelves: books-i-own, to-read, did-not-finish
review:

]]> One Hundred Years of Dirt 40692083 277 Rick Morton 0522873162 Caitlin 3 read-in-2021 4.06 2018 One Hundred Years of Dirt
author: Rick Morton
name: Caitlin
average rating: 4.06
book published: 2018
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2021/06/16
shelves: read-in-2021
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Theory of Film: The Redemption of Physical Reality]]> 237246 364 Siegfried Kracauer 0691037043 Caitlin 0 books-i-own, to-read 3.94 1960 Theory of Film: The Redemption of Physical Reality
author: Siegfried Kracauer
name: Caitlin
average rating: 3.94
book published: 1960
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2021/06/16
shelves: books-i-own, to-read
review:

]]> Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter 37831096
She vividly evokes her friendships, love interests, mentors, and the early days of the most important relationship of her life, with fellow student Jean-Paul Sartre, against the backdrop of a turbulent political time.]]> 362 Simone de Beauvoir Caitlin 0 books-i-own, to-read 2.00 1958 Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter
author: Simone de Beauvoir
name: Caitlin
average rating: 2.00
book published: 1958
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2021/06/16
shelves: books-i-own, to-read
review:

]]> Flights 35535012
Olga Tokarczuk brilliantly connects travel with spellbinding anecdotes about anatomy, about life and death, about the very nature of humankind. Thrilling characters and stories abound: the Russian sect who escape the devil by remaining constantly in motion; the anatomist Verheyen who writes letters to his amputated leg; the story of Chopin’s heart as it makes its journey from Paris to Warsaw, stored in a tightly sealed jar beneath his sister’s skirt; the quest of a Polish woman who emigrated to New Zealand as a teen but must now return in order to poison her terminally ill high-school sweetheart�

You will never read anything like this extraordinary, utterly original, mind-expanding book. Many consider Tokarczuk to be the most important Polish writer of her generation and Flights is one of those rare books that seems to conjure life itself out of the air.]]> 410 Olga Tokarczuk 1925603148 Caitlin 0 did-not-finish, to-read 3.76 2007 Flights
author: Olga Tokarczuk
name: Caitlin
average rating: 3.76
book published: 2007
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2021/06/16
shelves: did-not-finish, to-read
review:

]]> Moby-Dick or, The Whale 153747 "It is the horrible texture of a fabric that should be woven of ships' cables and hawsers. A Polar wind blows through it, and birds of prey hover over it."

So Melville wrote of his masterpiece, one of the greatest works of imagination in literary history. In part, Moby-Dick is the story of an eerily compelling madman pursuing an unholy war against a creature as vast and dangerous and unknowable as the sea itself. But more than just a novel of adventure, more than an encyclopaedia of whaling lore and legend, the book can be seen as part of its author's lifelong meditation on America. Written with wonderfully redemptive humour, Moby-Dick is also a profound inquiry into character, faith, and the nature of perception.

This edition of Moby-Dick, which reproduces the definitive text of the novel, includes invaluable explanatory notes, along with maps, illustrations, and a glossary of nautical terms.]]> 720 Herman Melville 0142437247 Caitlin 0 to-read, did-not-finish 3.53 1851 Moby-Dick or, The Whale
author: Herman Melville
name: Caitlin
average rating: 3.53
book published: 1851
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2021/06/16
shelves: to-read, did-not-finish
review:

]]> The Brothers Karamazov 4935
This powerful translation of The Brothers Karamazov features an introduction highlighting Dostoyevsky's recurrent themes of guilt and salvation, with a new chronology and further reading.]]> 1013 Fyodor Dostoevsky 0140449248 Caitlin 0 did-not-finish, to-read 4.46 1880 The Brothers Karamazov
author: Fyodor Dostoevsky
name: Caitlin
average rating: 4.46
book published: 1880
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2021/06/16
shelves: did-not-finish, to-read
review:

]]> Acts of Desperation 55048725
Love was the final consolation, would set ablaze the fields of my life in one go, leaving nothing behind. I thought of it as a force which would clean me and by its presence make me worthy of it. There was no religion in my life after early childhood, and a great faith in love was what I had cultivated instead. Oh, don't laugh at me for this, for being a woman who says this to you. I hear myself speak.

Even now, even after all that took place between us, I can still feel how moved I am by him. Ciaran was that downy, darkening blond of a baby just leaving its infancy. He was the most beautiful man I had ever seen. None of it mattered in the end; what he looked like, who he was, the things he would do to me. To make a beautiful man love and live with me had seemed - obviously, intuitively - the entire point of life. My need was greater than reality, stronger than the truth, more savage than either of us would eventually bear. How could it be true that a woman like me could need a man's love to feel like a person, to feel that I was worthy of life? And what would happen when I finally wore him down and took it?]]> 224 Megan Nolan 1787333361 Caitlin 0 books-i-own, read-in-2021 3.72 2021 Acts of Desperation
author: Megan Nolan
name: Caitlin
average rating: 3.72
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2021/06/05
shelves: books-i-own, read-in-2021
review:

]]> Kokomo 52334565 'genuinely funny and heartbreaking' - VPLA judges

When Mina receives an urgent call from her best friend back in Melbourne, her world is turned upside down. Her agoraphobic mother, Elaine, has left the house for the first time in twelve years. Mina drops everything to fly home, only to discover that Elaine will not talk about her sudden return to the world, nor why she's spent so much time hiding from it. Their reunion leaves Mina raking through pieces of their painful past in a bid to uncover the truth.

Both tender and fierce, heartbreaking and funny, Kokomo is a story about how secrets and love have the power to bring us together and tear us apart.

]]> 235 Victoria Hannan 0733643337 Caitlin 3 books-i-own, read-in-2021 3.55 2020 Kokomo
author: Victoria Hannan
name: Caitlin
average rating: 3.55
book published: 2020
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2021/06/05
shelves: books-i-own, read-in-2021
review:

]]> Notes to Self 42373438
In this debut, Emilie Pine speaks to the events that have marked her life—those emotional disruptions for which our society has no adequate language, at once bittersweet, clandestine, and ordinary. She writes with radical honesty on the unspeakable grief of infertility, on caring for an alcoholic parent, on taboos around female bodies and female pain, on sexual violence and violence against the self. This is the story of one woman, and of all women.

Devastating, poignant, and wise—and joyful against the odds�Notes to Self is an unforgettable exploration of what it feels like to be alive, and a daring act of rebellion against a society that is more comfortable with women’s silence.]]> 224 Emilie Pine 0241986222 Caitlin 5 books-i-own, read-in-2021 4.20 2018 Notes to Self
author: Emilie Pine
name: Caitlin
average rating: 4.20
book published: 2018
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2021/03/31
shelves: books-i-own, read-in-2021
review:

]]> The Marriage Plot 12647458 Madeleine Hanna was the dutiful English major who didn't get the memo. While everyone else in the early 1980s was reading Derrida, she was happily absorbed with Jane Austen and George Eliot: purveyors of the marriage plot that lies at the heart of the greatest English novels. Madeleine was the girl who dressed a little too nicely for the taste of her more bohemian friends, the perfect girlfriend whose college love life, despite her good looks, hadn't lived up to expectations.
But now, in the spring of her senior year, Madeleine has enrolled in a semiotics course "to see what all the fuss is about," and, for reasons that have nothing to do with school, life and literature will never be the same. Not after she falls in love with Leonard Morten--charismatic loner, college Darwinist and lost Oregon boy--who is possessed of seemingly inexhaustible energy and introduces her to the ecstasies of immediate experience. And certainly not after Mitchell Grammaticus--devotee of Patti Smith and Thomas Merton--resurfaces in her life, obsessed with the idea that Madeleine is destined to be his mate.]]> 406 Jeffrey Eugenides 0007441282 Caitlin 3 books-i-own, read-in-2021 3.44 2011 The Marriage Plot
author: Jeffrey Eugenides
name: Caitlin
average rating: 3.44
book published: 2011
rating: 3
read at: 2021/03/14
date added: 2021/03/14
shelves: books-i-own, read-in-2021
review:

]]> Slouching Towards Bethlehem 4073199 Slouching Towards Bethlehem remains, forty years after its first publication, the essential portrait of America� particularly California—in the sixties. It focuses on such subjects as John Wayne and Howard Hughes, growing up a girl in California, ruminating on the nature of good and evil in a Death Valley motel room, and, especially, the essence of San Francisco's Haight-Ashbury, the heart of the counterculture.]]> 238 Joan Didion 0374531382 Caitlin 5 read-in-2013 4.22 1968 Slouching Towards Bethlehem
author: Joan Didion
name: Caitlin
average rating: 4.22
book published: 1968
rating: 5
read at: 2013/10/30
date added: 2021/01/29
shelves: read-in-2013
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Growing Up Muslim in Australia: Coming of Age]]> 43826400
The beard, the hijab, the migrant - these are all familiar images associated with Muslim people. But delve deeper and there are many other stories: the young female boxer entering the ring for her first professional bout; a ten-year-old boy who renounces religion; a young woman struggling to reconcile her sexual identity with her faith. These honest and heartfelt stories will resonate with all readers, providing different snapshots of Muslim life in Australia, dispelling myths and stereotypes, and above all celebrating diversity, achievement, courage and determination.

With stories by Randa Abdel-Fattah, Arwa Abousamra, Michael Mohammed Ahmad, Tanveer Ahmed, Ali Alizadeh, Amal Awad, Tasneem Chopra, Hazem El Masri, Bianca Elmir, Sabrina Houssami-Richardson, Alyena Mohummadally and Irfan Yusuf.

'The kind of book that will change how readers look at the world. Coloured with many shades of humour, warmth, sadness, anger, determination and honesty, it will resonate with readers from all backgrounds and beliefs.' Bookseller+Publisher

'It's hard to imagine a more varied group of young people, united only by the fact that they come from diverse Muslim backgrounds. Story after story explodes the stereotypes...' The Age

'[W]hat is particularly striking is the diversity of backgrounds among the contributions. Perhaps it is not really surprising, given that Australian Muslims come from 70 different countries.' Thuy On, The Sydney Morning Herald]]> 176 Amra Pajalic 1760870609 Caitlin 0 did-not-finish, to-read 4.14 2014 Growing Up Muslim in Australia: Coming of Age
author: Amra Pajalic
name: Caitlin
average rating: 4.14
book published: 2014
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2021/01/09
shelves: did-not-finish, to-read
review:

]]> Ache 34077075 A heart-wrenching, tender and lovely novel about loss, grief and regeneration, Ache is not only a story of how we can be broken, but how we can put ourselves back together.]]> 256 Eliza Henry-Jones 1460750381 Caitlin 0 to-read 3.74 2017 Ache
author: Eliza Henry-Jones
name: Caitlin
average rating: 3.74
book published: 2017
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2020/12/27
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Outsiders 54123562 The Outsiders is about two weeks in the life of a 14-year-old boy. The novel tells the story of Ponyboy Curtis and his struggles with right and wrong in a society in which he believes that he is an outsider. According to Ponyboy, there are two kinds of people in the world: greasers and socs. A soc (short for "social") has money, can get away with just about anything, and has an attitude longer than a limousine. A greaser, on the other hand, always lives on the outside and needs to watch his back. Ponyboy is a greaser, and he's always been proud of it, even willing to rumble against a gang of socs for the sake of his fellow greasers--until one terrible night when his friend Johnny kills a soc. The murder gets under Ponyboy's skin, causing his bifurcated world to crumble and teaching him that pain feels the same whether a soc or a greaser.]]> 128 S.E. Hinton Caitlin 5 books-i-own, read-in-2020 4.00 1967 The Outsiders
author: S.E. Hinton
name: Caitlin
average rating: 4.00
book published: 1967
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2020/12/25
shelves: books-i-own, read-in-2020
review:

]]> Other People's Words 4659467 320 Hilary McPhee 0330491555 Caitlin 5 read-in-2020 4.29 2001 Other People's Words
author: Hilary McPhee
name: Caitlin
average rating: 4.29
book published: 2001
rating: 5
read at: 2020/11/24
date added: 2020/11/24
shelves: read-in-2020
review:

]]> <![CDATA[This is Going to Hurt: Secret Diaries of a Junior Doctor]]> 35510008 Scribbled in secret after endless days, sleepless nights and missed weekends, Adam Kay's This is Going to Hurt provides a no-holds-barred account of his time on the NHS front line. Hilarious, horrifying and heartbreaking, this diary is everything you wanted to know � and more than a few things you didn't � about life on and off the hospital ward.

As seen on ITV's Zoe Ball Book Club

This edition includes extra diary entries and a new afterword by the author.

]]> 285 Adam Kay Caitlin 4 read-in-2019 4.40 2017 This is Going to Hurt: Secret Diaries of a Junior Doctor
author: Adam Kay
name: Caitlin
average rating: 4.40
book published: 2017
rating: 4
read at: 2019/02/13
date added: 2020/11/23
shelves: read-in-2019
review:

]]> A Novel Idea 49550539
A unique, intimate portrait of a writer's working life, by one of Australia's most highly regarded novelists and performance artists.]]> 359 Fiona McGregor 1925818063 Caitlin 5 read-in-2020 3.93 A Novel Idea
author: Fiona McGregor
name: Caitlin
average rating: 3.93
book published:
rating: 5
read at: 2020/11/11
date added: 2020/11/11
shelves: read-in-2020
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Hysteria: A memoir of illness, strength and women's stories throughout history]]> 52172337
In the tradition of Siri Hustvedt’s The Shaking Woman, Bryant blends memoir with literary and historical analysis to explore women’s medical treatment. Hysteria retells the stories of silenced women, from the ‘Queen of Hysterics� Blanche Wittmann to Mary Glover’s illness termed ‘hysterica passio� a panic attack caused by the movement of the uterus � in London in 1602 and more. By centring these stories of women who had no voice in their own diagnosis and treatment, Bryant finds her own voice: powerful, brave and resonant.]]> 208 Katerina Bryant 1742236774 Caitlin 5 books-i-own, read-in-2020 3.79 2020 Hysteria: A memoir of illness, strength and women's stories throughout history
author: Katerina Bryant
name: Caitlin
average rating: 3.79
book published: 2020
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2020/11/06
shelves: books-i-own, read-in-2020
review:

]]> After Theory 1895070 225 Terry Eagleton 0141015071 Caitlin 4 read-in-2020, books-i-own 3.87 2003 After Theory
author: Terry Eagleton
name: Caitlin
average rating: 3.87
book published: 2003
rating: 4
read at: 2020/11/06
date added: 2020/11/06
shelves: read-in-2020, books-i-own
review:

]]> The Secret River 8490734 The Secret River is the story of Grenville's ancestors, who wrested a new life from the alien terrain of Australia and its native people. London, 1806. William Thornhill, a Thames bargeman, is deported to the New South Wales colony in what would become Australia. In this new world of convicts and charlatans, Thornhill tries to pull his family into a position of power and comfort. When he rounds a bend in the Hawkesbury River and sees a gentle slope of land, he becomes determined to make the place his own. But, as uninhabited as the island appears, Australia is full of native people, and they do not take kindly to Thornhill's theft of their home.

The Secret River is the tale of Thornhill's deep love for his small corner of the new world, and his slow realization that if he wants to settle there, he must ally himself with the most despicable of the white settlers, and to keep his family safe, he must permit terrifying cruelty to come to innocent people.
]]> 334 Kate Grenville 1921520345 Caitlin 4 read-in-2020 3.68 2005 The Secret River
author: Kate Grenville
name: Caitlin
average rating: 3.68
book published: 2005
rating: 4
read at: 2020/11/01
date added: 2020/11/01
shelves: read-in-2020
review:

]]> Melting Moments 50015272
In this absorbing novel, Anna Goldsworthy recreates the world of Adelaide half a century ago, and portrays the phases of a woman’s life with intimacy and sly humour. We follow Ruby as she contends with her damaged husband and eccentric in-laws. We see her experience motherhood and changing social circumstances, until, in a moving twist, a figure from the past reappears, to kindle a late-life romance.

In her captivating fiction debut, Goldsworthy evokes a woman’s life in a pre-feminist world. In this tender, funny book, she combines an Austenesque wit with Alice Munro’s feeling for human complexity.]]> 244 Anna Goldsworthy 186395998X Caitlin 4 read-in-2020 3.63 Melting Moments
author: Anna Goldsworthy
name: Caitlin
average rating: 3.63
book published:
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2020/10/23
shelves: read-in-2020
review:

]]> Emma 157421
Jane Austen exercises her taste for cutting social observation and her talent for investing seemingly trivial events with profound moral significance as Emma traverses a gentle satire of provincial balls and drawing rooms, along the way encountering the sweet Harriet Smith, the chatty and tedious Miss Bates, and her absurd father Mr. Woodhouse—a memorable gallery of Austen's finest personages. Thinking herself impervious to romance of any kind, Emma tries to arrange a wealthy marriage for poor Harriet, but refuses to recognize her own feelings for the gallant Mr. Knightley. What ensues is a delightful series of scheming escapades in which every social machination and bit of "tittle-tattle" is steeped in Austen's delicious irony. Ultimately, Emma discovers that "Perfect happiness, even in memory, is not common." Emma is her most cleverly woven, riotously comedic, and pleasing novel of manners.]]> 451 Jane Austen 1593081529 Caitlin 0 to-read, books-i-own 4.03 1815 Emma
author: Jane Austen
name: Caitlin
average rating: 4.03
book published: 1815
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2020/09/25
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review:

]]> Transit 28092867
Filtered through the impersonal gaze of its keenly intelligent protagonist, Transit sees Rachel Cusk delve deeper into the themes first raised in her critically acclaimed Outline, and offers up a penetrating and moving reflection on childhood and fate, the value of suffering, the moral problems of personal responsibility and the mystery of change.]]> 272 Rachel Cusk 1910702617 Caitlin 3 read-in-2020 3.90 2016 Transit
author: Rachel Cusk
name: Caitlin
average rating: 3.90
book published: 2016
rating: 3
read at: 2020/08/29
date added: 2020/08/30
shelves: read-in-2020
review:

]]> Outline 40176913
Beginning with the neighbouring passenger on the flight out and his tales of fast boats and failed marriages, the storytellers talk of their loves and ambitions and pains, their anxieties, their perceptions and daily lives. In the stifling heat and noise of the city the sequence of voice begins to weave a complex human tapestry. The more they talk the more elliptical their listener becomes, as she shapes and directs their accounts until certain themes begin to emerge: the experience of loss, the nature of family life, the difficulty of intimacy and the mystery of creativity itself.

Outline is a novel about writing and talking, about self-effacement and self-expression, about the desire to create and the human art of self-portraiture in which that desire finds its universal form.]]> 249 Rachel Cusk 0571346766 Caitlin 4 read-in-2020 3.75 2014 Outline
author: Rachel Cusk
name: Caitlin
average rating: 3.75
book published: 2014
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2020/08/13
shelves: read-in-2020
review:

]]> Pine 45298337
The trees are coarse and tall in the winter light, standing like men. Lauren and her father Niall live alone in the Highlands, in a small village surrounded by pine forest. When a woman stumbles out onto the road one Halloween night, Niall drives her back to their house in his pickup. In the morning, she's gone.

In a community where daughters rebel, men quietly rage, and drinking is a means of forgetting, mysteries like these are not out of the ordinary. The trapper found hanging with the dead animals for two weeks. Locked doors and stone circles. The disappearance of Lauren's mother a decade ago.

Lauren looks for answers in her tarot cards, hoping she might one day be able to read her father's turbulent mind. Neighbours know more than they let on, but when local teenager Ann-Marie goes missing it's no longer clear who she can trust.

In spare, haunting prose, Francine Toon creates an unshakeable atmosphere of desolation and dread. In a place that feels like the end of the world, she unites the gloom of the modern gothic with the pulse of a thriller. It is the perfect novel for our haunted times.]]> 288 Francine Toon 0857526707 Caitlin 0 books-i-own, read-in-2020 3.36 2020 Pine
author: Francine Toon
name: Caitlin
average rating: 3.36
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at: 2020/08/12
date added: 2020/08/12
shelves: books-i-own, read-in-2020
review:

]]> The Animals in That Country 52527550 Out on the road, no one speaks, everything talks.

Hard-drinking, foul-mouthed, and allergic to bullshit, Jean is not your usual grandma. She’s never been good at getting on with other humans, apart from her beloved granddaughter, Kimberly. Instead, she surrounds herself with animals, working as a guide in an outback wildlife park. And although Jean talks to all her charges, she has a particular soft spot for a young dingo called Sue.

As disturbing news arrives of a pandemic sweeping the country, Jean realises this is no ordinary flu: its chief symptom is that its victims begin to understand the language of animals � first mammals, then birds and insects, too. As the flu progresses, the unstoppable voices become overwhelming, and many people begin to lose their minds, including Jean’s infected son, Lee. When he takes off with Kimberly, heading south, Jean feels the pull to follow her kin.

Setting off on their trail, with Sue the dingo riding shotgun, they find themselves in a stark, strange world in which the animal apocalypse has only further isolated people from other species. Bold, exhilarating, and wholly original, The Animals in That Country asks what would happen if - for better or worse - we finally understood what animals were saying.]]> 288 Laura Jean McKay 191285452X Caitlin 0 3.39 2020 The Animals in That Country
author: Laura Jean McKay
name: Caitlin
average rating: 3.39
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2020/08/12
shelves: books-i-own, to-read, did-not-finish
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Sydney Journals: Reflections, 1970-2000]]> 12479047
At the same time the journals record, with a poet’s eye, the domestic and public life of the period, the changing seasons, the ageing of the writer and her companions, and the dramatic beauty of the city and its landscapes.]]> 246 Antigone Kefala Caitlin 4 books-i-own, read-in-2020 4.17 2008 Sydney Journals: Reflections, 1970-2000
author: Antigone Kefala
name: Caitlin
average rating: 4.17
book published: 2008
rating: 4
read at: 2020/08/12
date added: 2020/08/12
shelves: books-i-own, read-in-2020
review:

]]> Closed For Winter 1168646 Closed for Winter is a gripping novel that will haunt you to the very end, and a powerful, positive story about the pain of letting go.]]> Georgia Blain 0140272070 Caitlin 4 read-in-2020, books-i-own 3.50 1998 Closed For Winter
author: Georgia Blain
name: Caitlin
average rating: 3.50
book published: 1998
rating: 4
read at: 2020/04/12
date added: 2020/04/12
shelves: read-in-2020, books-i-own
review:

]]> Missus 2452887 247 Ruth Park 0170065944 Caitlin 4 books-i-own, read-in-2020 3.71 1985 Missus
author: Ruth Park
name: Caitlin
average rating: 3.71
book published: 1985
rating: 4
read at: 2020/04/06
date added: 2020/04/11
shelves: books-i-own, read-in-2020
review:

]]> The Weekend 44232338


People went on about death bringing friends together, but it wasn't true. The graveyard, the stony dirt - that's what it was like now . . . Despite the three women knowing each other better than their own siblings, Sylvie's death had opened up strange caverns of distance between them.

Four older women have a lifelong friendship of the best kind: loving, practical, frank and steadfast. But when Sylvie dies, the ground shifts dangerously for the remaining three. Can they survive together without her?

They are Jude, a once-famous restaurateur, Wendy, an acclaimed public intellectual, and Adele, a renowned actress now mostly out of work. Struggling to recall exactly why they've remained close all these years, the grieving women gather for Christmas at Sylvie's old beach house - not for festivities, but to clean the place out before it is sold.

Without Sylvie to maintain the group's delicate equilibrium, frustrations build and painful memories press in. Fraying tempers, an elderly dog, unwelcome guests and too much wine collide in a storm that brings long-buried hurts to the surface - and threatens to sweep away their friendship for good.

The Weekend explores growing old and growing up, and what happens when we're forced to uncover the lies we tell ourselves. Sharply observed and excruciatingly funny, this is a jewel of a book: a celebration of tenderness and friendship that is nothing short of a masterpiece.

'A compelling and vivid look at the friendships we make as women. Honest, unsettling and, like all good literature, had me asking questions about life and myself.'
Heather Rose, author of The Museum of Modern Love, winner of the 2017 Stella Prize]]> 272 Charlotte Wood Caitlin 0 to-read, did-not-finish 3.48 2019 The Weekend
author: Charlotte Wood
name: Caitlin
average rating: 3.48
book published: 2019
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2020/04/11
shelves: to-read, did-not-finish
review:

]]> The Odyssey 34068470 The Odyssey is a poem about violence and the aftermath of war; about wealth, poverty, and power; about marriage and family; about travelers, hospitality, and the yearning for home.

In this fresh, authoritative version--the first English translation of The Odyssey by a woman--this stirring tale of shipwrecks, monsters, and magic comes alive in an entirely new way. Written in iambic pentameter verse and a vivid, contemporary idiom, this engrossing translation matches the number of lines in the Greek original, thus striding at Homer's sprightly pace and singing with a voice that echoes Homer's music.

Wilson's Odyssey captures the beauty and enchantment of this ancient poem as well as the suspense and drama of its narrative. Its characters are unforgettable, from the cunning goddess Athena, whose interventions guide and protect the hero, to the awkward teenage son, Telemachus, who struggles to achieve adulthood and find his father; from the cautious, clever, and miserable Penelope, who somehow keeps clamoring suitors at bay during her husband's long absence, to the "complicated" hero himself, a man of many disguises, many tricks, and many moods, who emerges in this translation as a more fully rounded human being than ever before.

A fascinating introduction provides an informative overview of the Bronze Age milieu that produced the epic, the major themes of the poem, the controversies about its origins, and the unparalleled scope of its impact and influence. Maps drawn especially for this volume, a pronunciation glossary, and extensive notes and summaries of each book make this an Odyssey that will be treasured by a new generation of scholars, students, and general readers alike.]]> 582 Homer 0393089053 Caitlin 0 to-read, did-not-finish 4.30 -700 The Odyssey
author: Homer
name: Caitlin
average rating: 4.30
book published: -700
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2020/03/29
shelves: to-read, did-not-finish
review:

]]> I Choose Elena 51071647
In a brilliantly researched and deeply affecting essay, Osborne-Crowley invites the reader to her on decade-long journey to recovery: from the immediate aftermath of the assault, through years of misdiagnosis, to the solace and strength she found in writers like Elena Ferrante.

The author’s investigations reveal profound societal failures � of law, justice, education and the healthcare system. An essential contribution to the field of literature on assault and trauma, I Choose Elena argues that it is only through empathy than we can begin to address the self-perpetuating cycle of sexual violence.]]> 144 Lucia Osborne-Crowley 1999683390 Caitlin 5 read-in-2020 4.46 2019 I Choose Elena
author: Lucia Osborne-Crowley
name: Caitlin
average rating: 4.46
book published: 2019
rating: 5
read at: 2020/02/11
date added: 2020/02/24
shelves: read-in-2020
review:

]]> Siddhartha 6130 Siddhartha for the modern reader. Inspired by Hesse's profound regard for Indian philosophy and written in prose of almost biblical simplicity, it chronicles the quest of the Brahmin Siddhartha for the conquest of suffering and fear. His tortuous road leads him through the temptations of luxury and wealth the delights of sensual love, and the sinister threat of death-dealing snakes, towards the fulfilment of his destiny as a ferryman guided by the all-knowing voice of the running river...

This new expanded edition includes a comprehensive and illuminating preface by Donald McCrory that combines Hesse's biography with the writing and meaning of Siddhartha. McCrory also provides a select bibliography, an index of people and works influential to Hesse and a glossary of Sanskrit, Hindu and Buddhistic terms for newcomers to the novel.]]> 213 Hermann Hesse 033035485X Caitlin 4 books-i-own, read-in-2020 4.09 1922 Siddhartha
author: Hermann Hesse
name: Caitlin
average rating: 4.09
book published: 1922
rating: 4
read at: 2020/01/14
date added: 2020/01/14
shelves: books-i-own, read-in-2020
review:

]]> The Sleepless Moon 28477095 0 H.E. Bates 0140021779 Caitlin 0 to-read, books-i-own 3.60 1956 The Sleepless Moon
author: H.E. Bates
name: Caitlin
average rating: 3.60
book published: 1956
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2020/01/13
shelves: to-read, books-i-own
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Queen Kat, Carmel and St. Jude Get a Life]]> 71009
This is a wonderfully passionate & absorbing novel which explores the lives of three very different girls in their first year out of school, who share an inner city Melbourne house. All three girls come from the small country town of Manella. Katrina, priveleged, beautiful, & sophisticated, is the daughter of a wealthy medical family; Carmel, from a struggling farming family is overweight & inhibited, but has a gift for music, & Jude, a medical student, is the daughter of a Chilean doctor who was murdered when she was two.]]> 444 Maureen McCarthy 014028124X Caitlin 0 to-read, did-not-finish 3.79 1995 Queen Kat, Carmel and St. Jude Get a Life
author: Maureen McCarthy
name: Caitlin
average rating: 3.79
book published: 1995
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2020/01/02
shelves: to-read, did-not-finish
review:

]]> Burning In 6615702 306 Mireille Juchau 1920882278 Caitlin 0 to-read, did-not-finish 4.02 2007 Burning In
author: Mireille Juchau
name: Caitlin
average rating: 4.02
book published: 2007
rating: 0
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date added: 2020/01/02
shelves: to-read, did-not-finish
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Spells: 21st Century Occult Poetry]]> 42623259
Edited by Sarah Shin and Rebecca Tamás, with an introduction by So Mayer, Spells other contributors include Rachael Allen, Nuar Alsadir, Khairani Barokka, Emily Berry, A.K. Blakemore, Jen Calleja, Vahni Capildeo, Kayo Chingonyi, Elinor Cleghorn, Nia Davies, Kate Duckney, Livia Franchini, Will Harris, Caspar Heinemann, Rebecca May Johnson, Amy Key, Daisy Lafarge, Francesca Lisette, Canisia Lubrin, Karen McCarthy Woolf, Lucy Mercer, Hoa Nguyen, Rebecca Perry, Nat Raha, Nisha Ramayya, Sophie Robinson, Erica Scourti, Dolly Turing, and Jane Yeh.]]> 160 Sarah Shin 1999675908 Caitlin 5 books-i-own, read-in-2019 3.59 2019 Spells: 21st Century Occult Poetry
author: Sarah Shin
name: Caitlin
average rating: 3.59
book published: 2019
rating: 5
read at: 2019/11/22
date added: 2019/11/22
shelves: books-i-own, read-in-2019
review:

]]> Play It as It Lays 38926583 Alternate cover for ISBN 0140035621

A ruthless dissection of American life in the late 1960s, from the author of The Last Thing He Wanted and A Book of Common Prayer.]]> 168 Joan Didion Caitlin 5 books-i-own, read-in-2019 4.18 1970 Play It as It Lays
author: Joan Didion
name: Caitlin
average rating: 4.18
book published: 1970
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2019/11/15
shelves: books-i-own, read-in-2019
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Never Say Die: The Hundred-Year Overnight Success of Australian Women’s Football]]> 48583384 288 Fiona Crawford 1742236669 Caitlin 5 read-in-2019 3.92 Never Say Die: The Hundred-Year Overnight Success of Australian Women’s Football
author: Fiona Crawford
name: Caitlin
average rating: 3.92
book published:
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2019/11/02
shelves: read-in-2019
review:

]]> The Poems of William Blake 27677140 114 William Blake 1511773839 Caitlin 0 to-read, books-i-own 4.38 1893 The Poems of William Blake
author: William Blake
name: Caitlin
average rating: 4.38
book published: 1893
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2019/10/15
shelves: to-read, books-i-own
review:

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