Ellen's bookshelf: all en-US Thu, 03 Apr 2025 22:04:47 -0700 60 Ellen's bookshelf: all 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg The Inheritance 216119498 What if everyone in your family was given a DNA test at would there be any surprise results? For two women the answers are shocking, and dangerous. Perfect for readers of Liane Moriarty and Sally Hepworth.


Families lie. DNA doesn't.

Isobel Ashworth breezes through life, blissfully accustomed to the privilege which comes with her family name. But that changes when she arrives in the exclusive town of Hartwell. Sent there by her father to complete a controversial property development - and prove herself a serious player in the succession plan - her perfect life is unravelling. Isobel's fiance is telling lies, the project is a disaster and the locals hate her; could her father be setting her up to fail?

Buzzing with the promise of a big story, journalist Meg Hunter arrives in Hartwell to expose the Ashworth family dealings, and transform her faltering career. As she follows the trail of corruption, she uncovers clues about her mother's mysterious past.

When the next-gen Ashworths each receive an anonymous Christmas gift of a DNA testing kit, Isobel questions everything she knows about her family. Isobel is drawn to Meg and her pursuit of the truth ... but someone out there will stop at nothing to hide the secrets of both families.



'The Inheritance is a smart debut tackling the seductive issues of wealth, succession and family secrets. Taut, propulsive and with enticing Succession-meets-Jane Harper vibes, this novel is perfect for suburban noir superfans. I whizzed through it.' - Ali Lowe, author of The School Run

'Secrets, power and corruption - The Inheritance is an intriguing mystery and family drama.' -Vanessa McCausland, author of The Last Illusion of Paige White

'Books about families are my catnip and The Inheritance didn't disappoint. Take one establishment family with the money to hide anything then throw in a DNA test that never lies and sit back and enjoy the ride that Kate Horan takes you on. A fabulous debut!' - Fiona Lowe, author of The Accident

'The Inheritance is an incredibly strong debut from Kate Horan, full of all the things I love in a novel - family secrets, small-town intrigue and rich people behaving badly. I ripped through it faster than you can say the words 'DNA test'.' - Cassie Hamer, author of The Truth About Faking It

'A gripping story about wealth, entitlement, corruption and, most of all, family. Kate Horan's debut novel is sophisticated and un-put-down-able.' - B.M. Carroll, author of One of Us is Missing]]>
361 Kate Horan 1038940338 Ellen 0 currently-reading 4.03 The Inheritance
author: Kate Horan
name: Ellen
average rating: 4.03
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/03
shelves: currently-reading
review:

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The Oasis 219732727 By the bestselling authors of The Glass House, Anne Buist & Graeme Simsion, comes the second novel in the groundbreaking Menzies Mental Health series

Trainee psychiatrist Doctor Hannah Wright has only just got her head above water in the acute psychiatric ward at Menzies Hospital when she's thrown into the deep end of the outpatient clinic. Keen to develop her skills in talking therapies, she finds herself up against a boss who's focused on medication and a senior colleague with a score to settle.

Hannah's fellow first-years face problems of their on-and-off flame Alex is being bullied, Ndidi's marriage is in trouble, Jon feels isolated and Carey is concerned their autism will be a career barrier.

While Hannah comes under pressure to seek therapy herself to confront a traumatic past, her patients' health issues range from OCD to ice addiction, childhood abuse to the mental impact of ageing, and from bad parenting to bad genes. They all come to the Oasis.

Written with great humanity and humour, Australian psychiatrist Anne Buist and internationally bestselling author Graeme Simsion (The Rosie Project) welcome us into the world of mental health with compassion and insight.

Praise for The Oasis

'Anne Buist comes to this with real insight and wisdom' THE AUSTRALIAN

Praise for The Glass House, book one in the Menzies Mental Health series

'A masterfully told, character-driven novel that will have you laughing and crying in equal measures' THE AUSTRALIAN

'A deeply empathetic, humanising portrait of a mental health facility, and the souls that pass through it' THE AUSTRALIAN WOMEN'S WEEKLY

'Stunning . . . So timely' DAILY TELEGRAPH

'Absorbing' INSTYLE AUSTRALIA

'A darn good read' LIVING ARTS CANBERRA

'Brings alive the frontline of mental health care' PROFESSOR PATRICK MCGORRY AO, AUSTRALIAN OF THE YEAR 2010

'Overflows with compassion, insight and humour' MEREDITH JAFFÉ

'Gripping, rich and insightful'
ARIANE BEESTON, author of Because I'm Not Myself, You See

'Anne Buist skilfully writes from her own experiences and co-author Graeme Simsion adds his inimitable Rosie Project style. An honest, sensitive look into mental health care in Australia' PROFESSOR JAYASHRI KULKARNI AM, Psychiatrist, Monash University]]>
354 Anne Buist 0733651518 Ellen 3 4.34 The Oasis
author: Anne Buist
name: Ellen
average rating: 4.34
book published:
rating: 3
read at: 2025/04/03
date added: 2025/04/03
shelves:
review:
A sadly superfluous sequel. The subject would have been stronger with fresh faces, cases and characters.
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Car Crash: A Memoir 33311685 What is it like to survive a crash that kills your best friends, and how do you move on? From an exceptional debut writer comes a stunning memoir about grief, perseverance and courage.

At seventeen, Lech Blaine walked away unscratched from a car crash that killed three of his friends and left two in comas.

On a May night in 2009, seven boys in Toowoomba, Queensland, piled into a car. They never arrived at their destination. The driver made a routine error, leading to a head-on collision.

In the aftermath, rumours about speed and drink-driving erupted. There was intense scrutiny from the media and police. Lech used alcohol to numb his grief and social media to show stoicism, while secretly spiralling towards depression and disgrace.

This is a riveting account of family, friendship, grief and love after tragedy. In a country where class and sport dominate, and car crashes compete with floods and pandemics for headlines, our connection with others is what propels us on. Heartbreaking and darkly hilarious, Car Crash is a story for our times.]]>
304 Lech Blaine 1863959696 Ellen 5 4.30 Car Crash: A Memoir
author: Lech Blaine
name: Ellen
average rating: 4.30
book published:
rating: 5
read at: 2025/03/22
date added: 2025/03/22
shelves:
review:
This book is all perfectly worded prose and delicate descriptions, with sentences so sharp and sincere you'll want to capture them (my phone reel is filled with many such awkwardly angled snaps). The character Blaine creates when portraying his dad is both larger than life and loving, and I felt a real fondness for the family dynamics.
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A House in the Sky 18039963 The dramatic and redemptive memoir of a woman whose curiosity led her to the world’s most beautiful and remote places, its most imperiled and perilous countries, and then into fifteen months of harrowing captivity—an exquisitely written story of courage, resilience, and grace.

As a child, Amanda Lindhout escaped a violent household by paging through issues of National Geographic and imagining herself in its exotic locales. At the age of nineteen, working as a cocktail waitress in Calgary, Alberta, she began saving her tips so she could travel the globe. Aspiring to understand the world and live a significant life, she backpacked through Latin America, Laos, Bangladesh, and India, and emboldened by each adventure, went on to Sudan, Syria, and Pakistan. In war-ridden Afghanistan and Iraq she carved out a fledgling career as a television reporter. And then, in August 2008, she traveled to Somalia—“the most dangerous place on earth.� On her fourth day, she was abducted by a group of masked men along a dusty road.

Held hostage for 460 days, Amanda converts to Islam as a survival tactic, receives “wife lessons� from one of her captors, and risks a daring escape. Moved between a series of abandoned houses in the desert, she survives on memory—every lush detail of the world she experienced in her life before captivity—and on strategy, fortitude, and hope. When she is most desperate, she visits a house in the sky, high above the woman kept in chains, in the dark, being tortured.

Vivid and suspenseful, as artfully written as the finest novel, A House in the Sky is the searingly intimate story of an intrepid young woman and her search for compassion in the face of unimaginable adversity.]]>
373 Amanda Lindhout 1451651694 Ellen 4 4.26 2013 A House in the Sky
author: Amanda Lindhout
name: Ellen
average rating: 4.26
book published: 2013
rating: 4
read at: 2025/03/02
date added: 2025/03/09
shelves:
review:
Lindhout is vulnerable, relatable and raw in this honest account of her time held captive in Somalia. The quietly compelling way her story unfolds is a testament to her ability to balance immediacy with reflective intimacy.
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The Ledge 213912160
It all began in 1999 when sixteen-year-old Aaron ran away from home, drawing his friends into an unforeseeable chain of events that no one escaped from unscathed.

In The Ledge, past and present run breathlessly parallel, leading to a cliff-hanger nobody will see coming. This is a mind-bending new novel from the master of the unexpected.]]>
314 Christian White 1923022822 Ellen 2 4.20 2024 The Ledge
author: Christian White
name: Ellen
average rating: 4.20
book published: 2024
rating: 2
read at: 2025/03/08
date added: 2025/03/08
shelves:
review:
A terrific twist wasn't enough to compensate for characters who lacked depth and dialogue that dragged.
]]>
Tree Palace 20875076 They tried Mansfield but it was freezing and snowed and people like them don’t fit in because they don’t look prosperous. One time near Yellingbo they found a church no one prayed in and they lived there and for three weeks had stained glass for windows…They got chased out and went to Shepparton but Shane had a run-in and police said move.

Shane, Moira and Midge, along with young Zara and Rory, are ‘trants’—itinerants roaming the plains north-west of Melbourne in search of disused houses to sleep in, or to strip of heritage fittings when funds are low. When they find their Tree Palace outside Barleyville, things are looking up. At last, a place in which to settle down.

But Zara, fifteen, is pregnant and doesn’t want a child. She’d rather a normal life with town boys, not trant life with a baby. Moira decides to step in: she’ll look after her grandchild. Then Shane finds himself in trouble with the local cops�

Warmly told and witty, Craig Sherborne’s second novel is a revelation—an affecting story of family and rural life.]]>
327 Craig Sherborne 192214732X Ellen 3 3.47 2014 Tree Palace
author: Craig Sherborne
name: Ellen
average rating: 3.47
book published: 2014
rating: 3
read at: 2025/02/02
date added: 2025/02/02
shelves:
review:
A depressing and odd assortment of characters in a collection that captures place perfectly. Not sure I ever felt anything other than uneasy throughout this read, which concluded with some wishful thinking thrown in.
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17 Years Later 149116142 Is the truth sometimes best left buried?

A crime masterpiece by bestselling author J. P. Pomare

The violent slaughter of the wealthy Primrose family while they slept shocked the nation of New Zealand and scarred the small idyllic rural town of Cambridge forever.

All of the evidence pointed to their young live-in chef, Bill Ruatara, who was swiftly charged with murder and brought to justice. The brutal crime is now infamous, and Bill a figure of contempt who deserves to rot in jail for life.

Seventeen years later, prison psychologist TK Phillips is fighting for an appeal. He is convinced Bill did not receive a fair trial. When celebrity true-crime podcaster Sloane Abbott takes a sudden interest, it's not long before she uncovers new evidence that could set fire to the prosecution's case.

As TK and Sloane dig deeper into the past, they become tangled in a complex web of danger and deceit. With Bill's innocence far from assured and their own lives at stake, will they risk everything to unearth the truth, or leave it buried for good?]]>
404 J.P. Pomare 0733649653 Ellen 4 4.33 2024 17 Years Later
author: J.P. Pomare
name: Ellen
average rating: 4.33
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2025/01/13
date added: 2025/01/13
shelves:
review:
This book has more twists than a pole-dancing pretzel, with pace and personalities to boot.
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The Dreamers 40908694
Those affected by the illness, doctors discover, are displaying unusual levels of brain activity, higher than has ever been recorded before. They are dreaming heightened dreams—but of what?

Written in luminous prose, The Dreamers is a breathtaking and beautiful novel, startling and provocative, about the possibilities contained within a human life—if only we are awakened to them.]]>
400 Karen Thompson Walker 1471173585 Ellen 4 3.79 2019 The Dreamers
author: Karen Thompson Walker
name: Ellen
average rating: 3.79
book published: 2019
rating: 4
read at: 2025/01/05
date added: 2025/01/05
shelves:
review:
Walker writes sentences that feel as familiar as memories, such is her insight into shared experience. A beautiful book.
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The Nix 28251002
To save her, Samuel will have to embark on his own journey, uncovering long-buried secrets about the woman he thought he knew, secrets that stretch across generations and have their origin all the way back in Norway, home of the mysterious Nix. As he does so, Samuel will confront not only Faye’s losses but also his own lost love, and will relearn everything he thought he knew about his mother, and himself.]]>
625 Nathan Hill 110194661X Ellen 3 4.08 2016 The Nix
author: Nathan Hill
name: Ellen
average rating: 4.08
book published: 2016
rating: 3
read at: 2024/12/30
date added: 2024/12/30
shelves:
review:
A lightly humorous heft of literature, this long read languishes at times but is saved by the sense of fun in its unfolding.
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<![CDATA[All I Ever Wanted Was To Be Hot]]> 216789462
For her entire life, Lucinda's mission was to look as hot as possible. She nipped, tucked, bleached, cut, plucked, plumped, shaved, lasered, tanned, crunched, squatted and starved. Then, she broke.

All I Ever Wanted Was To Be Hot is a funny, provocative retrospective on the last thirty years of Western beauty standards. From Victoria's Secret to Extreme Makeover, Playboy Bunnies to the Australian media's fascination with Lara Bingle, Lucinda unfurls the tentacles of a culture hellbent on making women feel like happiness is always just five kilos away.

With her offbeat humour and incisive cultural commentary, Lucinda tells the unfiltered story of someone overcoming an eating disorder and rebuilding, illuminating our enduring obsession with appearance by holding a bedazzled mirror up to her own beliefs.

A hilarious, insightful deep dive into self image, desirability, pop-culture and power.]]>
320 Lucinda Price 0645869031 Ellen 4 4.16 All I Ever Wanted Was To Be Hot
author: Lucinda Price
name: Ellen
average rating: 4.16
book published:
rating: 4
read at: 2024/12/18
date added: 2024/12/18
shelves:
review:
Froomes is funny, smart and self-aware. That's hot.
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Fourth of July Creek 21847068
After trying to help Benjamin Pearl, an undernourished, nearly feral eleven-year-old boy living in the Montana wilderness, social worker Pete Snow comes face to face with the boy's profoundly disturbed father, Jeremiah. With courage and caution, Pete slowly earns a measure of trust from this paranoid survivalist itching for a final conflict that will signal the coming End Times.

But as Pete's own family spins out of control, Benjamin's activities spark the full-blown interest of the F.B.I., putting Pete at the center of a massive manhunt from which no one will emerge unscathed.]]>
480 Smith Henderson 0062286455 Ellen 3 3.82 2014 Fourth of July Creek
author: Smith Henderson
name: Ellen
average rating: 3.82
book published: 2014
rating: 3
read at: 2024/12/06
date added: 2024/12/06
shelves:
review:
Vaguely interesting, but ultimately overly ambitious. I found Rachel's story more immersing than the narrative provided by Pete.
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<![CDATA[Infinite Sky (Infinite Sky, #1)]]> 22751105 288 C.J. Flood 1471123499 Ellen 3 3.37 2013 Infinite Sky (Infinite Sky, #1)
author: C.J. Flood
name: Ellen
average rating: 3.37
book published: 2013
rating: 3
read at: 2024/11/22
date added: 2024/11/22
shelves:
review:
At times uncomfortable, at others sad, this is a read that resists easy endings.
]]>
Juice 207627291
Two fugitives, a man and a child, drive all night across a stony desert. As dawn breaks, they roll into an abandoned mine site. From the vehicle they survey a forsaken place � middens of twisted iron, rusty wire, piles of sun-baked trash. They’re exhausted, traumatised, desperate now. But as a refuge, this is the most promising place they’ve seen. The child peers at the field of desolation. The man thinks to himself, this could work.

Problem is, they’re not alone.

So begins a searing, propulsive journey through a life whose central challenge is not simply a matter of survival, but of how to maintain human decency as everyone around you falls ever further into barbarism.]]>
524 Tim Winton 1035050838 Ellen 3 3.96 2024 Juice
author: Tim Winton
name: Ellen
average rating: 3.96
book published: 2024
rating: 3
read at: 2024/11/17
date added: 2024/11/17
shelves:
review:
This is Winton re-imagined in a fiery post-apocalyptic thriller. I like this version of Winton's writing, but it's still Winton and there's instances of indulgence which irritate. If you're a fan, it's impossible to guess if you'll love or loathe his latest.
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<![CDATA[We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed with Our Families]]> 11472 356 Philip Gourevitch 0312243359 Ellen 3
I'll share with you some quotes which unfortunately remain resonant.

The West's post-Holocaust pledge that genocide would never again be tolerated proved to be hollow, and for all the fine sentiments inspired by the memory of Auschwitz, the problem remains that denouncing evil is a far cry from doing good.

But a subtler dynamic was at work in Rwanda as well. From the start of the war with the RPF in 1990, Hutu extremists had promoted their genocidal aspirations with the world-upside-down rhetoric of Hutu victimization. Now Hutu Power had presided over one of the most outrageous crimes in a century of seemingly relentless mass political murder, and the only way to get away with it was to continue to play the victim.

But body counts aren't the point in a genocide, a crime for which, at the time of my first visit to Rwanda, nobody on earth had been brought to trial, much less convicted. What distinguishes genocide from murder, and even from acts of political murder that claim as many victims, is the intent. The crime is wanting to make a people extinct. The idea is the crime.

If Rwanda's experience could be said to carry any lessons for the world, it was that endangered peoples who depend on the international community for physical protection stand defenseless.]]>
4.21 1998 We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed with Our Families
author: Philip Gourevitch
name: Ellen
average rating: 4.21
book published: 1998
rating: 3
read at: 2024/11/05
date added: 2024/11/04
shelves:
review:
A difficult read with visceral content which recounts some of the most senseless killing of our modern century. One of the most shocking things about the Rwanda genocide was its relative brevity � the violence lasted only 100 days, and in that time 800,000 people were killed. That equates to 5.3 murders every five minutes. And the majority of these murders were done manually with machetes.

I'll share with you some quotes which unfortunately remain resonant.

The West's post-Holocaust pledge that genocide would never again be tolerated proved to be hollow, and for all the fine sentiments inspired by the memory of Auschwitz, the problem remains that denouncing evil is a far cry from doing good.

But a subtler dynamic was at work in Rwanda as well. From the start of the war with the RPF in 1990, Hutu extremists had promoted their genocidal aspirations with the world-upside-down rhetoric of Hutu victimization. Now Hutu Power had presided over one of the most outrageous crimes in a century of seemingly relentless mass political murder, and the only way to get away with it was to continue to play the victim.

But body counts aren't the point in a genocide, a crime for which, at the time of my first visit to Rwanda, nobody on earth had been brought to trial, much less convicted. What distinguishes genocide from murder, and even from acts of political murder that claim as many victims, is the intent. The crime is wanting to make a people extinct. The idea is the crime.

If Rwanda's experience could be said to carry any lessons for the world, it was that endangered peoples who depend on the international community for physical protection stand defenseless.
]]>
Babes in the Wood 52736046 With unique access to the officers charged with catching the killer, former senior detective Graham Bartlett and bestselling author Peter James tell the compelling inside story of the investigation as the net tightens around local man Russell Bishop. The trial that follows is one of the most infamous in the history of Brighton policing � a shock result sees Bishop walk free.

Three years later, Graham is working in Brighton CID when a seven-year-old girl is abducted and left to die. She survives . . . and Bishop’s name comes up as a suspect. Is history repeating itself? Can the police put him away this time, and will he ever be made to answer for his past horrendous crimes? Both gripping police procedural and an insight into the motivations of a truly evil man, Babes in the Wood by Graham Bartlett with Peter James is a fascinating account of what became a thirty-two year fight for justice.

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336 Graham Bartlett 1529025575 Ellen 2 4.17 2020 Babes in the Wood
author: Graham Bartlett
name: Ellen
average rating: 4.17
book published: 2020
rating: 2
read at: 2024/10/28
date added: 2024/10/27
shelves:
review:
A book which moved more sluggishly than the detailed and dense court cases it described.
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<![CDATA[So You Want to Know What's Good for Your Kids?: The ultimate parenting guide on what matters from birth to ten by one of Australia's most trusted doctors]]> 208611336
With a background in paediatrics and an over thirty-year career monitoring and broadcasting the latest medical research, Dr Norman Swan fills that gap. He has unparalleled experience in delivering straight-talking, honest, unbiased and commonsense health information. Norman Swan knows what issues parents are worried about throughout childhood. Drawing on the questions he hears time and again, in this book he gives you the information you want and the answers you need to raise healthy and happy children, with a particular focus on the crucial years of five to ten - the runway to adolescence.

So You Want to Know What's Good for Your Kids? is a one-stop handbook that you can trust to clear away all the unnecessary advice, allowing you to focus on what makes the difference for kids. Norman Swan replaces myths, half-truths and misconceptions with practical knowledge on topics that parents agonise about - including sleep, diet, school refusal, screens, social media, what genetics determine and what you can and can't change, anxiety, ADHD and much, much more. This book will help you focus on the decisions that can make your kids the best they can be.

It's a must-have for every parent.]]>
562 Norman Swan 0733650732 Ellen 3
Key takeouts for me were the importance of warmth and structure, keeping your kids offline for as long as practically possible and giving yourself permission to parent each child differently (this is, in fact, more fair and effective because there are no two offspring alike).]]>
3.81 So You Want to Know What's Good for Your Kids?: The ultimate parenting guide on what matters from birth to ten by one of Australia's most trusted doctors
author: Norman Swan
name: Ellen
average rating: 3.81
book published:
rating: 3
read at: 2024/10/17
date added: 2024/10/16
shelves:
review:
Dr Swan has an engaging, self-aware writing style and this book neatly summarises several pressing parenting issues.

Key takeouts for me were the importance of warmth and structure, keeping your kids offline for as long as practically possible and giving yourself permission to parent each child differently (this is, in fact, more fair and effective because there are no two offspring alike).
]]>
American Mother 195937207
American Mother moves back and forth in time as Foley recalls her son's determination to shed light on the plight of those caught up in the agonies of war; his harrowing months of captivity; and the days following his death. Channeling Foley's singular voice, McCann brings to life her shock, sadness, resolve, and astonishing hope in the face of an unthinkably altered life.

American Mother is a work of profound moral clarity and courage, a book that takes readers inside one woman's extraordinary journey to find connection in a world torn asunder, and to fight for others as a way to keep James Foley's memory alive.]]>
216 Colum McCann 152666349X Ellen 3 4.29 American Mother
author: Colum McCann
name: Ellen
average rating: 4.29
book published:
rating: 3
read at: 2024/10/10
date added: 2024/10/10
shelves:
review:
A rare reflection on an unimaginable experience. Foley's mother views things through a filter of faith, a recurrent theme that I didn't find readily relatable. And though she teeters on the edge of understanding the personal ramifications of poorly conceived American foreign policy, the dots don't quite connect.
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<![CDATA[Lebanon Days: Memories of an ancient land through economic meltdown, a revolution of hope and surviving the 2020 Beirut explosion]]> 210336478 A captivating memoir that unravels the emotional struggles of a nation the world has long overlooked. Through the eyes of an outsider, this story takes a deep dive into the intimate details of Lebanon's hardships, providing a profound understanding of its people and their journey.

'An astonishing piece of writing.'ÌýHelen Garner on Ell's 'Façades of Lebanon', winner of the 2021 Calibre Essay Prize.Ìý

From 2018 to 2021, writer and researcher Theodore Ell accompanied his wife on her diplomatic posting to Lebanon and unexpectedly found himself a witness to a country on the brink of collapse.

In 2019, facing economic meltdown, the people of Lebanon rose up, united in a revolution of hope. With the country on the precipice of war, Covid-19 then swept in and the eerie quiet of lockdowns descended—a silence tragically shattered in August 2020, when Ell narrowly survived the largest ever non-nuclear peacetime explosion, which destroyed half of Beirut.

Everywhere from calm cedar forests to crowded Beirut bars, Ell listened to stories of the Lebanese people and tried to make sense of the maze of ideas, desires and illusions that create the Lebanon of their imagination, a place in sharp contrast to reality.

In prose as lucid as it is emotionally rich, and based on reportage that won Ell the 2021 Calibre Prize, Lebanon Days welcomes those who wish to understand more than news footage can convey. This is the story of a nation largely ignored by the rest of the world, a complex country driven over the edge but still seeking faith in itself, seen through the eyes of an outsider drawn into its intimate struggle.]]>
0 Theodore Ell 1761189271 Ellen 3 3.88 Lebanon Days: Memories of an ancient land through economic meltdown, a revolution of hope and surviving the 2020 Beirut explosion
author: Theodore Ell
name: Ellen
average rating: 3.88
book published:
rating: 3
read at: 2024/10/01
date added: 2024/10/01
shelves:
review:
Ell is an astute storyteller, and Beirut is never boring. While sometimes his prose drifts too lyrically for my liking, there's always an opportune anecdote to arrest your attention and give you a real feel for Lebanese life. This was a three-and-a-half star read for me.
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<![CDATA[Female Chauvinist Pigs: Women and the Rise of Raunch Culture]]> 6635893 A classic work on gender culture exploring how the women’s movement has evolved to Girls Gone Wild in a new, self-imposed chauvinism. In the tradition of Susan Faludi’s Backlash and Naomi Wolf’s The Beauty Myth, New York Magazine writer Ariel Levy studies the effects of modern feminism on women today.Meet the Female Chauvinist Pig—the new brand of “empowered woman� who wears the Playboy bunny as a talisman, bares all for Girls Gone Wild, pursues casual sex as if it were a sport, and embraces “raunch culture� wherever she finds it. If male chauvinist pigs of years past thought of women as pieces of meat, Female Chauvinist Pigs of today are doing them one better, making sex objects of other women—and of themselves. They think they’re being brave, they think they’re being funny, but in Female Chauvinist Pigs, Ariel Levy asks if the joke is on them. In her quest to uncover why this is happening, Levy interviews college women who flash for the cameras on spring break and teens raised on Paris Hilton and breast implants. She examines a culture in which every music video seems to feature a stripper on a pole, the memoirs of porn stars are climbing the bestseller lists, Olympic athletes parade their Brazilian bikini waxes in the pages of Playboy, and thongs are marketed to prepubescent girls. Levy meets the high-powered women who create raunch culture—the new oinking women warriors of the corporate and entertainment worlds who eagerly defend their efforts to be “one of the guys.� And she traces the history of this trend back to conflicts between the women’s movement and the sexual revolution long left unresolved. Levy pulls apart the myth of the Female Chauvinist Pig and argues that what has come to pass for liberating rebellion is actually a kind of limiting conformity. Irresistibly witty and wickedly intelligent, Female Chauvinist Pigs makes the case that the rise of raunch does not represent how far women have come, it only proves how far they have left to go.]]> 256 Ariel Levy 0743274733 Ellen 3 3.58 2005 Female Chauvinist Pigs: Women and the Rise of Raunch Culture
author: Ariel Levy
name: Ellen
average rating: 3.58
book published: 2005
rating: 3
read at: 2014/12/01
date added: 2024/09/28
shelves:
review:
Levy has put together a carefully researched argument documenting a cultural shift of relative significance. Did I swallow it? Not entirely. But that doesn't mean there's no resonance here. The section on PTSD and porn made for upsetting reading.
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The Girls 52280153 'Higgins spares nothing in her telling of the slow violence of grief, in the puzzlement of transformation and the skewing of sound mind from one instant of catastrophe...An exacting act of detonation, The Girls bares a talented writer's foundations at the same time as it raises the spirit of survival.' Kate Holden, author of In My Skin

In 2005, Chloe Higgins was seventeen years old. She and her mother, Rhonda, stayed home so that she could revise for her exams while her two younger sisters Carlie and Lisa went skiing with their father. On the way back from their trip, their car veered off the highway, flipped on its side and burst into flames. Both her sisters were killed. Their father walked away from the accident with only minor injuries.

This book is about what happened next.

In a memoir of breathtaking power, Chloe Higgins describes the heartbreaking aftermath of that one terrible day. It is a story of grieving, and learning to leave grief behind, for anyone who has ever loved, and lost.

MORE PRAISE FOR THE GIRLS

'A tender and heartfelt book, exploring the intricacies and long aftermath of trauma and grief with great frankness and directness. Its honest and exacting exploration of what happens to the body and the self in grief is deeply moving, without being excoriating, and the writing is both lyrical and tough - Higgins has a distinctive and accomplished voice, and this book is a beautiful achievement.' Fiona Wright

'An astounding new voice whose work mines the slippery regions between grief, sex, love, parents and children. This book is a rare find.' Felicity Castagna

'An urgent, poetic and skinless howl of a book.' Lee Kofman]]>
253 Chloe Higgins 1760788236 Ellen 4 4.06 2019 The Girls
author: Chloe Higgins
name: Ellen
average rating: 4.06
book published: 2019
rating: 4
read at: 2020/10/24
date added: 2024/09/28
shelves:
review:
A revealing and raw tale of trauma, told with quiet dignity and wrapped up in reflections on memory and meaning. The way Higgins wrestles with her relationship with her mother is so unflinching it bates the breath.
]]>
Rape: A Love Story 22927387
At a relentlessly compelling pace punctuated by lonely cries in the night and the whisper of terror in the afternoon, Joyce Carol Oates unfolds the story of Teena and Bethie, their assailants, and their unexpected, silent champion, a man who knows the meaning of justice. And love.]]>
160 Joyce Carol Oates 1782395253 Ellen 4 3.81 2003 Rape: A Love Story
author: Joyce Carol Oates
name: Ellen
average rating: 3.81
book published: 2003
rating: 4
read at: 2021/07/03
date added: 2024/09/24
shelves:
review:
This book is visceral and violent. It's also vengeful, which is precisely the right prescription to somewhat sate your rage and satisfy your search for justice. The implicit and uncomfortable truth is that the ordinary Teena and Bethies of the world rarely see such redress.
]]>
<![CDATA[The Dragon Man (Peninsular Crimes, #1)]]> 19425002 276 Garry Disher 1921776927 Ellen 4 3.99 1999 The Dragon Man (Peninsular Crimes, #1)
author: Garry Disher
name: Ellen
average rating: 3.99
book published: 1999
rating: 4
read at: 2024/02/05
date added: 2024/09/24
shelves:
review:
Pacy with just a smidge of predictability, Disher knows his noir.
]]>
<![CDATA[Syrian Dust: Reporting from the Heart of the War]]> 23992474
Francesca Borri is one of them. But she does not leave. She is thirty years old. For months she covers the battle of Aleppo as a freelance reporter. And she quickly realizes that to report a war is to hide with dozens of women and children, even a baby, born there, in a grave, 'a piece of soil under the ground that is as expensive as three houses' or to scavenge for anything to burn for some warmth, 'a broken slipper, the plastic hand of a toy' or to mistake bloody figments of skull for rubble. To report a war is also to meet with officials more worried about the stain of snow on their Clarks than the people they are supposed to help. It is to explain what is happening in Aleppo to journalists who have only been there once, on vacation, and bought a carpet. It is risking one's life because of the jealousy of a fellow reporter. And it is also about dreaming of driving at night with the windows open, about remembering impossible little things, the particular light on that day in that café at the beach when you were a kid, the eyes of people you love, all the minuscule simple joys that can be lost in a moment.ÌýÌý

Syrian Dust is a raw and powerful account of the Syrian war that throws the reader right in the middle of it, without any shelter.


From the Trade Paperback edition.]]>
192 Francesca Borri 160980662X Ellen 5
If Borri is still carrying this insidious guilt, she deserves the comfort of knowing that her book will speak to people. And by speak, I mean shout. She captures the complexity and muddied politics of a ruined country through a human lens, and the immense suffering and wasted lives are never secondary concerns. Nor should they be. Because at the end of the day, war is always more than right or wrong. It's about people and their stories � and these should never be forgotten.]]>
4.32 2014 Syrian Dust: Reporting from the Heart of the War
author: Francesca Borri
name: Ellen
average rating: 4.32
book published: 2014
rating: 5
read at: 2016/07/12
date added: 2024/09/24
shelves:
review:
I first encountered Francesca Borri's writing the same way many did � by reading her about the second-class treatment of freelancers on the frontline. And it's exactly this sort of fame which distresses Borri, as she was never the story. It should always have been Syria.

If Borri is still carrying this insidious guilt, she deserves the comfort of knowing that her book will speak to people. And by speak, I mean shout. She captures the complexity and muddied politics of a ruined country through a human lens, and the immense suffering and wasted lives are never secondary concerns. Nor should they be. Because at the end of the day, war is always more than right or wrong. It's about people and their stories � and these should never be forgotten.
]]>
Highway 13 216977232
In 1998, an apparently ordinary Australian man is arrested and charged for a series of brutal murders. The news shocks the nation, bringing both horror and resolution to the victims� families, but its impact travels even into the past, as the murders rewrite personal histories, and into the future, as true crime podcasts and biopics tell the story of the crimes.

Highway Thirteen , Fiona McFarlane’s newest collection, takes murder as its starting point, but it unfolds to encompass much through the investigation of the aftermath of this violence across time and place, from the killer’s childhood town to Texas, Rome, and tropical northern Australia, McFarlane presents an oblique, entrancing exploration of the way stories are told and spread, and at what cost.

What damages, big and small, do these crimes incur? How do communities make sense of such atrocities? How does the mourning of families sit alongside the public fascination with terrible crimes? And can we tell true crime stories without centering the killers? From the acclaimed author of The Sun Walks Down and The High Places comes a captivating account of loss and its extended echoes in individual lives.]]>
Fiona McFarlane 176106701X Ellen 3 3.55 2024 Highway 13
author: Fiona McFarlane
name: Ellen
average rating: 3.55
book published: 2024
rating: 3
read at: 2024/09/22
date added: 2024/09/22
shelves:
review:
An interesting idea that felt aimless and underwhelming in the execution.
]]>
My Career Goes Bung 17141521 234 Miles Franklin 1742699456 Ellen 3 My Brilliant Career' that I was content to be left wondering.]]> 3.45 1946 My Career Goes Bung
author: Miles Franklin
name: Ellen
average rating: 3.45
book published: 1946
rating: 3
read at: 2014/12/01
date added: 2024/09/22
shelves:
review:
This isn't terrible. But it's a sequel I wish I hadn't been tempted by � Sybylla's voice was so perfectly captured in 'My Brilliant Career' that I was content to be left wondering.
]]>
<![CDATA[Black Witness: The Power of Indigenous Media]]> 215544820 From one of this country' s leading Indigenous journalists comes a collection of fierce and powerful essays proving why the media needs to believe Black Witnesses.

Amy McQuire has been writing on Indigenous affairs since she was 17 years old. Over the past two decades, she has reported on most of the key events involving Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, including numerous deaths in custody, the Palm Island uprising, the Bowraville murders and the Northern Territory Intervention. She has also exposed the misrepresentations and violence of the mainstream media' s reports, as well as their omissions and silences altogether in regards to Indigenous matters.

Black Witness showcases how journalism can be used to hold the powerful to account and make the world a more equitable place. This is the essential collection that we need right now � and always have.]]>
336 Amy McQuire 070226332X Ellen 3
� Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people make up 27% of the national prison population, while only making up 2% of Australia's population
� In the decade from 2006 to 2016, these rates jumped by 41%
� Aboriginal women now make up 34% of the female prison population
� From 1991 to 2020, 432 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people lost their lives in custody
� There has never been a conviction of a police or corrections officer over an Indigenous death in their care.

McQuire pairs these striking statistics with sympathetically told stories, and while the essay format felt a bit formless at times this is still a very relevant read.]]>
4.56 Black Witness: The Power of Indigenous Media
author: Amy McQuire
name: Ellen
average rating: 4.56
book published:
rating: 3
read at: 2024/09/15
date added: 2024/09/15
shelves:
review:
McQuire's clarity on Indigenous affairs is a call to arms and an education. Her judicious examination of the Australian justice system is set to shock � consider:

� Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people make up 27% of the national prison population, while only making up 2% of Australia's population
� In the decade from 2006 to 2016, these rates jumped by 41%
� Aboriginal women now make up 34% of the female prison population
� From 1991 to 2020, 432 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people lost their lives in custody
� There has never been a conviction of a police or corrections officer over an Indigenous death in their care.

McQuire pairs these striking statistics with sympathetically told stories, and while the essay format felt a bit formless at times this is still a very relevant read.
]]>
What Happened to Nina? 199360471
Nina and Simon are the perfect couple. Young, fun and deeply in love. Until they leave for a weekend at his family's cabin in Vermont, and only Simon comes home.

WHAT HAPPENED TO NINA?

Nobody knows. Simon's explanation about what happened in their last hours together doesn't add up. Nina's parents push the police for answers, and Simon's parents rush to protect him. They hire expensive lawyers and a PR firm that quickly ramps up a vicious, nothing-is-off-limits media campaign.

HOW FAR WILL HIS FAMILY GO TO KEEP HIM SAFE?

Soon, facts are lost in a swirl of accusation and counter-accusation. Everyone chooses a side, and the story goes viral, fuelled by armchair investigators and wild conspiracy theories and illustrated with pretty pictures taken from Nina's social media accounts. Journalists descend on their small Vermont town, followed by a few obsessive 'fans.'

HOW FAR WILL HER FAMILY GO TO GET TO THE TRUTH?

Nina's family is under siege, but they never lose sight of the only thing that really matters - finding their daughter. Out-gunned by Simon's wealthy, powerful family, Nina's parents recognize that if playing by the rules won't get them anywhere, it's time to break them.

Praise for Dervla

'An uncommonly fine mystery writer' New York Times

'McTiernan's in the top rank of crime writers' Chris Hammer

'A born storyteller' Val McDermid

'A simply brilliant writer' Don Winslow]]>
336 Dervla McTiernan 1460713559 Ellen 3 4.24 2024 What Happened to Nina?
author: Dervla McTiernan
name: Ellen
average rating: 4.24
book published: 2024
rating: 3
read at: 2024/09/08
date added: 2024/09/08
shelves:
review:
A fun thriller that's as American as apple pie � there's college dorms, hiking and even a barn conversion thrown in for good measure. Don't overthink and you'll enjoy.
]]>
The Husbands 210391342 An exuberant debut, The Husbands delights in how do we navigate life, love, and choice in a world of never-ending options?

When Lauren returns home to her flat in London late one night, she is greeted at the door by her husband, Michael. There’s only one problem—she’s not married. She’s never seen this man before in her life. But according to her friends, her much-improved decor, and the photos on her phone, they’ve been together for years.

As Lauren tries to puzzle out how she could be married to someone she can’t remember meeting, Michael goes to the attic to change a lightbulb and abruptly disappears. In his place, a new man emerges, and a new, slightly altered life re-forms around her. Realizing that her attic is creating an infinite supply of husbands, Lauren confronts the question: If swapping lives is as easy as changing a lightbulb, how do you know you’ve taken the right path? When do you stop trying to do better and start actuallyÌýliving?]]>
362 Holly Gramazio 1784745367 Ellen 4 3.64 2024 The Husbands
author: Holly Gramazio
name: Ellen
average rating: 3.64
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2024/09/06
date added: 2024/09/06
shelves:
review:
Entirely satisfying, quirky yet never cutesy. Felt a little long but was easily absorbed with its pithy pace.
]]>
The Echoes 202908611 A story about the weight of the past and the promise of the future set between rural Australia and London - from the bestselling author of The Bass Rock

Max didn’t believe in an afterlife. Until he died. Now, as a reluctant ghost trying to work out why he remains, he watches his girlfriend Hannah lost in grief in the flat they shared and begins to realise how much of her life was invisible to him.

In the weeks and months before Max’s death, Hannah is haunted by the secrets she left Australia to escape. A relationship with Max seems to offer the potential of a different story, but the past refuses to stay hidden. It finds expression in the untold stories of the people she grew up with, the details of their lives she never knew and the events that broke her family apart and led her to Max.

Both a celebration and autopsy of a relationship, The Echoes is a novel about stories and who has the right to tell them, asking what of our past can we shrug off and what is fixed forever.]]>
304 Evie Wyld 1529926998 Ellen 3 3.83 2024 The Echoes
author: Evie Wyld
name: Ellen
average rating: 3.83
book published: 2024
rating: 3
read at: 2024/09/02
date added: 2024/09/02
shelves:
review:
There were poignant parts but on the whole it's puzzling to see the ghost of a man forced to float around someone who wasn't particularly pleasant to them.
]]>
You Are Here 196537410
Michael is coming undone. Adrift after his wife's departure, he has begun taking himself on long, solitary walks across the English countryside. Becoming ever more reclusive, he’ll do anything to avoid his empty house.

Marnie, on the other hand, is stuck. Hiding alone in her London flat, she avoids old friends and any reminders of her rotten, selfish ex-husband. Curled up with a good book, she’s battling the long afternoons of a life that feels like it’s passing her by.

When a persistent mutual friend and some very unpredictable weather conspire to toss Michael and Marnie together on the most epic of ten-day hikes, neither of them can think of anything worse. Until, of course, they discover exactly what they’ve been looking for.

Michael and Marnie are on the precipice of a bright future . . . if they can survive the journey.]]>
363 David Nicholls 144471547X Ellen 3 4.28 2024 You Are Here
author: David Nicholls
name: Ellen
average rating: 4.28
book published: 2024
rating: 3
read at: 2024/08/29
date added: 2024/08/29
shelves:
review:
Reads like milk arrowroot biscuits. Sweet in a vaguely endearing but ultimately forgettable manner.
]]>
The Glass House 200454877
Amongst unrelenting hours, hospital politics, fraught relationships and new friendships, Hannah must learn on the job in a strained medical system, navigating the conflicting practice of her boss, Nash, who puts his faith in pharmaceuticals, and his boss, Professor Gordon, who takes the Freudian line. Meanwhile, the new manager thinks they're all part of the problem.

Hannah and her fellow trainees are dealing with the common and the bizarre, the hilarious and the tragic, the treatable and the confronting. Every day brings new patients: Chloe, who has life-threatening anorexia nervosa; Sian, suffering postpartum psychosis and fighting to keep her baby; and Xavier, the MP whose suicide attempt has an explosive story behind it. All the while, Hannah is trying to figure out herself.]]>
337 Anne Buist Ellen 4 3.82 2024 The Glass House
author: Anne Buist
name: Ellen
average rating: 3.82
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2024/08/21
date added: 2024/08/21
shelves:
review:
An arresting read, with thoughtfully curated characters and the perfect blend of romance and realism. The episodic presentation feels perfect for a streaming service special � I'd watch this in a wink.
]]>
<![CDATA[First They Killed My Father: A Daughter of Cambodia Remembers]]> 36686459 From a childhood survivor of the Camdodian genocide under the regime of Pol Pot, this is a riveting narrative of war crimes and desperate actions, the unnerving strength of a small girl and her family, and their triumph of spirit.

One of seven children of a high-ranking government official, Loung Ung lived a privileged life in the Cambodian capital of Phnom Penh until the age of five. Then, in April 1975, Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge army stormed into the city, forcing Ung's family to flee and, eventually, to disperse. Loung was trained as a child soldier in a work camp for orphans, her siblings were sent to labor camps, and those who survived the horrors would not be reunited until the Khmer Rouge was destroyed.

Harrowing yet hopeful, Loung's powerful story is an unforgettable account of a family shaken and shattered, yet miraculously sustained by courage and love in the face of unspeakable brutality.]]>
274 Loung Ung Ellen 5 4.48 2000 First They Killed My Father: A Daughter of Cambodia Remembers
author: Loung Ung
name: Ellen
average rating: 4.48
book published: 2000
rating: 5
read at: 2024/08/17
date added: 2024/08/17
shelves:
review:
History books can record horrors, but in stories like this meaning intersects with memory in a way that won't fail to move you.
]]>
<![CDATA[Little Brother (Little Brother, #1)]]> 19173610
But his whole world changes when he and his friends find themselves caught in the aftermath of a major terrorist attack on San Francisco. In the wrong place at the wrong time, Marcus and his crew are apprehended by the Department of Homeland Security and whisked away to a secret prison where they’re mercilessly interrogated for days.

When the DHS finally releases them, his injured best friend Darryl does not come out. The city has become a police state where every citizen is treated like a potential terrorist. He knows that no one will believe his story, which leaves him only one option: "M1k3y" will take down the DHS himself.]]>
387 Cory Doctorow 000750599X Ellen 3 4.07 2008 Little Brother (Little Brother, #1)
author: Cory Doctorow
name: Ellen
average rating: 4.07
book published: 2008
rating: 3
read at: 2024/08/12
date added: 2024/08/12
shelves:
review:
Tech lite with a bit of fright, this is a well-considered read.
]]>
A Little Life 25334922 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER � A stunning “portrait of the enduring grace of friendship� (NPR) about the families we are born into, and those that we make for ourselves. A masterful depiction of love in the twenty-first century.

NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST � MAN BOOKER PRIZE FINALIST � WINNER OF THE KIRKUS PRIZE �

A Little Life follows four college classmates—broke, adrift, and buoyed only by their friendship and ambition—as they move to New York in search of fame and fortune. While their relationships, which are tinged by addiction, success, and pride, deepen over the decades, the men are held together by their devotion to the brilliant, enigmatic Jude, a man scarred by an unspeakable childhood trauma. A hymn to brotherly bonds and a masterful depiction of love in the twenty-first century, Hanya Yanagihara’s stunning novel is about the families we are born into, and those that we make for ourselves.]]>
720 Hanya Yanagihara 1447294823 Ellen 4
It's a relentless reminder of how abuse can break a person so completely that they never recover, and a heartbreaking documentation of how this impacts those around them.

With that in mind, this is in no way an easy read. At over 700 pages it's a bicep strainer and a hefty handbag accessory. Not to mention the deeply unsettling incidences of abuse which unfold through the pages.

As for whether it's deserving of the title 'masterpiece'... I think so. As a book, it's an exercise in empathy most readers will never forget. And isn't that why we read?]]>
4.28 2015 A Little Life
author: Hanya Yanagihara
name: Ellen
average rating: 4.28
book published: 2015
rating: 4
read at: 2017/05/15
date added: 2024/08/09
shelves:
review:
This book was necessarily devastating.

It's a relentless reminder of how abuse can break a person so completely that they never recover, and a heartbreaking documentation of how this impacts those around them.

With that in mind, this is in no way an easy read. At over 700 pages it's a bicep strainer and a hefty handbag accessory. Not to mention the deeply unsettling incidences of abuse which unfold through the pages.

As for whether it's deserving of the title 'masterpiece'... I think so. As a book, it's an exercise in empathy most readers will never forget. And isn't that why we read?
]]>
A Girl Made of Dust 4162471 320 Nathalie Abi-Ezzi 0007259034 Ellen 3 3.44 A Girl Made of Dust
author: Nathalie Abi-Ezzi
name: Ellen
average rating: 3.44
book published:
rating: 3
read at: 2014/12/01
date added: 2024/08/07
shelves:
review:
An affecting account of growing up in a world where war is normality.
]]>
<![CDATA[Because I'm Not Myself, You See: A Memoir of Motherhood, Madness and Coming Back From the Brink]]> 201090887 Ariane Beeston is a child protection worker and newly registered psychologist when she gives birth to her first child � and very quickly begins to experience scary breaks with reality. Out of fear and shame, she keeps her delusions and hallucinations secret, but as the months pass Ariane gets worse. Much worse. Finally admitted to a mother and baby psychiatric unit, the psychologist is forced to learn how to be the patient.


With medication, the support of her husband, psychotherapy and, ultimately, time, Ariane rebuilds herself. And she also begins a new chapter working in perinatal mental health, developing resources to support other new mothers.


Because I'm Not Myself, You See is a candid, often humorous memoir of motherhood and madness, interwoven with research and expert commentary. It's the story of the impossible pressures placed on new mothers and how quickly things can go wrong during 'the happiest time of your life'. It's also about life on the other side of serious illness, trying to make sense of what doesn't make sense, and finding humour, beauty and joy when things don't go according to plan.


‘Blistering, beautiful, true' �Susan Johnson, author of A Better Woman, From Where I Fell and Aphrodite's Breath


'Ariane Beeston's honesty, poetry and wisdom will save lives.' �Anna Spargo-Ryan, author of A Kind of Magic


'Both riveting and informative, this is an unflinching look at what it is like from inside postpartum psychosis.' —Anne Buist, Professor of Women's Mental Health, University of Melbourne, and co-author with Graeme Simsion of The Glass House


'A memoir like no other ... sing[s] with mordant humour on the page' —Geordie Williamson


'A beautifully written, raw and important memoir for anyone who has had a baby' —Daisy Turnbull]]>
331 Ariane Beeston 1743823568 Ellen 5 4.50 Because I'm Not Myself, You See: A Memoir of Motherhood, Madness and Coming Back From the Brink
author: Ariane Beeston
name: Ellen
average rating: 4.50
book published:
rating: 5
read at: 2024/08/05
date added: 2024/08/06
shelves:
review:
Beeston has a self-reflective writing style and an honest vulnerability, linking her lived experience to literary references which like-minded readers will hold in high regard. This is an exquisitely urgent read.
]]>
Hope 210419499

On a warm summer's evening in February 2014, eleven-year-old Luke Batty was killed by his father at cricket practice. It was a horrific act of family violence that shocked Australia.

The next morning, his mother Rosie bravely stood before the media. Her powerful and gut-wrenching words about family violence galvanised the nation and catapulted her into the spotlight. From that day on, Rosie Batty campaigned tirelessly to protect women and children, winning hearts and minds with her courage and compassion, singlehandedly changing the conversation around domestic violence in this country. Rosie's remarkable efforts were recognised when she became the 2015 Australian of the Year and a year later she was named one of the World's Greatest Leaders by Fortune magazine. However, behind Rosie's steely public resolve and seemingly unbreakable spirit, she was a mum grieving the loss of her adored son.

What happens when you become an accidental hero? What happens the day after the worst day of your life? What happens when you are forced to confront the emptiness and silence of a house that once buzzed with the energy of a young son?

You go to dark places from which you're not sure you'll ever recover.

Following on from her runaway best-seller A Mother's Story, which detailed the lead up to her son's murder, Hope shares what happened to Rosie the day after the worst day of her life and how she reclaimed hope when all hope was lost. She shares her struggles with anxiety, PTSD, self-doubt and self-loathing and how she finally confronted her grief. She shares the stories of those who have inspired her to keep going, and given her hope when she needed it most. In this heartfelt, and at times heartbreaking memoir, Rosie tells how she found the light on her darkest days and how she found the hope to carry on.]]>
288 Rosie Batty 1460760298 Ellen 3 4.00 2024 Hope
author: Rosie Batty
name: Ellen
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2024
rating: 3
read at: 2024/07/29
date added: 2024/07/29
shelves:
review:
Batty is a beautiful soul, but this memoir felt a little disjointed in places and was heavily reliant on a recap of her professional working presence.
]]>
Ohio 36373372
There’s Bill Ashcraft, a passionate, drug-abusing young activist whose flailing ambitions have taken him from Cambodia to Zuccotti Park to post-BP New Orleans, and now back home with a mysterious package strapped to the undercarriage of his truck; Stacey Moore, a doctoral candidate reluctantly confronting her family and the mother of her best friend and first love, whose disappearance spurs the mystery at the heart of the novel; Dan Eaton, a shy veteran of three tours in Iraq, home for a dinner date with the high school sweetheart he’s tried desperately to forget; and the beautiful, fragile Tina Ross, whose rendezvous with the washed-up captain of the football team triggers the novel’s shocking climax.

Set over the course of a single evening, Ohio toggles between the perspectives of these unforgettable characters as they unearth dark secrets, revisit old regrets and uncover—and compound—bitter betrayals. Before the evening is through, these narratives converge masterfully to reveal a mystery so dark and shocking it will take your breath away.]]>
484 Stephen Markley 1501174479 Ellen 3 3.85 2018 Ohio
author: Stephen Markley
name: Ellen
average rating: 3.85
book published: 2018
rating: 3
read at: 2024/07/22
date added: 2024/07/22
shelves:
review:
A good-ish but gloomy read which doesn't paint a pretty picture of Ohio and its inhabitants. I must admit I struggled to keep the main players straight.[spoilers removed]
]]>
Interesting Facts About Space 199209868
When she's not listening to grizzly murder podcasts, she's managing her crippling phobia of bald people and trying hard not to think about her mortifying teenage years - which is hard, when she's lost the password to her old YouTube account and the (many) vlogs that her teen self once uploaded.

She's worried about herself, her depressive mother, and what the deal is with gender reveal parties.

But as Enid fumbles her way through her first serious relationship and navigates a new family life with her estranged half-sisters, she starts to worry that someone is following her.

As her paranoia spirals out of control, Enid must contend with her mounting suspicion that something is seriously wrong with her... Full of charm, humour and heart, Interesting Facts About Space is a pitch-perfect exploration of the strange ways we try to connect with others, and the power of sharing our secret selves with the people we love.]]>
305 Emily R. Austin 1805460854 Ellen 4 4.04 2024 Interesting Facts About Space
author: Emily R. Austin
name: Ellen
average rating: 4.04
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2024/07/14
date added: 2024/07/14
shelves:
review:
Quirky without being cringey, this is a relatable read with kind-hearted characterisation.
]]>
Sold! 44320629
Whether you are a first home buyer or a downsizer whose kids have left home, or are upscaling to a bigger home as your family numbers grow, Sold! is an easy-to-access guide, with practical, commonsense ideas and top tips.

No matter where you are on your home-buying journey, Sold! helps you to understand why you are buying, what you should be looking for, and where you should be looking. Sold! even helps you decide whether you are still in love with your existing home and if renovating is your best option.

Many buyers are also sellers, so there is a section on how to choose a selling agent and the tips and tricks of the trade to prepare your home for sale, from where to spend your money to get the best return through to achieving the most street appeal.

As a buyer’s advocate for her clients, Nicole Jacobs always aims to provide as much information as possible. In Sold! she will let you in on the process she follows for her clients and help you do your homework to buy (and sell) well.

An expert on Channel Nine’s The Block, Nicole Jacobs is one of Australia’s most respected property advisers and buyer’s advocates. Nicole is highly regarded for her ability and expertise on both sides of the transaction process.]]>
199 Nicole Jacobs 1743586086 Ellen 3 3.88 Sold!
author: Nicole Jacobs
name: Ellen
average rating: 3.88
book published:
rating: 3
read at: 2024/07/12
date added: 2024/07/11
shelves:
review:
Both practical and factual, this is a handy guide to everything house hunting. Some sections do rankle � suggesting people cancel subscriptions and pack their own lunch to save for a home deposit is awkwardly out of touch � but the advice on the whole is helpful.
]]>
Downstream 206998235
While government and insurance investigations drag on, Rob and Sal are left with no choice but to rent while they wait to find out the fate of their badly damaged home. After a mix-up with contracts, they reluctantly agree to share a home unit in Ballina with a slightly older hippy couple, also impacted by the floods, who couldn't be more different from their new flatmates.

A two-bedroom, one-bathroom flat with very thin walls ... surely they can stick it out for six months? They're all grown-ups, right? As each awkward, yet entertaining week rolls into the next, they graciously try to deal with one another's personal quirks while waiting for life to get back to normal.

Only life has bigger plans for all four of them.

Downstream is a story about the forsaken dreams and buried secrets that lie below the surface of our everyday lives - until they reappear in the aftermath of trauma and disruption. With compassion and humour, Annika Johansson explores what 'marriage' and 'home' really mean, when you are faced with the prospect of losing them both.]]>
251 Annika Johansson 1760688746 Ellen 3 3.81 Downstream
author: Annika Johansson
name: Ellen
average rating: 3.81
book published:
rating: 3
read at: 2024/07/09
date added: 2024/07/10
shelves:
review:
Rob's internal monologue frequently felt too simple and silly, but this is a sweet read that doubles as a love letter to Lismore.
]]>
Days of Innocence and Wonder 199265279
All her life, Till has lived in the shadow of the abduction of a childhood friend and her tormented wondering about whether she could have stopped it.


When Till, now twenty-three, senses danger approaching again, she flees her past and the hovering presence of her fearful parents. In Wirowie, a town on its knees, she stops and slowly begins creating a new life and home. But there is something menacing here too. Till must decide whether she can finally face down, even pursue, the darkness - or whether she'll flee once more and never stop running.

Both a reckoning with fear and loss, and a recognition of the power of belonging, Days of Innocence and Wonder is a richly textured, deeply felt new novel from one of Australia's finest writers.]]>
336 Lucy Treloar 1760982733 Ellen 2 3.65 2023 Days of Innocence and Wonder
author: Lucy Treloar
name: Ellen
average rating: 3.65
book published: 2023
rating: 2
read at: 2024/07/06
date added: 2024/07/06
shelves:
review:
A book that can't decide what it ought to be. The majority meanders through a reckoning with loss, then it unexpectedly and implausibly dips into thriller territory. A disorientated drag.
]]>
I Hate the Internet 32792406

In New York in the middle of the twentieth century, comic book companies figured out how to make millions from comics without paying their creators anything. In San Francisco at the start of the twenty-first century, tech companies figured out how to make millions from online abuse without paying its creators anything.


In the 1990s, Adeline drew a successful comic book series that ended up making her kind-of famous. In 2013, Adeline aired some unfashionable opinions that made their way onto the Internet. The reaction of the Internet, being a tool for making millions in advertising revenue from online abuse, was predictable. The reaction of the Internet, being part of a culture that hates women, was to send Adeline messages like 'Drp slut ... hope u get gang rape.'


Set in a San Francisco hollowed out by tech money, greed and rampant gentrification, I Hate the Internet is a savage indictment of the intolerable bullshit of unregulated capitalism and an uproarious, hilarious but above all furious satire of our Internet Age.

]]>
287 Jarett Kobek 1782833145 Ellen 3 3.56 2016 I Hate the Internet
author: Jarett Kobek
name: Ellen
average rating: 3.56
book published: 2016
rating: 3
read at: 2024/07/03
date added: 2024/07/03
shelves:
review:
Snippets of snark � like "How do you reason with people who make arguments about human dignity on machines built by slaves in China?" A little bit formless, never gormless.
]]>
Prophet Song 158875813
On a dark, wet evening in Dublin, scientist and mother-of-four Eilish Stack answers her front door to find the GNSB on her step. Two officers from Ireland’s newly formed secret police are here to interrogate her husband, a trade unionist.

Ireland is falling apart. The country is in the grip of a government turning towards tyranny and Eilish can only watch helplessly as the world she knew disappears. When first her husband and then her eldest son vanish, Eilish finds herself caught within the nightmare logic of a collapsing society.

How far will she go to save her family? And what � or who � is she willing to leave behind?

Exhilarating, terrifying and propulsive, Prophet Song is a work of breathtaking originality, offering a devastating vision of a country at war and a deeply human portrait of a mother’s fight to hold her family together.]]>
259 Paul Lynch Ellen 4 4.03 2023 Prophet Song
author: Paul Lynch
name: Ellen
average rating: 4.03
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2024/06/28
date added: 2024/06/27
shelves:
review:
When I first picked this up, the lack of line breaks and Booker Prize laudings put me in the mind that this would be labourious, self-indulgent literature. And yes, initially it didn't grab me. But then it did. Woah, it did. A heart-stopper of the highest order.
]]>
Love, Death & Other Scenes 209327936 288 Nova Weetman 0702268437 Ellen 4 4.47 Love, Death & Other Scenes
author: Nova Weetman
name: Ellen
average rating: 4.47
book published:
rating: 4
read at: 2024/06/21
date added: 2024/06/22
shelves:
review:
I fell into this gently, as the story gradually unfurled with feelings tucked into its folds.
]]>
Under a Starless Sky 3390612 309 Banafsheh Serov 0733622917 Ellen 4 3.74 2008 Under a Starless Sky
author: Banafsheh Serov
name: Ellen
average rating: 3.74
book published: 2008
rating: 4
read at: 2024/06/20
date added: 2024/06/20
shelves:
review:
A wonderful read, narrated using multiple family thoughts elegantly interlaced.
]]>
<![CDATA[Heating & Cooling: 52 Micro-Memoirs]]> 36070642 Heating & Cooling offer bright glimpses into a richly lived life. They build on one another to arrive at a portrait of Beth Ann Fennelly as a wife, mother, writer, and deeply original observer of life’s challenges and joys. Some pieces are wistful, some poignant, and many of them reveal the humor buried below the surface of everyday interactions. Heating & Cooling shapes a life from unexpectedly illuminating moments, and awakens us to these moments as they appear in the margins of our lives.]]> 111 Beth Ann Fennelly 0393609480 Ellen 5 4.12 2017 Heating & Cooling: 52 Micro-Memoirs
author: Beth Ann Fennelly
name: Ellen
average rating: 4.12
book published: 2017
rating: 5
read at: 2024/06/14
date added: 2024/06/14
shelves:
review:
I don't love short stories. These micro memoirs, in contrast, are snippets of perfection. Tiny shards of revelation and gasps of feeling are delights waiting to be devoured.
]]>
<![CDATA[The Last Murder at the End of the World]]> 136276877
Outside the island there is nothing: the world was destroyed by a fog that swept the planet, killing anyone it touched.

On the island: it is idyllic. One hundred and twenty-two villagers and three scientists, living in peaceful harmony. The villagers are content to fish, farm and feast, to obey their nightly curfew, to do what they're told by the scientists.

Until, to the horror of the islanders, one of their beloved scientists is found brutally stabbed to death. And then they learn that the murder has triggered a lowering of the security system around the island, the only thing that was keeping the fog at bay. If the murder isn't solved within 107 hours, the fog will smother the island—and everyone on it.

But the security system has also wiped everyone's memories of exactly what happened the night before, which means that someone on the island is a murderer—and they don't even know it.

And the clock is ticking.

From the bestselling author of The 7 1/2 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle and The Devil and the Dark Water comes an inventive, high-concept murder mystery: an ingenious puzzle, an extraordinary backdrop, and an audacious solution.]]>
368 Stuart Turton Ellen 3 3.63 2024 The Last Murder at the End of the World
author: Stuart Turton
name: Ellen
average rating: 3.63
book published: 2024
rating: 3
read at: 2024/06/14
date added: 2024/06/14
shelves:
review:
When a book is described as 'mind-bending', that's usually a synonym for 'you won't understand it'. And so it was with this.
]]>
California 22743491
The sunshine state lies in darkness.

Los Angeles is in ruins, left to the angels now.

And the world Cal and Frida have always known is gone.

Cal and Frida have left the crumbling city of Los Angeles far behind them. They now live in a shack in the wilderness, working side-by-side to make their days tolerable despite the isolation and hardships they face. Consumed by fear of the future and mourning for a past they can't reclaim, they seek comfort and solace in one other. But the tentative existence they've built for themselves is thrown into doubt when Frida finds out she's pregnant.

Terrified of the unknown but unsure of their ability to raise a child alone, Cal and Frida set out for the nearest settlement, a guarded and paranoid community with dark secrets. These people can offer them security, but Cal and Frida soon realise this community poses its own dangers. In this unfamiliar world, where everything and everyone can be perceived as a threat, the couple must quickly decide whom to trust.

A gripping and provocative debut novel by a stunning new talent, California imagines a frighteningly realistic near future, in which clashes between mankind's dark nature and irrepressible resilience force us to question how far we will go to protect the ones we love.]]>
401 Edan Lepucki 1405525827 Ellen 3 3.42 2014 California
author: Edan Lepucki
name: Ellen
average rating: 3.42
book published: 2014
rating: 3
read at: 2024/06/13
date added: 2024/06/13
shelves:
review:
Slow-build suspense that fizzled to a soft fade. Dystopia done daintily.
]]>
Pheasants Nest 204731018
Kate Delaney has made the biggest mistake of her life. She picked the wrong guy to humiliate on a girls' night out and now she is living every woman's worst nightmare.ÌýKate finds herself brutalised, bound and gagged in the back of a car being driven god knows where by a man whose name she doesn't know, and she is petrified about what's in store for her.

As a journalist who is haunted by the crimes she's had to report over her career, Kate is terrifyingly familiar with the statistics about women who go missing—and the fear and trauma behind the headlines. She knows only too well how those stories usually end.

Kate can only hope the police will find her before it's too late, but she's aware a random crime is hardest to solve. As the clock ticks down, she tries to keep herself sane by thinking about her beloved boyfriend and friends, escaping into memories of love and happy times together. She knows she cannot give way to despair.

As the suspense escalates, Kate's boyfriend Liam is left behind, struggling with his shock, fear and desperation as the police establish a major investigation. The detectives face their own feelings of anguish and futility as they reflect on the cases they didn't solve in time and the victims they couldn't save. They know Kate's chances of survival diminish with every passing hour.

Acclaimed and award-winning writer and journalist Louise Milligan has written a stunning and surprising thriller with a gigantic heart; a gripping, propulsive and brilliantly original debut.]]>
320 Louise Milligan 1761188704 Ellen 2 3.57 2024 Pheasants Nest
author: Louise Milligan
name: Ellen
average rating: 3.57
book published: 2024
rating: 2
read at: 2024/06/06
date added: 2024/06/05
shelves:
review:
Yikes. This is a compilation of completely unbelievable characters, dreadful dialogue and people who have a penchant for texting when they need to talk. Some of the inner monologues are completely mad. And surely there's no one so rankling as Sylvia in real life?
]]>
<![CDATA[Unshrinking: How to Fight Fatphobia]]> 128657344 The definitive takedown of fatphobia, drawing on personal experience as well as rigorous research to expose how size discrimination harms everyone, and how to combat it—from the acclaimed author of Down Girl and Entitled

“An elegant, fierce, and profound argument for fighting fat oppression in ourselves, our communities, and our culture.â€â€”Roxane Gay, author of Hunger

For as long as she can remember, Kate Manne has wanted to be smaller. She can tell you what she weighed on any significant her wedding day, the day she became a professor, the day her daughter was born. She’s been bullied and belittled for her size, leading to extreme dieting. As a feminist philosopher, she wanted to believe that she was exempt from the cultural gaslighting that compels so many of us to ignore our hunger. But she was not.

Blending intimate stories with the trenchant analysis that has become her signature, Manne shows why fatphobia has become a vital social justice issue. Over the last several decades, implicit bias has waned in every category, from race to sexual orientation, except body size. Manne examines how anti-fatness operates—how it leads us to make devastating assumptions about a person’s attractiveness, fortitude, and intellect, and how it intersects with other systems of oppression. Fatphobia is responsible for wage gaps, medical neglect, and poor educational outcomes; it is a straitjacket, restricting our freedom, our movement, our potential.

In this urgent call to action, Manne proposes a new politics of “body reflexivityâ€â€”a radical reevaluation of who our bodies exist in the world ourselves and no one else. When it comes to fatphobia, the solution is not to love our bodies more. Instead, we must dismantle the forces that control and constrain us, and remake the world to accommodate people of every size.]]>
320 Kate Manne 024162939X Ellen 4 4.08 2024 Unshrinking: How to Fight Fatphobia
author: Kate Manne
name: Ellen
average rating: 4.08
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2024/06/01
date added: 2024/06/01
shelves:
review:
Rigorous reading, well researched with oodles of empathy. The section on weight-based medical bias will unravel years of your false thinking.
]]>
Gone 190416131
'I was there on the day Rebecca disappeared. I watched her hurry away. If I close my eyes I can still see her...'

When Rebecca Bundy fails to return home after the last day of school in 1984 her father reports her missing. But the teenager has run away before and recently she’s been bragging about going to Queensland, so the police tell the family to wait it out.

Days pass. Rumours swirl. A man seen loitering near the bus stop might have followed her. Was there something going on between Rebecca and a male teacher? What about the sheep farmer on Glen Lochan Road where she babysat? And why is her boyfriend, the rough cattle guy Bull Tennant, so sure something sinister has happened?

Then a shocking murder-suicide at a local farm diverts police attention and Rebecca’s disappearance all too quickly becomes a cold case.

But her younger sister Eliza has never forgotten, and for almost forty years she’s been looking for answers.

Once she kept Rebecca’s secrets. Now she’s ready to share her story . . .]]>
302 Glenna Thomson 1761345516 Ellen 4 3.94 2024 Gone
author: Glenna Thomson
name: Ellen
average rating: 3.94
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2024/05/29
date added: 2024/05/29
shelves:
review:
This is a calmly unravelled read that you'll consume compulsively. It's also confident enough not to convey all the answers, which is consistent with the knowingless-ness of a missing persons case.
]]>
The Great Undoing 204886311 In a near future all identity information is encoded in digital language. Nations know where everyone is, all the time. Not everyone agrees with this constant surveillance, and when the system is hijacked and shut down, all global borders are closed. The world is no longer connected, and there is no back-up plan to establish belonging, ownership or trade.

Scarlet Friday, whose job is to correct historical record, is stranded on the wrong side of the globe. Befriended by a stranger, she grabs an old, faded history book and writes her own version over the top—a record of the Great Undoing on the run.

But in deciding what truth to tell Scarlet must face her own history. How do we navigate identity when it is all a lie? She must reckon with her past before she can imagine her future.]]>
304 Sharlene Allsopp 1761151665 Ellen 4 3.89 The Great Undoing
author: Sharlene Allsopp
name: Ellen
average rating: 3.89
book published:
rating: 4
read at: 2024/05/22
date added: 2024/05/22
shelves:
review:
A smart dystopian story packed with loads to ponder, and if you're au fait with Australian literature there's lots of little Easter eggs to unwrap too.
]]>
Crows Nest 75254851
When Sandra and her best friend are found shot dead, Dana is drawn into an investigation that will force her to strip away the friendly veneer of small-town life, while grappling with ghosts of her own. As buried secrets, bitter tensions and corruption come to light, how far will locals go to stop her uncovering the truth of what happened?]]>
320 Nikki Mottram 0702265772 Ellen 4 3.42 2023 Crows Nest
author: Nikki Mottram
name: Ellen
average rating: 3.42
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2024/05/17
date added: 2024/05/17
shelves:
review:
A novel that's confident in its category, with some cosy '90s throwbacks to find comfort in.
]]>
<![CDATA[Severed: A History of Heads Lost and Heads Found]]> 23806497 260 Frances Larson 1847088015 Ellen 3 3.84 2014 Severed: A History of Heads Lost and Heads Found
author: Frances Larson
name: Ellen
average rating: 3.84
book published: 2014
rating: 3
read at: 2024/05/13
date added: 2024/05/14
shelves:
review:
Larson goes to great lengths to glean more info on a gruesome subject, contextualising our compulsion with beheaded relics in a considered manner.
]]>
Fourteen Days 58311985
One week into the COVID-19 shutdown, tenants of a Lower East Side apartment building in Manhattan have begun to gather on the rooftop and tell stories. With each passing night, more and more neighbours gather, bringing chairs and milk crates and overturned pails. Gradually the tenants - some of whom have barely spoken to each other - become real neighbours. In this Decameron-like serial novel, general editor Margaret Atwood, Authors Guild president Douglas Preston, and a star-studded list of contributors create a beautiful ode to the people who couldn't get away from the city when the pandemic hit. A dazzling, heartwarming and ultimately surprising narrative, Fourteen Days reveals how beneath the horrible loss and suffering, some communities managed to become stronger.

Includes writing from:
Margaret Atwood, Douglas Preston, Celeste Ng, Emma Donoghue, Dave Eggers, John Grisham, Diana Gabaldon, Ishmael Reed, Meg Wolitzer, Luis Alberto Urrea, James Shapiro, Sylvia Day, Mary Pope Osborne, Monique Truong, Hampton Sides, R. L. Stine, Scott Turow, Tommy Orange, and more!]]>
363 Margaret Atwood 0358616387 Ellen 2 3.14 2024 Fourteen Days
author: Margaret Atwood
name: Ellen
average rating: 3.14
book published: 2024
rating: 2
read at: 2024/05/13
date added: 2024/05/12
shelves:
review:
A lofty concept that lands loosely. This disparate selection of stories is the mixed bag you'd expect from such an all-inclusive collaboration.
]]>
Best Wishes 125342471 Do you hate gambling ads, pre-ripped jeans and pedestrians who walk five abreast? Do you also have a problem with plastic-wrapped fruit, climate-change deniers and take-away sandwiches priced at $14. 95? And, most of all, do you think the world would be a better place if people got back their sense of humour? Here's proof you are not alone. Heartfelt and hilarious, serious but sly, Best Wishes is the Encyclopedia of 'Can Do Better'. It's a plea for a better world - one wish at a time.]]> 304 Richard Glover 1460716663 Ellen 3
It's the drink offered at moments of life-changing crisis. When there is a death in the family you don't go over and offer to make your aunt a coffee. Or a Kahlua and milk. You don't say 'Your husband of 40 years has died; do you fancy a Carlton Dry?'

No, you say, 'How about I make a pot of tea?' And in that one phrase lies a whole world of consolation and care.
]]>
3.78 2023 Best Wishes
author: Richard Glover
name: Ellen
average rating: 3.78
book published: 2023
rating: 3
read at: 2024/05/01
date added: 2024/05/03
shelves:
review:
A series of wry observations and wisecracks, delivered with varying degrees of sincerity and seriousness. Take the section on the superiority of tea:

It's the drink offered at moments of life-changing crisis. When there is a death in the family you don't go over and offer to make your aunt a coffee. Or a Kahlua and milk. You don't say 'Your husband of 40 years has died; do you fancy a Carlton Dry?'

No, you say, 'How about I make a pot of tea?' And in that one phrase lies a whole world of consolation and care.

]]>
Against the Loveless World 55302664 384 Susan Abulhawa 152661880X Ellen 4 4.45 2019 Against the Loveless World
author: Susan Abulhawa
name: Ellen
average rating: 4.45
book published: 2019
rating: 4
read at: 2024/04/30
date added: 2024/04/30
shelves:
review:
Beautifully written and thoughtfully unravelled. We grow gracefully old alongside narrator Nahr.
]]>
<![CDATA[The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay]]> 52527061
Michael Chabon's exceptional novel is a thrilling tight-rope walk between high comedy and bitter tragedy, and confirms his position as one of the most inventive and daring of contemporary American writers. In Joe Kavalier and Sam Clay, he has created two unforgettable characters bound together by love, family and cartoons.]]>
639 Michael Chabon 1841154938 Ellen 2 4.19 2000 The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay
author: Michael Chabon
name: Ellen
average rating: 4.19
book published: 2000
rating: 2
read at: 2014/12/01
date added: 2024/04/29
shelves:
review:
A test of endurance rather than a book at its enduring best.
]]>
I'd Rather Not 133285590
'No one writes better when the stakes are lower.' —Sam Vincent, author of My Father and Other Animals

Quiet Quitting. The Great Resignation.

Sometimes a literary sensibility catches the spirit of the times. In I'd Rather Not , Robert Skinner has it all covered. This wonderful book of adventures (and misadventures) in the art of living is wryly subversive and constantly hilarious. It is about work, escape and that something more we all need.

'I was sleeping in what might reasonably be described as a ditch, though I tried not to think of it in those terms for morale reasons ...'

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, beagles, house parties, ill-advised love affairs, camel trips and bureaucratic entanglements.

I'd Rather Not is a deeply funny book of light and shade, triumph and misadventure, where the wisdom is hard-won and promptly forgotten. Yet even when his ventures fail, Robert Skinner succeeds, always, in delighting readers.

For fans of Sloane Crosley, Andrew Sean Greer, Nathan Fielder and David Sedaris.]]>
177 Robert Skinner 1743823150 Ellen 5 3.81 2023 I'd Rather Not
author: Robert Skinner
name: Ellen
average rating: 3.81
book published: 2023
rating: 5
read at: 2024/04/25
date added: 2024/04/25
shelves:
review:
Skinner has the style of an Antipodean David Sedaris, creating comedy that's cuttingly clever. May his contempt for call centres be ever consecrated.
]]>
<![CDATA[Servo: Tales from the Graveyard Shift]]> 201110286
Most of us have done our time in the retail trenches, but service stations are undoubtedly the frontline, as Melburnian David Goodwin found out when he started working the weekend graveyard shift at his local servo.

From his very first night shift, David absorbed a consistent level of mind-bending lunacy, encountering everything from giant shoplifting bees and balaclava-clad goons hurling cordial-filled water bombs from the sunroof of their BMW, to anarcho-goths high on MDMA releasing large rats into the store from their matching Harry Potter backpacks.

Over the years, David grew to love his mad servo, handing out free pies and chocolate bars on the sly as he grew a backbone and became street smart. Amidst the unrelenting chaos, he eventually made it out of the servo circus � and lived to tell the tale.

For anyone who's ever toiled under the unforgiving fluorescent lights of a customer service job, SERVO is a side-splitting and darkly mesmeric coming-of-age story from behind the anti-jump wire that will have you gritting your teeth, then cackling at the absurdity, idiocy and utterly beguiling strangeness of those who only come out at night.]]>
327 David Goodwin 0733651208 Ellen 3 3.63 Servo: Tales from the Graveyard Shift
author: David Goodwin
name: Ellen
average rating: 3.63
book published:
rating: 3
read at: 2024/04/24
date added: 2024/04/24
shelves:
review:
Unadulterated moments of mirth undermined by unrestrained repetition. A tighter edit would have made this wall-to-wall wit.
]]>
<![CDATA[Lenny Marks Gets Away With Murder]]> 63326581 Lenny Marks is excellent at not having a life.

She bikes home from work at exactly 4pm each day, buys the same groceries for the same meals every week, and owns thirty-six copies of The Hobbit (currently arranged by height). The closest thing she has to a friendship is playing Scrabble against an imaginary Monica Gellar while watching Friends reruns.

And Lenny Marks is very, very good at not remembering what happened the day her mother and stepfather disappeared when she was still a child. The day a voice in the back of her mind started whispering, You did this.

Until a letter from the parole board arrives in the mail—and when her desperate attempts to ignore it fail, Lenny starts to unravel. As long-buried memories come to the surface, Lenny’s careful routines fall apart. For the first time, she finds herself forced to connect with the community around her, and unexpected new relationships begin to bloom. Lenny Marks may finally get a life—but what if her past catches up to her first?

Equal parts heartbreaking and heartwarming, Kerryn Mayne’s stunning debut is an irresistible novel about truth, secrets, vengeance, and family lost and found, with a heroine who's simply unforgettable.]]>
352 Kerryn Mayne 176104804X Ellen 4 Eleanor Oliphant-sized tsunami of these kinds of books lately, and I'm getting a little sick of the 'stuck-in-her-ways-girl-comes-good' shtick.]]> 4.12 2023 Lenny Marks Gets Away With Murder
author: Kerryn Mayne
name: Ellen
average rating: 4.12
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2024/04/15
date added: 2024/04/15
shelves:
review:
A great little read, full of quirk and character. My only hesitation is that there has been an Eleanor Oliphant-sized tsunami of these kinds of books lately, and I'm getting a little sick of the 'stuck-in-her-ways-girl-comes-good' shtick.
]]>
Broadchurch 21047994 433 Erin Kelly 0751555584 Ellen 4 4.12 2014 Broadchurch
author: Erin Kelly
name: Ellen
average rating: 4.12
book published: 2014
rating: 4
read at: 2024/04/01
date added: 2024/04/01
shelves:
review:
As solid and reliable as a gingernut biscuit. Perfect with a cup of tea on a rainy day.
]]>
Between Before and After 59849504
Her husband Goran stayed behind, trapped in the impenetrable siege. He wasn’t allowed to leave. They believed it was only for a couple of months.

After five months of waiting for Goran in Split, Croatia, Edita and her children moved to Penrith in Cumbria, Northern England.

Many more months went by while Goran’s every attempt to escape failed. Edita knew she had to help him. But how? What could she do with her broken English, without money and contacts, and two children to look after by herself?

This moving and compelling true story of courage, love and humanity is a reminder of the nightmares that those fleeing conflict endure and of the difference that the simplest acts of kindness make.]]>
252 Edita Mujkic 0645309958 Ellen 3 4.65 Between Before and After
author: Edita Mujkic
name: Ellen
average rating: 4.65
book published:
rating: 3
read at: 2024/03/27
date added: 2024/03/26
shelves:
review:
Capably written and sure to provoke sentiment. Mujkić keeps the pitch of her memoir very personal, with little sense of the whys and wherefores behind the wider war in her former country.
]]>
<![CDATA[The Uncaged Sky: My 804 Days in an Iranian Prison]]> 60166131
The extraordinary true story of Kylie Moore-Gilbert’s fight to survive 804 days imprisoned in Iran.

On September 12, 2018 British-Australian academic Kylie Moore-Gilbert was arrested at Tehran Airport by Iran’s feared Islamic Revolutionary Guards. Convicted of espionage in a shadowy trial presided over by Iran’s most notorious judge, Dr Moore-Gilbert was sentenced to 10 years in prison.

Incarcerated in Tehran’s Evin and Qarchak prisons for 804 days, this is the full and gripping account of her harrowing ordeal. Held in a filthy solitary confinement cell for months, and subjected to relentless interrogation, Kylie was pushed to the limits of her endurance by extreme physical and psychological deprivation.

Kylie’s only lifeline was the covert friendships she made with other prisoners inside the Revolutionary Guards� maximum-security compound where she had been ‘disappeared�, communicating in great danger through the air vents between cells, and by hiding secret letters in hava khori, the narrow outdoor balcony where she was led, blindfolded, for a solitary hour each day.

Cut off from the outside world, Kylie realised she alone had the power to change the dynamics of her incarceration. To survive, she began to fight back, adopting a strategy of resistance with her captors. Multiple hunger strikes, letters smuggled to the media, co-ordinated protests with other prisoners and a daring escape attempt led to her transfer to the isolated desert prison, Qarchak, to live among convicted criminals.

On November 25, 2020, after more than two years of struggle, Kylie was finally released in a high stakes three-nation prisoner swap deal orchestrated by the Australian government, laying bare the complex game of global politics in which she had become a valuable pawn.

Written with extraordinary insight and vivid immediacy, The Uncaged Sky is Kylie Moore-Gilbert’s remarkable story of courage and resilience, and a powerful meditation on hope, solidarity and what it means to be free.]]>
416 Kylie Moore-Gilbert 1761150405 Ellen 3
There's a few elements of frustration though � there's almost no context given to who she is outside of this experience, and at times her naivety is so stark it beggars belief (how could a Hebrew-speaking Middle Eastern scholar who's proficient in the geopolitical nuances of the region not anticipate issues arising in Iran when she has recent travel history to Israel and a husband who served in the IDF?)]]>
4.29 2022 The Uncaged Sky: My 804 Days in an Iranian Prison
author: Kylie Moore-Gilbert
name: Ellen
average rating: 4.29
book published: 2022
rating: 3
read at: 2024/03/22
date added: 2024/03/25
shelves:
review:
Written with an uncanny eye for detail and a razor-sharp recollection of events, Moore-Gilbert's memoir is an arresting read.

There's a few elements of frustration though � there's almost no context given to who she is outside of this experience, and at times her naivety is so stark it beggars belief (how could a Hebrew-speaking Middle Eastern scholar who's proficient in the geopolitical nuances of the region not anticipate issues arising in Iran when she has recent travel history to Israel and a husband who served in the IDF?)
]]>
<![CDATA[Cubed: A Secret History of the Workplace]]> 18209337
In the mid-nineteenth century clerks worked in small, dank spaces called “counting-houses.� These were all-male enclaves, where work was just paperwork. Most Americans considered clerks to be questionable dandies, who didn’t do “real work.� But the joke was on as the great historical shifts from agricultural to industrial economies took place, and then from industrial to information economies, the organization of the workplace evolved along with them—and the clerks took over. Offices became rationalized, designed for both greater efficiency in the accomplishments of clerical work and the enhancement of worker productivity. Women entered the office by the millions, and revolutionized the social world from within. Skyscrapers filled with office space came to tower over cities everywhere. Cubed opens our eyes to what is a truly "secret history" of changes so obvious and ubiquitous that we've hardly noticed them. From the wood-paneled executive suite to the advent of the cubicles where 60% of Americans now work (and 93% of them dislike it) to a not-too-distant future where we might work anywhere at any time (and perhaps all the time), Cubed excavates from popular books, movies, comic strips ( Dilbert! ), and a vast amount of management literature and business history, the reasons why our workplaces are the way they are—and how they might be better.]]>
368 Nikil Saval 0385536577 Ellen 2 3.41 2010 Cubed: A Secret History of the Workplace
author: Nikil Saval
name: Ellen
average rating: 3.41
book published: 2010
rating: 2
read at: 2024/03/25
date added: 2024/03/25
shelves:
review:
Subdued and slow, this recap of white-collar work won't keep you awake.
]]>
The Strip 195960178 Ìý‘This is as hard-boiled as Australian crime fiction gets, and it's very good.’Ì� –ÌýSydney Morning Herald

'tense and compelling' â€� Garry DisherÌý

'
The Strip is an eye-popping, nightmarish miasma that sets a new bar for Australian crime. A total triumph in every respect.'Ìýâ€� Chris FlynnÌý

When a local doctor is brutally murdered, Detective Constable Lana Cohen joins Strike Force Diablo on the notorious Gold Coast, where she finds herself navigating a world of chaos and corruption.

As she delves deeper into the case, Lana reluctantly pairs up with Henry Loch, a detective with a tarnished reputation who sees an opportunity to redeem himself amidst the mayhem.

But as Lana and Henry unravel the threads of violence and deceit, they uncover a dark side to the Gold Coast that shocks them to the core. With six unsolved murders already haunting them, will they be able to untangle the web of lies before it's too late?

Inspired by real-life events,ÌýThe Strip is a gripping crime thriller that paints a vivid portrait of a time and place where corruption and ambition reign supreme.

PRAISE FOR THE STRIP AND IAIN

‘a cracking crime thriller� –The Australian

‘The real-life history of vice and corruption on the Gold Coast in the 1970s and 80s has inspired this pacy, tense work of crime fiction� - The West Australian


‘Page-turning from the start, this book ratchets up the tension tenfold as the pieces fall into place and the novel reaches its thrilling pinnacle.� - Books + Publishing

�The Strip is bingeworthy reading � a gritty crime thriller reeking of corruption, murder and sex. If you like your heroines flawed and kick-ass and your cops dirty as hell, you’ll love Ian Ryan’s gripping foray into the underworld of the Gold Coast. Hardly took a breath from first page to last.' � Kate Mildenhall, author of THE MOTHER FAULT and THE HUMMINGBIRD EFFECT

'Fast paced, gritty, sharply observed noir that goes hard into the sleaze and corruption of the moonlight state.'Ìýâ€� Andrew Nette, author of ORPHAN ROAD and GUNSHINE STATE

'Steeped in the bitter lore of old-school policing and backlit by the gaudy neon of the Gold Coast streets, The Strip is hands down one of the finest Australian crime novels you’ll ever read.'Ìý–ÌýDavid Whish-Wilson, author of LINE OF SIGHT


'an exciting new voice in Australian crime fiction'Ìýâ€� Adrian McKinty, author of THE CHAIN and THE ISLAND]]>
0 Iain Ryan 1761152319 Ellen 3 3.77 The Strip
author: Iain Ryan
name: Ellen
average rating: 3.77
book published:
rating: 3
read at: 2024/03/15
date added: 2024/03/15
shelves:
review:
A no-surprises noir that's rough and ready, though the cast of characters tended towards confusing.
]]>
The Librarianist 74886395
Behind Bob Comet's straight man facade is the story of an unhappy child's runaway adventure during the last days of the Second World War, of true love won and stolen away, of the purpose and pride found in the librarian's vocation, and the pleasures of a life lived to the side of the masses. Comet's experiences are imbued with melancholy but also a bright, sustained comedy; he has a talent for locating bizarre and outsized players to welcome onto the stage of his life.

With his inimitable verve, skewed humor, and compassion for the outcast, Patrick deWitt has written a wide-ranging and ambitious document of the introvert's condition. The Librarianist celebrates the extraordinary in the so-called ordinary life, and depicts beautifully the turbulence that sometimes exists beneath a surface of serenity.


________________________________________________________________________

Praise for Patrick deWitt
'A triumph from a writer truly in the zone' Maria Semple, author of Where'd You Go, Bernadette
'deWitt remains a true original' Guardian
'One of the most talented young writers around' Sunday Times]]>
336 Patrick deWitt 1526646919 Ellen 3 3.91 2023 The Librarianist
author: Patrick deWitt
name: Ellen
average rating: 3.91
book published: 2023
rating: 3
read at: 2024/03/08
date added: 2024/03/08
shelves:
review:
Bob proves to be a gentle raconteur, although the section where his eleven-year-old self escaped to the Hotel Elba felt like filler.
]]>
The Midnight Library 51879720
When Nora Seed finds herself in the Midnight Library, she has a chance to make things right. Up until now, her life has been full of misery and regret. She feels she has let everyone down, including herself. But things are about to change.

The books in the Midnight Library enable Nora to live as if she had done things differently. With the help of an old friend, she can now undo every one of her regrets as she tries to work out her perfect life. But things aren't always what she imagined they'd be, and soon her choices place the library and herself in extreme danger.

Before time runs out, she must answer the ultimate question: what is the best way to live?]]>
288 Matt Haig Ellen 4 4.13 2020 The Midnight Library
author: Matt Haig
name: Ellen
average rating: 4.13
book published: 2020
rating: 4
read at: 2024/03/04
date added: 2024/03/04
shelves:
review:
A book that's so clever, kind and creative I can forgive its sins of geography (a car crash south of Coffs Harbour when a character was driving from Brisbane to Byron Bay. Not while using a map, clearly!)
]]>
<![CDATA[What You Are Looking For Is in the Library]]> 91274427 For fans of The Midnight Library and Before the Coffee Gets Cold, this charming Japanese novel shows how the perfect book recommendation can change a reader's life.

What are you looking for?

This is the famous question routinely asked by Tokyo’s most enigmatic librarian, Sayuri Komachi. Like most librarians, Komachi has read every book lining her shelves—but she also has the unique ability to read the souls of her library guests. For anyone who walks through her door, Komachi can sense exactly what they’re looking for in life and provide just the book recommendation they never knew they needed to help them find it.

Each visitor comes to her library from a different juncture in their careers and dreams, from the restless sales attendant who feels stuck at her job to the struggling working mother who longs to be a magazineÌýeditor. The conversation that they have with Sayuri Komachi—and the surprise book she lends each of them—will have life-altering consequences.

With heartwarming charm and wisdom, What You Are Looking For Is in the Library is a paean to the magic of libraries, friendship and community, perfect for anyone who has ever found themselves at an impasse in their life and in need of a little inspiration.]]>
304 Michiko Aoyama 1335005625 Ellen 3 4.07 2020 What You Are Looking For Is in the Library
author: Michiko Aoyama
name: Ellen
average rating: 4.07
book published: 2020
rating: 3
read at: 2024/02/29
date added: 2024/02/29
shelves:
review:
If you enjoy feel-good folktales with emotionally restrained actors then this is your jam.
]]>
<![CDATA[Infested: How the Bed Bug Infiltrated Our Bedrooms and Took Over the World]]> 22859694 Ìý
In Infested, Borel introduces readers to the biological and cultural histories of these amazingly adaptive insects, and the myriad ways in which humans have responded to them. She travels to meet with scientists who are rearing bed bug colonies—even by feeding them with their own blood (ouch!)—and to the stages of musicals performed in honor of the pests. She explores the history of bed bugs and their apparent disappearance in the 1950s after the introduction of DDT, charting how current infestations have flourished in direct response to human chemical use as well as the ease of global travel. She also introduces us to the economics of bed bug infestations, from hotels to homes to office buildings, and the expansive industry that has arisen to combat them.

Hiding during the day in the nooks and seams of mattresses, box springs, bed frames, headboards, dresser tables, wallpaper, or any clutter around a bed, bed bugs are thriving and eager for their next victim. By providing fascinating details on bed bug science and behavior as well as a captivating look into the lives of those devoted to researching or eradicating them, Infested is sure to inspire at least a nibble of respect for these tenacious creatures—while also ensuring that you will peek beneath the sheets with prickly apprehension.]]>
224 Brooke Borel 022604193X Ellen 4 3.66 2015 Infested: How the Bed Bug Infiltrated Our Bedrooms and Took Over the World
author: Brooke Borel
name: Ellen
average rating: 3.66
book published: 2015
rating: 4
read at: 2024/02/26
date added: 2024/02/26
shelves:
review:
Not so much icky as engrossing. Bed bugs in this quirky compilation make a fertile ground for fascination. It's surprisingly satisfying.
]]>
<![CDATA[Finding My Bella Vita: A story of family, food, fame and working out who you are]]> 195434892
As a child, her Nonna would tell her stories of the small volcanic island off Sicily she called home. Cannoli, curses and lighting a candle at church were as much a part of Pia's childhood as mouse plagues, her Aussie Nanna's lemon slice and cheering on South Melbourne at the footy with her Grandfather.

After chasing a childhood dream to become a ballet dancer (with a back-up plan of becoming a nun) she was cruelly shamed out of her leotard and into a new dream: acting. The rollercoaster ride of fame would see her travel the world and narrowly avoid a sky-high #MeToo moment. But after fame comes real life - work stress, career questions, money worries, relationships and heartbreak, love and marriage, illness and grief. Having grown up pinballing between her very Italian side and her very Australian side while trying to carve out a space all her own, Pia didn't realise how the push and pull of tradition had made her world all the richer.

Finally, setting foot on Vulcano to reconnect with her roots, Pia understands how all the parts of herself have made her the true survivor she is. Like her Nonna told her, every day on top of the earth is a good day.]]>
270 Pia Miranda 0733649882 Ellen 3 3.83 Finding My Bella Vita: A story of family, food, fame and working out who you are
author: Pia Miranda
name: Ellen
average rating: 3.83
book published:
rating: 3
read at: 2024/02/24
date added: 2024/02/24
shelves:
review:
Does what it says on the packet in a pleasantly unsurprising style.
]]>
The Passage (The Passage #1) 7169581 She is.

Anthony Carter doesn't think he could ever be in a worse place than Death Row. He's wrong.

FBI agent Brad Wolgast thinks something beyond imagination is coming. It is.

Unaware of each other's existence but bound together in ways none of them could have imagined, they are about to embark on a journey. An epic journey that will take them through a world transformed by man's darkest dreams, to the very heart of what it means to be human. And beyond.

Because something is coming. A tidal wave of darkness ready to engulf the world. And Amy is the only person who can stop it.]]>
963 Justin Cronin Ellen 3 The Ring' on the book cover.]]> 4.00 2010 The Passage (The Passage #1)
author: Justin Cronin
name: Ellen
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2010
rating: 3
read at: 2014/12/01
date added: 2024/02/24
shelves:
review:
There was a fair whack of weirdness in this tale � but the pace was relentless enough to overcome the creepy six-year-old re-enacting scenes from 'The Ring' on the book cover.
]]>
The Wieambilla Shootings 204805411
On foot, they were met with gunfire. Two died there. A concerned neighbour who came over was shot dead. The other two cops survived. Their country-cop colleagues contained the shooters. A siege ended six hours later, when the last of the three shooters was reported 'no movement' by a police helicopter crewman.

News of the deaths stunned the nation. Photos of the youthful Constables Rachael McCrow and Matthew Arnold, and of Good Samaritan neighbour Alan Dare stared back at us from screens and front pages, left us wondering 'But why this?'

This book is the first in-depth attempt to answer that question. It musters what is known about the lives and deaths of two brothers, Gareth and Nathaniel Train, and Stacey Train, wife to first the latter and then the former, the perpetrators of these hideous crimes.]]>
192 John Kerr 1922810843 Ellen 4 3.33 2023 The Wieambilla Shootings
author: John Kerr
name: Ellen
average rating: 3.33
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2024/02/21
date added: 2024/02/20
shelves:
review:
The Wieambilla shootings was a shocking incident, but as Kerr recounts through his thorough analysis, far-right extremism should no longer surprise us. With a coronial inquest of the Trains' actions still to come, some sections of this book are unavoidably unclear � but all in all, this is an essential, uneasy read.
]]>
The Rachel Incident 182187659
When Rachel falls in love with her married professor, Dr Byrne, her best friend James helps her devise a plan to seduce him. But what begins as a harmless crush soon pushes their friendship to its limits. Over the course of a year they will find their lives ever more entwined with the Byrnes' and be faced with impossible choices and a lie that can't be taken back...]]>
320 Caroline O'Donoghue 0349013543 Ellen 3 4.11 2023 The Rachel Incident
author: Caroline O'Donoghue
name: Ellen
average rating: 4.11
book published: 2023
rating: 3
read at: 2024/02/16
date added: 2024/02/16
shelves:
review:
There is a light, witty tone to the narration of this novel that's fun to fall into, but I never felt entirely invested in the outcome.
]]>
<![CDATA[Something Bad is Going to Happen]]> 174916084 297 Jessie Stephens Ellen 3 3.81 2023 Something Bad is Going to Happen
author: Jessie Stephens
name: Ellen
average rating: 3.81
book published: 2023
rating: 3
read at: 2024/02/13
date added: 2024/02/13
shelves:
review:
A slow, sad build with several somethings bad and not a lot of solace.
]]>
<![CDATA[Game of Queens: The Women Who Made Sixteenth-Century Europe]]> 31759641
A fascinating group biography of some of the most beloved (and reviled) queens in history, Game of Queens tells the story of the powerful women who drove European history.]]>
416 Sarah Gristwood 1780749945 Ellen 2 3.97 2016 Game of Queens: The Women Who Made Sixteenth-Century Europe
author: Sarah Gristwood
name: Ellen
average rating: 3.97
book published: 2016
rating: 2
read at: 2024/01/29
date added: 2024/01/29
shelves:
review:
More suited to devotees of dynasties than for your average punter looking to dip into history.
]]>
So Close To Home 195110020
Desperate to fund his addiction, Aaron climbs into the car of The Man, a distinguished elderly gentleman willing to pay for a certain kind of relationship. This regular cash could be the lifeline Aaron needs to start again, but The Man keeps raising spectres from Aaron's past that he'd rather forget. As Aaron gathers the courage to confront the events that derailed his life, his rage grows � and the consequences could be fatal.

So Close to Home is a pacey, gritty and captivating novel exploring homelessness, power dynamics and the ties that bind. Social worker, debut author and winner of the prestigious VPLA for Unpublished Manuscript Mick Cummins has created a striking, emotionally complex and unnervingly tense narrative that poses one simple question: who can we ever truly rely on?]]>
320 Mick Cummins 1922992232 Ellen 3 3.35 2023 So Close To Home
author: Mick Cummins
name: Ellen
average rating: 3.35
book published: 2023
rating: 3
read at: 2024/01/19
date added: 2024/01/19
shelves:
review:
A lonely vacuum of sorrow, invoking empathy amongst the aimlessness.
]]>
<![CDATA[Doppelganger: A Trip into the Mirror World]]> 138505710
Not long ago, the celebrated activist and public intellectual Naomi Klein had just such an experience―she was confronted with a doppelganger whose views she found abhorrent but whose name and public persona were sufficiently similar to her own that many people got confused about who was who. Destabilized, she lost her bearings, until she began to understand the experience as one manifestation of a strangeness many of us have come to know but struggle to define: AI-generated text is blurring the line between genuine and spurious communication; New Age wellness entrepreneurs turned anti-vaxxers are scrambling familiar political allegiances of left and right; and liberal democracies are teetering on the edge of absurdist authoritarianism, even as the oceans rise. Under such conditions, reality itself seems to have become unmoored. Is there a cure for our moment of collective vertigo?

Naomi Klein is one of our most trenchant and influential social critics, an essential analyst of what branding, austerity, and climate profiteering have done to our societies and souls. Here she turns her gaze inward to our psychic landscapes, and outward to the possibilities for building hope amid intersecting economic, medical, and political crises. With the assistance of Sigmund Freud, Jordan Peele, Alfred Hitchcock, and bell hooks, among other accomplices, Klein uses wry humor and a keen sense of the ridiculous to face the strange doubles that haunt us―and that have come to feel as intimate and proximate as a warped reflection in the mirror.

Combining comic memoir with chilling reportage and cobweb-clearing analysis, Klein seeks to smash that mirror and chart a path beyond despair. Doppelganger What do we neglect as we polish and perfect our digital reflections? Is it possible to dispose of our doubles and overcome the pathologies of a culture of multiplication? Can we create a politics of collective care and undertake a true reckoning with historical crimes? The result is a revelatory treatment of the way many of us think and feel now―and an intellectual adventure story for our times.]]>
416 Naomi Klein 0374610320 Ellen 3 4.21 2023 Doppelganger: A Trip into the Mirror World
author: Naomi Klein
name: Ellen
average rating: 4.21
book published: 2023
rating: 3
read at: 2024/01/06
date added: 2024/01/06
shelves:
review:
Klein's razor-sharp assessment of cultural trends is admirable; however, her doppelganger Wolf's appeal is partly attributable to her ability for sensationalist spin in a short attention span world. Rebuffing her ideas in a dense, academic tome feels a little like an addition to the echo chamber of ideas.
]]>
<![CDATA[Death on the Nile (Hercule Poirot, #18)]]> 1009709 373 Agatha Christie 0007815530 Ellen 3 4.05 1937 Death on the Nile (Hercule Poirot, #18)
author: Agatha Christie
name: Ellen
average rating: 4.05
book published: 1937
rating: 3
read at: 2015/01/08
date added: 2023/12/25
shelves:
review:
The characters quickly blend into one another, lack depth and there is not a trace of genuine emotion to be found. But there is something so readable about Agatha Christie novels that all is easily forgiven. Thoroughly addictive, and the whodunnit twists and turns are delightfully clever.
]]>
The Woman in Me 63133205 The Woman in Me is a brave and astonishingly moving story about freedom, fame, motherhood, survival, faith, and hope.

In June 2021, the whole world was listening as Britney Spears spoke in open court. The impact of sharing her voice—her truth—was undeniable, and it changed the course of her life and the lives of countless others. The Woman in Me reveals for the first time her incredible journey—and the strength at the core of one of the greatest performers in pop music history.

Written with remarkable candor and humor, Spears’s groundbreaking book illuminates the enduring power of music and love—and the importance of a woman telling her own story, on her own terms, at last.]]>
288 Britney Spears 1668009048 Ellen 3 3.83 2023 The Woman in Me
author: Britney Spears
name: Ellen
average rating: 3.83
book published: 2023
rating: 3
read at: 2023/12/24
date added: 2023/12/24
shelves:
review:
Endearingly unpolished introspection from an icon.
]]>
<![CDATA[Everyone on This Train Is a Suspect (Ernest Cunningham, #2)]]> 75494492
The program is a who’s who of crime writing royalty:

the debut writer (me!)

the forensic science writer

the blockbuster writer

the legal thriller writer

the literary writer

the psychological suspense writer


But when one of us is murdered, the remaining authors quickly turn into five detectives. Together, we should know how to solve a crime.

Of course, we should also know how to commit one.

How can you find a killer when all the suspects know how to get away with murder?]]>
310 Benjamin Stevenson 014377994X Ellen 3 3.98 2023 Everyone on This Train Is a Suspect (Ernest Cunningham, #2)
author: Benjamin Stevenson
name: Ellen
average rating: 3.98
book published: 2023
rating: 3
read at: 2023/12/21
date added: 2023/12/21
shelves:
review:
Writing that's almost a bit too clever for its own good.
]]>
When Breath Becomes Air 29779231
When Breath Becomes Air chronicles Kalanithi’s transformation from a medical student asking what makes a virtuous and meaningful life into a neurosurgeon working in the core of human identity � the brain � and finally into a patient and a new father.]]>
229 Paul Kalanithi 1784701998 Ellen 3 4.36 2016 When Breath Becomes Air
author: Paul Kalanithi
name: Ellen
average rating: 4.36
book published: 2016
rating: 3
read at: 2023/12/12
date added: 2023/12/12
shelves:
review:
A read made weighty with the shock and soul-searching that accompanies unexpected mortality. Kalanithi's wife Lucy writes an afterword that has as much meaning as the middle.
]]>
The Boy with Two Lives 27220506 256 Abbas Kazerooni 1743314833 Ellen 4 4.18 The Boy with Two Lives
author: Abbas Kazerooni
name: Ellen
average rating: 4.18
book published:
rating: 4
read at: 2023/11/22
date added: 2023/11/21
shelves:
review:
A sequel which feels sadder than its predecessor. May Kazerooni's bittersweet ending stay skewed to safety.
]]>
Essays In Love 52254343 212 Alain de Botton Ellen 3 4.11 1993 Essays In Love
author: Alain de Botton
name: Ellen
average rating: 4.11
book published: 1993
rating: 3
read at: 2023/11/21
date added: 2023/11/20
shelves:
review:
Alain de Botton has boring uncle vibes. His semi-charmed navel-gazing is ultimately harmless and occasionally appealing, but you'll find your attention wandering as you look for a more grounded Christmas lunch companion.
]]>
On Two Feet and Wings 16103660
In the strange and often frightening city of Instanbul, Abbas has to grow up fast. Living alone for twelve weeks in a rundown hotel, he has to learn to live by his wits, and watch his back. Will he ever get his dream visa to England?]]>
264 Abbas Kazerooni Ellen 5 4.13 2005 On Two Feet and Wings
author: Abbas Kazerooni
name: Ellen
average rating: 4.13
book published: 2005
rating: 5
read at: 2023/11/18
date added: 2023/11/17
shelves:
review:
A book that will leave you overflowing with empathy. Simply told, yet stunning.
]]>
Man in the Empty Suit 13531802
The year he turns 39, though, the party takes a stressful turn for the worse. Before he even makes it into the grand ballroom for a drink he encounters the body of his forty-year-old self, dead of a gunshot wound to the head. As the older versions of himself at the party point out, the onus is on him to figure out what went wrong--he has one year to stop himself from being murdered, or they're all goners.

As he follows clues that he may or may not have willingly left for himself, he discovers rampant paranoia and suspicion among his younger selves, and a frightening conspiracy among the Elders. Most complicated of all is a haunting woman possibly named Lily who turns up at the party this year, the first person besides himself he's ever seen at the party. For the first time, he has something to lose. Here's hoping he can save some version of his own life.]]>
306 Sean Ferrell 1616951257 Ellen 2 3.13 2013 Man in the Empty Suit
author: Sean Ferrell
name: Ellen
average rating: 3.13
book published: 2013
rating: 2
read at: 2023/11/15
date added: 2023/11/15
shelves:
review:
Time travel at its most tedious. Totally untranslatable.
]]>
<![CDATA[The Forever War (The Forever War, #1)]]> 5940939 Series Info:
This is the first part of the "Forever War" series, however it can be read as a standalone.

Book Description:
The Earth's leaders have drawn a line in the interstellar sand—despite the fact that the fierce alien enemy that they would oppose is inscrutable, unconquerable, and very far away. A reluctant conscript drafted into an elite Military unit, Private William Mandella has been propelled through space and time to fight in the distant thousand-year conflict; to perform his duties and do whatever it takes to survive the ordeal and return home. But "home" may be even more terrifying than battle, because, thanks to the time dilation caused by space travel, Mandella is aging months while the Earth he left behind is aging centuries.]]>
265 Joe Haldeman 0312536631 Ellen 3 4.10 1974 The Forever War (The Forever War, #1)
author: Joe Haldeman
name: Ellen
average rating: 4.10
book published: 1974
rating: 3
read at: 2023/11/03
date added: 2023/11/03
shelves:
review:
Substantive science fiction, with the scenes from an imagined Earth the most satisfying.
]]>
<![CDATA[Rental Person Who Does Nothing: A Memoir]]> 143386566 Today, I’m starting a ‘rent a person who does nothing� service . . . Except for very simple conversation, I’m afraid I can do nothing.

Shoji Morimoto was constantly being told that he was a ‘do-nothing� because he lacked initiative. Dispirited and unemployed, it occurred to him that if he was so good at doing nothing, perhaps he could turn it into a business. And with one tweet, he began his business of renting himself out . . . to do nothing.

Morimoto, aka Rental Person, provides a fascinating service to the lonely and socially anxious. Sitting with a client undergoing surgery, accompanying a newly-divorced client to her favourite restaurant, visiting the site of a client’s suicide attempt are just a few of his thousands of true life adventures. He is dependable, non-judgmental and committed to remaining a stranger and the curious encounters he shares are revelatory about both Japanese society and human psychology.

In Rental Person Who Does Nothing, Morimoto chronicles his extraordinary experiences in his unique line of work and reflects on how we consider relationships, jobs and family in our search for meaningful connection and purpose in life.]]>
208 Shoji Morimoto Ellen 3 3.29 2023 Rental Person Who Does Nothing: A Memoir
author: Shoji Morimoto
name: Ellen
average rating: 3.29
book published: 2023
rating: 3
read at: 2023/10/13
date added: 2023/10/13
shelves:
review:
Sparse yet strangely comforting � perfectly befitting its founder.
]]>
Gang Leader for a Day 13334123 332 Sudhir Venkatesh Ellen 3 4.31 2008 Gang Leader for a Day
author: Sudhir Venkatesh
name: Ellen
average rating: 4.31
book published: 2008
rating: 3
read at: 2023/10/11
date added: 2023/10/11
shelves:
review:
A respectable read, though at times I was left nonplussed by Venkatesh's naivety.
]]>
The Bandit Queens 75542641 But she soon discovers that being known as a "self-made" widow has some surprising perks. No one messes with her, no one threatens her, and no one tries to control (ahem, marry) her. It's even been good for her business; no one wants to risk getting on her bad side by not buying her jewelry.

Freedom must look good on Geeta, because other women in the village have started asking for her help to get rid of their own no-good husbands...but not all of them are asking nicely.

Now that Geeta's fearsome reputation has become a double-edged sword, she must decide how far to go to protect it, along with the life she's built. Because even the best-laid plans of would-be widows tend to go awry.]]>
352 Parini Shroff 1838957154 Ellen 3 3.94 2023 The Bandit Queens
author: Parini Shroff
name: Ellen
average rating: 3.94
book published: 2023
rating: 3
read at: 2023/10/02
date added: 2023/10/02
shelves:
review:
Intensely detailed, meaty treatise in the form of fiction.
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Yellowface 59357120
So what if June edits Athena’s novel and sends it to her agent as her own work? So what if she lets her new publisher rebrand her as Juniper Song—complete with an ambiguously ethnic author photo? This piece of history deserve to be told, whoever the teller. That is what June believes, and The New York Times bestseller list agrees.

But June cannot escape Athena’s shadow, and emerging evidence threatens her stolen success. As she races to protect her secret she discovers exactly how far she will go to keep what she thinks she deserves.]]>
329 R.F. Kuang Ellen 4 3.84 2023 Yellowface
author: R.F. Kuang
name: Ellen
average rating: 3.84
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2023/09/30
date added: 2023/09/30
shelves:
review:
Gentle, clever comedy that's both incisive and addictive. [spoilers removed]
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The Cry 63854841 He's gone. And telling the truth won't bring him back...

When a baby goes missing on a lonely roadside in Australia, it sets off a police investigation that will become a media sensation and dinner-table talk across the world.

Lies, rumours and guilt snowball, causing the parents, Joanna and Alistair, to slowly turn against each other.

Finally Joanna starts thinking the unthinkable: could the truth be even more terrible than she suspected? And what will it take to make things right?

The Cry is a dark psychological thriller with a gripping moral dilemma at its heart and characters who will keep you guessing on every page.]]>
309 Helen Fitzgerald Ellen 4 3.67 2013 The Cry
author: Helen Fitzgerald
name: Ellen
average rating: 3.67
book published: 2013
rating: 4
read at: 2023/09/16
date added: 2023/09/16
shelves:
review:
An authentic Australian murder mystery, with the made-for-TV adaptation even more gripping with its atmospheric amendments.
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Hospital 170108848 128 Sanya Rushdi 1922725455 Ellen 3 3.55 2023 Hospital
author: Sanya Rushdi
name: Ellen
average rating: 3.55
book published: 2023
rating: 3
read at: 2023/08/30
date added: 2023/08/30
shelves:
review:
Matter-of-fact and pattering along at an amiable pace, this is a short read that feels a little unresolved.
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Imagine Me Gone 29262276 Imagine Me Gone is the unforgettable story of what unfolds from this act of love and faith. At the heart of it is their eldest son, Michael, a brilliant, anxious music fanatic who makes sense of the world through parody. Over the span of decades, his younger siblings--the savvy and responsible Celia and the ambitious and tightly controlled Alec--struggle along with their mother to care for Michael's increasingly troubled and precarious existence.]]> 363 Adam Haslett Ellen 3 3.87 2016 Imagine Me Gone
author: Adam Haslett
name: Ellen
average rating: 3.87
book published: 2016
rating: 3
read at: 2023/08/30
date added: 2023/08/30
shelves:
review:
A book whose emotional arc is authentic, while simultaneously creating genuine laugh-out-loud moments mostly via the imaginative mind of Michael.
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The Hidden Light of Objects 17287087
The headlines tell of war, unrest and religious clashes. But if you look beyond them you may see life in the Middle East as it is really lived � adolescent love, yearnings for independence, the fragility of marriage, pain of the most quotidian kind. Mai Al-Nakib’s luminous stories carefully unveil the lives of ordinary people in the Middle East � and the power of ordinary objects to hold extraordinary memories.]]>
256 Mai Al-Nakib 999219541X Ellen 4 3.92 2014 The Hidden Light of Objects
author: Mai Al-Nakib
name: Ellen
average rating: 3.92
book published: 2014
rating: 4
read at: 2023/08/22
date added: 2023/08/21
shelves:
review:
A beautiful book, vaguely mystical with warmhearted murmurings.
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<![CDATA[Blink: The Power Of Thinking Without Thinking]]> 16052663
This book is all about those moments when we 'know' something without knowing why. Here Malcolm Gladwell explores the phenomenon of 'blink', showing how a snap judgement can be far more effective than a cautious decision. By trusting your instincts, he reveals, you'll never think about thinking in the same way again.]]>
304 Malcolm Gladwell Ellen 4 3.58 2005 Blink: The Power Of Thinking Without Thinking
author: Malcolm Gladwell
name: Ellen
average rating: 3.58
book published: 2005
rating: 4
read at: 2023/08/15
date added: 2023/08/15
shelves:
review:
Gladwell writes well, taking facts and making them feel fun. His books are invariably absorbing.
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<![CDATA[Trailed: One Woman's Quest to Solve the Shenandoah Murders]]> 58328366 320 Kathryn Miles 1616209097 Ellen 4 3.91 2022 Trailed: One Woman's Quest to Solve the Shenandoah Murders
author: Kathryn Miles
name: Ellen
average rating: 3.91
book published: 2022
rating: 4
read at: 2023/07/26
date added: 2023/07/26
shelves:
review:
True crime created carefully, with Miles thorough and thoughtful in her approach.
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<![CDATA[Black Dahlia, Red Rose: America's Most Notorious Crime Solved for the First Time]]> 36448155 Black Dahlia, Red Rose is a panorama of 1940s Hollywood, a definitive account of one of the biggest unsolved murders of American legal history.]]> 368 Piu Marie Eatwell Ellen 3 3.00 2017 Black Dahlia, Red Rose: America's Most Notorious Crime Solved for the First Time
author: Piu Marie Eatwell
name: Ellen
average rating: 3.00
book published: 2017
rating: 3
read at: 2017/12/01
date added: 2023/07/24
shelves:
review:
This book suffered somewhat from its own methodical manner � there was little suspense or excitement, just plenty pages of assured investigation.
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The School for Good Mothers 58425195
Frida Liu is a struggling mother. She remembers taking Harriet from her cot and changing her nappy. She remembers giving her a morning bottle. They'd been up since four am.

Frida just had to finish the article in front of her. But she'd left a file on her desk at work. What would happen if she retrieved it and came back in an hour? She was so sure it would be okay.

Now, the state has decided that Frida is not fit to care for her daughter. That she must be re-trained. Soon, mothers everywhere will be re-educated. Will their mistakes cost them everything?

The School for Good Mothers is an explosive and thrilling novel about love and the pressures of perfectionism, parenthood and privilege.]]>
336 Jessamine Chan 1529151333 Ellen 3 3.46 2022 The School for Good Mothers
author: Jessamine Chan
name: Ellen
average rating: 3.46
book published: 2022
rating: 3
read at: 2023/07/22
date added: 2023/07/23
shelves:
review:
Feminist dystopia has been done to death, so it's a hard field to float among. This book made for fair reading but never really reached a zenith.
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