Reading update

Hello peeps,

while I am playing catch up on pattern writing and making a galah and finishing the next Lemonade Stand dolly quilt and making another felt mouse (I got WAY behind on everything while I was sick!!), it occurs to me that we haven't had a reading update in some while. I know from your messages that lots of you like seeing what I've been reading,  and stuck in bed I watched almost no television, did absolutely no sewing - but I did read quite a lot. In the past few weeks this has included:

One Hundred Years of Betty by Debra Oswald

Aussies will know Debra as the writer and creator of Offspring (which I LOVE... Nina is my spirit animal), and she is married to Richard Glover, who I also love. She also happens to be very good friends with my step-aunt, writer Geraldine Brooks, so what's not to like about this book, right? Betty is writing this book on the eve of her 100th birthday. Born in London to extreme poverty just before the Blitz, Betty struggles through a difficult life with passion, humor and love. She moves to Australia which was fun to read because a lot of the places featured are very familiar to me, some also where I grew up and where I live! Betty is a wonderful character, and I enjoyed the book very much... I did get a little tired of her describing herself as ancient and unattractive from the age of about 40, I would have thought Debra as a writer of modern women was past that particular trope. Aside from that though, its a really fun and quick read, nicely written and full of endearing characters.

Silver by Chris Hammer

If you were in my Stitch and Story Book Club during Covid, this is a name you will recognise. Chris is a writer of some of the best Australian crime fiction out there. He has a few different characters that have their own line of books - during Covid we read The Tilt, which is in his Ivan and Nell series. This book is the third in the Martin Scarsdale series, Martin is my favourite of Chris's characters and this is a great read if you like this kind of thing. Punchy, quick, set in wonderful Australian landscapes and full of interesting mysteries but no gore or graphic violence - if you have't read any crime books before, Chris is a good place to start. Scrublands is also a great TV series on Stan in Australia - not sure if its available anywhere OS but its worth looking for. It also has delicious Luke Arnold as Martin Scarsdale which is an extra bonus :) His book series are in the following order (but can be read in any order really) - 

Ivan Lucic/Nell Buchanan series

Treasure & Dirt

The Tilt

The Seven

The Valley

Martin Scarsdale series

Scrublands

Silver

Trust

Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen

Yes, yes, you've all seen the films, and some of you will have watched the BBC TV series... but have you ever actually READ them? You really should. I've read them all a load of times but I recently bought some beautiful Penguin Classics editions that I couldn't resist, so of course I had to start again. If you haven't read any Austen before and aren't sure wether you can wade through the formal language, Pride and Prejudice is a better place to start than Sensibility. The Penguins are worth having just to be pretty on the shelf though!!

The Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley

I LOVED THIS BOOK. I absolutely loved every word. It's Kaliane's first novel and I hope she writes many many more that are just as good. I also home that someone has optioned the TV rights for this and that there is an amazing series on the way, perhaps with someone like Tom Holland as the Commander. The novel is a sci-fi romance about a government employee in the newly founded Ministry of Time, taking care of one of the first time-travellers, known as "expats". It sounds terrible, I know! It's NOT terrible. It's very very funny, and tender and sweet and a beautiful romance. And it's serious and deadly and threatening and sobering. I ate it in a weekend like a fresh packet of TimTams and then was instantly sorry I didn't make it last longer. If you read it I hope you love it too, please tell me if you do!

And I'm halfway through....

The Empress Murders by Toby Schmitz

Toby Schmitz is another Australian writer, who Sydney theatre goes might recognise as a Sydney Theatre Company regular - you might also know him as the corrupt detective in the TV adaptation of Boy Swallows Universe. (Also if you haven't read THAT wonderful piece of genius by Trent Dalton or seen the series, what have you even been doing?!) This is Toby's first novel, and I have to say it's taken me a bit to get into. The writing style could best be described as unusual, and there's so many characters that I have to keep jumping back to see who the heck he's talking about. I'm finally there though, and it's settling in to be a ripping yarn. It's set on a passenger ship from London to New York in 1925, and ranges from the staff quarters to top deck and everywhere in between. The bodies are piling up and the suspects are multiple. The book is a character in the story which is an interesting addition. Halfway in and I can now say I'm enjoying it, so you need to persevere if you try it and you're finding it odd. The murders are a little more grisly than Chris Hammer though, but nothing too graphic in the scheme of crime novels!

Next I'm starting James by Percival Everett. It's been sitting next to my bed for months and I keep starting something else - but as it won the Pulitzer yesterday I thought I should finally crack it open!! The Wikipedia synposis of the novel is "a re-imagining of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain but told from the perspective of Huckleberry's friend on his travels, Jim, who is an escaped slave." Lots of people have told me how wonderful it is, and as I read several times as a kid both Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn, I'm looking forward to it. 

What are you reading? I've had SO MANY people ask me to do the book club again... I can't quite decide to do it. The price of the club included a book box each month that had a copy of the book, food treats and quilty treats, a section of a 6 part pattern and book club participation, including chats, zooms and recorded (and some live) interviews between me and the authors. If I did decide to do it again, would be interested? Would you want the box? Or just the online participation? It's a LOT of work to put together, hence the hesitation... during Covid it was fab.

I actually have a few copies of the books we did for the club left over, I ordered more than we needed each time because I was worried what would happen if a box got lost or damaged (which it never did!) they are now up on the website for sale at $10 a book so that they're not in the warehouse any more!

Happy Wednesday peeps

Sarah