DISCUSSION POST :: The Life by Malcolm Knox
This month we’ve been reading The Life by Malcolm Knox. Daring, dazzling, funny and heartbreaking, this is a story about fame and ambition, surfing and pine-lime Splices … a superbly written and ambitious novel by one of Australia’s rising stars. The Life will simply blow you away. The Life tells the story of former-world-champion Australian surfer, Dennis Keith,...
The Life by Malcolm Knox :: Reviewed by Kylie Ladd
This awesome review was first published on the Booktopia Blog Review by Kylie Ladd Malcolm Knox knows how to get my attention. I first became aware of him when I chanced across his 2006 book Secrets Of The Jury Room, a dramatic account of his experiences as a juror on a lengthy criminal trial. A few...
Embracing the Future: Or Six Reasons Why I Love My Kindle
[This post originally appeared on Read in a Single Sitting] Embracing the Future: Or Six Reasons Why I Love My Kindle First things first: I, like you, am a fully-fledged book lover. Reading is my favourite pastime in the whole world. I love nothing more than spending hours wandering around a bookshop and I...
Currently reading :: I Capture The Castle
Introducing: I Capture The Castle by Dodie Smith This wonderful novel tells the story of seventeen-year-old Cassandra and her family, who live in not-so-genteel poverty in a ramshackle old English castle. Here she strives, over six turbulent months, to hone her writing skills. She fills three notebooks with sharply funny yet poignant entries. Her journals...
Meet the writer :: Dodie Smith
Meet the writer :: Dodie Smith [First published here] Biography Before Dodie Smith died in 1990, she asked the novelist Julian Barnes to be her literary executor. As Barnes later told The Guardian, “She said she didn’t think I’d have much to do as her literary executor — in the last years of her life she...
Trashionista honour Dodie Smith
THURSDAY TRAILBLAZER: Dodie Smith [Originally published here] I’ve been meaning to “do” Dodie for some time, and as it’s cult classic week on Trashionista, what better time to honour the author of one of the first, and most fabulous YA/crossover novels: I Capture The Castle. A favourite of many modern authors (asRachel Johnson will testify), ICTC is...
I Capture the Castle :: Review by Jessica Duchen
Book of a Lifetime: I Capture The Castle, by Dodie Smith by Jessica Duchen [review originally published by The Independent] I’d seen it on the shelf for years before I opened it: a well-thumbed, yellowing paperback that belonged to my sister, a Peacock logo indicating its suitability for so-called “young adults”. The author’s name was...
Revolutionary Road as discussed on ABC’s First Tuesday Book Club
You might like to kick back with a glass of wine (or a cuppa) and watch this clip of Revolutionary Road being discussed on First Tuesday Book Club. The discussion starts at around 15.20. If that doesn’t work, or you’d just rather read the opinions, here’s the transcript of the conversation the guests had....
Learn more about Richard Yates
Richard Yates was born in Yonkers NY in 1926. His parents divorced when he was three, and during the Depression he and his mother and sister moved around from apartment to apartment. In 1944 he graduated from The Avon School and joined the army. He was shipped off to France and saw combat. He also contracted...
A short extract of Revolutionary Road
Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates The trouble was that from the very beginning they had been afraid they would end by making fools of themselves, and they had compounded that fear by being afraid to admit it. At first their rehearsals had been held on Saturdays—always, it seemed, on the kind of windless February or...
DISCUSSION POST :: Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates
Welcome to the August Book Salon. This month we’ve been reading a classic first published in the 60s: Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates. Revolutionary Road was the first novel of author Richard Yates and was published in 1961. The New York Times reviewed it as “beautifully crafted… a remarkable and deeply troubling book.” In 2005 the novel was chosen by Time...
Readings’ Martin Shaw reviews The Tiger’s Wife
This review originally appeared on the Readings website I returned from my Christmas holidays knowing that with The Tiger’s Wife, I had just read my book of the year. And my euphoria hasn’t subsided since: I’m happily reading the novel a second time, and, as I write, I note with delight that Obreht has just made...
