2024: The Year in Books

To recap my 2024 of reading, I need to first reflect on the past. 

Reflections on the Past 

When I was younger, still in my 20s and before I had any children, reading was my passion. I purchased many books, read frequently, and started my first blog, Page Turners. Page Turners was like my first baby. I poured all my energy into designing it, publishing reviews, building a following, and participating in the book blogger community. My highlight was being interviewed on the ABC Book Show about my review of The Timeless Land by Eleanor Dark. 

But then, in 2012, I had my first child, and everything changed. At first, sheer exhaustion prevented me from reading and blogging. But inevitably, my priorities shifted as I entered a new phase of life. Suddenly, my passion was parenting one, and later two, young children. I had to manage family life while working full-time. We moved homes, helped our children through day care, preschool, and primary school, and now my eldest is on the cusp of starting high school. 

Over that time, we lost several loved ones, travelled, and lived through a pandemic along with the rest of the world. During that phase of my life, my reading suffered. I still read books, but far fewer than before. Often, I re-read books, which I found easier to dip in and out of whenever I found the time and inclination to read. 

Reflections on the Present 

That brings us to 2024. Finally, the stars seemed to align. I started a new professional role that was far less stressful than any of my previous roles. This left me with more mental space and, literally, more time to pick up my reading habit again. I was also inspired by a colleague who is a voracious reader. I had already read a little more than usual in 2023, but everything seemed to click in 2024 when I finally found the time and inspiration to start reading again. 

Another piece that clicked into place was finding Page Turners again. I had thought I lost it due to some issues with the web address I had purchased in 2010. But through sheer luck, I found all my posts from 2009 to 2015 sitting in the back end of Blogger, waiting to be explored. While I wasn’t sure I was ready to start blogging again, I knew I didn’t want to risk losing all my work, so in 2024, I made it a labour of love to transfer all of Page Turners posts into this new blog, Aidanvale, named after my home and representing a new phase for me. 

The Books of 2024 

Now that we have covered the context of 2024, it’s time to reflect on the books themselves. I read 41 books in total. Perhaps not the biggest number compared to how many books I used to read, but quite an achievement for me in my current phase of life. I still re-read seven books—old favourites that I have read many times in the past and will continue to re-read in the future.

If you were to try any of those, I would recommend reading the Barforth Trilogy by Brenda Jagger, historical fiction that explores the experiences of women through three generations. Seventeen books were written by Australian authors, something I deliberately tried to prioritize. Most of these were from the Rowland Sinclair series by Sulari Gentill. I highly recommend this series to anyone who is a fan of Agatha Christie, Kerry Greenwood, or Richard Osman. There’s nothing like some cozy detective fiction. I hope they adapt this series into a television show. 

My Favourites of the Year 

To be honest, none of the books I read in 2024 would go straight to my “favourites of all time” list. However, as evidenced by the fact that I finished the entire series in 2024, the Rowland Sinclair series was definitely a favourite. Other favourites include: 

Devotion by Hannah Kent: Kent’s writing transports you. It offers a sensory experience of the natural world and the emotional lives of the characters. In this case, it explores the love story between two young women who are transported across the world to start new lives. 

March by Geraldine Brooks: This novel is written from the perspective of the father in Louisa May Alcott’s March family while he is away from his family, fighting in the Civil War. It is a dark yet emotional tale of a love that cannot be. 

The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes by Suzanne Collins: This is the origin story of President Snow as he begins his ascent from poverty to the presidency. I’ve always loved The Hunger Games and how Collins explores human responses to social, political, and personal circumstances. 

Most Overrated 

Lastly, the most overrated book I read in 2024 was Butter by Asako Yuzuki. This was based on the true story of a Japanese female serial killer. I believe the author had grand plans to convey a message about how women are treated in Japanese culture, particularly regarding body image, but it fell flat for me. The pacing was inconsistent, and the story took too many odd tangents. I had read a lot of positive reviews before picking it up, but ultimately, it didn’t live up to my expectations.

Review: The Suspicions of Mr Whicher by Kate Summerscale, the real-life inspiration for detective fiction

"Since Whicher was sure that the murderer was an inmate of the house, all his suspects were still at the scene. This was the original country-house murder mystery, a case in which the investigator had to find not a person but a person's hidden self. It was pure whodunnit, a contest of intelligence and nerve between the detective and the killer. Here were the twelve. One was the victim. Which was the traitor?"

~ Quote from The Suspicions of Mr Whicher by Kate Summerscale

For a non-fiction book, Kate Summerscale's The Suspicions of Mr Whicher has many different, but equally interesting layers to it.

Firstly, The Suspicions of Mr Whicher provides detailed insight into the development of the profession of police detective. The book centres around one of the first murder investigations in 19th century Victorian England to significantly capture the public's attention - what is known as the murder at Road Hill House. One morning on a day in 1860, the inhabitants of Road Hill House, the Kent family, awake to find that young Saville Kent, aged 3, had been taken from his nursery during the night only to be found in the outdoor bathroom, brutally murdered.

What follows is an account of the investigation and resolution of that crime by Detective Jack Whicher. Detective Whicher was one of the original 8 Scotland Yard detectives. Whicher used his controversial methods to dig deep into the secrets of the Kent family and in doing so threatened many Victorian values and norms that were held dear by the population.

This is another layer of The Suspicions of Mr Whicher - the examination of Victorian society through this singular case study of the murder at Road Hill House. Summerscale explores the roles of things such as family, privacy, gender roles and class distinction in the lives of the people of 19th century England, as they were reflected in the media coverage and popular opinion of this singular murder.

Finally, and most interestingly, in The Suspicions of Mr Whicher, Summerscale goes so far as to claim that this murder and Jack Whicher's investigation of it had a significant influence upon the development of detective fiction as its own unique genre. Summerscale claims that prior to this public murder, detective fiction only took the form of short stories but that after the public attention it received, detective fiction began to evolve into longer pieces of fictions. She argues that the case had a profound effect on authors such as Wilkie Collins, Henry James and Charles Dickens and that the influence of Mr Whicher's personal characteristics and investigation methods can be seen in fiction from the 19th century to the present.

So, in The Suspicions of Mr Whicher, Summerscale sets out to achieve a lot and I would say that she is largely successful. I certainly found for arguments about the effect the murders at Road Hill House had on detective fiction the most interesting aspect of the book. Sadly, the tension surrounding the actual murder itself wasn't maintained throughout the entire book and I found my attention wavering from about two thirds of the way into the book. It may have been more effective in achieving its aims if it has been a little shorter and more directed.

Although it is essentially a book focused on a single murder in Victorian England, by looking at this murder in such depth Summerscale is able to bring so much more of interest to the attention of her reader, and I admire her for that.

5.5 / 8

Enjoyable, and worth reading if you have the opportunity.

I did a brief post about this around a month or two ago and a lot of people had read the book and enjoyed it. I would love to know how people feel about Summerscale's opinion on the role that this single murder played on the development of detective fiction as a genre. If you have read the book, do you think that she has over-estimated the role it played, or were you convinced by her arguments?

Originally posted 30 October 2011

Review: Dune by Frank Herbert

I have always wanted to read Dune. I have a weakness for good old fashioned science fiction, and I had recently read some Asimov books that I had really enjoyed. I also remember as a child listening to my father talking about how much he enjoyed reading Dune.

So, when it came time to choose my next book I thought that the time had finally come for me to pick it up and give it a read.

Dune is a difficult book to summarise but I will do my best.

The story is full of political intrigue. The Atreides family are awarded a lucrative contact mining the planet Arrakis for melange, a drug that also happens to be the most valuable resource in the universe. The contract had previously been held by the Harkonnes family who also happen to be Atreides family enemies.

With the support of the Imperial Majesty, the Harkonnes rebel against the loss of their valuable contract. Duke Leto Atreides is killed and his concubine Jessica and their son Paul escape into the dessert on the planet Arrakis where they are supported by the native population called Fremen.

The Fremans see Paul as someone sprung out of a legend. Paul takes on the mantle he was destined to wear, that of Muad- Dib, essentially the Messiah of the Fremans. His goal is to take back Arrakis from the Harkonnes and turn it into an ecologically sustainable planet.  In the end he gets even more.

Sigh.

I was really ready to enjoy this book and maybe that was the problem.

It had the makings of a great book.

The story is epic. It is set in a future imperial space empire. The planet is populated by giant worms that consume everything in their path. There is political intrigue. There is romance. There is love.

And yet…. I don’t know.

I just got lost. The books focus seems to lean toward philosophy and religion. It takes itself very seriously. So seriously in fact that I think the story just got lost in amoungst all the religious and philosophical rhetoric. By the end of the book I didn’t really understand Paul’s motivations. I didn’t enjoy reading all of Jessica’s inner reflections. I had lost sight of what everyone was trying to achieve in amoungst all their ponderings and discussions and…… snore.

I might be out on a limb. I know a lot of people love this book and I have obviously missed something. I even wish that I could think of something more interesting to say about it. There are probably some significant themes in the books that I could identify (Climate change? Cultural respect?) I just can’t really even bring myself to think about it that much.

I am glad that I finally read it, I can honestly say that. I only wish that the story had grabbed my interest a little more. 

 4 / 8 stars

Alright, but I wouldn't recommend it.

Originally posted 25 June 2015 Page Turners

Review: The Children Act by Ian McEwan

I’ll bet a lot of reviews about Ian McEwan novels start out like this but there is no getting away from it. Ian McEwan is polarising. 

Yes, there are readers who will either love his books or loathe them. 

A more common phenomenon, I think, is that there are readers out there who love some of his books and loathe others. I am certainly in that latter camp. Atonement took me many attempts and a long time to get into it but when I did I loved it. The same could be said for Enduring Love. Saturday and Solar, on the hand, I have never been able to finish, no matter how many times I have started them.

So, it was with great trepidation when I started reading Ian McEwan’s latest book, The Children Act. 

What it had going for it from my point of view was the subject matter. The protagonist of this short novel is Family Court Judge Fiona Maye. Fiona is a woman who has made many sacrifices to reach what is now the pinnacle of her career as a well-respected Family Court Judge. 

The reader is introduced to Fiona as she faces a crisis in both her professional and personal life. Professionally, she is facing one of the most personally challenging matters of her career. Adam Henry is a spirited and intelligent 17-year-old boy who suffers from Leukaemia. He is also of the Jehovah’s Witness faith. Without a blood transfusion Adam is sure to die and yet his parents are refusing to consent to the lifesaving treatment on the basis of their religion. Although Adam is not yet of an age at which he is considered at law to be mature enough to make such a decision, he supports that of his parents. The Hospital brings a case before the Family Court seeking authority to perform the blood transfusion and it falls on Fiona to decide what is in the best interests of young Adam.

In the meantime, Fiona’s marriage of 30 years is falling apart. The book opens with a personal scene in which Fiona’s academic husband is asking for her permission to conduct an extra-marital affair. He feels that there is widening rift between them that Fiona won’t accept or deal with and he thinks that the best way for them to deal with this rift and still maintain their marriage is for him to be honest about his desire for infidelity. Fiona, although willing to accept to a certain degree her culpability in this rift between them, is offended by his suggestion and her marriage seems on the brink of collapse.

I loved so many things about this book.

The story felt so real and authentic. I believe that this can largely be put down to the quality of the writing. Just thinking of the opening scene of the book I feel as though I can picture every inch of the room that they are sitting in. The chaise lounge, the piano, even the soft lushness of the carpet upon which they “pad”. McEwan crafts everything so beautifully with just words.

What also lends the story that air of authenticity and reality are the lengths that McEwan has obviously gone to research the family law, the family law courts and the roles of the various parties to the legal disputes that come before the courts. I am not a Judge by a long shot, but I am a solicitor and have worked in domestic family law and I am currently working as an international family lawyer.  

I have spent a lot of time in court rooms, sitting at the bar table in front of the Judge and making my own submissions and I could feel myself there again reading this book.

When I read Fiona going about her daily life I felt as though I was though I was having a glimpse of what goes on on the other side of the Bench. More specifically, I appreciated the way in which McEwan portrayed a Family Court Judge who finds herself in the shoes of those that she regularly passes judgement on. It is her professional role to be objective. She needs to be able to objectively view both sides of the family law dispute, apply the law and pass judgement, all the time keeping her personal views and opinions to herself.

Juxtaposed to this is her own failing marriage in which she is forgivably unable to be anything close to objective about. Fiona is able to recognise that professionally she would advise against and think poorly of certain actions that she herself takes in response to her husband’s request for fidelity.

Fiona is able to recognise that some of her husband’s criticisms or (if we are going to be kinder) observations of her recent behaviour may be true and that she may have some level of culpability in the rift that has formed in their marriage, she is still too angry to be able to really sit down and reflect on her marriage in any way that might be close to being considered objective.

In many ways, Fiona acts against her own self-interest and I think that in a way this is a theme of The Children Act.

Her husband too, acts against his own self-interest. He declares that he still loves Fiona and that he wants their relationship to work and in the same breath suggests that the only way forward is for him to conduct an affair with another woman, sanctioned by Fiona. He is able to justify this to himself of course but one can’t help but wonder at his naivety. On a slight side note, this one aspect of the story instigated some lively debate between my husband and I about fidelity inside marriages and whether or not he had the right approach in requesting permission to have an affair. Fiona and her husband hadn’t had sex for 7 weeks, which seems to be one of the driving forces behind her husband’s desire to commence a relationship with another woman.  7 weeks seemed a little too soon to me to be running off into the arms of another woman.

Even Adam, the young man who wishes to refuse the lifesaving blood transfusion has his own reasons for acting in a way that seems to totally against his self-interest. He doesn’t want to die but he think that it is the right to do according to God’s law. In this storyline, McEwan deals superbly with the moral, ethical and legal issues raised in this scenario. As a family lawyer I really found McEwan’s portrayal of legal intervention in these religious issues interesting. I also did my Honours Thesis on the rights of the child in relation to consent to medical treatment so from that point of view it was also really interesting to see how the fine line between personal autonomy and the law was dealt with in The Children Act.

Everything about this book seemed nuanced, from the characters to the various themes throughout the book and I can’t help but admire how deftly McEwan achieved all of this in such a short novel.  

6 / 8 stars

Really enjoyable and well written. I would recommend it.

I would love to know what you though of this book? Was there a particular story line that caught your attention over the other one?

Originally posted 16 June 2016 Page Turners

How do you choose what to read next?

It's one of the problems of being a book hoarder - how do you choose which book to read next?

I haven't been reading much lately. What I have been reading definitely hasn't been anything taxing.

I think I've read about a quarter of Agatha Christie's bibliography, and I've read the Harry Potter and Twilight series at least times each. I'm expecting baby number 2 and so between the morning sickness, work and looking after my toddler those books have been just about all I can manage.

 Now that I'm starting to feel more like myself, I've started to read a little more widely. A little while ago I read An Atlas of Impossible Longing by Anuradha Roy. More recently I re-read The Book Thief by Markus Zusak (oh my goodness, how amazing is that book!).

I am currently halfway through The Children Act by Ian McEwan. I have a love-hate relationship with Ian McEwan. Some of his books I love. Some of them, I don't love at all. I must say that, so far, I am really enjoying The Children Act. It is well written, easy to read, and I feel very drawn to the protagonist, a Family Court Judge. It helps that I am currently working in a very specific area of international family law, so its content is spot on the sort of issues I have to consider at work on occasion. I feel like I am actually having an insight into what it is like being a Judge. Soon, though, it will be finished.

So here is the question - what do I read next?

My bookcase, circa 1898.

I have shelves and shelves of books. There are a lot of books on those shelves that I haven't read yet. I look and look at the shelves.

Sometimes I pull down a book and start reading it. Usually, though it doesn't grab my attention, and it ends up back on the shelf while I aimlessly continue to peruse in the hopes of finding something that grabs my attention and keeps it.

Just tonight I pulled down The English Patient and Song of Solomon. No luck. Neither of those are my next read. I am clearly not someone who plans ahead with their reading. Not usually anyway. Right now, though, for whatever reason, I am struggling to choose books.

So many books. So little idea what to read next.

How do you decide what to read next?

Originally posted 1 April 2015 Page Turners

Review: The Casual Vacancy by JK Rowling

Here I am after another long absence. In that long absence, amoungst changing nappies and giving baths, I have managed to do some reading.

A couple of months ago I read JK Rowling's The Casual Vacancy. As a big Harry Potter fan, I was curious to see what else she could produce and whether it would live up to the expectations I held after her previous success.  

Sadly, for me, it didn't. Whilst I can intellectually see what Rowling was trying to achieve, the narrative pace was just too slow for me. I was reading the book because I had to read the book, and it felt like pulling teeth. Until the end, that is, when all of a sudden, I found that I had been hooked and couldn't put it down until I had finished it. Did that end make up for the first 3/4 of the book that was as dull as staring at a brick wall? Not for me.

The story is based around the small town of Pagford in rural England. When one of the members of the Parish Council, Barry Fairbrother, passes away local politics becomes nasty as a local election is called to see who will take the position. Factions form according to whether candidates are supporters of or detractors from the local housing estate "The Fields".

We see this drama unfold through the eyes of a host characters from a range of ages, backgrounds and political views. There is Krystal, a young girl being raised by a drug addict mother in The Fields, trying to keep her family together. Tessa, the school counsellor who has to act as a barrier between her teenage son and her husband, also the Principal of the local High School. Parminder Jawanda, a local doctor who sits on the Parish Council, supports The Fields and is in love with Barry Fairbrother.

That is only to name three of the many characters JK Rowling has filled her book with. I found that with so many characters, the bulk of the first half of the book was spent just introducing them and it became very difficult to remember who everyone was and how they were all related to each other. This distracted from what else might have been going on in the early parts of the story, although to be fair from I could detect it wasn't much.

I read The Casual Vacancy as part of an online book club that I participate in and everyone seemed to have a similar response to the book as I did.

Everyone found that they had to push their way through most of the book and most people found that their attention was finally hooked toward the end of the book when all the threads of the story came together for the final tragedy.

It wasn't until we all started discussing the book, however, that I really began to appreciate just how much JK Rowling had managed to cover in The Casual Vacancy. She dealt with so many social, economic and moral issues of relevance to everyone in a first world country that it made it even more of a shame that the book was so uninteresting. I say this because the more that we discussed the book, the more issues we discovered that the book had got us thinking about; issues such as social services, housing, drug and alcohol rehabilitation, parenting and relationships.

So, I propose to do something a little different for the review of The Casual Vacancy by JK Rowling. I am going to post some of the discussions we had a book club, to give you some idea of how we collectively responded to the story. 

Where there are spoilers, it will of course be identified, and I will be changing some things to protect my friend's privacy. 

I understand that for a lot of people these discussions will not be relevant unless you have read The Casual Vacancy yourself and for that I apologise. I hope that this short review will suffice for now to indicate what my thoughts about the book are. 

 4 / 8

Alright, but I wouldn't recommend it.

Originally posted 1 March 2013 Page Turners 

Review: Blind Faith by Ben Elton

He worked in the DegSep Division of NatDat. DegSep was short for Degrees of Separation and it existed in order to establish and catalogue the connections (no matter how tenuous) between every single person, every other person and every single thing that happened. 

~Blind Faith by Ben Elton

The "he" referred to here is Trafford, the protagonist of this comic dystopian novel. Blind Faith is set in a future where the world as we know it has been wiped out by a disastrous flood brought on by mankind's carelessness toward the environment. In its place is a world ravaged by plagues, where only 50% of children survive past their 5th birthday and vaccinations are illegal because they contravene God's Will.

In fact, there is now a single world religion in which the entire population participates with blind faith. In this religion, people are told that they are the embodiment of God and that to respect God they must worship themselves. Privacy is seen as a perversion and everything one does is recorded and shared with everyone else via all forms of social media. People must blog daily and place footage of everything from childbirth to sex to shaving their bikini line on You Tube for everyone else watch. This is a world where it is sinful for women to have natural breasts, g-strings are every day dress and McDonalds is the fanciest restaurant around.

Trafford, a conservative man who wears shorts as long as half way down his thigh, secretly despises the world in which he lives and desires the ability to reason for himself. Blind Faith is the story of Trafford's attempt to reason for himself and share his knowledge with the rest of the population.

Blind Faith is essentially a warning. Firstly, it is a warning against the dangers of climate change. In this future, the earth has been abused to such an extent that is has responded with a devastating flood, that has killed a significant proportion of the world's population, changed the geography of the planet and bought with it ravaging diseases.

Secondly, and what struck a nerve with me, it is a warning against what might come as a result of the increasing fascination with sharing our lives and thoughts via social media (blogging for example!). Elton creates a world where people have become so engrossed with themselves and sharing every minute of their lives that they have come to see themselves as the embodiment of God on earth and therefore deserving of the worship of others.

As I was reading the book, I couldn't help but wonder whether or not this was too much of a leap, a little too unbelievable. I can see the dangers of social media. I don't use twitter, and I don't use Facebook. I don't have an interest in sharing every little thing with every other person who pretends an interest (or even has a real one). If there's something I want to share with someone, I would hope that I could be close enough to that person to share it with them in a more personal way. Yet I found myself wondering as I read the book whether mankind would really take it so far? Scarily though, the more I think about it the more I wonder if it isn't a possibility we should give some thought to. The book has made me wonder why it is that we want to share so many details of our lives in such a public way and what effect this could have on our collective psyche. Already in places like America they allow video cameras in the court room and televise trials. In Australia we see footage on the news of videos people have taken on their mobile phone of incidents they've witnessed where their first response is to pull out their mobile and film it rather than just experiences it or assist in any way. 

I was forcibly reminded of Blind Faith a couple of week ago at the football, when below me in the crowd I witnessed a fight and almost the entire stand around them stand up and pull out their mobile phones to film the fight as if it was entertainment they would laugh over with friends later that night. Could it be that sharing so much about ourselves makes us feel more important than perhaps we should feel? Might we become suspicious of those that don't share their thoughts and actions with others via social media? How far could this go? I don't know the answers to these questions, but Blind Faith certainly raises many of these questions in the reader's mind.

Although some of this might sound serious, Blind Faith is really a comedy. The world of the future is outrageous. Every time I read some newly uncovered aspect this this future world, like Trafford's conservative shorts that reach halfway down his thighs, I found that I had to share it with my partner so that I had someone to laugh with. This outrageousness is, I think, Blind Faith's biggest strength.

Its biggest weakness for me, however, was the way in which Elton delivered his messages. Elton had a definite agenda he wanted to address in relation to the dangers of social media and climate change and as I read the book I felt as though I was being hit over the head with it so to speak. Although it was a funny book, I can think of other works of dystopian fiction dealing with the same issues in a more subtle way.

So, I enjoyed Blind Faith. In fact, the more I think about it, the more I can see that I have got something out of reading it. It's funny and outrageous, although in the end I think that this distracts somewhat from the book's message.

5 / 8 stars

Good and worth reading if you have the opportunity, but there's no need to prioritise it.

Have you ever given any serious thought to the danger that social media might pose to our world in the distant future? How do you think that blogging might contribute to this, if at all?

Originally posted 8 January 2013 Page Turners

Review: The Twelve by Justin Cronin

One of the things I was looking forward to most this year was the release of The Twelve by Justin Cronin. It was worth the wait. I couldn't put it down.

The Twelve felt very different to The Passage. It felt to me to be more of a thriller than a piece of paranormal speculative fiction (or whatever else you might classify it as).

Also, where The Passage seemed to deal more with the experience of the individuals in the aftermath of the virus, The Twelve dealt more with the state of the nation following the release of the virus. We see people spread across the country living in different outposts, attempting to establish themselves in a manner they can sustain in the face of the adversity they now face.

Where some of those new cities are facing their challenges with respect for the human race, there is another city being established and controlled by the 'red-eyes' where this is not the case. The Homeland, as it is called, is run by people who have infected themselves with the virus but have not flipped, and they see themselves controlling the world in conjunction with the virals. In this way, an interesting question is raised in The Twelve: how can the virals sustain themselves when they have almost eaten their entire food source? It's a question I am surprised I never really considered while I was reading The Passage. In The Twelve we see one solution imagined by humans who are willing to betray their own race.

The characters I came to know in The Passage had all gone in their separate directions, and yet I still felt attached to them all. I was invested in their lives and read with bated breath to see what had become of them now.

I do have to say I was rather frustrated that there was so much about The Twelve that I didn't understand.

*SPOILER ALERT* Why didn't the red-eyes flip? Why was Lucius Greer so attached to Amy, was he her familiar? What is this ship they were talking about? How was it that Amy came to be talking to Carter, as if in real life? How is it that Wolgast came back into the story as a viral? Why didn't Alicia flip and who is talking to her at the end of the story? My questions could go on and on. *END SPOILER*

I hope very much that these questions are answered in the third book. If not, I am going to need someone a lot smarter than me to explain it all to me. 

Ultimately, the pace was fast, and I couldn't stop reading. If I were to be honest with myself, I think that a big part of why I couldn't put it down was my commitment to The Passage rather than the contents of this book, but I still loved every minute of it.

7 / 8 

Brilliant, couldn't put it down. Recommend that you buy it. 

So, who else has read The Twelve yet? I am dying to hear what you thought of it after all the anticipation. Were you as confused about a lot of what happened as I was?

Originally posted 30 November 2012

Review: Earthly Delights by Kerry Greenwood (Australian)

Kerry Greenwood's Earthly Delights was an easy and enjoyable read.

Earthly Delights is a detective story. The protagonist Corinna Chapman is a straightforward woman who runs her own successful bakery. Like a lot of detective stories, there are a series of mysteries to be solved. Who is the stalker who is threatening all the owners of Corinna's unit block? Is Corinna's new bloke Daniel more than he seems? Why has a junkie ended up dead in Corinna's back yard?

Whilst I can tell you the main mysteries that Corinna was faced with in Earthly Delights, I must admit that for me, months later, the plot is pretty forgettable.

Perhaps some of the plot was lost in amoungst the larger-than-life characters. In Earthly Delights we have a baker, a dominatrix, a Wiccan, a professor, an old married couple, a social worker helping the homeless, computer geeks and stupid young girls. Although this provided great variety, it still struck me as a bit too far-fetched that you find so many unusual individuals all living within a stone's throw of each other and all being involved in one way or another with each other. What else struck me about the characters is that even though each appeared so unique on the surface, somehow or other they all feel so cliched. I felt like I could just tick of the cliches as I went, the hippy witch, the Gen Y girls obsessed with their phones and clothes, the handsome do gooder and so on and so forth.

What I appreciated even less than the cliched characters... were the cats. Corinna Chapman is a cat person. And I am not. I heard far too much about her 3(?) cats and what they got up to.

What I did appreciate was that Greenwood was certainly trying to make a point about drug use and homelessness in Australian society, and how people who live with these issues are viewed by the broader population. As someone who works with people like this, I could identify to a certain extent with the way in which those people were portrayed. Greenwood was able to make her point that sometimes people fall into situations that they can't get themselves out of, and sometimes (only sometimes mind you) some help and compassion can help those people make some positive change in their lives.

Earthly Delights is a harmless and enjoyable read. Fun read... but nothing special. I suppose it didn't help that I read it straight after having read The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency by Alexander McCall Smith. They were, despite their different settings, similar in terms of having a strong female protagonist with a variety of mysteries to solve, and her own personal history to come to terms with. And yet The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency delivered this in a unique manner without any cliches. And, at heart, I am still a Phryne Fisher girl when it comes to Kerry Greenwood.

5.5 / 8

Enjoyable. I would recommend it if you are looking for an easy read to fill some time. 

Do you ever feel that your feelings about a certain book is affected by the book you read before it?

  I would be interested to hear when it has happened to you and how you felt the book effected your reading of the following one. 

Originally posted 20 November 2012

Review: 11/22/63 by Stephen King

Reading 11/22/63 by Stephen King was going to be my first time reading a Stephen King novel and I was very excited about it. 

School teacher Jake is approached by a local cafe owner who has discovered a portal to the past. Jake's mission is simple, to go back in time and prevent the assassination of JFK. There will obviously be a butterfly effect from these actions, something that Jake is always aware of as he sets out to change history.

I liked that the writing was straightforward and created a real sense of place. I also liked the idea behind the story, how single events can shape the course of history. My only reservation was that King seemed slightly... corny at times.

Having said that, I only read half the book. This wasn't because I found the book boring or difficult. I enjoyed it. Sadly, it was just a little too long for me to read at the moment. I got to halfway through, and although I wanted to keep reading it, I could tell it would take me till Christmas time to get it finished with a 6-month-old baby to look after. So, I have left it to finish off another time when I give it the attention it deserves. 

Originally posted 17 September 2012 Page Turners

A few months in the life of baby Page Turners

Here he is, Baby Page Turners aka Rafael and... can you believe it he is almost 7 months old. 

He is the most adorable thing that there ever was. Although I sometimes find his a little frustrating (go the eff to sleep) every single moment is worth it.

This is a photo of him in his cot. We haven't transitioned him from our bedroom yet, but hopefully I will be ready to let him sleep in his big boy bed soon. No crawling yet, but he's giving it his best shot.

His favourite books are The Very Hungry Caterpillar and Where is the Green Sheep?

I have been doing a lot of re-reading simply because I find it isn't too challenging to my fuzzy baby brain. I have fit a few new books in there though. Now, I just need to find more time to actually get on the computer.

Originally posted 17 September 2012 Page Turners

Review: Salvage the Bones by Jesmyn Ward

*Does contain some spoilers, sorry, it was unavoidable given the nature of the story and in order to properly convey my thoughts*

I hope it's not too corny to say that I experienced a hurricane of emotions whilst reading Jesmyn Ward's novel Salvage the Bones. 

In Salvage the Bones Ward provides the reader with a snapshot of family life in a poverty-stricken area of New Orleans in the twelve days leading up to and including Hurricane Katrina.

The protagonist, a young teenage girl named Esch, and her three brothers are being raised by her alcoholic father in their run-down house. Her father doesn't work and sometimes is abusive towards her brothers. There's little money for necessities such as food. Instead, they live off the land as much as they can and hope that they can make money off the litter of pure-bred pit-bull terriers one of her older brothers is raising. Significantly to the story, at age fourteen, Esch finds herself pregnant. 

The picture Ward paints is a bleak one, and at times I found it to be quite an assault on the emotions.

At other times however, particularly in the middle of the book, I found that the story moved a little too slowly for my liking. The book is primarily an account of the daily activities of the family. So much of their time in the days leading up Hurrican Katrina was dedicated to raising the pit bull terrier pups they hoped to sell, and as someone not particularly interested in dog rearing my attention wandered. 

Just as I was really hoping for something more interesting to happen, Hurricane Katrina hit. From this point in the story the pace became fast, and the tension kept mounting and mounting as the water climbed and the storm raged on. I was reading so fast to match the pace of the events that sometimes I lost track of where I was on the page.

So, although some of the book I found to be quite slow, in the end I think that Ward effectively used the contrast in the pace of the book as a technique to really show the calm before the storm. Just as life for the real victims of Hurricane Katrina continued as usual in the days leading up to the hurricane, with all the mundaneness of daily life, so did the lives of Esch and her family, that is, until the hurricane hit and wiped everything out.

I didn't feel that Ward was too melodramatic about the damage caused by the hurricane. She presents it very calmly:

"We reach the end of the road. Here the hurricane has ripped even the road that rimmed the beach away in chunchs so there are red clay and oyster shell cliffs. The gas station, the yacht club, and all the white columned homes that faced the beach, that made us feel small and dirty and poorer than ever when we came here with daddy, piled in his truck, for gas or chips or bait on our swimming days, are gone. The hurricane as left a few steel beams, which stick up like stray hairs, from concrete foundations. There are rivers running down the highway that lines the beach. A man with white hair and an open button-down shirt is sitting on the arm of the sofa, and he is holding his head or he is rubbing his eyes or he is smoothing his hair or he is crying, and a dog, orange and large in the sun, is sniffing around him in circles, and then it is running and it is barking excitedly at what it has found. A closed black casket."

I think it's important to note that although the book does describe the devastation following the hurricane, it doesn't address any of the political fallout that occurred following the hurricane. For me, the only hint of dissatisfaction with the way in which the Government handled the crisis was in the way in which Ward portrays the automatic phone calls asking residents to evacuate, which were too little too late. 

Instead, Salvage the Bones, focuses on the characters. 

Ward creates a real sense of wildness and need around Esch and her family. She created this by slowly revealing little details that really demonstrated the level of poverty they lived in. Bit by bit we see the dirty sheets, the lack of food, the condemned house. Ward reveals how the children had to raise their younger brother when their mother dies in childbirth. Esch is fourteen years old and has been sexually active since she was twelve for the sake of, by her own admission, some loving affection from other people that she doesn't feel at home. For me, the most poignant moment in the book (which nearly bought me to tears) was when Esch's father apologised to her on discovering that she is going to be a mother.

Yet I rarely felt pity for them because they never felt pity for themselves. Each of them has hope. They accept their reality without letting it depress them and they make the best of their lives with what they can.

All of the characters are salvaging something. Skeetah, one of Esch's brothers, salvages anything he can for the sake of his dogs; wormer, food, planks of wood. In doing so Skeetah is really attempting to salvage his sense of purpose. They all salvage items from their property in order to prepare for the hurricane, just as everyone who was affected by the hurricane must salvage what they can of their lives. For Junior, one of Esch's brothers, it is memories of his mother that he attempts to salvage throughout the novel.

Motherhood is certainly a recurring theme in Salvage the Bones. Everyone is Esch's family remembers their mother with love. Esch's father is clearly a man devastated by the loss of his wife and the mother of his children. Esch, on the cusp of becoming a mother herself, reflects on the good that her mother did and the big shoes that she and her brothers had to fill when her mother passed away. Ward takes time to show Skeetah's dog China's attempts to be a mother to her new pups, and Skeetah's attempt to take on this roll when China and the pups need him to.

This is all occurring against the backdrop of mother nature, who is impartial to the lives of the people of New Orleans:

"I will tie the glass and stone with string, hang the shards above my bed, so that they will flash in the dark and tell the story of Katrina, the mother that swept into the Gulf and slaughtered. Her chariot was storm so great and black the Greeks would say it was harnessed to dragons. She was the murderous mother who cut is to the bone but left us alive, left us naked and bewildered as wrinkled newborn babies, as blind puppies, as sun starved newly hatched baby snakes. She left us a dark Gulf and salt-burned land. She left us to learn to crawl. She left us to salvage. Katrina is the mother we will remember until the next mother with large, merciless hands, committed to blood, comes." 

Salvage the Bones is a poignant book about family, love and survival. I would recommend it to anyone.

6 / 8 stars

Really enjoyable and well written. I would recommend it.

If you have read Salvage the Bones, I would like to know if your interest waned in the middle of the book, only to be reignited when the Hurricane hit? 

Also, I have read that Jesmyn Ward was criticised for not dealing sufficiently with the political aspects of Hurricane Katrina, that is (I believe), criticism of the Government's response to the disaster. Do you think that she should have given this issue a larger role in the book?

Originally posted 9 July 2012 Page Turners

4 month update of my little man

Here he is, my beautiful baby boy, now 4 months old and enjoying his first coffee. It is perhaps the most wonderful thing in the world being a parent, and at the same time very challenging. I love every minute of it though. 

I am finally starting to read a little more and... shock horror!!! I have actually written a couple of reviews. I've also been spending a little more time reading your posts and I hope to read even more. 

So thanks for hanging around and I hope that everyone is well and happy in their lives. I'm just discovering how wonderful life really can be and I hope everyone else is just as happy as I am :-)

Final thoughts - a cheeky grin from my cheeky little man.

Review: Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins

In Mockingjay, the final instalment of the Hunger Games trilogy, Collins gives us full scale revolution of the Districts of Panem against the Capitol.

Katniss plays an integral role in the revolution, although at first she is not convinced that she wants or is even able to take on this role. She soon realises, however, that her needs are not as great as those of Panem and she takes to her role wholeheartedly. Although the love triangle between Katniss, Gale and Peeta is still explored in Mockingjay, it is the themes of oppression and revolution that play a primary role,

I found the plot in Mockingjay more... messy (for want of a better word) than the plots of The Hunger Games and Catching Fire. It felt a little as though Collins was trying to fit so many parts of the story into the final book that it became a little chaotic.

Having said that, I so admired the way in which Collins portrayed the revolutionary forces and the Capitol that a little chaos in the plot was soon forgotten.

In Mockingjay, Collins doesn't give us a black and white world. The Capitol is not portrayed as always being in the wrong, just as the revolutionary forces are not portrayed as always being in the right. Both the Capitol and the revolutionary forces use the same media indoctrination techniques as each other to takes their messages to the masses. The revolutionary forces create short video clips, essentially advertisements for the revolution, which they broadcast throughout the country.  To do this, the revolutionary forces send camera crews into real battles, people are dressed in dramatic costumes for effect and great thought is given to setting up 'scenes' that best suit the video clips they are creating. These clips are often as manipulative as the Hunger Games themselves were. In fact, the leaders of the revolutionary forces are shown in the end to be just as power hungry as the leaders in the Capitol.

It is clear in Mockingjay that the desire for power can corrupt the best of people who have the best of intentions, regardless of which side of a conflict they are on, and in showing the extremes that the Capitol and the revolutionary forces are willing to go to in order to manipulate and even harm the populace in the name of their cause, Collins gives the conflict a sense of reality.

I did find that Mockingjay was a little slow to get started, and perhaps a little repetitive in the early stages while Katniss was deciding whether she was willing and able to play the part in the revolution that people wished her play. I also thought that Katniss's journey to the Capitol was a little far fetched but then I reminded myself that this was fiction, a YA novel set in a possible future, and so a little bit of implausability could be forgiven.

All the same, there is is something so raw and real about these books that I was unable to put them down. Mockingjay definitely doesn't disappoint as the final instalment in this thrilling trilogy. 

8 / 8

One of the most enjoyable books I have ever read.  Everyone should read it, it is amazing.

What did you think about the final instalment of The Hunger Games trilogy? Did you find it a satisfying end to the story or were you hoping for something different? How realistic did you find Collins portrayal of the social and political revolution that was taking place in Panem? 

Originally posted 1 July 2012 Page Turners

I was on ABC Radio National's 'The Book Club'!!

Here in Australia, we have a national radio station called Radio National. It has a program called Books and Arts Daily, which "is Australia’s only national radio program devoted to all aspects of literature and the arts. It explores the many worlds of performance, writing, music and visual arts".

Every month, Books and Arts Daily has a Book Club, where they feature a different Australian classic novel. 

On 25 May 2012, the book featured was The Timeless Land by Eleanor Dark. The Timeless Land is my grandmother's favourite book. So, in June 2010 I read and reviewed it here at Page Turners. When The Timeless Land was being featured on Books and Arts Daily, I was contacted by the producer to offer some thoughts on my experiences with the book on their monthly book club.

I was very pleased to be given the chance to discuss The Timeless Land on the radio and enjoyed myself very much. 

If anyone is interested in hearing the discussion about this Australian classic and listening to yours truly on the radio (I am 27mins into the program), please have a listen to Book Club: Eleanor Dark's The Timeless Land. 

Originally posted 29 June 2012 Page Turners

Why I am an ereader convert

As the title of this post would suggest - I am an ereader convert. 

I had been reading ebooks for about 3 years on my iPhone. I enjoyed reading in this format because it enabled me to have a book on hand at all times even when I didn't have a book with me. I enjoyed reading on the bus, which I couldn't do with a physical book because of travel sickness. I enjoyed reading while standing in lines. The list goes on.

An iPhone, however, is not an ereader. Reading the ebook on my phone felt different somehow. It was a stop gap. Something I did on occasion to fill my time. It was always an old book I had dowloaded on some random app that I had usually read before and could therefore go some significant period of time between readings without having to worry about losing track of the story line.

Where my ereader differs from reading an ebook on my iPhone is that the ereader actually takes the place of books.

I had been a little... suspicious of ereaders in the past. I love books so much I doubted that an ereader would be the same. You've heard it all before. I like the feel of a book, the smell of a book. How could an ereader possibly be the same?

Fortunately for me I was given the opportunity to find out.

My wonderful partner purchased me an ereader for Christmas last year and I have never looked back.

What I love about the ereader

I live in a 2-bedroom unit. Already I have over 500 books. They are on two bookcases, in one chest and now heading into a third bookcase. My point is, I am space poor.

And yet, within 4 days of being given the ereader I had over 500 new books to read, waiting just at my fingertips. All of them are books I want to read. All of them are books that I couldn't purchase because I don't have the space to keep them anywhere. I could borrow them from the library, but the difference is that here I can access them right away when I need them, without having to reserve them and then return them by a set date (something I fail to do almost every single time).

I don't need to find shelf space for all these wonderful titles and within days I have doubled the number of books I have right at my fingertips.

I also have to admit that I enjoy looking for new books to download. It's like being able to go book shopping any time I want, without having the leave the house. 

Finally, I have to say that with a newborn baby, I spend a large proportion of every 24-hour period (day and night have ceased to have much meaning for me) breastfeeding.  Although I am becoming an expert at doing almost anything one handed, I just haven't managed to learn how to hold a book, turn the pages and breast feed at the same time. An ereader on the other hand doesn't need to be held, it can just be rested in front of me, and I can use a single finger to turn the page with a single swipe across the screen. Perfect.

Can an ereader provide the same reading experience as a book?

I think that most readers are suspicious of the ereader is because they love books. I am one of those people. I have a large collection of books. I love seeing them in my house. I love holding them in my hand. I love the idea that a second hand book has its own story (aside from the story it contains). I love the smell of new books and the feel of their new pages turning. The book itself, as well as the story inside it, has captured my imagination.

I couldn't help but question whether an ereader could give me the same experience.

It can't, but what I have discovered about myself if that no matter how much I like the book itself - it is the story it contains that is what really captures my imagination and speaks to me. Personally, I haven't lost anything of the reading experience by swapping from physical books to the ereader. If an author has produced a piece of work that speaks to me, it speaks to me equally regardless of the medium through which I read it.

I still love a book, don't get me wrong. But what I love most is what it contains. The characters, the setting, the storyline. I can access those regardless of how I read it.

Why I am an ereader convert

So, in short, I am an ereader convert because of the convenience it offers me at this time of life. Also, because it has allowed me to increase my book collection twofold without taking up any extra space in my already crowded unit. If I respond the story, it doesn't matter to me in what form I read it. The physical book doesn't contribute to the story for me. It might contribute to my sensory experience, but ultimately, I am primarily after the story it contains.

The point of this post? Really just to share my own experience. But also, just as a reminder to people to be open minded. We all love books, but sometimes you can be surprised when we try something new. Sometimes we even learn something about ourselves.

Originally posted 9 April 2012 Page Turners

Review: Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins

The Hunger Games largely focused on Katniss, her relationship with Peeta and surviving the Hunger Games. All this of course while also dealing with themes such as individual freedom, oppressive governments, media influence, poverty and social inequality. Catching Fire expands on these latter themes.

The Capitol is not happy with Katniss and Peeta for their show of defiance at the end of the Hunger Games. Uprisings are beginning in some of the Districts, and the Capitol blames this on their act of defiance, which they fear is inspiring other acts of defiance from the Districts. To punish Katniss and warn the people of Panem that defiance will not be tolerated, Katniss and Peeta are again thrown into the Hunger Games, where all of the surviving winners of past games are pitted against one another.

Catching Fire, however, is about more than just the survival of Katniss and Peeta. 

Where Catching Fire really adds to The Hunger Games is the shift from this narrower focus to the broader themes raised by the political situation in Panem; fighting against oppressive governments and bringing hope to the people. In Catching Fire we see the subtle shift in the population – when people stop accepting and start questioning. The government is trying to maintain control of an angry population who have discovered that there’s hope for a better life, as represented by Katniss and her individual act of defiance.

Katniss herself is just as strong and independent a character as she was in The Hunger Games, something I think is hard to come by in YA novels, especially for female characters. The teen angst surrounding her love triangle is still present and is a little teenage for my tastes, but it is a YA novel after all. Nonetheless, Katniss has grown from her experiences in the past. She is more grown up, more cynical and more realistic about the world in which she lives and her role in it. She is strong female character, willing to fight for what she believes in and those that she loves.

Without knowing it, in her final act in the Hunger Games Katniss has come to represent to the people of Panem that spirit of rebelliousness they all feel inside them. In Catching Fire, Katniss becomes swept up in events bigger than herself and bigger even than the Hunger Games and in doing so she begins to question what she can do for the people of Panem.

 8 / 8

One of the best books I have ever read. Everyone should read it - it is totally amazing. I am in love.

Did you think that Catching Fire added to The Hunger Games by building on the themes I mentioned, or do you prefer the love triangle plot between Katniss, Peeta and Gale? 

Originally posted 21 March 2012 Page Turners

Review: The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins

The Hunger Games is an utterly compelling YA Dystopian novel from author Suzanne Collins.

The book is set in the future, when the world has been largely destroyed by an environmental disaster that has changed the face of the planet forever. More specifically, it is set in what used to be North America, now known as Panem, a country of 12 Districts all ruled by The Capitol. The Capitol is an oppressive government, forcing the people of the Districts in poverty while they consume the bulk of what the Districts produce. In punishment for past uprising by the Districts against The Capitol, The Capitol has given the people of Panem the Hunger Games. But what are these Hunger Games?

"The rules of the Hunger Games are simple. In punishment for the uprising, each of the twelve districts must provide one girl and one boy, called tributes, to participate. The twenty-four tributes will be imprisoned in a vast outdoor arena that could hold anything from a burning desert to a frozen wasteland. Over a period of several weeks, the competitors must fight to the death. The last tribute standing wins."

The Hunger Games is a first person narrative, written from the perspective of a teenage girl by the name of Katniss from District 12, the coal mining District. Katniss and her family live in poverty in the Seam, relying on Katniss’s hunting skills to supplement their meagre diet provided by the Capitol. When Katniss’s younger sister Prim is chosen as District 12’s tribute, Katniss steps up to take her place. She is soon joined by a young man by the name of Peeta, someone to whom she and her family owe their lives.

What follows is the story of Katniss and Peeta’s experiences leading up to, during and following the Hunger Games (that’s not a spoiler – this is the first of a trilogy after all!). A large part of the story that follows deals with the love triangle between Katniss, Peeta and Gale, Katniss’s best friend. Both young men are in love with Katniss and Katniss loves both of them in return, but is unable to determine which she has more genuine feelings for. It is this element of the story that is certainly the most teenage part of the book.

Having said that, although The Hunger Games might be marketed to a young adult audience, this is equally a book for adult readers of all types.

One of the things I was most impressed with was the way in which Collins brings to life her characters and emphasises those personal attributes that should be admired. For what is essentially a plot driven YA novel, she did this incredibly well. There were so many different layers to the various characters which meant as a reader I could connect with each of them in different ways. Collins explores loyalty, courage, morals, family, love and much much more.

But where Suzanne Collins really excelled, and what I think adult readers will appreciate the most, are the themes that run through the book. There are so many adult themes that run through this book that I couldn’t possibly hope to deal with them all. These themes include social inequality, poverty and political hype/power. A lot of these were explored through the contrast between the lives and lifestyles of those in the Capitol and the lives and lifestyles of those in the Districts. The decadence of the first and poverty and starvation in the second.

What resonated most for me was Collins exploration of the power of the media and more specifically, the prevalence of reality television, in today’s society. What are the Hunger Games? It is children killing other children, but more than this, it is entertainment for the masses. To win the Hunger Games Katniss has to kill the other children, but she also has to win over the audience as the producers in charge of the television event manipulate their environment, exercising ultimate control over what happens within the arena and to the contestants. They are not children, they are contestants. It isn’t life or death, it’s entertainment. It isn’t manipulation of viewers and contestants alike, it is ‘reality’. People are so desensitised to violence that they can watch these events without blinking and without questioning.

Clearly our current western society doesn’t stoop to such lows, but in reading The Hunger Games you can’t help but reflect on our own reality and the role that the media plays in our lives. To what extent are we manipulated in the way that the populace in The Hunger Games is manipulated? Why do we allow it? Where will it end for us?

All I can really say is that The Hunger Games is so much more than you might expect. I was completely carried away by this book; I couldn’t put it down during the day and I was dreaming about it at night. It’s a little like a young adult version of Orwell’s 1984. Not as well written, not as complex, but just as clever in its use of the future to explore today’s society.

8 / 8

One of the best books I have ever read. Everyone should read it - it is totally amazing. I am in love.

I would love to know if other people enjoyed it as much as I did? Has anyone been avoiding the series because of the hype and do you think that you could possibly rethink your decision?

Originally posted 11 March 2012 Page Turners