"Instructions for living a life: Pay attention. Be astonished. Tell about it." – Mary Oliver

Category: Books

  • August 2024 Books

    August 2024 Books

    It’s nearly the end of November, and I’m just getting around to reviewing the books I read in August. Time Shelter – Georgo Gosdopinov From Goodreads: In Time Shelter, an enigmatic flâneur named Gaustine opens a ‘clinic for the past’ that offers a promising treatment for Alzheimer’s sufferers: each floor reproduces a decade in minute…

  • July 2024 Books

    July 2024 Books

    In August I posted about some of my renewal adjacent reading in July. It’s now almost the end of September, and I’m just now getting round to posting about the rest of July’s books. Better late than never I guess? Fourth Wing – Rebecca Yarros This is a fantasy romance. It’s not that original—love triangle…

  • Renewal Adjacent Reading in July

    Renewal Adjacent Reading in July

    This post includes a lot of prayer and God talk. If that’s not your thing, you might want to skip this. I’m a fair way into my year of renewal and am keen to get more forward movement in the spiritual area of my life. With this in mind, I picked up several books on…

  • June 2024 Books

    June 2024 Books

    The Paris Apartment – Lucy Foley I’m getting in some Paris-themed reading before I head there in September. Lucy travels to Paris to stay with her brother in a fancy apartment block, but when she arrives, he is nowhere to be found. The apartments are occupied by an collection of pretty awful people who all…

  • May 2024 Books

    May 2024 Books

    So it is almost July and I’m just getting round to reviewing the books I read in May. Too Much Lip – Melissa Lucashenko Winner of the 2019 Miles Franklin Award. Kerry Salter, an aboriginal woman, comes home from Queensland to her family in northern NSW on a stolen motorbike, thinking it will be a…

  • Living the sabbath: discovering the rhythms of rest and delight by norman wirzba

    Living the sabbath: discovering the rhythms of rest and delight by norman wirzba

    I normally just do a quick review of the books I read at the end of each month but “Living the Sabbath” had many points of intersection with some of the emphases I wanted my year of renewal to have. So, for my own benefit, I’ve decided to do a more in-depth summary. In this…

  • Good Things Friday

    Good Things Friday

    This week, I had a laze around and eat weekend at Noosa, with lots of good food and good views. G had a solid run in the Noosa half-marathon in preparation for the Gold Coast Marathon in July. He’s nursing an Achilles injury, and we’re hoping it holds up until then so he can get…

  • April 2024 Books

    April 2024 Books

    King: The Life of Martin Luther King – Jonathan Eig This was an excellent biography. Admittedly, not being American, I only knew the bare bones about MLK, but this certainly gave me a better picture of him and his radical gospel-centred vision. His understanding of the captivity and diminishment of the oppressed and the oppressors…

  • March 2024 Books

    March 2024 Books

    Cytonic – Brandon Sanderson This is the third book in the Skyward series. The best thing about the series is how each book expands the world-building. In this book, Spensa travels into the Nowhere. She meets a whole new group of characters who she bonds with, trains with and then defeats their foes, which is,…

  • February 2024 Books

    Breath – Tim Winton The title of this novel is very clever, with the idea of breath popping up in various ways throughout the book. It begins with Bruce (a paramedic) on a callout then flashes back to his childhood in a small, West Australian coastal mill town. He falls into a friendship with Loonie,…