The soundtrack of your life often reflects the time when you were a teenager, when everything sears into the memory, embeds itself deep in the psyche and remains with you. Come my old age, my nursing home will have a very different soundtrack to the Hits of the Blitz that the grandparents...Read more
Sometime around 2012 we were lucky enough to catch Miriam Margolyes performing Dickens' Women at Her Majesty's Theatre in Ballarat. A one person show, with pianist, written by Margolyes and Sonia Fraser, she commanded the stage, effortlessly shifting through 23 different characters, based...Read more
Bob Mortimer is probably best known around these parts for his legendary appearances on WOULD I LIE TO YOU? The TV show that includes David Mitchell as a team captain, somebody who, it has to be said, Mortimer has bluffed well and truly. His storytelling style on that show is exactly the...Read more
Angela Merkel has always been an outsider. A pastor’s daughter raised in Soviet-controlled East Germany, she spent her twenties working as a research chemist, entering politics only after the fall of the Berlin Wall. And yet within fifteen years, she had become chancellor of Germany and,...Read more
The subtitle of this book is "A misfit's story of love, connection and the glorious power of letting go" and if there was ever a statement that succinctly defines what's wrong with this world, it's that.
Gina Chick should never be made to feel like a misfit. The rest of us,...Read more
Listened to this on audio and loved it. Rhys is one of my favourite comedians, love their honesty and openness, and willingness to talk about the things that make life complicated. Particularly appreciated the idea that somebody with an eating disorder would include recipes in a book like...Read more
I read and reviewed this book in September / October, posted the review on StoryGraph and then promptly nuked the wrong account there and lost it.
So in lieu of the carefully constructed comments I made there, let's have a go at something coherent here.
This...Read more
This is the biography of Caroline Hodgson, the woman who became known as Madame Brussels. She was a legendary brothel keeper in nineteenth century Melbourne, with a laneway in the city now named after her, and yet even during her life, she was an enigmatic and private woman who kept a very...Read more
The long-awaited memoir by one of the most important political leaders of our time
For 16 years, Angela Merkel bore the governmental responsibility for Germany, leading the country through numerous crises and shaping German and international politics and society...Read more
I'm not at all ashamed to admit that I'm a recent convert to football via the Matilda's. Fair to say men's football left me vaguely disinterested even though I did try to watch a World Cup once. But the Matilda's - well they were a revelation.Read more
I listened to Alcott read this memoir himself so that was a bit of a joy in and of itself, there's something about the infectious tone of his voice that's very engaging, and pretty funny in places. He's got a dry sense of humour that's for sure, but in ABLE he doesn't shy away from the...Read more
Every now and again a break from crime fiction is sought, and everything I've ever seen written or heard spoken about Sandi Toksvig, and every time I've heard her on TV or the radio, makes me convinced that time spent in her company on those mediums is just better. So this was an immediate...Read more
Been a committed, somewhat besotted fan of Billy Connolly's forever - not just for his humour, but for his observations about life, aging, and all the saggy bits. I've quoted "no such thing as bad weather, just the wrong clothes", since I heard him say it. Regarded his assertion that you...Read more
I was one of those girls, right up the back of the venue, watching The Angels. The band mostly keeping to the shadows, statues in the dark, playing hard driving, LOUD, guitar based rock and roll. In the spotlights, at the front, more often than not, hanging from the scaffolding, dressed in...Read more