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My top 10 posts in 2016
It is a fact of life that whenever you try to plan your life you end up dropping something at some point – life intervenes and you have to. You have to prioritise. In 2016 it was this blog. But it is interesting to see what my top 10 posts were for 2016 in terms of how many people viewed/read them. I got views despite not being as active as I wanted to be on the blog. I am hoping to change that this year. It is also interesting to see what people read and to try and unpick why that was the case. PS: All headings are clickable and…
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3 amazing Australian authors I read in 2016 and absolutely loved
I tend to stumble upon my books (matters not if it is work by Sri Lankan or Australian authors) and I started young. We have a bookcase in our house that spans the length of the downstairs study. It is mostly filled with modern day thrillers and what I refer to as airport novels – Jeffery Archer, Frederick Forsythe, Connelly, Koontz, Deaver. John Grisham. Those books. A smaller bookcase housed the encyclopedia set and the treasure trove of Agatha Christie novels. In the bookshelf for us kids, there were Enid Blytons and Carolyn Keenes, topped up by regular birthday and Christmas gifts. I read the classics – the cornerstone foundation of…
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The best Australian books that 7 Australian writers loved in 2016
I wanted to write about some of the best books by other Australian writers that I had read and been blown away by during 2016. And then I thought – why not ask them who they read in 2016 that was amazing AND an Australian author? So that then I could have a list of books to then go read myself in 2017? So I did. I yelled out into the Twittersphere: Australian #writers: what was the best book by an Australian that you read this year? I want to write a blog post & will link back to you. — Marisa Wikramanayake (@mwikramanayake) December 24, 2016 And true enough, over…
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The Paper House by Anna Spargo-Ryan
My heart fell out on a spring morning… ~ The Paper House by Anna Spargo-Ryan Grief is an ever present theme in Australian literature. We are a nation of writers fascinated by either lack or loss. That, in itself, intrigues me. And it intrigues me that much like Anna’s opening line here, that we never run out of ways to twist and use language to be able to describe so well the nuances of the nature of that grief. And language and the use of it is what strikes me so immediately with The Paper House. This is Anna’s first book, one she has worked on for ages, one that…
