Reviews

March Reading 2023: Richard Fidler and baggage. Observation notes 115-116 and Reading Note 62

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Being in the thick of Autumn Semester plummeted my recreational reading to a dismally low seven books (though during lockdown years, this would have been quite the achievement) across the month of March. This thick of it includes making time today to write this post despite having nearly 200 assessment submissions waiting for me to mark. So I will be quick!

Observation note 115: Moral to the story is “do not read books when you are overwhelmingly busy”. Of the seven books, I rated none of them above a 3.5/5 stars. At best, I was only partially engaged, and at worst, I was bored and annoyed. So why did I even bother to read the books? Well…they were all library reservations which I had waited for months upon months for them to arrive. They had all been on my TBR for a long time, and some of them I had deferred from borrowing several times, so I gave up and just borrowed them at a bad time instead. I realise this is due to my own reading baggage*. Despite knowing I was strapped for time, I persisted where I probably should not have. I think that I did most of the books a disservice. I hope to post about some of them in the next week or so (after marking has been completed). I have drafted notes for the other books I read in March but I will only discuss one in this post.

Reading Note 62: Richard Fidler’s The Book of Roads and Kingdoms.

Cover: A mosaic like design in orange, blues and greens.

The blurb: A lost imperial city, full of wonder and marvels. An empire that was the largest the world had ever seen, established with astonishing speed. A people obsessed with travel, knowledge and adventure.

When Richard Fidler came across the account of Ibn Fadlan – a tenth-century Arab diplomat who travelled all the way from Baghdad to the cold riverlands of modern-day Russia – he was struck by how modern his voice was, like that of a twenty-first century time-traveller dropped into a medieval wilderness. On further investigation, Fidler discovered this was just one of countless reports from Arab and Persian travellers of their adventures in medieval China, India, Africa and Byzantium. Put together, he saw these stories formed a crazy quilt picture of a lost world.

The Book of Roads & Kingdoms is the story of the medieval wanderers who travelled out to the edges of the known world during Islam’s fabled Golden Age; an era when the caliphs of Baghdad presided over a dominion greater than the Roman Empire at its peak, stretching from North Africa to India. Imperial Baghdad, founded as the ‘City of Peace’, quickly became the biggest and richest metropolis in the world. Standing atop one of the city’s four gates, its founder proclaimed: Here is the Tigris River, and nothing stands between it and China.

In a flourishing culture of science, literature and philosophy, the citizens of Baghdad were fascinated by the world and everything in it. Inspired by their Prophet’s commandment to seek knowledge all over the world, these traders, diplomats, soldiers and scientists left behind the cosmopolitan pleasures of Baghdad to venture by camel, horse and boat into the unknown. Those who returned from these distant foreign lands wrote accounts of their adventures, both realistic and fantastical – tales of wonder and horror and delight.

Fidler expertly weaves together these beautiful and thrilling pictures of a dazzling lost world with the story of an empire’s rise and utterly devastating fall.

Way back in the Before Times, I named Fidler’s Ghost Empire (Reading Note 10) not only as my favourite book of 2019 but in my Top 10 books of all time. Richard Fidler is a radio presenter on the Australian public broadcaster ABC where he conducts these sublime hour-long interviews with relatively unknown but incredible people (on the rare occasion he will interview someone famous but only if they are amazing like his interview with Angela Lansbury). A few weeks earlier, a friend of mine asked me who would I invite to my ideal dinner party and Fidler was on my very short list. So when I heard that he would be the first author at my local (and reknowned) bowling club’s new monthly book group (interview with an author), I grabbed my friend Monica and I was there with bells on!

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February Reading 2023 – Romances, Memoirs and Picture books: Reading Notes 58-61

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Unlike the last three months, my reading has slowed down as I am back at work and prepping for the teaching semester. However, I still managed to read (nearly) 18 books, including two books which I DNF’d – I am going to argue that reading more than 25% of a super long book counts, especially as I had to tolerate reading a book that already is boring or annoying me. Notable books which I won’t go into detail include Lea Ypi’s Free: A Child and a Country at the End of the World on living through the Albanian shift from socialism to the “free market”, David Sedaris’s Happy-Go-Lucky with a fresh series of essays including the essays on his difficult father’s death, and only one reread – Lauren Layne’s Walk of Shame which continues to be delightful and flighty reading fun. So here are my favourite five starred books for this month:

Two book covers. Both are blue. Emily Henry's Book Lovers (including 2 characters sitting with their backs turned to each other, reading books but their arms reaching behind to the other person). The Invisible Kingdom cover is dominated by its title howeverr there is a faint illustration of a skeleton behind the title.

Reading Note 58: Emily Henry’s Book Lovers. I didn’t know what to expect from this book. I hadn’t read the blurb before I picked it up, and I usually avoid books with bookaholic characters (LOL – so much for readers wanting to see themselves represented in books). Nora Stephens is an urbanite. She loves her city, she loves her job, and she is not one to go on holidays. She has this small problem with (ex)boyfriends who all seem toleave her for women who live in small-towns and she is not a fan of small-town romances. However, her pregnant, younger sister Libby (named for the library app perhaps?) coerces her to spend a month in a small-town which is where her sister’s favourite book was set. Annoyed but loyal to a T, Nora agrees and joins her sister. The irony is that she keeps bumping into Charlie Lastra, an editor she knows from New York City. The story unfolds beautifully. Nora is revealed as being still-waters-run-deep, and has so many levels of worries and anxieties. I love the way that she and Charlie found commonalities in their life aims but also stuck to their own convictions, until the end moment (no spoilers but I did like the ending).

This book does get a bit meta with its mentioning of popular culture and book trope, yet it is done comfortably and the mentions fit the narrative well. Far from being clever add ins, they moved the story forward, and gave it richness. I would definitely reread this book and I certainly recommend it.

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January reading 2023: Reading Notes 52-57

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I’ve had a busy month of reading – 30 books – a book a day except for the book I was reading on 31st – I was at the 60% mark but the working year has finally kicked in and I was too busy writing workerly things to be able to finish. It has been an odd two months, as I have had no work yet I have been negotiating new teaching contracts in the in-between times. In the next few weeks, I will be going from relax-á-vous to hectic again. I will cherish the past few months of reading constantly. An opportunity I doubt I will re-experience for a long time. Meanwhile, here are my favourites from January:

Three book covers for: Feral City, Salonica, and Pineapple Princess.

Reading Note 52: Jeremiah Moss’s Feral City: On Finding Liberation in Lockdown New York. A memoir and observation of New York City once the privileged and rich fled, leaving behind those who couldn’t and those who didn’t want to leave their home. Moss explores his city in 2020 on his bike, through protests marches, with shared music and community, as the hidden and marginalised emerge from their homes to fill the void left by the “hyper-normals”. He writes about the symbolic violence “that moves through normativity, deployed through sudden movements, a certain walk, a flick of the eyes, a smirk”. He describes the smirk as a splinter biting skin, one of those invisible filament you feel but can’t quite see, a fibre of glass. The smirk is contempt,  the hallmark micro-expression of hyper-normativity, it is a doing, and we are the done to”. Though Moss is discussing the contempt of a “normal” passing him by, his words cut deep into my thoughts as they clearly explain my own dislike of the “smirk” which I had not been able to articulate as clearly as Moss does. This was a striking book examining power and queerness and community in the face of pandemics and oppression. It certainly makes you question the “return to normal” push.

Reading Note 53: Mark Mazower’s Salonica, City of Ghosts: Christians, Muslims and Jews: 1430-1950. A long history of the multicultural, polylinguistic and polyethnic city and its changes over the centuries to a city that is unrecognisable from even a century earlier. Maxower writes in his introduction that “Change is, of course, the essence of urban life and no successful city remains a museum to its own past”.  The homogenisation of this cosmopolitan city is slowly unravelled by a compelling narrative. A week later, I am still smarting and feeling the grief of the Great Catastrophe, with the awful consequences of the population swap of Turkish and Greek people, forced from their ancestral land, It doesn’t escape me that today is the 100 year commemoration of this devastating period in history which continues to have reverberations across the world. Following this was the devastation resulting from the German occupation in World War II and their eradication of the Jewish citizens of Salonica. This was a sombre read, and I will definitely be seeking out more books to read by Mark Mazower.

Reading Note 54: Sabina Hahn’s Pineapple Princess is a funny, glamorous, tasty, bug-filled picture-book with sass and delight. I love this story. Buy it for your kids, your friends’ kids, your libraries and your storytimes.

Two book covers for Cultish and Violet Bent Backwards Over the Grass.

Reading Note 56: Amanda Montell’s Cultish: The Language of Fanaticism explores the language that is used by cults – from fringe religious sects to yoga and exercise crazes and the cult of retail. Montell focuses upon the power of language used to entice and compel people into cults. Montell also provides the tools of understanding the difference between a fad, a religious groups and the cray-cray. I listened to this on audiobook with my husband and we were constantly stopping it to examine our own response to charismatic people, as well as thinking about the people we know who sadly have been consumed by organisations and movements that mimic cults, causing them harm and by default, causing harm to their loved ones.

Reading Note 57: Lana del Rey’s Violet Bent Backwards Over the Grass is a beautifully produced audiobook of del Rey narrating her poetry. Just play it on auto-loop. It is wonderful.

My 2022 Year of Reading

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A photo of myself next to a neon red love heart

A belated Happy New Year to you all. My plan had been to post this list early in January, but the weather was lovely and we were on summer holidays and frankly swimming and visiting came ahead of writing. And then, a week ago, after three years of hiding, lockdowns, isolations, vaccinations, masking up and going out, I was finally felled by the plague. Covid hit me early on Tuesday morning and it was painful and sudden, with all the expectant symptoms. Due to having been hospitalised in August of last year with RSV (ambulance dash to the  resuscitation unit at my local hospital and an ensuing protracted illness and recovery) meant I was on the high risk list and I received antivirals within a few hours of testing positive and I have been bed bound and isolating ever since. The meds have worked, I am still isolating so I have turned my time into writing for the blog, and gratefully I tested negative just yesterday. 

Up until late October of 2022, my reading continued to be fractured and interrupted by life and all its oddities, however, in late October, I felt like my pre-PhD, pre-uni reading mojo was back, having read 70 books from November onwards – over double for the rest of the year. And that reading mojo also had me giving 5 stars to 25 books – a quarter of all I read! I think it is a bit much to go into depth with all 25 books (though 11 of those were picture books), I will have a brief description of my absolute favourites and only list the rest.

102 Books

Fiction: 29 – Romance fiction: 25

Audiobooks: 20

Picture Books and Junior fiction: 27

Non-Fiction: 34 – Memoirs, histories, narrative non-fiction: 21, Design and travel 6, Academic 4

Graphic Novel – all memoirs – 11

Australian authors – 8

YA – 1

DNFd but counted: 2

The five star books for 2022

Fiction

Flirting with Forever – Cara Bastone

Can’t Help Falling – Cara Bastone

Love and Other Puzzles by Kimberley Allsop

Starfish by Lisa Fipps – made me cry

Meet Cute by Helena Hunting

To Sir With Love – Lauren Lane

Accidentally Engaged by Farah Heron

Best of the fiction best: 

Flirting with Forever by Cara Bastone.

This was such a deep, slow burn of a romance. A flirty, confident heroine, with an awkward foot-in-mouth nerdy hero (who doesn’t turn into a swan). I loved who thoughtfully the main protagonists in this story grew and developed throughout this story. The hero John Modesto-Whitford is a serious man not taken to having fun, serious about his public defender job, serious about not allowing his rich father contribute to his life. He presents as boring but still-waters-run-deep and this man… ““John was being active. Inside the walls of this crumbling but noble building, he was never passive. He was doing something about that complicated world. Each hour of concentration he lent to his cases he was making the world a more just, fair place.” ….this man is a fair man. Just swoon.

Love and Other Puzzles by Kimberley Allsopp.

What an absolute delightful book. I loved the way it was written, the protagonist’s cheeky, clear eyed voice, it was just fun. It was more chick-lit than romance, Rory is devoted to her rigid routines, judges life by the rom-com openings they reflect, and how well they reflect them, and doesn’t really cope when things are out of place. Until she decides that she needs to break her routine so she allows the clues in the New York Times crossword puzzles dictate her life decisions. In the space of a week, her life is changed. I loved it. 

Pink cover for Love and Other Puzzles
Blue cover for Flirting with Forever

Non-fiction

Inheritance: A Memoir of Genealogy, Paternity, and Love – Dani Shapiro

Invisible Women: Data Bias in a World Designed for Men by Caroline Criado Pérez

Phosphorescence: On Awe, Wonder and Things That Sustain You When the World Goes Dark by Julia Baird

Fierce Attachments by Vivian Gornick

A City is Not a Computer by Shannon Mattern

The Crane Wife: A Memoir in Essays by C.J. Hauser

Best of the Non-fiction Best: 

Deep blue with bioluminescence of sea creatures on the cover of Phosphorescence

Phosphorescence: On Awe, Wonder and Things That Sustain You When the World Goes Dark by Julia Baird. An Australian author, journalist exploring the world of phosphorescence and how to find our own internal light. This book worked for me but I think it did this because I was in an unusual headspace even for myself. I read it only a few weeks after my hospitalisation and it spoke to that darkest part of ourselves, especially as I had stopped breathing on two occasions and it was difficult to comprehend the severity of what I was experiencing. This book made me consider how I think about things that give me awe.

Some of quotes that I felt deeply included “Keep in mind that the most important quality in a person is goodness” and “Don’t make the mistake of dismissing decency as dullness” (p. 139) Especially that last one, oh the amount of women I have known who craved the “bad boy” for romance and mistreated the decent man as dull. It always angered me. 

“It might take you decades to speak up about things that matter to you, but, being able to speak your truth is a vital part of being human, of walking with certainty and openness on the earth, and refusing to be afraid. Once you have found your voice, you must resist every person who will tell you to bury or bottle it.” (p. 151). This quote stung me. I felt much more outspoken prior to my PhD and somehow, I find that 2 years later, I still haven’t got my voice back. I have stopped trying to get it back too. I hope with time it will come back.

Picture Books

Purple book, stars in the scar, sweet young girl. Cover of When Molly Ate The Stars

Stacey’s Remearkable books by Stacey Abrams

When Molly Ate the Stars Joyce Hesselberth

The Octopus Escapes by Maile Meloy

Blankie by Ben Clanton

Julián is a Mermaid by Jessica Love

I love you like by Lisa Swerling

Moonlight by Stephen Savage

The Perfect Tree by Corinne Demas

If You Were A City by Kyo Maclear

It Had To Be You by Loryn Brantz

White cover of a narwhal holding a yellow blankie

Prince & Knight by Daniel Haack

Best of the Picture book Best: 

When Molly Ate The Stars by Joyce Hesselberth was slow, bright, starry, delightful and light. It had an ethereal sense to it that just made me happy. 

Blankie by Ben Clanton is a board book with rhythms and humour. It would just be delightful fun to read to a toddler.

Weirdest Book

Green and mottled cover for Upright Women Wanted

Upright Women Wanted by Sarah Gailey

Bat-shit-crazy

gunslinging

anti-fascist

lesbian librarians

in a futuristic dystopian American West.

Like, I really don’t think I need to describe it any further.

This is a must read.

Just for the cray-cray.

The Best What-the-fuck-did-I-just-read book of the year

A couple on the cover of Promoted to the Greek's Wife. She's in a pink flowing dress, he's in a tuxedo.

And just because I feel I need to make a comment…I did read a Lynne Graham novel this year and yes it made me happy and made me laugh.But I have comments!

Promoted to the Greek’s Wife: An Uplifting International Romance by Lynne Graham

Let’s start with the novel. It was the usual angsty Graham novel which engages in love, romance, rich entitled men and poor waifish women who get the hots with each other while they jetset around the world while navigating the difficulties of unconventional families. Heroine Cleo, billionaire hero Ari, work romance (though they call it before it gets unethical – Lynne’s gone woke!). Lots of tension. Lots of foster kids, lots of social issues and lots of love. This book was fun and I really enjoyed it.

However, there is a particularly large elephant in the room. That large elephant is the subtitle. 

An uplifting International Romance.

AN UPLIFTING INTERNATIONAL ROMANCE!

AN UPLIFTING INTERNATIONAL ROMANCE?????

SERIOUSLY!?

I had to check my book cover. Had I accidently picked up an Inspirational romance? Has Lynne Graham stopped writing Sexy’s?

What is happening? 

This is not my Mills & Boon and I really don’t like it.

Inspirational kiss my big fat Greek-Australian arse!

This book was many things but it was not uplifting and it certainly wasn’t inspirational.  But it definitely was fun.

Starting Over By Looking Back: Observation Notes 112-114 and Reading Notes 47-51

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Observation Note 112: Starting over. As I do every January, I start out with a post of my favourite books. But this year, that post is running late so instead, I’m going to mess with the natural order of things and do my first post on SuperWendy’s TBR reading challenge. Last year, I only managed to post in the first half of the year. However, let’s just say I was busier reading than writing. I did manage to read through a big chunk of my TBR which is my ass-backwards way of kicking off on the theme of Starting Over. Well….let me tell you how I took charge of my 220 TBR waiting-to-read books that had accumulated on my Goodreads over the 10 years I have been documenting my reading habits…

Observation Note 113: Looking back. So let’s start in November, I was heading to the Blue Mountains a few hours west of Sydney for an academic writer’s retreat where I was going to try to be scholarly and thinkerly (true word). I was being driven by a friend in what I would call a white-knuckle drive on a Friday afternoon crazy Sydney motorway weekend exit frenzy, when I saw a friend contacted me via Twitter (yes – I am still there and happy to accept the side-eyes) to tell me that Queens Public Library in New York City had an overseas non-US citizens membership availability. For US$50, I got to subscribe to the most incredible elibrary. So I paid and added that sweet library to my Libby app for I now had some procrastinating reading to do rather than writing.

Have I been reading a book a day for the past three months. I sure have! Have I been reading in bed? Yes I have. Have I been reading instead of watching TV. Damn yes! Have I been reading instead of swimming. Ummm….no. Even I have reading boundaries. I can’t read when the harbour view is astounding!

Brilliant blue sky sea ripples out through the harbour yachts boats masts floating beyond. Houses bound Little Manly Cheerful cabanas, Cheerful sun tents. A beautiful day on the sand.
View of Sydney Harbour from Little Manly

Here is the link for those who want to be part of this amazing opportunity! https://www.queenslibrary.org/get-a-card/eUser

So how did that TBR go?

Well…my list has gone from 221 books to 121. 100 books are off my TBR. Of those 100, I have read 44, I have another 12 on hold, and another 44 which were reassessed off the TBR list – some due to sampling the first few chapters and finding I was no longer interested, and others just deleting as I couldn’t work out why or when I had added them. Of course, in the last week, I accidentally added another 10 to my TBR want-to-read list but I am not counting them here. Also, no book cover pics – I hate this wordpress layout. It makes adding images a nightmare.

So now for some of the more notable books I read: 

Reading note 47: The Longest Wait 

The Trouble with Joe by Emilie Richards.

I added this book, published in 1994, on the 29th of September, 2012 and read it on the 17th of November, 2022. A 10 year, 2 month wait. I have read and kept several Emilie Richards category romances from the 1990s so I was familiar with the calibre of the authors writing. She usually grapples with issues of the self, overcoming problems not necessarily of love, but of pressures that society can bring to a couple. The love between the protagonists is undeniable, however they are grappling with Joe’s infertility problems. Joe’s wife Samantha is a teacher and she has a neglected child, Corey,  in her class. Over the summer holidays, the two of them find themselves as foster carers for Corey, unravelling a lot of emotions around what it means to be parents, have family, responsibility, love and neglect. This is the only romance I recall reading which also gives the child’s point of view and it adds such depth to the story. It was well worth the 10 year wait to read it. 

Reading Note 48: The Best Wait.

Cara Bastone. About two years ago, in a catch-up conversation with Jayashree Kamblé, she recommended to me to try and find some Cara Bastone books to read. There were none in any of Sydney’s library systems so I left the recommendation hanging in the TBR. So I was delighted to find 3 of Bastone’s books at Queens Library: When We First Met, Can’t Help Falling and Flirting with Forever. All three novels had these fully fleshed, deeply understandable characters – not only the main protagonists but all their neighbours and friends and colleagues. The setting felt known and lived in, well understood, I felt like I could smell the air of the city through her writing. And the relationships, well they too were these nuanced courtship tales, thoughtful of differences and the tensions that can bring people together. I particularly loved the hero from  Flirting with Forever. In the opening scene of the book, he comes across as awkward and thoughtless but as the book unfolds, you discover a deeply thoughtful, principled man with grace and reason. I highly recommend you seek out Cara Baston’s books.

Reading Note 49: Most Annoying Wait.

To Sir With Love by Lauren Lane – I cannot tell you how frustrated I’ve been with my public library where I had a long-standing purchase request with them for this book in 2021. It was finally satisfied 14 months after I placed the request, so my reserve on the request expired and it got borrowed by other people and I had another 3 month wait and I was just furious and annoyed and I just didn’t bother going and it was so much more pleasurable reading it online. 14 months wait and a shitty reservations system – just do better, Sydney.

Reading Note 50: Yeah books from the TBR.

Some of my reading highlights from the last three months.

Blended by Sharon Draper. This was on my TBR since 2018. A children’s novel about mixed race young girl dealing with her divorced parents and her difficult experience. This is a book about seeking your belonging, grappling with your parents custody issues, the concept of home, and how race and identity can differ depending upon which parent you are with. A good read.

Accidentally Engaged by Farah Heron. This is one my favourite books for this year so I won’t write too much about it on this post as I still plan to do a 2022 post in the next few days. Basically, this is fun, family dynamics, Tanzanian-Gujurati-British-Canadian migrant story, lots of food, lots of cultural expectations and cultural pushback all set in lovely Canada. A great read. 

Anne of Manhattan by Brina Staler.  Thoroughly Modern 21st century fanfiction of Anne of Green Gables as young adults living in Manhattan. It’s well-written and I really liked the book. The author definitely captured the (kindred) spirit of of Anne and Gilbert and their connection though it had quite a different plot trajectory. Well worth the two year wait to read it.

Invisible Women: Data Bias in a World Designed for Men by Caroline Criado Pérez. I wrote about this book in my previous post (Reading Note 46).

Tweet Cute by Emma Lord. A YA/teenage romance conducted across several social media platforms as well as being set in a New York high school. The usual teen coming of age issues compounded by pressures from parents especially around insisting their older teens making corporate social media decisions. It was complex, it was good, I really liked it. Well worth waiting to read it since 2019.

The Lonely City: Adventures in the Art of Being Alone by Olivia Laing. A memoir reflecting on the loneliness of the city, seeking connections and not finding them, the impact of the AIDS crisis, and how artists such as Andy Warhol and Edward Hopper grappled with their own loneliness. Impactful and wonderful. Another well worth waiting for since 2019.

Reading Note 51: Meh books from the TBR. 

I am so far from the zeitgeist on these ones. Many of them are lauded as “hits” and “must-read” stars of booktok and romancetok. If this is the future of romance fiction, I will cry.

The Roommate by Rosie Danan. Bleh. Call me a prude. Porn hero was boring. The plot was inane (seriously – the heroine leaves her city to keep a low profile and then hooks up with a high profile porn star just doesn’t make sense) and there was zero tension. Just. waffle.

Below Zero by Ali Hazelwood. Double Bleh. I totally cannot stand the “smart” heroine romance trend. Let’s face it. All these STEM heroines are just another iteration of targeted career-girl romance novels. And this one – well the heroine may have had a high IQ but she was definitely lacking in emotional intelligence. Imagine cracking onto your research project’s interviewee IN HIS WORKPLACE! That’s is serious misconduct. Not sexy. A breach of work health and safety too. Just no.

Corner Office Confessions by Cynthia St. Aubin. Great title. The story didn’t grab me.

Dial A for Aunties by Jesse Sutanto.  SPOILER ALERT FOR THIS ONE. Everyone raves about this book as being hilarious and great and I will admit that it started out that way – just super super funny and cheeky. But then the main character Meddelin accidently kills her date (who was catfished by her mother!) and rather than call emergency services, get him to a hospital, go to the police, etc., like a normal person would, she shoves him in the boot, takes him to her aunts where they hide him in a freezer and all of a sudden I am reading horror murder meets Weekend at Bernies. I know that I should be able to overlook all the problems in this book and haha have a laugh but IT WAS GHOULISH!  A (fictional) person died. Someone has to care. Someone has to pay. And they didn’t. And I just couldn’t. Just say no!

The Wedding Party by Jasmine Guillory. Look, the premise was great – I do love a hook-up becomes lurvvve story and Guillory writes some lovely witty repartee but she substitutes way too much food in her novels for her lack of sexy times. Unlike Farah Heron’s book, the food is a prop in this novel, it beefs up the novel (sorry, not sorry) but it doesn’t further the plot. Not that books need detailed sex, but good god – that constant eating annoyed me. Waiting since February 2019.

The Two Lives of Lydia Bird by Josie Silver. A sliding doors story. Great premise, ho-hum delivery. It didn’t do it for me. Waiting since January 2020.

Time is a Mother by Ocean Vuoung. Listening to the audio narration also by Vuong was the wrong thing for me. Whispered wistful poetry is totally not my thing. I couldn’t bear it but I persisted to the end. Perhaps I would have liked the poetry better if I had just read the text, but now the poet’s voice is in my head and it won’t work for me. Suited to a whole different type of person. Frustrated at the anticipation of waiting since 2019 for On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous but opting for the 2022 publication instead due to availability.

Moral to the story is: stick with the book you have already listed on the TBR

Observation Note 114: In conclusion.

I feel so pleased with my overhaul of my TBR. I am so happy that Queens library membership has slayed my seven year reading slump, and I will definitely be renewing it for as long as it is offered to non-US citizens. 

As for my procrastination during my writing retreat…it was a successful enough attempt at being “scholarly” that it kickstarted my re-engagement with a journal article which had been accepted pending revisions which I hadn’t completed for many different reasons. I managed to finish it and submit it a month later. I think the deep diving into the TBR reading probably energised me as much as the retreat, if not more so. Thanks, Super Wendy!

Reading Milestones: Observation Note 111 and Reading Note 46

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Observation note 111: I’m an avid reader. I reached a personal milestone this weekend. I have read 2500 books since I started keeping my own digital reading records. Starting on WeRead from 2008, then migrating my data over to Goodreads in 2012 where I joined many of my other bookish friends (this probably coincides with my ceasing to post my reading choices on FB). This is the only social media platform I use consistently, facilitating nearly a decade and a half of record keeping – the habits of avid readers!

Diligently adding information to my digital reading record grew out of my readers’ advisory practices as a librarian. My access to my library records prior to using these book sites provided only a partial snapshot of my reading as it didn’t include the books I was buying and reading outside of the library. The books I found myself buying also informed me as to the biases in library collections.

Keeping track of my reading has always helped me in my workplace in understanding user behaviours and anticipating reading requirements, especially during my time as a team leader at the City of Sydney where I was coordinating up to 7 storytimes a week for the various childcare centres in Ultimo (separately from the children’s programming) which explains the “library-storytime” tag (143 books) where I was assessing picture books for performance suitability. But even once I stopped working in libraries, I couldn’t stop the record keeping. You can take the librarian out of the library, and all that.

Now for some statistics: My year for the most books read was in 2012 – 365 books. My year for the least books read was 2013 – 26 books. The years I spent studying deeply impacted my book reading outputs, especially as many of those years I was working in two jobs, along with studying, along with general family and home responsibilities. Reading opportunities in those years became treats and luxuries, though the list would be off the scales if I was able to count journal articles on GoodReads!

I have approximately 580 subject tags “shelves”, though my early records don’t have many tags, my later ones are rich with description – this practice emerged as the digital world became more sophisticated. Folksonomic categorisation rather than taxonomic predetermined ordering systems FTW! My highest read genre is romance fiction (814), picture books (599), non-fiction (589). I love that along standard tags such as “graphic novel” (64 books), “historical fiction” (86 books), I get to created my own descriptors and some of the more esoteric ones are “bat shit crazy” (10 books), “fake name trickery” (23 books), “yeeha cowboy” (27 books) and “hatch-back hero” (a pathetic 2 books). I even have a “vassiliki” tag for books with characters who have my name (5 books).

Caroline Criado Perez's Invisible Women: Data Bias in a World Designed for Men

Reading Note 46: Furious fury. For the record, my 2500th book was Caroline Criado Perez’s Invisible Women: Data Bias in a World Designed for Men. Added to my TBR in March 2019. It’s on the obfuscation of women from data collection and its deep life and historic impacts. It made me incredibly angry at the extent that womens’ lives continue to be marginalised from health, education, road safety, employment and every day life opportunities. Men continue to be the default at the expense of women’s lives. I think this book should be a must read for everyone, especially policy and decision makers.

Grumpy March: Time Poor, Graduation, Too Many Dates and Wham!: Observation notes 100-101 and Reading Notes 41-42

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So I have already established that this is my year of pretending to not taking part in  Wendy the SuperLibrarian’s TBR Challenge however I am still using her monthly themes to for my end of month blog post. And March has been a mean, moist, mlerhe of a month.

Observation Note 100: Time poor grumpy. Somehow, I have gone from languishing in lockdown to high speed pre-Covid busy in the space of a month. I was able to secure some sessional teaching at my university for a subject that I haven’t taught before (I have previously studied a very early iteration of it), I am continuing to run workshop on road safety for a not-for-profit organisation and of course there is the day-to-day running around for family and for my research project (see Observation Note 98). Just this week, I have been in contact with over 360 students in my classrooms and often I am the only person with a mask on (so I go full on with my n95). As my body is out of practice with the high pace, most days when I get home, I collapse on my sofa, too exhausted to do much other than groan. That said, I have managed to read a few books

Reading Note 41: Reading regrets, I’ve had a few grumpy. I tried and somehow managed to plod through Rebekah Campbells’ 138 Dates: The true story of one woman’s search for everything. I was so intrigued by Rebekah’s true story of needing for to find love for herself having spent 10 years alone, hardly ever dating. She had found love when she was younger, however she chose to explore life rather than commit herself to her boyfriend from when they were teens – this becomes a constant thread in her book because he truly symbolised lost love and lost chances for her, making it difficult for her to move on. I was really sympathetic to her decision at that young age, and as her story of finding love in her thirties unfolded, this decision impacted so much of her life trajectory. I really wanted to like this book, which is why I continued reading it where with other books I would have given up but sadly, it just didn’t work for me. I would argue that it was long, it was way too wordy, it brings up again my usual whine about traditionally published books which ramble to reach a certain page length. Perhaps it would have held my interest more if it had been 150 pages rather than over 400. And even the blurb felt too long and tiring. It wasn’t too bad a book, it just didn’t rock my boat. While I was reading this book a mosquito landed on the pages and I was about to squash it but remembered the book was a library loan so I stopped myself and the mozzie flew off. I turned off the lights and I tried to go to sleep with a mozzie buzzing in my room. I pulled my sheet over my head so I wouldn’t get bitten (if the pandemic wasn’t enough, and cataclysmic floods weren’t enough, we have a mosquito causing Japanese encephalitis crisis in Australia) but I felt the weird flutter of mozzie wings in my eyelashes. I flayed my arms and in a Ralph Macchio Danielson move, I caught the mosquito between my thumb and pointer finger…in the dark…and squashed it . This was the most interesting part of reading this book.

Observation 101: A graduation ceremony…at last not so grumpy. Having graduated a year ago, my university had not had any ceremonies over the last two years. They finally had a large ceremony for all the 2019, 2020 and 2021 graduates. I am surprised at how much I absolutely needed this ceremony to take place. The rituals and symbolism of hearing my name being called out was so important to me. I had a tinge of sadness at some parts of the rituals having been changed. There is no longer the handshake and the public handing over of your award. I understand why that physical touch needed to be removed so as to protect the health of the person giving the award to hundreds of students. You know, due to this scourge of a virus. Though all that needed to be removed was the handshake, they could have still handed the testamur to students without having any contact. However, the same concern was not extended for the health of the staff member who handed me my PhD in the gowning area. I guess some staff are more expendable than others. This made me grumpy.

I was also deeply disappointed that the PhD graduates were not given a seat with all the other academics which use to be the protocol that was followed. We were just led back to our seats amongst all the Bachelors. This was disappointing. I’m not angry or devastated or anything like that. I am fine with traditions changing. But it further dimmed my expectation for ritual on the day. Though I mention them, they are small grumps. There was still ceremony. My supervisor carried the mace into the great hall. There were majestic gowns and graduate colours. It was lovely to have my bright red gown – reserved only for PhDs. It was lovely to be sitting amongst the bachelors in their Uluru capes over their black gowns, just as I had worn exactly thirty years ago at my first graduation. These were my over-riding feelings on the day. I was happy and enjoyed myself. I was happy that my sons and my husband were all well enough to attend. One of my sisters came to the graduation too, however the other two are ill with Covid and my mother is in isolation due to living with one of my sisters. I wanted my mum to be there. But at least she could watch the livestream. I also managed to find a beautiful pink and floral dress. Over the past month I have bought five dresses, and returned three, in my obsessive search for the “perfect dress” for the “big event”. I felt like I was in a Betty Neels novel. LOL. It wasn’t until after the ceremony that I realised that I had chosen a dress worthy of Penelope Featherington from Bridgerton. It is indeed, very pretty. This historical romance moment was suited to the day, for as Kat from Bookthingo commented, the graduation event was the “PhD equivalent of an HEA with an epilogue”.

A lovely epilogue, at that.

Reading Note 42: Last Christmas. I received a copy of Andrew Ridgeley’s memoir Wham! George and Me from my son, last Christmas (LOL). There is so much going through my head having only finished reading this book a few hours ago. As a teenager, I liked Wham! for all their fun and happy songs, and of course their heartbreak songs. Though I desperately yearned for a “Choose Life” t-shirt (I never got one), I wasn’t a fangirl in the sense of buying all their albums (I bought none), or queuing for concert tickets (I attended none) though I did get to see Andrew Ridgeley spin some discs at The Polish Club in Sydney’s Inner West (back in the not-cool-to-live-here days) and to this day, I always get up and dance when Wham! or George Michael songs are being played. So reading this book was a given. An excellent and insightful present from my son (brownie points!).

This is a gorgeous, heartfelt story of Andrew and Georgios/Yog, two boys who became best friends at school and started a band together. I loved Ridgeley’s stories of how they would make up dance routines in their bedrooms, that they would skive off school to go to London clubs and record shops, that their aim was to have fun. I loved Ridgeley’s description of their songwriting, and I was so saddened that he took a back seat to George. I loved his description of their clubbing antics, their incredible fast rise to fame. But most of all, I love that this book is a love dedication to a deep friendship. Andrew Ridgeley writes “Undoubtedly, George was my best friend. And I’ve not had as strong a bond with any other chum since then….I’ve discovered that type of intensity is harder to rediscover as you get older”. This floored me. The loss of friendship and the inability to find new ones is something that thwarts many older people, and reading about it happening to Wham!, and having seen it unravel through the tabloids over the years, seemed to make it even more heartbreaking as there wasn’t even the privacy of being able to hide the pain.

I need to let you know that I cried so hard at the end of this book, that the top of my n95 mask got sopping wet as I was reading it on the bus home from work. This book had me sobbing in public and I didn’t care to stop reading so as to preserve my dignity. There is something so poignant about their early boyhood friendship and Andrew Ridgeley captures their youthfulness in this book. I love that he wrote that they wanted their band to symbolise fun and joy and happiness. I didn’t even realise how much Wham! captured and were successful in their aim. Wham! with its cheeky wink to pop culture comic book art, just made me feel happy. As they say in Wham Rap

Take pleasure in leisure, I believe in joy!

…

Do! you!

Enjoy what you do?

If not, just stop!

Don’t stay there and rot!

I think I just need to put Wham! music on high rotation so I can stop being grumpy and embrace joy again. Time to give up the rot.

My 2021 Year of Reading

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Happy New Year to you all. Just like 2020, my year of reading for 2021 continued to be fractured and interrupted by life, relationships and of course, the pandemic. For the blog record, I read:

72 Books

Fiction: 18

DNFd but counted: 2

Audiobooks: 0

Picture books: 25

Graphic novels: 7 – 3 fiction and 4 non-fiction

Non-fiction: 23 – Memoir and long narrative: 15 ; Design and Travel: 6 ; Scholarly: 2. 

Essays and articles: lots upon lots

Though my year kicked off with the successful completion of my thesis, I had a number of struggles to overcome, not in the least, needing to finally grapple with my inability to return to working in libraries due to the severity of my asthma. Unfortunately, this is not going to reverse itself but at least I am no longer crumpling into a heap, beating my chest, voicing my mourning when I speak about it. I know this sounds so very dramatic, but it honestly is how devastated I feel. Along with the asthma, I also had a stupid fall (I think I have mentioned this elsewhere), face planting into a gutter while I was crossing the road on my way to pick up my library reservations (I blame avid reading). I ended up with a black eye, scrapes and bruises, and a “mild” head injury which took me close to 6-8 weeks to recover from the headaches and some brain fog. And then came the lockdown. So much time for reading, so little concentration to actually read. Just like last year, I spent more time reading articles, essays, doom scrolling and staring at walls than engaging with books. I am not sure if this is an indication of my attention span or an indication that I am not finding anything interesting enough to read. It’s probably a mix of both. 

Fiction:

Unlike 2020, the year I read only 2 mediocre fiction novels, in 2021 I read 18. Of the 18, only five were not romance, of those five, I read my first science fiction novel in more than 15 years. Martha Wells’ The Murderbot Diaries series: All Systems Red was a fun read. The book appeal for me was its brevity which, unfortunately, continues to be rare amongst published fiction novels. I was deeply saddened to see that Wells has caved to the market and is now writing lengthier novels for the series with Book 5 clocking in at 350 pages – nearly double the length of the first four fabulous novels. Another loss for tightly plotted and written books.

The cover of The Prenup includes a byline "Love wasn't part of the deal"

Romance:  Most of the romances I read this year ranged from mediocre to lovely, though none were awful. I did have two standouts Lauren Layne’s The Prenup and Kate Clayborn’s Love at First.

Layne’s The Prenup is one of friction and surprise and fun and depths unexpected in a green card romance spanning ten years. I was delighted by Layne’s writing which always seem to have these socialites who hold zero interest for me, and yet, the beauty of Layne’s writing makes me forget my disinterest and plummets me into some excellent fun storytelling. The best thing about this book is that I had a momentary forgetfulness. I read as though it was 2011 – the year before I returned to study. I have linked to my earlier blog post for The Prenup above so I won’t write more here but if you are searching for a fun read, I do recommend Lauren Layne’s books – I read three of her novels in the past year and all were good.

Purple cover, stars and hearts, silhouette of an older style apartment with the title in cursive letters

As for Kate Clayborn’s Love at First  – this was such a gentle story. Mercurial in its pacing. Vivid in its setting. Nuanced emotions in its telling. I was charmed and so deeply taken by this book which barely has grand tensions or big misunderstandings or tempestuous feelings. The feelings are on the surface, even keeled. Still waters however, run deep and the issues that mire the two main characters are resolved slowly but not completely.

I loved this book for its softness. It’s soft hero. It’s soft heroine. Yet even with such kind and giving hearts, they both show their inner resolve for overcoming their personal and interpersonal problems which is what makes this book such a gem of a story.

Blue head being held by a pink body hanging from above

Graphic Novels 

Fiction: I really enjoyed Rachel Smythe’s Lore Olympus. First published as episodes on Webtoons, it is now published as a book. I read it on the app where it was infinitely superior than to the codex. Scrolling through each episode allowed for a flow of story, and a flow of emotions through illustrations continuing down the screen. The screen design builds tension and pace into a new imagining of age old stories of Greek gods Hades and Persephone and their often overlooked relationship. The scrolling down the screen also allows for such a visceral experience of Hades as the god of the underworld. I really feel strongly that this story should be read in the app or the website as I am unsure whether the book could elicit the same emotional reading. I look forward to reading through the new season of this story.

Green apartment building with silhouettes in the windows. Title spans the top of the cover with a background of orange sky

Non-fiction: Seek You: A Journey through American Loneliness by Kristen Radtke was a sombre read during an already sombre time. Having spent much of the year in lockdown or isolating from others, Seek You speaks to our disconnection from each other and how being lonely has deep impacts in the way we socialise with others. Radtke explores loneliness in its various manifestations, from radio, suburban sprawl, the sitcom laugh track and its insidious guidance as to what is and isn’t funny, the importance of connection with others, the physical pain we feel when we are rejected by others, disturbing research on the social deprivation in monkeys and the deep affects of loneliness. Radtke speaks of our need for the human touch, for connection with others, and the way that touch brings us to love. This book just made me sadder than I really wanted to be. It barely gave me hope but it did give me a way of seeing how I live now. And I really don’t like the way my world is unravelling into deeper loneliness. 

Non-fiction essays and articles

I read Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Notes on Grief as a long essay in the New Yorker, and it has since been expanded upon and published in book form. From the beginning, this essay captured me through its form, her use of Notes felt similar to my use of notes for writing many of my blog posts. Adichie writes of the shock of her father’s death and the ensuing events, from remembering her life and relationship with her father as a young child and into adulthood,  to her struggle to return to Nigeria for his funeral during the peak Covid lockdowns. Adichie explores her love of her father, their ancestral home, her life as an immigrant, and the difficulties of being a cosmopolitan citizen in a world that has shut its borders. This essay was filled with sadness – a core theme in my 2021 reading choices.

Non-fiction books

Cover has an out of focus family photograph that looks like it is from the 1970s.

The Lost Family: How DNA Testing Is Uncovering Secrets, Reuniting Relatives, and Upending Who We Are by Libby Copeland was a fascinating read. As I have gone out of my way to leave as small as possible biometric trail of my life (no thumbprint or facial recognition to unlock my phone, no fitbit linked to an app, no entering nightclubs/bars that scan your eyes etc), doing a DNA test has zero interest for me. However, many of my friends and family are spitting into jars (so much for not sharing my biometrics!) and doing these tests to discover who they are, who their (biological) parents are etc. This book takes a deep look into the world of DNA testing, the ethical conundrums of the secrets that are revealed, as well as delightful news too. This book was wonderful, with many personal stories to accompany the more technical and scientific explanations of how DNA does and does not reveal our lives and our ancestors lives. I probably think about this book more than any other that I have read in 2021.

Shared reading

One of the unexpected joys that this miserable year provided me is a different way of reading. I started doing buddy reading with Kay from Miss Bates Reads Romance, and with my goddaughter. 

Miss Bates Reads Romance. Miss Bates and I chose to buddy read Vivian Gornick’s The Odd Woman and the City. I was introduced to Gornick by Miss Bates and I was enamoured by her writing style. Having already read The Odd Woman and the City, Kay and I chose to reread it together. 30 pages at a time. Meeting weekly. It was a joyous way to read. Sometimes our conversation took us on tangents, other times it took us a while to get to our book choice, and we always always swapped favourite quotes and delighted in shared highlighted passages. We didn’t necessarily deconstruct the text as much as complain/enjoy/laugh at the text. I deliberately have not reviewed, or written further about this book which is my only reread of 2021. I just want to remember how much it resonated with me. How much my body – shoulders, neck, hips – relaxed as I read this book, and relaxed as I chatted with a dear friend about this book. I feel so fortunate to have had this experience as it led me to doing some buddy reading with my goddaughter.

A yellow sky, light blue buildings silhouetted, with dark blue cyclists riding up a hill. Lots of silhouette covers!

Fancy fairy reading godmother fancy reading fun. So at the end of June, Sydney went into hard lockdown. With an abysmally low vaccination rate (not through hesitancy but through the continued application of dirty design by our despised Prime Minister who did not procure enough vaccines for the population), everyone other than essential workers stayed at home, schools shut their doors and silent chaos ensued. Sadly, this is not unique to most people across the world. One day, I called my goddaughter’s mum to see how she was coping, and drawing from my Miss Bates fun, offered to do reading after school with my goddaughter. At first I thought it would be a weekly meet up, but we had so much fun that it immediately became a daily Zoom call. In the 2 months of our reading fun, we read 26 books – 24 picture books and 2 novels. We used a variety of methods from physical books which had to be held to the computer’s camera so we can see images, buying duplicate books so we can read in turn, to ebooks where I could share my screen and we would read in sync with each other. My favourite of the buddy reads with my goddaughter was Steven Herrick’s Zoe, Max and the Bicycle Bus. Written in prose, we read a chapter each until we found ourselves singing the story (out of tune) while using the Zoom tools to draw the characters. I honestly don’t think I would have considered this style of shared reading in the before times. Lockdown sapped me of energy and but it did give me a stronger connection with my goddaughter and a completely different way of reading. However, no pandemic would have been better for both of us.

A shared page from Zoe, Max and the Bicycle Bus with red writing over it saying "we can do it!" and a screen capture of the two Zoom participants at the bottom of the page.

Reading in 2022

Last year, I kept my reading goals low by setting myself 21 books. This year, I have decided to not take part in any competition. I have set my Goodreads challenge to 1 book only because I enjoy the “My year of reading” wrap up that they post in early January. I also get to show off this wrap up to my sons in comparison to their annual Spotify stats and I force them to feign interest (LOL). I haven’t made plans for reading this year. 2020 left me exhausted. 2021 has left me with depression and heightened anxiety. I have secured some sessional teaching/facilitating with two organisations and I have a paper to present at a Valentine’s Day symposium. Tiny steps in the work prospects which, for now, is all I want as I still haven’t decided what I want to do for the next 20 years. Long term goals will have to wait. With the pandemic still going strong, I am settling for short goals and maximising rest time for now. 

Happy reading year to you all. 

A photograph of myself wearing a white top with blue flowers. Backdrop of green plants and a small demitasse of coffee by my arm.

Readers and Languishing: Reading notes: 17 and 18

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Earlier today, I saw long-time Twitter friend Flexnib post that she is going to try to do BlogJune just like in the olden blog days. I have decided to try to post every June day too and I thought I would start simply, resurrecting my Reading and Observation notes, a style of writing which I have previously used and I find particularly enjoyable.

Reading Note 17: Other readers. I’ve just finished reading Vivian Gornick’s Unfinished Business: Notes of a chronic rereader. I first heard about Gornick pre-pandemic, 18 months ago on Miss Bates Reads Romance where Kay reviewed Fierce Attachments, a book that continues to sit unopened on my bedside bookshelf. I managed to borrow three of Gornick’s books from the library and I wanted to start with her book on rereading so that I can get an insight into who she was and what her book choices mean to her. I enjoyed Unfinished Business, this collection of essays has her rereading and reconnecting to books that she has loved many years ago. Her revisiting of each text finds her either loving or rejecting the book as she delves deeply into the characters driving each novel. Gornick is not writing an analysis of these books, but instead, she is relating her own life through her reflections of her rereads. Each essay was detailed and interesting but I was increasingly annoyed that her choices were all tragedies – stories where everyone grapples with life’s difficulties and love is attained and lost. I kept wanting Gornick to choose something more edifying, something with happier outcomes, something that could mix up her reading choices rather the the predictable stalwart classics. Right at the end though, she has a short essay on about a “cheap 1970s paperback” that falls apart when she takes it into her hand. Gornick relishes in her material experience of the pages falling out one-by-one and how she salvages this unnamed book by slowly reading through it again, marking the pages as she ordered them, and bounding the book with a rubber-band. Gornick doesn’t name the books and I am so curious. I would love to know the name of the one book that she doesn’t name. My guess is that it is something along the line of Kathleen E. Woodiwiss’s The Flame and the Flower.

Reading Note 18: Languishing. Vivian Gornick discusses being “unreceptive” to a book, just not in the right mood to read it; not “in a a state of readiness”. Well that is how I have been feeling lately about all fiction reading. I pick up a novel and I either give up just a few chapters in, turned off the book for something as trivial as the name of a character, the description of a sofa, or an internal thought that I am just not interested in reading. This sense of fiction ennui is not what I want to be feeling and I hope it doesn’t last for too much longer. Meanwhile, I will continue reading memoirs and I will post about my thoughts on them here.

Vivian Gornick’s Unfinished Business, Fierce Attachments and The Odd Woman and the City have all been borrowed from a NSW public library.

The fairytale, marriage and another fun read

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I’m over 10 days late for this month’s TBR challenge having completely missed posting for March and April’s TBR. The May topic being Fairytale/Folktale and my connection to the theme is a bit of a tenuous stretch and only mentioned briefly towards the end of this post. As for how long this book has been on my TBR, I’m just going to say that I have borrowed it three times, with a three month loan period (inclusive of renewals), and I only managed to read it at the tail end of this latest loan.

A lilac shadow shaped like skyscrapers in a city as a backdrop, with a cartoon bride holding open a yellow taxi door which just doesn't make sense because there was no taxi in the wedding scene.

Book: Marriage on Madison Avenue by Lauren Layne  (the third in the ˆ series) 

The Blurb: Can guys and girls ever be just friends? According to Audrey Tate and Clarke West, absolutely. After all, they’ve been best friends since childhood without a single romantic entanglement. Clarke is the charming playboy Audrey can always count on, and he knows that the ever-loyal Audrey will never not play along with his strategy for dodging his matchmaking mother—announcing he’s already engaged…to Audrey.

But what starts out as a playful game between two best friends turns into something infinitely more complicated, as just-for-show kisses begin to stir up forbidden feelings. As the faux wedding date looms closer, Audrey and Clarke realise that they can never go back to the way things were, but deep down, do they really want to?

This is the final instalment to the Central Park Pact series.

How did I find this book: Lauren Layne has become an auto-read author for me since Dr Jayashree Kamblé recommended her novel Walk of Shame to me several years ago.

Meet Cute: A bit of series backgrounding first: this is a trilogy with the protagonists of each book, Audrey, Claire and Naomi having dubiously met at the funeral of their (yes – plural THEIR) dead boyfriend a couple of years earlier, having discovered that they had all been duped (ahem sleeping with) the same man. On the day of his funeral (no – they didn’t kill him), the three discover that they weren’t his only girlfriend/wife. Though horrified by their own role in being “the other woman”, they forge an unlikely friendship where they look after each other – especially when it comes to finding their true love as they all now, understandably, have trust issues. Claire and Naomi in this book are already paired up which leaves Audrey to find her love match. 

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