Happy New Year, everyone! I want to start out by thanking all of you who read my blog. I know that I only have a small(ish) group of subscribers, and I also have regular commenters and I want to convey to you how important you all are to me. I have tried to do some private writing (in my offline space) but it is only when I start thinking of my now 17 year old blog and its readers that I can find flow for my thoughts. 2025 seems to have flown but it isn’t until I take stock of my reading that I realise that it has been a long and eventful year both personally, as well as in world events. I started with the Nikos Papastergiadis’s memorable John Berger and Me and finished with Maisey Yates’s Cowboy It’s Cold Outside with its delightful cover but forgetable story.
53 books
Fiction: 29 – Romance fiction: 25
Audiobooks: 0
Picture Books and Junior fiction: 0
Non-Fiction: 24 (note: 23 but I reread one book immediately as my Kobo lost all my notes)
It is TBR Challenge time again and I am only a week late. This month’s theme is Change of Plans. My choice this month was to read an early 21st century Sarah Morgan novel. She has been a favourite author who used to be an auto-read for me until she moved away from romance fiction to women’s fiction. Sarah Morgan wrote one of my favourite ever Harlequin/Mills & Boon novels Playing by the Greek’s Rules so I was interested to read an earlier iteration of its theme: a gazillionaire power-broking Greek male protagonist, a much poorer though determined (feisty???) English female protagonist, settings that go between an Anglosphere country and a (sometimes made-up) Greek island, dysfunctional family backstories, and the power of lurrrrrve to overcome all the money-mongering, maniacal, master-manipulated machinations by the mercurial and macho main-man (I am LOLing at my stupid alliteration).
Did I approach this novel with a jaded, exhausted soul? Yes, I did. Did the storytelling carry me away, wiping the cynicism far from my heart? Wellll…read on, my friends. You will find out. And turn away if you don’t want any spoilers (seriously, it is a 20 year old book – it’s perfectly fine to reveal all at this point).
Sarah Morgan’s The Greek’s Blackmailed Wife
“Zander Volakis is a ruthless tycoon who’s used to getting all he desires. Now, in order to secure the Greek island resort he’s always wanted, he needs an image change—fast!
The only person who can help him is the woman who betrayed him five years ago: his wife, Lauranne O’Neill. But Lauranne refuses to work with Zander again. He ruined her life once and he has the power to do it again. The sexual chemistry between them might be sizzling, but Lauranne knows that to play with Zander is to play with fire. As for Zander, her refusal to help leaves him with only one option…”
So I am going to cheat here and I am going to use two (yes two!) TBR challenge themes for the one book. WILD! Has this ever been done before? I don’t know but maybe SuperWendy will know. Am I breaking the TBR rules??? I don’t know but also I am throwing caution to the wind. Because when it comes down to it, the book I read had sooooo much going on, has two distinct parts to it, that it deserves two themes.
MAJOR SPOILER ALERT, MAJOR CONTENT ALERT, MAJOR BLUE LANGUAGE ALERT! I am going to be discussing disturbing and upsetting details including abuse being part of the backstory for one of the characters. And I am giving away MANY plot details so just don’t read further if this is on your TBR.
The Book:Swept Away by Beth O’Leary
The Blurb: Lost at sea . . . with your one-night stand
Lexi is looking for no-strings-attached fun with a stranger. She deserves one night for herself, doesn’t she? Zeke is looking for love. But for one night with a woman like Lexi, he’ll break his rules. Sparks fly at the pub, one passionate kiss leads to another and they end up stumbling home to the marina together. The next morning, hungover and shaken by an amazing night together, Lexi is more than ready for Zeke to leave. There’s just one small problem . . . the houseboat they stayed on has been swept out to sea. As their supplies start to run dangerously low, and the waves pick up, Zeke and Lexi soon realise there’s much more on the line than their new relationship. How long can they really survive on a drifting houseboat in the North Sea? Will search and rescue find them? And who will they be if they both make it back to dry land?
This novel is written in two parts. There is the lost at sea section and then there is the back on land section. Each of these sections are quite distinct from each other.
I am behind on my TBR challenge for this year so I am going to try to write several posts over the next few days to play catch up. This post is actually on the topic for August. And a BIG SPOILER ALERT! should you be planning on reading this book.
Reading Note 92: August 20 – Do the Hustle
Promise me Sunshine by Cara Bastone
The blurb: Lenny’s a bit of a mess at the moment. Her best friend, Lou, recently passed away after a battle with cancer, and her death has left Lenny feeling completely lost. She’s avoiding her concerned parents, the apartment she shared with Lou, and the list of things she’s supposed to do to help her live again. The only thing she can do is temporary babysitting gigs, and luckily, she just landed a great one, helping overworked, single mom Reese and her precocious daughter, Ainsley. It’s not perfect: Ainsley’s uncle, Miles, always seems to be around, and is kind of… a huge jerk. But if Lenny acts like she has it all together, maybe no one will notice she’s falling apart.
Miles sees right through her though. Turns out, he knows a lot about grief and, surprisingly, he offers her a proposition. He’ll help her complete everything on her “live again” list if she’ll help him connect with Ainsley and overcome his complicated relationship with Reese. Lenny doubts anything can fill the Lou has left behind, but she begins to spend more time with Miles, Lenny is surprised to discover that, sometimes, losing everything is only the first step to finding yourself, and love, again.
It has become a terrible habit of mine to blog only a few times a year, and most often, just to catch up on Wendy the Super Librarian’s TBR Challenge. And just like clockwork, I am doing it again. A full admission that I am just matching books I read to the themes. Few of them were actually read in the month I have listed them under.
Reading Note 87: February 19 – Previously, In Romance…
Any Trope but You by Victoria Lavine. This was so fun and cheeky. A burnt-out cynical yet successful romance author Margot Bradley is outed on social media as a fake by her angry fans so she travels to Alaska to escape the criticism and to try to write a book in a new genre. In Alaska she meets Dr Forrest Wakefield who ridiculously encompasses every romance trope. Margot eventually discovers that tropes are too surface level and people can be complex beyond the stereotype.
My favourite line in the book is “Cradled against his warm chest, I am a woman transformed. Never again will anyone catch Margot Bradley scoffing at a trope. If I were wearing a bodice, I’d rip it myself”.
I missed the deadline on the 15th of January first TBR for the year, not because of busy-ness but because I had yet to read a book in 2025 by that date (let alone a book that aligned with the January topic of New Year, Who Dis? But then on Monday, I started reading a book in the morning and I finished it by night time because it was fun and lovely. And I can’t remember when I last did that with a full-length novel.
Reading Note 84:
Christmas Is All Around by Martha Waters
The blurb… A former child star learns that holiday magic can come from a change in perspective in this charming and hilarious holiday rom-com, perfect for fans of Love, Actually and The Holiday A little holiday magic can change everything . . . Charlotte hates the holidays. As a former child actress, she starred in a Christmas movie, whose fans won’t let her move on. When a piece revealing that her reluctance nixed plans for a reboot, she flees to London to spend the festive season with her sister. But the ghosts of Christmas past follow her when she visits Eden Priory, one of the filming locations. When she’s accidentally left behind, she’s forced to accept a ride back to London from Graham, the son of the owners. Their family business – and the funds to keep their historic house running – relies on holiday cheer, and Graham knows seasons greetings from a certain star would bring in more visitors.
Now an illustrator, Charlotte accepts a commission illustrating iconic holiday movie scenes in London and its environs for Eden Priory, with Graham offering to escort her. But as Charlotte’s chaotic family holiday goes awry, she begins spending more time with Graham. Charlotte may not love a Christmas romance . . . but what if she has one of her own?
As the blurb states, Charlotte Lane is a former child star who has chosen a non-acting career as an adult, much to the dismay of her parents and lots of fans. Her one and only acting gig became a cult hit Christmas movie tritely called Christmas, Truly (that seems to have overundertones of Love, Actually). Charlotte hated the experience and is a crochety and utter bah-humbug over the whole Christmas commodification and love/romance celebration. She hates the Christmas movies, she can’t stand her own popular-culture status that perpetuates the love, she certainly has mum-and-dad-didn’t-love-each-other issues around this date. So, in general, she just hates Christmas revelry and joy.
Happy New Year to you all! I hope you saw in the new year in the way you had planned. Loud and raucous or quiet and calm.
In 2024, I had a much better reading year than the previous years even though I read fewer books. I was gifted a Kobo for my birthday in September, yet I totally slowed down my reading from October onwards so I haven’t really taken advantage of it yet. But I have a month free from uni teaching so I hope to start my reading year as soon as I finish this blog post. As for 2024, if I had to pick only one book I read it would be Roger Deakin’s Waterlog. But thankfully, I get to choose a lot of books. So here are my stats:
I had 21 five star books. Here is a selection of the one’s which stood out for me:
Best of the Fiction books:
Overnight Inheritance by Rachel Bailey
Canadian Boyfriend by Jenny Holiday (Reading Note 75)
Marry Me, Juliet trilogy (yep – all 3 books were 5 stars) by Jodi McAlister (Reading Note 74 for Here for the Right Reasons)
Ready or Not by Cara Bastone (Reading Note 82)
Some Kind of Wonderful by Sarah Morgan (Reading Note 79)
The Rom-Commers by Katherine Center
Best of the Non-Fiction books:
Courting: An Intimate History of Love and the Law by Alecia Simmonds
Waterlog: A Swimmer’s Journey Through Britain by Roger Deakin
Orwell’s Roses by Rebecca Solnit
Walking with Sam: A Father, A Son and 500 miles across Spain by Andrew McCarthy
All About Love by bell hooks
Best of the Picture Books
Aaron Slater, Illustrator by Andrea Beaty
Duck! Rabbit! by Amy Krouse Rosenthal
I Just Ate My Friend by Heidi McKinnon
The Best of non-book reading
As an advocate for reading being understood beyond the traditional published book, it would be remiss of me to not discuss some of my favourite non-book reading. I have favourite investigative journalists, organisations, academics and other writers who I follow across several platforms.
Rebecca Solnit – on Facebook and Bluesky
Ronni Salt – has moved to Bluesky so I can finally ditch my X
Shannon Mattern – on Bluesky (and various websites)
The Daily Aus – my favourite new service on Instagram
Inner West Plant People – a gardening site on Facebook focused on the Inner West of Sydney. Urban gardening tips with occasional humour. The most wholesome of community FB.
Academic Reading
The AI Atlas by Kate Crawford – an ethnographic examination on the impacts of AI. I am only 3 chapters into this book. It is gripping and interesting. A must read.
I continue to be delighted by TikTok creators. I completely avoid Booktok but I adore so many different subcultures (like chihuahua tok). My current favourites are:
The Happy Urbanist and Strong Towns
Bimbo University
Elena Charalampoudi (who has given me so many laughs – Greek female comedian)
Caleb Simpson (whose book was great but falls short of the beauty of his Tiktoks)
Chef Reactions
Wil Stracke – Australian unionist extraordinaire!
Other great creators:
Alexei Toliopoulos – film reviewer with the Betoota, on Tiktok, on websites and other places
Apartment Therapy – I’d also like to tip my metaphorical cap to Apartment Therapy whose website I followed many decades ago, whose books I bought, whose digital feeds I follow as they continue to delight with their home interiors coverage, crossing over to visual based platforms such as instagram and tiktok and youtube so well. So reflexive which is what all great creator collectives have to be in our current digital broadcast and publishing environment.
Letterboxd – I love the website, I love the tiktoks. The Goodreads equivalent for watching (not reading). I love the Letterboxd tiktok stream where they interview various stars on the red carpet or at interview/promos asking them for their favourite 4 films. I am so taken by responses and how so many people name childhood favourites. We so often dismiss the impact of children’s content, yet the films and TV shows we watch growing up shape us as much as books do. I have been so engaged by Letterboxd content that I finally got my own account (Shallowreader of course). I tried to add as many movies as I could possibly remember watching and it is telling that there are less than 1000 movies for me. I am much more likely to read a book for entertainment.
2025 planning like a fool….
My plan for 2025 is to continue to read whatever comes my way and hopefully I will be motivated enough to blog more than a handful of times a year. I will again attempt to take part in SuperWendy’s TBR Challenge. I will continue to watch all the reruns of shows that give me comfort. Maybe along the way, I will start posting more on BlueSky which at this point is like a re-creation of ye olde Twitter except this time around, I don’t have the energy to write or connect much. Yet. Maybe that will change. If not, I am still happy.
I feel that the second quadrant of the century is starting at a low point so I really hope that we are in the gutter looking up to the stars and that our trajectory is upwards and uplifting. Wishing you all a safe and calm 2025 with lots of love, food and entertainment.
This IS NOT my 2024 best of list. I am just playing catch up for Wendy’s TBR Challenge. In a conscious effort to post on all the TBR topics for 2024, I put together a quick post for the previous 5 months.
Reading Note 80: August – Everyday Heroes
Hello, Stranger by Katherine Center
I became a bit obsessed with Katherine Center this year. I have yet to read one that tanked. In Hello Stranger the protagonist Sadie is a portrait artist who after winning a place in a national competition has a critical head injury when she has a fall in the middle of the street. When she comes to, the result of the fall is that she has aphasia – face blindness. Which, as a portrait artist, is a bit of an issue. While she is trying to navigate her new world, Sadie meets her grumpy neighbour Joe who somehow helps her through the various issues she is experiencing. And of course, they fall in love but not without their own issues.
Sadie has so many circumstances that go against her. An absent father, an evil step-sister, an ambivalent step-mother. A friend who seems supportive but is not at all, sometimes bordering on cruel. When Sadie gets into the portrait competitiion, Sue says to her “You’ve been tragically failing at life for years and years! We have to celebrate!” Sadie thinks “Tragically failing at life seemed a bit harsh. But fine. She wasn’t wrong.”
This month, I have decided to ignore the usual order, and I am backtracking to July’s theme of SuperWendy’s TBR challenge and I am going to post on the theme of What a Wonderful World. I will find a way to catch up on August and September at another time.
July – What a Wonderful World
Reading Note 78: In July, I found myself reading Kate Clayborn’s The Other Side of Disappearing. This novel is not the focal point of this TBR post but I will discuss it in short.
I am a big fan of Kate Clayborn with several Shallowreader posts proselytising about her books and I waited several months on the library holds list before getting access to this novel. It is a story about two age-gap half-sisters whose shitty mum has abandoned them. Jess has been caring for Tegan for many years, and now that Tegan has come of age, she wants to seek out her mother who ran off with a con-man. With the awkward involvement of two journalists, Adam and (secondary but important character) Salem. The four of them go on a road-trip, following the trail of the few postcards sent by shitty mum. The road-trip allows for the slow reveal of the characters motivations, soul-searching and psyches, as well as their relationships with each other. And of course, it builds up to Jess and Adam’s romance.
I was expecting a wonderful story, however, unlike most of my romance blogger friends, I was left unmoved by the novel. It was an OK story, I could see the complexity of the numerous characters development and their story arcs but it didn’t give me the joy that Claybourn’s other books have given me. If anything, it left me frustrated, as the storytelling felt disjointed which I will attribute to the function of the “he said/she said” structure where each chapter alternated the point-of-view of each protagonist, both of which were told in the first point-of-view and in a mostly linear trajectory.
I personally love two point-of-view/head-jumping romances where you get an insight into each character’s thoughts. The last decade (and more) trend towards a first point-of-view and only from one of the main characters, annoyed me immensely. It was like romance fiction had reverted to the 1970s and 1980s when this was the standard. I loved the 1990s which shifted the storytelling to allow for multiple characters’ perceptions of the relationship build. I am glad that we are now seeing a return to two (or more) perspectives, however it is like a pendulum. The he said/she said style of alternating chapters are jarring to read as they move from one character to the other.
At the end of last year, I once again committed to taking part in Wendy the Super Librarian’s TBR challenge. I don’t know if and where Wendy is posting everyone else’s posts but I rarely go to my old social media haunts (I still have accounts but I am rarely posting). I am not across the older apps these days. If anyone knows, or if Wendy is reading this :: waves wildly ::, I would love to know where I can follow along in the laziest possible way (because I know I can just click on everyone’s link on the TBR link but shhhhhhh!).
I have been too lazy to write full reviews with blurbs and plots synopses. Instead I am just giving you my irrational, emotional reader-reacts. Hold on to your hats. There will be swearing!
Reading Note 72:January– Once More With Feeling
The Only Purple House in Town by Ann Agguire.
This book had been recommended to me by many readerly friends. I had several false starts and I found myself dragging my feet rather than read it. I borrowed it from the library three times until in January, I fully committed myself to reading it once more with feeling. And the feeling was loveliness.
This story didn’t overwhelm me with intense with emotions, it didn’t make me swoon or get angry or cry. And though it wasn’t intense, it went deep into the feelings of being on the outer in your own family, to finding your own place at your own pace. The story was gentle and lovely, set in our real world and the paranormal elements weren’t so fantastical that I cringed (Yes – I am thinking of the Black Dagger Brotherhood et al., of yesteryears).
Shallowreader 