Belinda Castles has won this year’s Asher Literary Award for her book Hannah and Emil. From the publisher Allen & Unwin, we know this book is Continue reading
Category Archives: Fiction
Read Watch Play – Ego Read October 2013
Biographies and memoirs strike at our humanity. Understanding the motivations of another person’s life, empathising with their situation no matter how different it is from your own can create some powerful emotions that stay with you for many years.
From sporting lives, the lives of refugees, the life on the land or the life spent exploring the world, there is so much to experience. From the lives of celebrities to the lives of reality show stars to the little told story of a family member, their story written and handed down only through their family #egoreads can inspire us and help us with out future directions. You can add to the discussion on Pinterest too.
So indulge yourself in #egoread and join us on 29 October for a live twitter discussion starting at 8.00pm Australian Eastern Daylight Time. 9.00pm New Zealand Summer Time, 6.00pm Singapore Standard Time, 12.00 noon Central European Summer Time. Note : this is a staggered start to the discussion.
Use the tags #egoread and #rwpchat as you discuss the reading, watching playing that is your experience of egoreads, so others can join in the conversation too. You might like to use instagram to join the discussion – don’t forget the hashtags.
1st Wednesday Book Group – Pied Piper
2nd October 2013
Title: The Pied Piper
Author: Nevil Shute
Book Summary
During John Howard’s holiday in France, the Nazis invade and he is forced to try to escape back to England with the two small children of some friends. The roads become impassable and Howard also comes across five more children who need his help. He ends up leading this motley group of youngsters through the French countryside constantly beset by danger yet heroically protecting his charges.
Group Comments
NOTE COMMENTS MAY CONTAIN PLOT SPOILERS
- I was initially not keen to read the book, but I really enjoyed it. Very interesting to read about the War from the perspective of someone who was around at the time? Continue reading
Last Thursday Book Group – Foal’s Bread
26th September 2013
Title: Foal’s Bread
Author: Gillian Mears
Book Summary
The long-awaited new novel from the award-winning author of THE GRASS SISTER tells the story of two generations of the Nancarrow family and the high-jumping horse circuit prior to the Second World War. A love story of impossible beauty and sadness, it is also a chronicle of dreams ‘turned inside out’, and miracles that never last, framed against a world both tender and unspeakably hard. Set in hardscrabble farming country and around the country show high-jumping circuit that prevailed in rural New South Wales prior to the Second World War, FOAL’S BREAD tells the story of two generations of the Nancarrow family and their fortunes as dictated by the vicissitudes of the land. It is a love story of impossible beauty and sadness, a chronicle of dreams ‘turned inside out’, and miracles that never last, framed against a world both tender and unspeakably hard. Written in luminous prose and with an aching affinity for the landscape the book describes, FOAL’S BREAD is the work of a born writer at the height of her considerable powers. It is a stunning work of remarkable originality and power, one that confirms Gillian Mears’ reputation as one of our most exciting and acclaimed writers.
Group Comments
NOTE COMMENTS MAY CONTAIN PLOT SPOILERS Continue reading
2nd Tuesday Evening – All That I Am
Title – All that I am
Author – Anna Funder
Book Summary
WINNER OF THE 2012 MILES FRANKLIN LITERARY AWARD
When Hitler comes to power in 1933, a tight-knit group of friends and lovers become hunted outlaws overnight. United in their resistance to the madness and tyranny of Nazism, they flee the country. Dora, passionate and fearless; her lover, the great playwright Ernst Toller; her younger cousin Ruth and Ruth’s husband Hans find refuge in London. Here they take awe-inspiring risks in order to continue their work in secret.
But England is not the safe-haven they think it is, and a single, chilling act of betrayal will tear them apart.Some seventy years later, Ruth is living out her days in Sydney, making an uneasy peace with the ghosts of her past, and a part of history that has all but been forgotten. Continue reading