Podcast Episode 34 Historical Fiction

Historical Fiction as a genre is fascinating for the window it provides to the past, to characters and events both real and imagined, to lives in a time so different to our own.

Historical Fiction is one of my favourite genres that I have been reading for so long. This is purely because I love escaping my reality for a while and getting sucked into the past. While it may not always be pleasant, I find it fascinating.

Because I have been reading Historical Fiction for a long time there are literally hundreds of titles that I could add to the books Nisa and Antonia discussed in the podcast. However, I think my ‘Top Six’ might have to do for this post; after all I am supposed to be promoting our latest episode of Parra Pods!

Needless to say the podcast as always was interesting to listen to and when I say listen, I mean it! When you edit a podcast you have to listen through at least three times or at least I normally do.

Anyway enjoy our ‘Historical Fiction’ podcast. And if you are looking for some more recommendations checkout the recommendations below.

Happy Reading & Listening!

Continue reading

There is no such thing as ‘Too Many Books!’ Or is there?

I am happy to admit that I ‘love reading and books’ but sometimes, well if I am honest, most of the time I find it extremely hard to read. Does that make sense? What I am trying to say is that while I want to read, I find it hard to concentrate and make a decision on what to read. You can only re-read Harry Potter and Jasper Jones so many times!

You might think working in a library would make this decision easier, well it doesn’t. In fact it makes it one thousand times harder. When your job requires you to be up to date with what new titles are coming out and provide reading suggestions on an almost daily basis, having to then decide what books you want to read can prove almost impossible.

I find my interest is influenced by what I am working on at the time. For example while providing personalised reading suggestions for one of our recent Parra Reads Match requests; which was for thriller recommendations. I thought to myself you know what, I think what I feel like reading is a, thriller!

You might think this story ended there and I picked up the perfect thriller. Well it didn’t. I did choose four wonderful books to read and read the first few pages of each. Then put them all down. Not because they weren’t good, it was because I had already moved on to working on some ‘Chick Lit’ or you might like to call them, ‘Rom Com’ title recommendations for our library readers.

Hopefully you can now understand my dilemma. Or maybe you are thinking how hard is it to pick just one book to read. Or you might be wondering if I finally managed to choose a book to read.

Well unfortunately I haven’t actually managed to read any book yet. I have however managed to pick some amazing titles which, fingers crossed I will eventually read!

Until that time, I hope that you might find a great book to read or listen too among my ‘Wish List’.

Happy Reading, fingers crossed!

Jody

Jody’s Wish List

House of Earth and Blood, Crescent City Book 1 by Sarah J Maas

Jacinda Ardern by Michelle Duff

The Redhead by the Side of the Road by Anne Tyler

Maggie’s Going Nowhere by Rose Hartley

The Dictionary of Lost Words by Pip Williams

The Nowhere Child by Christain White

The Secrets She Keeps by Michael Robotham

The Mother-In-Law by Sally Hepworth, (Parra Reads Online Book Club)

Alice to Prague by Tanya Heaslip, (Parra Reads Online Book Club)

The Switch by Beth O’Leary.

Parra Pods, Identity

Episode 24 – Identity

Mass human migration in modern history has made identity such an interesting and complex thing, at least we think so!

In this episode join Katherine and Nisa as they discuss two Australian books that focus on ‘Identity’, with a sideways dip into the ‘On’ series of books published by Melbourne University Press.

Some of the books discussed include:

On Identity by Stan Grant, Melbourne University Press, May 2019.

Arab, Australian, Other: Stories on Race and Identity – Randa Abdel-Fattah and Sarah Saleh (eds), Picador, May 2019.

On Freedom by Tory Shepherd, Melbourne University Press, June 2019.

On Artists by Ashleigh Wilson, Melbourne University Press, May 2019.

HAPPY LISTENING!

Nisa & Katherine