The ASA (Australian Society of Authors0 newsletter today brought news of the 2024 Barbara Jefferis Award shortlist. Funded by a bequest in memory of author Barbara Jefferis, this award is made biennia...

It took two weeks to read this first and best-known novel from 2012 Nobel Prize winner Mo Yan. Red Sorghum is harrowing reading, best read in tandem with something less confronting.  It's historical f...

I could be wrong, but I think Stone Yard Devotional will test the loyalty of some of Charlotte Wood's more recent fans.  I found it compulsive reading, and read on through the night, but though the pr...

Death by Water - perhaps the last novel by Nobel Laureate Kenzabure Oe - is a fascinating book.  A book to provoke both conversation and consternation, offering insights from the personal to the polit...

This week, my (free) email subscription to the Story of the Week from the Library of America,  brought me 'The Power of Touch' by Helen Keller. It was first published in The Century Illustrated Monthl...

Spell the Month in Books is a linkup hosted on Reviews From the Stacks on the first Saturday of each month, but that's the day for #6Degrees, so here we are, a week later instead. This month, the them...

Prompted by Peter Dann's link to his recording of Katherine Mansfield's 'Prelude' at Librivox*, I listened to the story this afternoon, hypnotised by Peter's rendering of this ostensibly simple story ...