To my surprise, I have read a similar number of books to last year, 34 books in all – nowhere near my illusory goal of a book a week. The year started slowly as I only managed two books a month until August. Results for the latter part of the year were helped by a … Continue reading 2023 – A Year of Reading
Memoir
Book Review – Fat Dogs and French Estates by Beth Haslam
Fat Dogs and French Estates is a delightful and humorous memoir of the adventures of Beth Haslam and her husband, Jack, as they look for a second home, a domaine, in France. They have a list of requirements: around 100 hectares complete with game, space for long walks with their dogs, a few outbuildings and … Continue reading Book Review – Fat Dogs and French Estates by Beth Haslam
Book Review – One Woman’s War and Peace by Wing Commander Sharon Bown (Ret’d)
When I think of Australian women’s military service, particularly in relation to World War 1, I think of the women of Australian Army Nursing Service. 2,139 AANS nurses served overseas during World War I attending wounded Australian soldiers in all major campaigns. They worked behind the lines in field hospitals and on hospital ships that … Continue reading Book Review – One Woman’s War and Peace by Wing Commander Sharon Bown (Ret’d)
One Minute Book Review – The Forgotten Highlander by Alastair Urquhart
This week something slightly longer than a one minute review. The Forgotten Highlander. My Incredible Story of Survival During the War in the Far East is a memoir by Alistair Urquhart (1919-2016). It touches on Urquhart's childhood and post-war life but concentrates on the period in which he was a Prisoner of War of the … Continue reading One Minute Book Review – The Forgotten Highlander by Alastair Urquhart
One Minute Book Review – 12 Edmondstone Street by David Malouf
12 Edmondstone Street by David Malouf is a memoir/essay which uses his childhood home in Brisbane in the 1930s and 1940s to gently observe the way the beliefs and experiences of a family’s past shape a child's view of and relationship with the world as an adult. Room by room, down to the space beneath … Continue reading One Minute Book Review – 12 Edmondstone Street by David Malouf
Catherine Meyrick 