They can be "books that I physically own, be it arc, bought, paperback or ebook. It could have been there for months or just acquired it yesterday."
My little twist is to highlight one new release and one classic each week.
Over the next few weeks I will also focus on the Australian books lurking in my TBR in honour of AusReadingMonth.
I've been a Lily Brett fan ever since I first stumbled across Too Many Men. Although many of her subsequent novels feel like a repeat of TMM, I always enjoyed falling back in to the way she wrote about family relationships.
Her non-fiction pieces also explore this theme in a way that I find very satisfying.
Only in New York by Lily Brett is her latest offering.
New York is a walker's city. You can walk for hours. The streets slip by. There is so much to look at, so much to take in. I walk a lot. Especially when I am not writing…Lily Brett's love affair with New York began as an outsider in her late teens when she was posted on assignment there as a young Australian rock journalist. In her early forties she returned, together with her soul mate and three children, to start a new life. She has since called New York home for three decades.This witty, candid and moving collection of short pieces celebrates the city that's now part of her heartbeat. A compulsive walker, Brett takes us to her favourite places and introduces us to the characters of the city that has nurtured, perplexed and inspired her. She brings to life the delights of Chinatown, the majesty of Grand Central Station, the lure of spandex and sequins, and the peculiarity of canine couture. And she muses on the miracle of love in the Lodz ghetto, the possibility of loneliness amidst skyscrapers, and the joy and redemption in a child's curiosity.Full of wisdom, humour and grace, Only in New York is a human portrait of a city in part lost in its own mythology – and of a woman in step with herself.
Swords and Crowns and Rings by Ruth Park is one of the new Text Classics reprints. Harp in the South is a wonderful story, but it is this one that won Park a Miles Franklin Award. I'm curious, very curious.
Ruth Park’s Miles Franklin-winning novel brilliantly evokes Australia in the midst of the Great Depression. Written with warmth and affection, Swords and Crowns and Rings is a powerful story about human nature and the strength of an unlikely love.
Growing up in an Australian country town before World War I, Jackie Hanna and Cushie Moy are carefree and innocent in their love for each other. But Jackie is a dwarf, and his devotion to the beautiful Cushie is condemned by her parents.
This is the story of their lifelong odyssey, and of the triumph of a special kind of courage.
In Swords and Crowns and Rings, Ruth Park brilliantly captures the mood of Australia in the first part of the twentieth century.
I'm a huge Ruth Park fan.... better than The Harp in the South?
ReplyDeleteI'm adding "Swords and Crowns and Rings by Ruth Park" to my book Women's Classis Literature List !
I've never read S&C&R but it sounds like a rural Depression story as opposed to Harp in the South's inner city Depression story. And yes, it's on my Women's Classic Lit List too :-)
DeleteThe Harp in the South is definitely in my sights. Actually I have S&C&R on my TBR too (and both books in the house somewhere), but I want to read The Harp in the South more at this stage. New York isn't my thing (too much a Paris girl) but this could be a great present for someone I know who is planning a trip.
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