book review

John McPhee's Tabula Rasa

Book Review: Anecdotes, accidents and antecedents fill the page in Tabula Rasa

If you’re not familiar with John McPhee, he’s considered “a pioneer of creative nonfiction” and won the Pulitzer Prize for his 1999 book Annals of the Former World. That book is the complete collection of two decades worth of road trips he took with eminent geologists, through which he tells the history of North America’s…

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Book Review: Cold Mountain author Charles Frazier returns to the American Civil War with Varina, a beautiful blend of fiction and history

1906, Saratoga Springs. A man named James Blake enters The Retreat hotel and asks to see Varina Davis. In his hands he holds a blue book, a book that offers a glimpse into his past. He barely remembers Mrs Davis – V – but he wonders if she remembers him, a small black boy rescued…

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Review: Explore an abandoned Tel Aviv in Raphaël Jerusalmy’s poetic novella Evacuation

Young filmmaker Naor is driving with his mother. Along the way, he tells his mother of his time in Tel Aviv, abandoned after a mandatory evacuation. Staying behind with his girlfriend Yaël, and his grandfather, Naor encounters a new side to his beloved city. As the bombs fall, the trio begin to make a film,…

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Book Review: You’ll sleep with the lights on after reading Laura Purcell’s The Silent Companions

Elsie Bainbridge, newly widowed, is sent to her late husband’s estate to see out the last few weeks of her pregnancy. With a skeleton staff, abandoned, dusty rooms, and a surrounding village terrified of the house, The Bridge is far from the haven Elsie hopes it to be. But when she and Sarah, her husband’s…

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Book Review: Hannah Jewell’s 100 Nasty Women of History will help you find your new favourite historical figure

Join The Washington Post’s pop culture editor Hannah Jewell as she plucks (almost) forgotten women from the historical cutting room floor. From artists to investigative reporters, scientists to queens, political firebrands to murderers, there’s no such thing as the delicate fairer sex here. Get in the kitchen and make you sandwich? Puh-lease. I’ve got an…

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Book Review: Graphic memoir Eyes Too Dry explores mental illness, lasting friendships, and the healing power of art

A true tale of mental illness told from the perspective of both the sufferer and the bewildered friend, Eyes Too Dry is a joint venture from Alice Chipkin and Jessica ‘Tava’ Tavassoli. Switching between Tava, a medical student slipping into a deep depression, and housemate Alice, losing herself in her friend’s darkening struggle, this graphic…

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Book Review: Immerse yourself in the hunt for Australia’s deadliest snake with Brendan James Murray’s Venom

In the first half of the twentieth century, the Australian media began spreading tales of a huge, lightning fast species of snake that was seemingly taking lives at a rate of knots. Attaining a near mythical status, the nguman, or taipan, was all too real. The press demonised them, wary farmers hunted them, and desperate…

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Book Review: Alicia Inez Guzmán’s Georgia O’Keeffe At Home explores the oeuvre of an American art icon

Famed American artist Georgia O’Keeffe is the focus of Alicia Inez Guzmán’s latest work, Georgia O’Keeffe At Home. Exploring the relationship between O’Keeffe’s location and the work she produced, Guzmán takes readers from Texas, to New York, to New Mexico, in a book that is part beautiful coffee table literature, part in depth art historical…

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Book Review: The Paper House by Anna-Spargo Ryan

Heather and Dave are expecting. Finding the perfect home for their growing family, they settle down to await the new arrival. But tragedy strikes and a grieving Heather finds no comfort in the new house they were so excited to share with their first born. The Paper House, the debut novel from Anna Spargo-Ryan, follows…

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Book Review: The Midnight Watch by David Dyer (Penguin Books, 2016)

It has just gone midnight on April 15 1912, and Herbert Stone — second officer aboard the SS Californian — is about to take watch. Across the Atlantic ice field that has halted his own ship’s progress for the night lies another, a passenger steamer, her lights dim. Stone is expecting a quiet night, but when…

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