This week....

I'm reading

I had to do some last minute reading for the Rachael John's Book Club Retreat weekend in the last week. 

First, I had to read The Palace of Lost Virtue by Anthea Hodgson which is a historical fiction novel about two women who live in the remote gold mining town of Kalgoorlie in the late 1800s. One of the women is a young Christian woman and the other is a jaded madam. It was a fun read.

Then I read The Couples Retreat by Mercedes Mercier, which I only finished with a couple of hours spare before the discussion!

Both of these books are on my 20 Books of Winter list, as is The King's Jewel by Elizabeth Chadwick. This book was on the list as I didn't get to it last year so I started it as soon as I could and I have made some good progress so far.

I did intend to start my Classics Spin read next but then I realised that I can't extend one of my library books, so needed to start that instead. That book was We'll Prescribe You Another Cat by Syou Ishida. This is a pretty quick read though and I am now maybe 2/3 of the way through even though I only started it this morning. 

I'm watching


Not much really!

Life


This weekend was the annual Rachael John's Book Club Retreat weekend. This year it was held in a regional city which is about an hour away from me, Geelong. It was another great event where you get to meet up with other book lovers, talk books all weekend, hang out with authors and generally have a great time. I am planning to write something more about this later this week so I will just say it was a lot of fun! I have already booked my ticket for next year!

Posts from the last week

Top Ten Tuesday: 10 Authors I Am Looking Forward to Meeting at the Rachael Johns Book Club Retreat This Weekend

Atmosphere by Taylor Jenkins Reid

Weekend Cooking: Hot Chocolate on Thursday by Michiko Aoyama

Thoughts on War and Peace

I've linked this post to It's Monday, what are you reading? as hosted by Book Date, Sunday Salon hosted at Readerbuzz and the Good Book and a Cup of Tea link up hosted at Boondock Ramblings

Thoughts on War and Peace

According to Goodreads I started reading War and Peace back in July 2010. I did give it a good go, but then I put it down and just didn't pick it up again. It wasn't that I wasn't enjoying it, but I just stopped. 

At the beginning of last year I decided I was going to try and read alongside the chapter a day readalong. I didn't join the group or anything like that. I just kind of kept up with the schedule. I was doing well until I started working again and I fell behind when I was about 2/3 of the way through. It sat on my desk, taunting me every day. Finally, I decided I was going to finish it, once and for all. And so I did!

Today I am sharing a number of thoughts about reading War and Peace. Fair warning....some will be deeper than others.

This isn't my first Tolstoy. Years ago I read and loved Anna Karenina when Oprah chose it for her Classics Book Club. I loved reading along with other readers and discussing the experience, even if not everyone loved it. I should have joined the readalong for this book but I chose to read alone. I knew that I could read Tolstoy but it was still daunting and it definitely felt like an achievement when I finished it.

I think the thing that I do enjoy about these books is the humanness of the characters and how relevant that is still today. Yes, Tolstoy goes off on massive tangents, and spends paragraphs talking about the fact that battles were won despite no one doing what they were ordered to do. I particularly thought where he was talking about the fact that we look back and say this one thing or one person was decisive but really there were many people and incidents that contribute to the eventualities was very perceptive. I think we see this evidenced in the fact that we say that WWI was started because of the shooting of the Archduke Ferdinand. It was, in effect, the straw that broke the camels back, but in reality tensions had been building for years. Another example is that the American's entered WWII due to Pearl Harbor but there had been many events that led up to that one decisive moment. 

Getting back to the humaness of the characters, we saw characters who undertook big transformations due to their experiences, such as Pierre going from illegitimate son, to rightful heir, to husband, to member of the Masonic Lodge, to outwardly losing everything. And similarly the female characters such as Natasha and Princess Marya experienced love and loss, and were bound by duty but ultimately achieved happiness.

Whilst the title is War and Peace, it could just as easily have been Love and Loss or Power and what ever the opposite of that is. 

Humour isn't the first word that comes to mind when I think of Tolstoy but there was definitely humour in the book, from the inept armies who couldn't follow orders and still triumphed to single lines that just made me smile, like the one late in the book which said about Pierre "Though the doctors treated him, let his blood, and gave him medications to drink, he nevertheless recovered."

Would War and Peace qualify as having one of the longest epilogues ever? There are two parts to the epilogue and together they are nearly 100 pages long which seems crazy. One was an epilogue in the more normal use of the word where we found out what happened to the characters after the main part of the story. The other part was more philosophical thoughts about war. 

I read the Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky translation of the book because theirs was the version I read of Anna Karenina. It felt quite accessible, and I liked that they kept a lot of the French in the books.

Ultimately, reading a book like War and Peace is a commitment, and I am so glad that I was able to finish it this time. I did close the book with a sense of achievement, but also relief that I had finally got to the end. If you asked me to name Tolstoy books I probably would only be able to name this one and Anna K, but there are others out there, which I might try to read.....one day.

This book counts for the Books in Translation Challenge hosted by Introverted Reader, for the Historical Fiction Reading Challenge which I hosted, counts as one of my 20 Books of Winter and was read for the Marathon reader prompt of the Spring Goodreads Challenge.

Weekend Cooking: Hot Chocolate on Thursday by Michiko Aoyama

 

Hidden away in a residential neighbourhood, The Marble Café is located at the end of a row of cherry blossom trees that line the side of a river. It is a very small café with only three tables and a counter that seats five. It's sounds really idyllic.

The manager of the café stumbled into it when he needed a job and was immediately hired. Since then he has basically had free reign in how he runs the café. Every Thursday a young woman comes in, sits at a particularly seat and orders a hot chocolate, regardless of the weather. However, he has not yet found enough courage to interact with her, even though she has intrigued him which is clear from the very first line of the book!

From this start, the reader is introduced to multiple characters with each story haven't a small connection. We meet a newly wed young woman who is in Sydney for her honeymoon. She is visiting Tooronga Zoo and meets a couple that is celebrating their 59th wedding anniversary and they don't know it but they have a connection. The connections are sometimes just the slightest link and I enjoyed looking for the connections in each chapter.

One of the mysterious characters is the café owner The Maestro. He is a man who seems to have his finger in lots of pies and at various points pops up in several of the stories pulling the strings to make things happen in various characters lives. 

It isn't unusual for Japanese or Korean books of this nature to feature 4 or 5 connected stories. This book has 12 different stories, so they are more slice of life vignettes with very intriguing connections in each story. The whole collection is connected through the people who visit the café or at least know people who have visited.

I also enjoyed that a fair portion of the book had an Australian connection in terms of Japanese people who live or have lived in Australia, or have family members. It's not something I have seen in a Japanese book before.

Hot Chocolate on Thursday was Michiko Aoyama's first book published in Japan, although it was her third book that was translated into English. The good news is that there is a sequel called Matcha on Monday which is due to be released in a few weeks time. I can guarantee that I will be going out of my way to read that one!

I must confess that I am very impressionable. Every time I look at this book I start thinking about a fabulous European style hot chocolate! Yum.

I thoroughly enjoyed this and I am really looking forward to reading Matcha on Monday, and whatever else this author comes up with!

I am sharing this review with Foodies Read hosted at Based on a True Story, the Books in Translation Challenge hosted at Introverted Reader and Weekend Cooking which I host here.

Rating 4.5/5

Weekly meals

Saturday - Butter chicken, rice and roti
Sunday - Butternut pumpkin soup
Monday - Chicken stir fry and rice
Tuesday -  Baked Tuscan Chicken
Wednesday - Beef and Broccoli Stir Fry
Thursday -Paneer and Tomato Curry
Friday - Away

Atmosphere by Taylor Jenkins Reid

A

As a person who is older than I would like to admit some days, if you mention the words space shuttle, then there are probably two places where my mind goes straight away. First, the iconic images of the shuttle piggybacking on a jumbo but secondly it is the video of the Challenger exploding. Given that event happened 40 years ago this year, it does seem timely that this book, which was released last year,  tells the story of a fictional shuttle called Navigator and the lives of the men and women who were part of the space program in the early 1980s.

The story centres on a female astronaut by the name of Joan Goodwin. The story starts in late 1984. Joan is working in Mission Control where she is CAPCOM, the only person who can speak directly to the crew on board the Navigator when things go wrong. She needs to be the rational and calm voice as she talks to her crew while they deal with a terrible incident.

Through a series of flashbacks we follow Joan's journey from the time that she was one of the earliest women accepted for the space program, through training and more training and more training. On a personal front, we watch as Joan is the stabilising figure in her beloved niece Frances' life and as she falls in love. However, the woman that Joan falls for is another astronaut and they must keep their relationship secret.

There were so many layers to this book from moments where the characters are looking at the stars and contemplating the meaning of life, to the strong friendships and rivalries which grow as the team learn about each other. After all, they are part of a very select group and there could be situations when you are relying on each other in life and death situations

I experienced a rollercoaster of emotions throughout this book. I laughed, I cried, I was prompted to think deep, I got angry at the double standards, and at Joan's sister for the way she treated Frances, and I learnt some things as well!

I am not much of a science fiction reader, so it seems kind of ironic that while I was reading this book I was also listening to the audio book of Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir. What these two book have in common that while they are filled with science and space talk, they are both really accessible and have a great deal of emotional depth. This is a very sciency historical fiction book.

I know I am very late to the party,  but this was my first ever read from Taylor Jenkins Reid. I have intended to read other books from here, especially books like Daisy Jones and the Six, but I haven't gotten to them yet. Given how much I enjoyed these I am going to try to read more from her soon. The reason why I picked this one up now is that it helped me cross off two different categories in the Goodreads Spring Challenge.

I am sharing this review with the Historical Fiction Reading Challenge which I host here.

Rating 4/5

Top Ten Tuesdays: 10 Authors I am Looking Forward to Meeting at the Rachael Johns Book Club Retreat this weekend

 Welcome to this week's edition of Top Ten Tuesday which is hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl. This week the theme is Bookish Wishes (List the top 10 books you’d love to own and include a link to your wishlist so that people can grant your wish. Make sure you link your wishlist to your mailing address [here’s how to do it on Amazon] or include the email address associated with your ereader in the list description so people know how to get the book to you. After you post, jump around the Linky and grant a wish or two if you’d like. Please don’t feel obligated to send anything to anyone!)

I am always a bit uncomfortable with this prompt, so I am changing the theme to suit me, which I do pretty regularly to be fair. This coming weekend I am heading down to Geelong, a regional city just over an hour away from where I live, and I will be attending the 2027 Racheal Johns Book Club Reader Retreat. I have been to all four of these and they are such a good weekend. There are usually around 100 readers and 20 guest authors. So here are books by 10 of the authors I am looking forward to meeting or seeing again this weekend.

The Lucky Sisters by Rachael Johns - Of course I had to have Rachael Johns on the list.

The Palace of Lost Virtue by Anthea Hodgson - Anthea is the co-host of the retreat so I had to have her on the list as well. I really liked The War Nurses by this author. We started hearing about this book at the last retreat and it sounds great. It is one of the book club choices for the weekend!

A Woman's Voice by Alli Sinclair - Last year I went to hear Alli Sinclair talk about this book and it sounds so good. 

The Paradise Pact by Anita Heiss - Anita Heiss is an amazing person to spend time with. Can't wait to hear more about this book! (Update - since I wrote this post a few weeks ago, it has been announced that Anita can no longer attend)

Where the Birds Call Her Name by Claire van Ryn - I have absolutely loved both of Claire van Ryn's books so I am very excited to meet her!

The Paradise Heights Miniature Railway Club by Kate Solly - I have booked a couple of times to go to author events with Kate Solly, but it just hasn't worked out, so I am pleased she is one of the feature authors this weekend.

The Bookshop of Buried Pasts by Sarah Clutton - I was supposed to go to the launch of this book a few weeks ago but I ended up having to work late so I didn't make it!

Better than the Real Thing by Brooke Crawford - Last year I ran into this author at quite a few events, so looking forward to seeing her again.

Sunrise at Sunny Cross Farm by Maya Linnell - I have read a couple of books by this author. This is her new book which has just come out!

The Wedding Forecast by Nina Kenwood - This sounds like such a fun read!

Have you ever been to a reader's retreat?

This week....

I'm reading

My big news this week....I finished War and Peace! Yes! I started this for the second time in January last year and was determined to finish it by June 30 and made it!

In other reading news, sometimes a book feels as though it was specifically written with me in mind, and that is definitely the case with This Book Made me Think of You by Libby Page. I loved it from beginning to end. I loved how bookish it was, it was sad but also hopeful, warm and uplifting! This will be on my best of list for 2026 for sure!

This week I also finished reading my first ever novel by Taylor Jenkins Reid, Atmosphere, which I read to fulfil two categories in the Goodreads Spring challenge. It is kind of funny that I was reading this book and listening to Project Hail Mary at the same time! I am making some progress with PHM, but it will be a while until I actually finish it.

I also finished reading The Frozen River by Ariel Lawhon which was another Goodreads challenge read. It's my first book by her and it won't be my last.

Now I am reading The Model Murders by Amanda Hampson, which is the fourth book in the Tea Ladies series. It's so much fun visiting with these characters again!

We had our read on a theme book club meeting this weekend, and for the first time since we started this book club I didn't read a book to match the theme. I thinks on the shelf I could of read but they just didn't really appeal. The next theme is Secrets and I feel like both of the last two books I mentioned could fit for that theme!

I'm watching


On Friday night we went and saw a Peruvian movie called Mistura which is set in the 1960s in Lima and features a woman who needs to come up with a plan to save her house after her husband leaves her for a younger woman. It was very foodie and worth a watch!

On Satruday night we watched two movies. The first was a WWII file called Into the White which was set in Norway. It was based on a true story where a German plane crew and a British plane crew come together in a remove cottage in the middle of nowhere and have to work out how they are going to survive.

In a change of pace we then watched Office Romance which stars Jennifer Lopez and Brett Goldstein as the boss and her lawyer who begin an inappropriate office relationship. I actually laughed out loud several times!

And for old times sake I watched First Wives Club with Goldie Hawn, Bette Midler and Diane Keaton as three women whose husbands left them for younger women.

Life

Not a lot to tell this week!

Max


Happy birthday to the Max! This good boi turned 4 this week! 

Posts from the last week


Top Ten Tuesday: Books with handwriting on the cover
Blog Tour: Charlie's Last Angel by Maggie Christensen
The Little Wartime Library by Kate Thompson
Afternoon Tea Diaries: Paradox at Oxi Tea Rooms
Historical Fiction Reading Challenge: May statistics



I've linked this post to It's Monday, what are you reading? as hosted by Book Date, Sunday Salon hosted at Readerbuzz and the Good Book and a Cup of Tea link up hosted at Boondock Ramblings

Historical Fiction Reading Challenge: May statistics

 

 Every month I share some of the statistics related to the Historical Fiction Reading Challenge. I try very hard to visit every post which has been linked (time permitting) and I find it interesting to see what are the books that people are reading and reviewing! I often end up adding a couple of books to my never ending TBR list.

In terms of the books read in May, there were 51 reviews linked up for the challenge, shared by 18 participants. There were 51 individual titles reviewed, written by 51 different authors. There were 3 reviewers who reviewed 5 or more books each. Thank you to everyone who shared their links whether it be 7 or just 1.

Now, if you look at those numbers carefully, you might note that there were 51 reviews of 51 individual titles and 51 different authors. It occasionally happens that we might not have a single title reviewed more than once, but it has never happened that we didn't have an author with multiple titles reviewed. Never!! I guess that is an interesting statistic in and of itself!

One thing of interest. We had two books reviewed this month that featured Abigail Adams, wife of US President John Adams. Laura from Laura's Reviews shared her review of Three Queens by Rebecca Connolly and Kim reviewed A Founding Mother: A Novel of Abigail Adams  by Stephanie Dray and Laura Kamoie on Goodreads!

If you enjoy reading Historical Fiction why not join us? You can find all the details here.

I am sharing this with Sunday Salon hosted at Readerbuzz and A Good Book and a Cup of Tea hosted at Hopewell's Library.