Image credit: Schrodinger's Books Not as much time as I would have liked for reading this year but still I managed 63 books in total. Four of my top ten reads were books suggested by Mary the owner of Schrodinger’s Books in Petone for our monthly book discussion group. Another four were books I bought... Continue Reading →
One of the joys of reading historical fiction are books about events that immerse you in the world of your ancestors – to imagine what it would be like and the perils that accompanied voyages across the seas, for example. I wrote about the 1894 wreck of the Wairarapa on Great Barrier Island in The... Continue Reading →
Another year of living covidly (hence no book fairs) but there have been some great New Zealand publications this year. A third of the book I read in 2021 and my top three recommendations are all recently published books by NZ authors. Check them out! Come Back to Mona Vale – Alexander McKinnon Family secrets,... Continue Reading →
A Journal of the Plague Year: On 21 March 2020, I started keeping a daily journal to record and process these “unprecedented” times. I use these quotes ironically as one of the papers I did for my degree was The History of the Plague and although our scientific understanding of disease has advanced, our social... Continue Reading →
For three weeks of the summer, my parents rented a beach house at Taurikura. There was no television and my Dad would return to the farm during the day, but we spent idyllic days swimming, messing about in the dinghy and reading. There was the daily walk to The Store with five cents of spending... Continue Reading →
2019 has been a busy year for me: my first grandchild, moving house and getting back into researching my family tree – no apologies, but this blog and my writing have been neglected. I still found time to read, however, and here is my annual book-reading summary for the year. My reading habits haven’t changed... Continue Reading →
What is a booktown, you may well ask? Alex Johnson in his book Book Towns: Forty-five Paradises of the Printed Word defines it as “simply a small town, usually rural and scenic, full of bookshops and book-related industries.” The most well-known booktowns are Hay-on-Wye in Wales and Wigtown in Scotland (the location of Shaun Bythell’s... Continue Reading →
I’ve been bereft at the sudden closure of the Wellington Central Library last month. I used to go there two or three times a week but now I have to check the opening hours of another branch and get in my car – so I haven’t bothered. I thought I would make a dent in... Continue Reading →
I read exactly 100 books last year which is probably a record for me. An update of the statistics from my first blog post: Half of the fiction books I read were historical fiction. This year included more New Zealand authors, and more biographies and memoirs. I tried to get back into reading more short... Continue Reading →
Starting with the annual DCM book fair I’ve been on a bit of a book-buying binge lately, so for dedicated bibliophiles here is a miscellany of new and second-hand bookstores in and around central Wellington. Conveniently, my two favourite bookshops (Unity and Arty Bees) both have a bus stop right outside. Unity Books Unity Books... Continue Reading →
Catherine Clarke 