This week

I'm reading

Another busy week reading wise! It is surprising in a way as it doesn't feel like I have a lot of reading time but I am making some good progress.

First I finished We'll Prescribe You Another Cat by Syou Ishida, which is the second book in the series. The third is due to be released later this year and I will read it! It's funny because I am not really a cat series, but I don't mind reading Japanese series that features cats.

Next up, I read Careful, He Might Hear You by Sumner Locke Elliott which was my selection for the current Classic Club Spin! I absolutely loved this. It was a really engaging read which I got through in just a couple of days, even though it is a pretty big book! This book also counts as a read for my read on a theme book club. This month the theme is Secrets

I then started Forty Rules of Love by Elif Shafak. This book is going to slow my reading down as it is pretty dense. I love that it is set in Konya though, which is a city in Turkiye that we visited on our recent trip.

On the audiobook front I finished Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir which I loved. The audio experience of this one was great!

My next audio book is Before I Knew I Loved You by Toshikazu Kawaguchi, the next book in the Before The Coffee Gets Cold series. I have only listened to the prologue so far though

I'm watching


A while ago now I read The Convenience Store by the Sea by Sonoko Machida and really enjoyed it. (my review). I only just learnt this weekend that they have made a TV version of the book, so I watched the first episode on Saturday. It is a bit kitschy but it is a lot of fun so far. 

We finished watching two series this week.  We finished watching the latest series of Welcome to Wrexham, which is always really good TV. 

The other series was The Ottoman Empire by Train which is hosted by British archaelogist Alice Roberts. This journey started in Turkiye, visiting cities like Ankara and Istanbul, and then on into Eastern Europe. It was very interesting! And it too visited Konya!

I also binged watched the third season of Stuff the British Stole. In this season, they talked about the English flag, a meteorite that was found in Victoria but is now in Britain, the history of tea and more. It is always very interesting viewing.

Here's the trailer

Life

It is end of financial year here which means that I am crazy, crazy busy. Not that I am not super busy the rest of the time too, but even more so this week. 

I could really have done with a quiet weekend but instead we had two very enjoyable events. 

On Friday night we went to see Post Modern Jukebox in concert. This is the second time I have seen them live. They do amazing versions of songs that you know really well and adapt them to the sounds of different musical eras. One of the highlights was a version of Every Breath You Take by The Police.

On Saturday night, we went to an amazing 5 course (plus some extra little morsels) Japanese dinner in the city. It was a delicious dinner, plus a cooking demonstration as we were shown how each dish was made, and then a cultural demonstration as well. There were drumming displays, judo demonstration and a musical performance. It was such a great night! I have so many food photos but I have resisted the urge and only shared the ones above!

Posts from the last week


Top Ten Tuesday: My Current Library Check Outs
The Palace of Lost Virtue by Anthea Hodgson
Weekend Cooking: Two South American movies
Sunday Salon: Rachael John's Book Club Reader Retreat




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

Sunday Salon: Rachael John's Book Club Readers Retreat 2026

Last weekend I attended the Rachael John's Book Club Retreat which, this year, was held at a regional called Geelong which is just over an hour away from where I live. Geelong is a city that I love visiting but I have never stayed there before. Above is the view from my hotel room! 

The city sits on a bay with beautiful beaches, a fun waterside walk and some interesting museums and art galleries. It is also gateway to the Bellarine Peninsula which has some really lovely wineries, restaurants and fantastic beaches which we enjoy visiting. In other words, we often drive through Geelong!

The advantage of having it at this location is that it was close enough to drive although I did miss the reading time on the plane that I have had when travelling to the previous locations. I do have a tendency to do a lot of my required reading on the plane there! 

So what happens at one of these events? I could say what happens on retreat, stays on retreat, but I won't! There are 120 or so readers, plus around 20 authors and you get to spend the whole weekend talking about books, eating, and generally having a good time!

The event started with a cocktail party on Friday night where the theme was Madams and Miners, which ties in with one of the hosts books. I don't love a dress up, but I do make something of an effort. There are plenty of people who made a really big effort with some amazing costumes.

On the Saturday night it was a formal dinner where the theme was From Poolside to Party Ready: Dress Like You’re on Holiday with your Besties. 

And during the two days? There are book club discussions, author panels, author speed dating (which is always a lot of fun, optional yoga sessions and writer sessions, a bookshop where you can shop the books of all the fab authors you have met over the weekend and more! This year, there was the new addition of a game show called A Romance Knockout where authors competed against each other on specialist subjects, tropes and writing prompts.

The book club reads this year were Anthea Hodgson's The Palace of Lost Virtue which is set in 1890s and 1920's Kalgoorlie, which is a gold mining town in Western Australia. The palace of the title is a brothel, hence the theme of Madams and Miners. I reviewed the book last week.

The other book was The Couples Retreat by Mercedes Mercier who is a new author to me. It is a crime/psychological thriller which isn't my normal cup of tea, but it never hurts to read outside your comfort zone right. This book is set on Kangaroo Island in South Australia and features a rookie cop who gets drawn into a murder at a luxurious property. Kangaroo Island is a place that has been on my list of places to visit for a long time. 

One of the highlights every year is the debate. It is always hilarious and this year was no exception. The debate topic was This house believes that reading romance gives women unrealistic expectations of men and our debaters certainly gave interesting and compelling arguments both for and against!

Pictured above are Rachael and Anthea during the book club discussion, Bree from All the Books You Can Read leading an author panel and Sarah Clutton and Ali Sinclair visiting our table during author speed dating. 

Unsurprisingly I came home with more books, than I went there with, as well as bookish paraphernalia including what we received in the goodie bag,  To be fair, I only bought one book which was very controlled. More surprisingly, I also came home with more clothes than I went with!

I have been to all 4 of the retreats so far, which makes me an OG. This year there was a t-shirt that we could buy to celebrate this fact.  Every year since the beginning I have sat at the same table with the same group of people (pictured above on the Friday night). Some of us knew some of us, but no one knew all of us when we first started sitting together.  We now have a group chat, we are all Facebook friends and we have become more than just book friends. We also had a t-shirts to celebrate this year the group this year!

This retreat is always a lot of fun and Rachel, Anthea and their team does a fantastic job. I have already booked for Hobart next year

You can read about previous years here.

2025 - Perth

2024 - Gold Coast

2023 - Hahndorf

Weekend Cooking: Two South American films

I love a foreign film festival. We have a cinema chain here who has a steady stream of them from British to German and French, Scandinavian and so much more. Recently, it has been the Spanish and Latin American film festival, and two of the films that I have seen have had a foodie connection, one more than the other.

Let's start with the second movie we saw which is a Peruvian film called Mistura.

When a society woman's husband leaves her for a younger woman, she is left with the mortgage for the house and no idea how she is going to make ends meet. This is 1960's Peru, and upper class women do not work but she only has four months to come up with a plan. Her reputation is already damaged enough because of the scandal associated with recent events.

Nora's father was the French ambassador and he loved to cook and Nora loved to learn from him. She has a recipe book where she recorded the recipes he shared. After being initially distraught and retreating to her bedroom to smoke and drink, her driver Oscar convinces her to try cooking again, and from there she decides to to open a classical French restaurant in the room that used to be her husband's studio.

Whilst the reviews for her restaurant were good, the people did not come. It was only once a customer asked for a ceviche that things began to turn around. Whilst Nora didn't initially have an appreciation for the food of her adopted country, her team members began to share their own comfort food. Will changing the focus be enough to save her house. 

This is one of those films which is filled with images like a lemon being juiced in slow motion, and sauce being stirred slowly. In other words, this is a food porn movie. I don't know a lot about Peruvian food, but I did leave the cinema wishing that I could try some.

It wasn't only food that was focussed. This was set in Lima and so we got to see what I imagine would be key events in Peruvian history, we got to see the amazing cliffside of Lima, and Nora's 60s fashion was amazing!

If I am going to be a bit critical, there's one aspect of the story which was telegraphed from quite early in the movie and I don't know that it really needed to be in the movie, but it was! But the food and fashion more than made up for it! I would definitely watch it again if I happened across it

Here's the trailer:

The first film my friend and I saw was called Nothing Between Us and explores an affair which happens at a corporate conference between a Mexican man, Guillermo, played by Gael García Bernal and a Uruguyan woman named Mechi played by Natalia Oreiro.

The two work in different regions in South America but are bought together in Baja California in Mexico due to a commerical crisis for the large company they work for. For Mechi it is something of a surprise that she was invited, and it gives her a break from a crumbling marriage and a sullen and rebellious daughter. Guillermo has his own issues at home where he feels distant from his wife and son.

On the first night, they meet by chance on the beach in the middle of the night and soon they begin an illict affaiir which they must keep secret from their colleagues, and of course their respective families. Their connection is strong and immediate and over the course of the few days they are drawn together time and again.

You may be wondering what the food aspect is here. It is a company that produces canned foods and they have been caught up in a case of food poisoning which has left hundreds of people ill or dead. At first the CEO seems to think that just an apology will do but soon the group that is sequestered together must come up with some other strategies to deal with the crisis and rebuild the confidence of the public. It is an interesting glimpse into that kind of world.

Whilst I ddin't love this movie, it was interesting enough, and the scenery looked amazing!

Here's the trailer

Weekly meals

Saturday - Away 
Sunday - Chicken, Chorizo and Orzo
Monday - Pork Chops, mash, broccoli and gravy
Tuesday - French Onion Rigatoni (new)
Wednesday - Pork nachos
Thursday -
Friday -

A note on the future of Weekend Cooking

I love doing Weekend Cooking and have no plans to stop. I often have Weekend Cooking posts planned weeks in advance and don't often run out of content. However, as an event there are really only a couple of us who are linking up each week so going forward I am not going to worry about putting in Mr Linky or the whole banner and blurb thing. 

Please feel free to continue to add your link in the comments if you want to.

Weekend Cooking is open to anyone who has any kind of food-related post to share: Book reviews (novel, nonfiction), cookbook reviews, movie reviews, recipes, random thoughts, gadgets, quotations, photographs, restaurant reviews, travel information, or fun food facts. If your post is even vaguely foodie, feel free to grab the button and link up anytime over the weekend. You do not have to post on the weekend. Please link to your specific post, not your blog's home page

The Palace of Lost Virtue by Anthea Hodgson

Goldrush history is always something that I find really interesting. So many interesting characters who leave everything behind in the hope that they can change their lives and the lives of their families, the mix of nationalities, the colourful characters and so much more. Of course, more often than not, that dream find does not happen but the lure of gold is strong.

Marigold Harrington, a devout young Christian woman, arrives in the remote Western Australian gold town of Kalgoorlie in the late 1890s with only one plan. She and her mother have undertaken the long and arduous trip from Melbourne to be reunited father. He used to be a preacher but he headed west in the hope of making his fortune and save his family from their current financial problems. When Marigold and her mother arrive, there is no sign of her father. 

It is hot, dry and dusty and Kalgoorlie is a typical gold town, full of miners, with limited numbers of women. And a lot of the women that there are prostitutes. American Pansy Arlington is the owner of the Palace of Pleasure. Pansy is rough around the edges, is prone to drinking too much, and is hiding a story of heartbreak

In theory, Marigold and Pansy should not even cross paths, but they do when Marigold joins the Christian Women's Temperance Union and she and the other members knock on the door to try and minister to the girls who work for Pansy. This unlikely pair form a friendship based on a love of good conversation, books and more.

This is a dual timeline novel with the second part of the story being set in the late 1920s when two gold detectives are murdered. As the investigation continues, we find out how the women's history impacts lives 30 years later.

Anthea Hodgson has found a great story to tell, packed with interesting history. Pansy Arlington was real life character from history, and the history of prostitution in Kalgoorlie is very interesting. The y came up with an interesting way of dealing with the problem of having ladies displaying their wares in public. This was through a policy called containment which meant all the brothels are located on just one street, known as Hay Street. There were also rules around how they could operate. It is something unique to Kalgoorlie. The murder case was also based on a true story which was also very interesting.

Many years ago we used to catch the train from Adelaide to Perth, which is a journey of around 36 hours. The last major stop before you get to Perth is in Kalgoorlie, where there was a fairly long stop. On one of those trips, I did a bus tour which took you down Hay Street, which is the street where all of the brothels were located. I mean, we looked at the mine heads and other things too. Apparently these days there is not much to see thanks to the advent of fly in fly out work and the internet but it was certainly an interesting tour to take.

Anthea Hodgson has given us another really interesting read with some little known aspects of history portrayed on the page. As a reader we were taken back to the dusty, rough streets of Kalgoorlie, warts and all. It wasn't an easy life and things happened to the characters that broke my heart.

I always intended to read this book, but it moved to the top of my list as it was one of the books that I needed to read for the Rachael John's Book Club Reader's Retreat that I attended last weekend. I might not read many of the other book club books, but I do make an effort to read the retreat ones! 

This book counts for the Historical Fiction Reading Challenge, which I host here, with the New Release Challenge hosted at The Chocolate Lady's Book Reviews and was also one of the books that I nominated for 20 Books of Winter hosted at AnnaBookBel.

Rating 4/5

Top Ten Tuesday: My current library checkouts

 Welcome to this week's edition of Top Ten Tuesday which is hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl. This week theme is Books on My Summer 2026 To-Read List.or in my case, the Winter to read-list. 

For the most part, my winter TBR list should be dictated by the books that I nominated for the 20 Books of Winter which I have shared in previous TTT posts here and here. It is, however, inevitable that as soon as I create a list I will start reading books that are not on that listj! Often those books are library books, so today I am sharing the next ten library books I plan to read, some of which are on my 20 books list, and some which are not. There is also a fair chance that at least one or two of these might go back unread but hopefully not too many!

A Far Flung Life by M L Stedman - I have heard a lot of good things about this book!

And Now Back to You by B K Borison - This is the second book in the Heart Strings series.

In the Weeds by B K Borison - Yes, I really do have two B K Borison books out from the library at the same time.

The Forty Rules of Love by Elif Shafak - This will be my third Elif Shafak read and I have high hopes for this one too!

Careful He Might Hear You by Sumner Locke Elliot - This is my Classics Spin choice

We'll Prescribe You Another Cat by Syou Ishida - I actually finished this one today after I put this list together.

Everyone in this Bank is a Thief by Benjamin Stevenson - I will be all caught up on this series once I read this one.

The Palace Women by Jennifer Ryan - I picked this up on a whim on a recent visit to the library.

The Island of Mists and Miracles by Victoria Mas  - I really enjoyed the last book I read by Victoria Mas.

Seascraper by Benjamin Wood - This should be a quick read at least!

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.