Top Ten Tuesday: Buzz-words!

 Welcome to this week's edition of Top Ten Tuesday which is hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl. This week the theme is Buzzwords or Phrases That Make Me Want to Read (or Avoid) a Book (These words or phrases can be in the title, synopsis, marketing materials, reviews, author blurbs, etc. and immediately pique your interest or immediately make you say “NOPE”. Examples include: fae, forbidden romance, morally grey characters, unreliable narrator, found family, magical worlds, love triangle, marriage of convenience, dark academia, stranded, dragons, dual points of view, starting over, etc.)

I am focussing on just one word out of that theme - Buzz!

Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd - I was very late to the party having only read this book around 18 months ago. (my review)

Go Tell the Bees I am Gone by Diana Gabaldon - I still haven't read this book which is the latest in the Outlander series. Maybe I will one day.

The Enlightenment of Bees by Rachel Linden - I have had this book out from the library a couple of times now. Next time I borrow it I really need to make sure that I actually read it!

All the Bees in the Hollow by Lauren Keegan - I have this second book here to read soon, and then I will go back to this one.

The Bee Sting by Paul Murray - I heard Paul Murray speak about this book at Melbourne Writers Festival a couple of years ago.

The Murmur of Bees by Sofia Segovia - I did have this on my shelves for a while. I can't remember if I kept it the last time I did a book purge.

Land of Milk and Honey by C Pam Zhang  - Where there's bees there is often honey! I didn't love this book when I read it at the beginning of last year. (my review)

Lion's Honey by David Grosman - I read this a very long time ago now (my review)

Honey: Recipes From a Beekeeper's Kitchen by Amy Newsome - This was a Jamie Oliver Cook Book Club selection a whie ago

The Girl Who Kicked a Hornet's Nest by Stieg Larsen - A reminder that no everything that buzzes is a bee!

Six Degrees of Separation: Prophet Song to My Father's House

Welcome to this month's edition of Six Degrees of Separation, which is a monthly meme hosted by Kate from Books Are My Favourite and Best. The idea is to start with a specific book and make a series of links from one book to the next using whatever link you can find and see where you end up after six links. I am also linking this post up with The Sunday Salon, hosted by Deb at Readerbuzz.

The starting point this month is the 2023 Booker Prize winner, Prophet Song by Paul Lynch.

For my first link I am going to use two connections. I am choosing The Bee Sting by Paul Murray because of the name Paul but also because this book was listed for the 2023 Booker Prize. 

Last year, I saw Paul Murray at the Melbourne Writers Festival. Another writer I saw on the same day was Japanese author Toshikazu Kawaguchi (I posted about that here). He has a number of books but I am going to choose his latest book Before We Forget Kindness, and not just because I can play off the sound Bee!

If I think of the word Kind, there is a famous quote from both the book and the movie The Help by Kathryn Stockett which goes "You is kind. You is smart. You is important."

Originally I was thinking that I would look for another book to movie that Octavia Butler starred in but she wasn't in the movie I was thinking of. Then I realised that Jessica Chastain was in the movie of The Help and she was also in one of my favourite movies based on a book, The Martian by Andy Weir.

It probably isn't a spoiler to say that The Martian is set on Mars, which leads me to the book The Iron Hand of Mars by Lindsey Davis. This is part of the Marcus Didius Falco series set in ancient Rome

Another mystery series set in Rome is the Rome Escape Line series. The first book in the series is My Father's House and the author is Joseph O'Connor, who I only recently learned is the brother of the famous singer Sinead O'Connor. The second book has just been released and is on my TBR pile.

Paul Lynch, Paul Murray and Joseph O'Connor are all Irish authors so I have managed to go full circle which I don't normally manage!

Next month, the starting point is Salman Rushdie’s memoir, Knife.

Will you be joining us?

Sunday Salon: Melbourne Writers Festival

Last week it was Melbourne Writers Festival. I do try to attend a least one event each year at the festival, although sometimes it is easier than others to find sessions which sounded interesting. When I first saw the program for this year, the two authors I really wanted to see were Toshikazu Kawaguchi and Shankari Chandran. Whilst I was able to see Toshikazu Kawaguchi, the Chandran session was sold out. Maybe next time. 

We ended up going two sessions. The first session was Irish writer Paul Murray, author of The Bee  Sting and American writer Bryan Washington, author of Family Meal,  who were talking to Australian author Toni Jordan. The theme for the Festival this year is Ghosts, and this session was Familiar Haunts, and so the authors spoke about literal and figurative ghosts in their respective books. Interestingly, at book club today, one of the members had read The Bee Sting and highly recommends it, so that is the book out of these two that I am most likely to read.

The session I was most looking forward to, and that I most enjoyed, was the session with Toshikazu Kawaguchi. It was an absolute pleasure from the moment he took to the stage with a cheeky wave to the crowd, until the very end! The whole crowd hung on every word. Of course, he was there to talk about the very popular series that starts with Before the Coffee Gets Cold. 

The conversation was really interesting, ranging from talking about Kawaguchi's work on the stage to his disbelief of being in Australia. He also shared a number of secrets about the book. For example, the first book,  Before the Coffee Gets Cold, was originally a screenplay which makes perfect sense when you think about how the book is only set with in the four walls of the cafe. He also shared how the ghost in the story came to be, and that he never really intended to write books. 

One of the interesting things he talked about was the rule in the books which says that even going back to the past can't change what has already happened. When asked about this Kawaguchi talked about it not being about changing the future but rather about being able to move to a different acceptance about what has happened when you return to the present. It's a lovely sentiment.

Obviously, Kawaguchi is Japanese, and so there needed to be a translator and he did such a great job, and was part of what made the session so much fun. The host would ask a question that would be translated, and then you would see Kawaguchi laughing as he responded, and then the translator would laugh, and then when the crown got the translation we would also laugh! 

There was a suggestion that there maybe some kind of TV or movie in the offing, but apparently there is already a Japanese movie version which I am going to need to try to find.

I have just finished listening to the fourth book in the series, so I was very excited to hear that the English translation of book number five is on it's way and should be out in a few months, and that he is currently writing book number six.

And what do you do after a session like this. Well, of course you go for ramen! Delicious!

I am so glad that I did make the effort to attend these sessions!

Have you attended a writers festival in your home town?

This week....

Life

This weekend was Melbourne Writers Festival in Melbourne and I was lucky enough to go to two sessions. the first was Irish author Paul Murray and American author Bryan Washington talking about their latest books, The Bee Sting and Family Meal respectively.

The other was Japanese author Toshikazu Kawaguchi who wrote the hugely successful Before the Coffee Gets Cold series. It was an absolute delight to attend this session! My plan is to write more about both of these session next week. 

In other news I have to go to the doctor every day, but other than that my recovery from my hospital visit last week has gone quite well!

We did go the beach last night to try looking for Southern Lights. There was us and several thousand other people. I haven't seen that many people at that beach since the last time there were fireworks for Australia day which would have been at least 15 years ago! Unfortunately, we were not lucky enough to see them. Maybe another time!

I'm reading

After a bumper reading week last week, mainly due to enforced rest, I really haven't read much at all this week. I am making some progress on The Shakespeare Sisters by Juliet Greenwood, but not enough. I need to get a wriggle on so that I can read my upcoming review books, otherwise I will start to the feel the pressure.

I'm watching

I was very excited this week. I found not one but two new Bake Offs. We have watched the Canadian Bake Off before but I didn't realise a new series was coming. The other was the South African version which I have never seen before!

We also started watching the third series of Welcome to Wrexham. Even though I know what happened during the season, I still can't wait to see how it all plays out during the TV show.

We went to watch a film that is showing as part of the German Film Festival last night. It was called From Hilde, With Love and it is based on a true story. I have wondered for a long time what kind of stories authors from countries like Germany tell about significant events like WWII. This was a German film telling a German story and it was very interesting. There were some things that I found really surprising. For example, there wasn't a single bomb dropped during the movie, mainly because during the time when the movie was set the war was elsewhere in Europe. My husband actually really enjoyed this and we had a really robust conversation about it on the way home.

Here's the trailer

Posts from the last week

Top Ten Tuesday: May Flowers

Blog Tour: The Restaurant in Pelican Crossing by Maggie Christensen
Weekend Cooking: Around the World

Historical Fiction Reading Challenge - April stats

I've linked this post to It's Monday, what are you reading? as hosted by Book Date