Six Degrees: Ghost Stories to A Brief History of Montmaray

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 and A Good Book and a Cup of Tea hosted at Boondock Ramblings.

This month the starting point is Ghost Cities by Siang Lu which was recently announced as the winnter of the 2025 Mile Franklin Literary Award here in Australia. I haven't read it, and I don't think I am likely too, but that doesn't mean that I can't make a chain from it!

A book I read earlier this year that featured a house that was haunted by ghosts was Lauren Westwood's The House of Light and Shadows. (my review)

I do love it when a house is almost a character in a book. In The Briar Club by Kate Quinn Briarwood House is a character in it's own right, telling part of the story. I listened to this book on audio recently and thoroughly enjoyed it.

The next book I listened to on audio was Remarkably Bright Creatures by Shelby van Pelt which also featured an unusual character - a giant Pacific octopus named Marcellus. I loved the voice of Marcellus in the audiobook so I am really pleased to hear that the same actor is going to be the voice in the upcoming movie version too! 

There are remarkably few books with the word remarkably in the title (at least in my reading lists) but there is Remarkable Creatures by Tracy Chevalier which is about a woman who was a fossil collector.

Which leads me nicely to The Fossil Hunter by Tea Cooper.

Choosing the final book was actually a bit harder, as there were almost too many directions I could choose from but in the end I went with the surname of Cooper and chose A Brief History of Montmoray by Michelle Cooper

Next month, the starting point is Dominic Amerena’s novel about authors and publishing, I Want Everything.

Will you be joining us?

Top Ten Tuesday: Ten 5 star reads from previous years

Welcome to this week's edition of Top Ten Tuesday which is hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl. This week is a love freebie so I am bringing you ten books I loved so much I gave them a 5/5 rating! And let's face it, I love a good love story so a lot of them will be about love in some form or another!

Given that we have only recently done our best of lists for 2024, I have decided to go with the last ten books that I gave this rating to before 2024. 

The Dressmaker's of Yarrandarrah Prison by Meredith Jaffe - I recently saw that Lisa from ANZ Litlovers had reviewed this book, and I was reminded again how much I enjoyed it! (My review)

The Cartographer's Secret by Tea Cooper - I saw Tea Cooper talking about her latest book a few months ago! I really must read it!

Island of Missing Trees by Elif Shafak - My goodness I loved this book! And I recently read her latest book which I liked a lot too! (My review)

The Beautiful Words by Vanessa McCausland - The first of two books by this author on my list today!

Book Lovers by Emily Henry - I have really liked all the Emily Henry books I have read but this is the one that I loved the most when I gave it a rating!

The Forgotten Palace by Alexandra Walsh - I have since read a couple more of this author's books. They have all been set in different time periods but all really good. (My review)

The Lost Daughters of Ukraine by Erin Litteken - A really good WWII novel with an unusual setting (My review)

The Bookbinder of Jericho by Pip Williams - Not as well known as the accompanying book, The Lost Dictionary of Words, but an excellent read!

Dreaming in French by Vanessa McCausland - I really must read this author's newest book and see if it is as good as the two I have on this list (My review)

The Little Paris Toy Shop by Lauren Westwood - I love the cover of this one, the story, the Paris setting! I am about to read another book from this author! I hope I love it! (My review)

Have you read and loved any of these?

This week...

Blogging

Raise a glass! My blog can legally drink in Australia! I started this blog 18 years ago, which is pretty amazing to me. I did have a gap for a while, but I am still here.

You'd think I would be better at it by now, right??

To celebrate, I finally decided what I am going to do about Instagram and now I have an Insta account specifically for bookish goodness. Yes, I am committing to Bookstagram. I am always very late for any trends but better late than never!

You can find me @intrepidreaderandbaker and I would love it if you added it, and I will follow back!

I'm reading

Last week I finished reading Someone Like You, which is the fourth book in the Ever After Agency series by Aussie author Sandy Barker. The review can be found here.

I also then read A Skye Full of Stars by Sue Moorcroft, the second book in the Skye Sisters trilogy, and I reviewed that here.

I then started Crying at the H Mart by Michelle Zauner. I had never heard of the author before, but I am still finding it an interesting read. This is the current Cook the Books selection and will also work for my read on a theme book club as well. I will also need to find something to cook to tie in with this book, and get it all posted by 30 November!

I went to the library last week and noticed something that I had never seen before, or at least paid any attention to. There is a selection of books by the door which they are calling Express Reads. You can't request them, you can't extend them, and they have to be returned within a week. Now, even though I knew I wouldn't get it read, I couldn't resist picking up The Sea Captain's Wife by Jackie French. She is a prolific Australian writer across a number of genres, including historical fiction. I have started the book, but there is no way I am going to get it finished, so maybe I will have to return it and then borrow it again to finish it. We'll see how far I get today or tomorrow.

Speaking of Australian historical fiction authors, I went to see Tea Cooper at an author event and heard her speak about the inspiration for her latest book, The Golden Thread. I have to say the story behind the story was fascinating!!


I'm watching

Before the Tea Cooper event, I went to the see the movie Lee, starring Kate Winslet. This tells the story of the first female war photographer, Lee Miller. She took some iconic pictures during WWII, despite initially being told that she could not go to the front lines because she was a woman. It was a very, very good movie.

Here's the trailer:

I also started my Christmas movie viewing with Hot Frosty. A woman puts a magical scarf around the neck of a carved snowman and he magically came to life! It sounds really naff, but it was actually a lot of fun, with some great nods to other movies like Pretty Woman and Mean Girls.

Life


Yesterday we went to the One Electric Day music festival which is held in the grounds of a historic home not too far from us. The weather threw everything at us, from strong winds, rain, being cold, to quite sunny and warm. Ah Melbourne weather at it's best. I somehow also managed to get sunburnt in a 2cm strip on my wrists, which is a bit odd!

It was a great show featuring the bands Chocolate Starfish, Killing Heidi, Baby Animals, Wolfmother, Birds of Tokyo and finishing with Noiseworks. Birds of Tokyo is one of our favourites so we love seeing them. Chocolate Starfish are always a lot of fun and draw the crowd in, which is a bit tricky seeing as there are so many people just arriving when they are on. It was our first time seeing Wolfmother and Killing Heidi.

Last week was the hardest week so far of the not working thing goes. There were a couple of days where I was struggling for motivation to do some of the things that I know need to be done. I am definitely not missing being stressed all the time, but my brain does have a habit of finding things for me to stress about. For example, I have a blog post due in a couple of weeks and I couldn't sleep the other night because I was thinking about the content. No idea why that was important at that time but apparently it was.

Max


Max is feeling much better than he has been. He wants to play, to be chased, to climb up on us, which he hadn't for a while now. In the picture you can see him being a lap dog again! lol

His fur is starting to grow back again in all the places that he was shaved but it is a slow process! 

He will go back to the vet again on Wednesday.

Posts from the last week


Top Ten Tuesday: A New Start
Blog Tour: Someone Like You by Sandy Barker

Blog Tour: A Skye Full of Stars by Sue Moorhouse

Weekend Cooking: Sift by Nicola Lamb

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

Top Ten Tuesday: Unread Books on My Kindle - Part Two

Welcome to this week's edition of Top Ten Tuesday which is hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl. This week's theme is Favorite Book Quotes (You can pick your favorite quotes from books, or about books! You can set a theme like quotes from books about love, friendship, hope, etc. or you can just share quotes you loved from your recent reads!). I don't often keep note of quotes so I am going rogue again this week .... yes, again!!!

A couple of weeks ago there was a theme which was Unread Books on My Shelves I Want to Read Soon. I chose to focus only on the books that are on my Kindle. At the time, I said I could easily do this topic again, so I am going to! So here are ten more books that have been languishing on my Kindle that I would buy again!

You Had Me At Hello by Mhairi McFarlane - I actually have a couple of her books on my Kindle

The Family Next Door by Sally Hepworth - I feel like it is a bit sacrilegious to have not read any of Sally Hepworth's books

The Familiars by Stacy Halls - Stacy Halls writes such interesting sounding books!

The Pearl of Penang by Clare Flynn - I have all three of the books in this series. I am keen to read these because of the setting.

Bellewether by Susanna Kearsley  - To be honest I am a bit shocked that this book is on my list. I love Susanna Kearsley, and was very excited when she announced a new book just this week, only to realise that I still haven't read this book.

A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles - I read Lincoln Highway a while ago, but haven't managed to read this one yet. 

The Pretty Delicious Cafe by Danielle Hawkins - I really must read this.

The Naturalists Daughter by Tea Cooper - I actually have a few Tea Cooper books to read.

Clap When You land by Elizabeth Acevedo - I loved With the Fire On High so much when I read it, I pre-ordered this book....and still haven't read it!

The Lost Girls of Devon by Barbara O'Neal - I have a few books by this author too!

Six Degrees of Separation: From I Capture the Castle to The Fatal Shore

 

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. 

 

This months starting point is I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith, which is the diary of Cassandra Mortmain.

I instantly thought of a book but I couldn't remember the name of the book, I had no idea why I thought it would connect to the starting book, and I only had a vague idea that the author's first name was Michelle. Eventually I figured it all out out, thank goodness. The book is called A Brief History of Montmaray by Michelle Cooper.  This is a book which tells the story of the royal family of an imaginary kingdom. The family lives on a small island in a crumbling castle in the mid 1930sand the story is told through the diary of Princess Sophie. And it turns out both of these books have been released as Vintage Children's Classics.

For my next step I am choosing Australian historical fiction author Tea Cooper. There are any number of her books I could choose but I guess I have to pick one which is.......The Cedar Cutter.

In the end I could have chosen any of her books because I am choosing my next link in the chain based on the word Tea. My next choice is The Tea Rose by Jennifer Donnelly. This is the first book in the Tea Rose trilogy set in Victorian London. I was very excited to see an email from this author this week to say that she is releasing a new short story set in this world! Yes!!

This made me think of other novella's I have read so my next book is The Fish Girl by Mirandi Riwoe which is a reimagining of a short story by W Somerset Maughan. This was a book I featured in a Weekend Cooking post a number of years ago, and it was winner of the Seizure Viva La Novella Prize back in 2017. It is set in Dutch Colonial Indonesia

I tried to think of other books set in Indonesia. There was one that came to mind but it was one I would rather not feature, so instead I am choosing Map of the Invisible World by Tash Aw.

My final choice is another with a map on the cover, The Fatal Shore by Robert Hughes. 

Next month's starting point is 

Western Lane by Chetna Maroo, which is a novella that has been nominated for the Booker prize

Top Ten Tuesday: 2021 Releases I Was Excited to Read But Didn't Get To

 

 

 

 

Welcome to this week's edition of Top Ten Tuesday which is hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl. This week the theme is 2021 Releases I was excited to readd but didn't get to. Now, it's going to be a very short post if I just say all of them, so let me work through some of my posts from last year!

Go Tell the Bees That I am Gone by Diana Gabaldon - I have been invested in this series for at least 20 years. Normally by this stage I would have bought the book the first time I saw it in the shop and finished it. I will read it at some point I am sure.

One Last Stop by Casey McQuiston - I really enjoyed Red, White and Royal Blue so I was very excited about this book coming out.

The Four Winds by Kristin Hannah - I have several books still to read by Kristin Hannah. I did intend to read this one!

The Missing Sister by Lucinda Riley - I have listened to all of the Seven Sisters books and they are all very long books. I am just not sure when I am going to have time to listen to this one.

From the Ashes by Kristina Gruell - This is the first in a series written by a friend of mine who I met on the forums for Sara Donati back in the day.

Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir - I haven't actually read Andy Weir before, but the movie of his book The Martian is one of my all time favourites.

The Fossil Hunter by Tea Cooper - This author wrote one of my few 5/5 reads for last year so I really should read this one.

Cloud Cuckoo Land by Anthony Doerr - I loved All the Light We Cannot See and I have heard good things about this book too.

The Last Bookshop in London by Madeline Martin - I have heard such good things about this book

Still Life by Sarah Winman - Several people I know have raved about this book. I just started it this week and so far so good.

Have you read any of these books?

Sunday Salon: 2021 in review

I do love a good graph, so it's always fun when we get to the end of a reading year and we look back to see what the patterns of our reading year are in graphical form.

In 2021 I set my Goodreads challenge total at 75, which unfortunately I didn't reach. I ended up with 53 books for the year, which I am happy with. It basically means I am tracking at a book a week. Gone are the heady reading years where I read more than 200 books in a year but this feels more balanced. And that is what I am striving for now in my life. In fact, balance is my word of the year for 2022! The biggest thing I need to balance is between work and home, but there are also a lot of things happening this year so there will be plenty of other things that I need to remember balance if I am not going to exhaust myself.

Anyway, enough about 2022. Let's focus back on the reading stats for 2021. There are a few surprises in amongst them, and then there are some expected results. The first of those is my tendency to read new books rather than back list. The oldest book I read was published in 1996, and that was a reread of Hogfather by Terry Pratchett.

Genre wise, there are no surprises that my reading is dominated by historical fiction, contemporary fiction and contemporary romance. If you had of told me 5 years ago that I would have a year when I would only read romance with a contemporary setting, I would have laughed. Back in the day I read all historical romance with an occasional contemporary set novel. These days, it's turned around completely. One thing that is slightly surprising it is that I read 4 sci-fi novels. I am generally not a sci-fi reader, but 3 of the Murderbot books in quick succession helped fill this number out!

My best reading month was August. Not sure why I got more reading done in that month, but I did!

One of the things that have changed for me over the last couple of years is the way that I read. If we look back a few years, most of my reading would have been paper books, then audio and then finally the occasional e-book. However, that has completely swapped around with the vast majority of my reads being digital this year. The fact that I only finished 3 audiobooks is representative of the fact that I spent most of my year working at home.

Some other stats:

I read 25 new to me authors in 2021, which is 47%. I think that is a good thing, but it also means I am not getting through many backlist books from authors I have already read. So I guess there are pros and cons both ways.

The authors who I did read multiple books by were Maggie Christensen with 6 books, Viola Shipman, Martha Wells and Ella Carey with 3 each and Susanna Kearsley and Maisie Thomas with 2 books.

I don't do a lot of rereads. This year I reread two books. One was The Winter Sea by Susanna Kearsley, one of my all time favourite books, and the other was The Hogfather by Terry Pratchett. It is interesting that both of these were audiobooks that I listened to.

As always my reading is always skewed to read a lot more women authors than men. This year was no exception with 49 books by female authors and only 4 by males. However, 3 of those books were by Viola Shipman, who writes names under his grandmother's name, so if we were just looking at names, it would be one male author.

Another skew that I have in my reading is towards Australian authors. This year I read 41% of my reads were by Australian authors, which is a pretty big portion. I don't really see this changing.

The last graph I wanted to share is for ratings. My go to rating of a book I enjoyed is 4 out of 5 and this is once again reflected in the gradings for the year.

These were the four books that I gave 5/5 to!

The Rose Code by Kate Quinn (review) and 

The Warsaw Orphan by Kelly Rimmer

The Dressmakers of Yarrandarah Prison by Meredith Jaffe (review) and 

The Cartographer's Secret by Tea Cooper

I was going to add some Storygraph stats but they aren't really complete. Must do better on that this year. I also think this post is long enough without more!

So there is it is....my 2021 reading year in review!

Top Ten Tuesday: Best books of 2021

 

 

Welcome to this week's edition of Top Ten Tuesday which is hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl. This week the theme is best books of 2021. So let's start with my five star reads of the year.

The Rose Code by Kate Quinn (review)

The Warsaw Orphan by Kelly Rimmer

The Dressmakers of Yarrandarah Prison by Meredith Jaffe (review)

The Cartographer's Secret by Tea Cooper

I had 10 books that I graded as being 4.5 star reads. When I looked at those book these were the 6 that were closest to being graded up to a 5 star read.

Bila Yarrudhanggalangdhuray by Anita Heiss (review)

Midnight at the Blackbird Cafe by Heather Webber (review)

Midnight in the Snow by Karen Swan

The Clover Girls by Viola Shipman

The Space Between Worlds by Micaiah Johnson

Battle Royal by Lucy Parker

Have you read any of these books??