Breathing Just a Little

The end of 2025 is almost upon us. Tomorrow, I will be posting my reflections on the year as a whole, but today, I wanted to summarise one aspect of the year that has been richly rewarding and important to me - my year in books. Firstly, the stats. I track my reading through Goodreads, which tells me that I have logged 131 titles this year, but that is misleading, as it counts DNFs (things I started but didn't finish) as well as re-reads (I do comfort re-reads quite often!)  Excluding both of these and looking at only new-to-me books (ie books I read for the first time in 2025, and completed), I actually read 105 new (to me) books in 2025, which is an increase of 15 on my 2024 total. I credit this to two things - my discovery of the joy of audiobooks, and a larger than typical (for me) number of novellas and short novels on the list. I read across a number of genres, and undertook three reading-to-list tasks (the Hugo Award nominee list, the Stella Prize nominee list, and, as alway...

 I have picked up my reading pace now that I am on leave from work, but my concentration level, after a huge year and while battling an annoying cold virus, has been a little below par. Thus, I have been gravitating to quick reads (which I define as "230 pages or less, simple straightforward style, no highly complex ideas to grapple with"). These four books all meet that brief, and all were worth reading! I saw the movie of this years ago when it first came out (late 80s, I believe?) and found it charming, but had somehow neglected to read the book. I finally got to it, and what a sheer delight it is!  This is the true story, told through letters, of the long-distance friendships formed by American writer Helene Hanff with the staff of a British secondhand and antiquarian book shop, located at (you guessed it) 84 Charing Cross Road. Over more than twenty years, starting in 1949, Hanff communicates with the bookshop to find her obscure titles, primarily corresponding with chie...

December has been a very busy month, with not a huge amount of reading time in it so far (we were away for the first week and have been both work and social busy since then). Nevertheless, some reading got done! (In addition to these three, I've also read a short story Christmas mystery collection, but it was so slight that I didn't think it worth a review - utterly disposable, albeit pleasurable, reading trash). These three books were varying levels of good, but  I'd recommend them all if the genre is one you enjoy. (I personally think everyone would benefit from reading the Le Guin, but as she is in my top five authors of all time list and I do not believe she ever wrote a bad word, I would say that, wouldn't I :-) I think I might have to revise my statement that I don't read a lot of horror, as this is the third book I've read in the last three months that could fairly be described as horror, and I actually really enjoyed it. This one's a ye olde slasher ...

I'm back today from 7 days away in Tasmania with my husband - our first interstate trip with just the two of us since before my first daughter was born (22 years ago now!) We stayed in Hobart for the whole time but did day trips to Richmond, Bruny Island and the Huon Valley, as well as exploring Hobart itself (MONA, Salamanca Market, Battery Point, the Museum, the Botanic Gardens, Cascade Brewery, Mount Wellington lookout, and more). We had a great time! Here are a few pics to give a flavour. I've just chosen two pictures per day to be the representative! Day 1 - Richmond (Bridge / Miniature Village) Day 2 - Huon Valley (Tahune Airwalk) Day 3 - Botanic Gardens and Mount Wellington Day 4 - Bruny (The Neck / Lighthouse) Day 5 - Hobart city (Battery Point / Harbour) Day 6 - Salamanca Market Day 7 - MONA