I love January. I love new-year-new-you energy. I love the quiet of Melbourne as many of its residents are away for the summer holidays. I love movie-award season. And I love reading new books and essays. Here are six films, two books, and the many essays that filled my January. Six films Coco Coco is …
Here’s the first of my ‘this year’ lists: the best fiction books of 2017. This list covers books that I read this year, not books that were published in 2017. Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe (1958) This novel deals with life in pre- and post-colonial Nigeria during the late nineteenth century. It was on …
Fairies today are popularly viewed as enchanted creatures that are usually harmless though sometimes playful, even mischievous, but also kind, helpful, beautiful, and usually disconnected from culture. In her novel, The Good People, Hannah Kent reminds us that fairies were once viewed as so frightening, you didn’t even say “fairies” too loudly for fear of …
This weekend, my partner and I visited the Heide Museum of Modern Art. It sits at the edge of park lands that we have visited many times. I’ve never been prompted to visit Heide because although I know that modern art encompasses several movements, many of which I love, I tend to immediately associate modern …
What did I just finish reading? Daughter of the Sun: A Devotional Anthology in Honor of Sekhmet. I don’t have a big interest in ancient Egypt and I would not have picked up Daughter of Sun: A Devotional Anthology in Honor of Sekhmet, but, in full disclosure, my friend Tina Georgitsis edited this new anthology …
What did I just finish reading? The Happiness Project by Gretchen Rubin. This book was not on my reading list. I saw it at my local second-hand shop one day for a dollar and it piqued my curiosity. It seemed like one of those frou-frou, feelgood, self-help books, but it wasn’t that bad. I actually liked it and …