L: Lawson by Grantlee Kieza #atozchallenge

Posted on April 14, 2023 by Jennifer Jones

The Blogging from A to Z April Challenge is for bloggers who wish to participate by publishing a blog post every day in April except for Sundays. Each blog post will focus on a letter of the alphabet. For example April 1 will be A, April 2 will be B and on it goes. By the end of April, a blog post for every letter of the alphabet will have been posted. My theme for 2023 is Book Reviews.

You can read my reviews without worrying about spoilers. My reviews are quite brief and I give away nothing more than you would read on the back cover or on Goodreads.

LAWSON
BY
GRANTLEE KIEZA

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️💫

Summary

“Henry Lawson captured the heart and soul of Australia and its people with greater clarity and truth than any writer before him. Born on the goldfields in 1867, he became the voice of ordinary Australians, recording the hopes, dreams and struggles of bush battlers and slum dwellers, of fierce independent women, foreign fathers and larrikin mates.

Lawson wrote from the heart, documenting what he saw from his earliest days as a poor, lonely, handicapped boy with warring parents on a worthless farm, to his years as a literary lion, then as a hopeless addict cadging for drinks on the streets, and eventually as a prison inmate, locked up in a tiny cell beside murderers. A controversial figure today, he was one of the first writers to shine a light on the hardships faced by Australia’s hard-toiling wives and mothers, and among the first to portray, with sympathy, the despair of Indigenous Australians at the ever-encroaching European tide. His heroic figures such as The Drover’s Wife and the fearless unionists striking out for a better deal helped define Australia’s character, and while still a young man, his storytelling drew comparisons on the world stage with Tolstoy, Gorky and Kipling.

But Henry Lawson’s own life may have been the most compelling saga of all, a heart-breaking tale of brilliance, lost love, self-destruction and madness” – Goodreads

Published in 2021. 512 pages.

My Thoughts

The author definitely tells the story of the life of Henry Lawson, warts and all. There is no glossing over his heavy drinking and the problems he faced in his life, many caused by himself. I have been a fan of Henry Lawson since we read The Drovers Wife at school. I come back to his short stories quite often and always enjoy them, but have never really given much thought to his life. I found it very sad to read about his life, in fact this book brought me to tears in many places.

Henry Lawson is an icon in Australia, but he was flawed, and those flaws are laid out in the book. I really enjoyed reading the back story to his short stories – where he got his ideas from, who might have prompted them, and why he wrote them.

For a fan of Henry Lawson, this book is gold. If you’re not a fan, or not aware of his works, I’m sure you would still enjoy this very well researched book, about a man who had a weakness, but who also had a huge talent for writing.

I would recommend Lawson, without any hesitation at all, as an unputdownable read.

More than 60 pages of bibliography and references.

All books that I review have been purchased by me or borrowed from the library, unless otherwise stated.

Star Rating

Please note that my star rating system isn’t at all based on literary merit, but is based on my enjoyment for the book.
For me a book that gets five stars, is a book that I really enjoyed, and found difficult to put down.

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️Unputdownable. Would definitely read again
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️Fantastic read. Not to be missed.
⭐️⭐️⭐️Enjoyable read. Would recommend.
⭐️⭐️Wouldn’t read again
⭐️Don’t recommend this book again

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Next Phase In Fitness & Life and Tracking Down The Family

K: Kin: A Real Person’s History Of Our Nation by Nick Brodie #atozchallenge #throwbackthursday

Posted on April 13, 2023 by Jennifer Jones

You can read my reviews without worrying about spoilers. My reviews are quite brief and I give away nothing more than you would read on the back cover or on Goodreads.

Many book bloggers re-post a book review that they have written in the past, under the #throwbackthursday hashtag. I will be joining them in this each Thursday.

The following book review was first published here in April 2020. This is a book that I enjoyed, and I feel warrants highlighting again.

KIN
BY
NICK BRODIE

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Summary

From convicts, goldminers and sailors, to high country horsemen, nurses and soldiers – and almost everyone in between – KIN is about generations of real people living real lives. Join historian and archaeologist, Nick Brodie, as he traces his family back to their first arrivals in Australia. As their lives intersect, KIN provides a unique historical insight into Australia’s past: colonies grow and wars are fought as Nick follows his people and their children across land and sea, in their everyday occupations and through their hardships and most memorable events. Follow Nick’s journey to discover how his kinfolk lived, the bigger story of the history of Australia, as their stories become both his and ours. – blurb

Published 2019
Paperback, 448 pages

My Thoughts

The author uses stories about his own ancestors to create a full and thorough explanation of Australian history. I really enjoyed this book, but as family history and Australian history is my passion, be aware that I could be biased. I loved the ancestry charts included and really enjoyed following the lives of the author’s ancestors. Even though Kin is a very thorough history of Australia and of his own ancestors, it is very easy to follow.

Kin is based on very thorough research, both ancestral and historical. My only criticism would be that I’d have liked to have seen a list of sources at the back of the book. But this is addressed by the author at the end, where he gives his reasons for not including them.

Key to Star Rating

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Images and author information: Goodreads

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Next Phase In Fitness & Life and Tracking Down The Family

F: Flesh Wounds by Richard Glover #audiobook #atozchallenge

Posted on April 7, 2023 by Jennifer Jones

You can read my reviews without worrying about spoilers. My reviews are quite brief and I give away nothing more than you would read on the back cover or on Goodreads.

FLESH WOUNDS
BY
RICHARD GLOVER
#audiobook narrated by Richard Glover

⭐️⭐️⭐️💫

SUMMARY

“Richard Glover’s favourite dinner party game is called ‘Who’s Got the Weirdest Parents?’. It’s a game he always thinks he’ll win. There was his mother, a deluded snob, who made up large swathes of her past and who ran away with Richard’s English teacher, a Tolkien devotee, nudist and stuffed-toy collector. There was his father, a distant alcoholic, who ran through a gamut of wives, yachts and failed dreams. And there was Richard himself, a confused teenager, vulnerable to strange men, trying to find a family he could belong to. As he eventually accepted, the only way to make sense of the present was to go back to the past – but beware of what you might find there. Truth can leave wounds – even if they are only flesh wounds”. -goodreads

Published 2015. 305 pages

MY THOUGHTS

This book is primarily about Richard’s parents. We follow Richard from a small child to his teenage years, early adulthood and as a parent himself.

If, like me, you think that you probably have the strangest family out there, then this book is for you. By the time I finished reading this book, I realised that this family of Richards, were much stranger than mine, and I had never thought that possible.

Flesh Wounds is part family memoir and partly a look at life in Australia in the 1970s. I really enjoyed reading about the 70s, as many memories came back to me. Much of the story is both very funny and also very sad. Richard was so honest and vulnerable in his writing that at times, it made me squirm.

This audio book was narrated by the author, which I enjoyed. I usually enjoy a memoir that is read by the author, especially if they have a voice that is easy to listen to, as is Richard’s voice. Richard Glover is a presenter on ABC Radio.

Star Rating

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Images and author information: Goodreads

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Next Phase In Fitness & Life and Tracking Down The Family

A: Anatomy: A Love Story by Dana Schwartz #AtoZChallenge

Posted on April 1, 2023 by Jennifer Jones

The Blogging from A to Z April Challenge is for bloggers who wish to participate, by publishing a blog post every day in April, except for Sundays. Each blog post will focus on a letter of the alphabet. For example April 1 will be A, April 2 will be B, and on it goes. By the end of April, a blog post for every letter of the alphabet will have been posted. My theme for 2023 is Book Reviews.

You can read my reviews without worrying about spoilers. My reviews are quite brief and I give away nothing more than you would read on the back cover or on Goodreads

ANATOMY A LOVE STORY
BY
DANA SCHWARZ

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

“A gothic tale full of mystery and romance about a willful female surgeon, a resurrection man who sells bodies for a living, and the buried secrets they must uncover together.” Goodreads

SUMMARY

Hazel is an upper class seventeen year old girl with a fascination for science and medicine. She has a strong desire to be a doctor and no interest at all in marriage, as is expected by her parents. Anatomy is set in Edinburgh, Scotland in 1817, a time when the idea of a female surgeon was inconceivable. Hazel needs to pass the medical exam but is thrown out of medical lectures for being a woman. As she now isn’t able to have official lessons, she needs a supply of corpses to study. At the time, grave robbing isn’t at all unusual, and she has recently made friends with Jack, a grave robber who helps her obtain the bodies for her research and study.

Published in 2022
Kindle edition

MY THOUGHTS

This is the beginnings of the story, and it develops into much more with macabre and unusual twists. I wouldn’t class this book as gothic, but it is definitely macabre. It’s not a scary read, but I did wish my stomach was stronger at times. Some passages for me, were quite difficult to read. After I finished reading the book, I discovered that it was YA, and did wonder how younger readers coped with those parts. Perhaps, being younger, they have a stronger tolerance than me, for gore and a bit of yukkiness.

This didn’t spoil my enjoyment of this book. I absolutely loved it, and read it very quickly, as I couldn’t put it down. I read this book when it first came out in early 2022, and have just read it for the second time. My reason for reading it again, other than that I adored the story line, is because the sequel was about to be published. I felt the need for a refresher before diving into what happened next to Hazel. I’m so pleased that I read it the second time. With the knowledge of what happens in the end, I was able to pick up on certain things during the book, that went over my head on the first reading.

Anatomy: A Love Story – audiobook – short sample

All books that I review have been purchased by me or borrowed from the library, unless otherwise stated.

Star Rating

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Images and author information: Goodreads

You can find my other blogs here:
Next Phase In Fitness & Life and Tracking Down The Family