Archive for the ‘Acquisitions’ Category
Monday, May 14th, 2012
Two arrivals for me this week, one via mail for review and the other borrowed from the library’s audio catalogue:
 FLAVOURS OF MELBOURNE written and edited by Jonette George
(Smudge Publishing | Booktopia)
344 pages, 38 x 32cm hardcover with dust jacket, coffee table book
Flavours of Melbourne explores Melbourne’s nooks and crannies, upstairs and downstairs and through the complex laneway system. Beautiful photography, history, recipe, street art, restaurants and bars – all come together in this exciting new book about Melbourne’s food and wine scene.
Showcasing restaurants like Guy Grossi’s Florentino and Merchant, Martin Pirc’s Punch Lane and Aaron Whitney’s Portello Rosso are showcased with stories about their history and what makes them legendary today. Bars like Madame Brussells, Rooftop Cinema, Bar 1806 and Emerald Peacock, to name only a few, are also featured, sharing information about their secret cocktails and venues.
For the locals who want to know, and the visitors who want to view Melbourne through the eyes of a local, this book is a must-read, and an exceptional guide to what’s on offer in food and wine.
 NOCTURNES: Five Stories of Music and Nightfall by Kazuo Ishiguro – audio
(Amazon | B&N | Kobobooks | Book Depository)
In a sublime story cycle, Kazuo Ishiguro explores ideas of love, music and the passing of time. From the piazzas of Italy to the Malvern Hills, a London flat to the ‘hush-hush floor’ of an exclusive Hollywood hotel, the characters we encounter range from young dreamers to cafe musicians to faded stars, all of them at some moment of reckoning.
Gentle, intimate and witty, this quintet is marked by a haunting theme: the struggle to keep alive a sense of life’s romance, even as one gets older, relationships flounder and youthful hopes recede.
What books did you welcome into your home this week?
Mailbox Monday is currently being hosted by Martha @ Martha’s Bookshelf.
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Have you entered my current international giveaway of a paperback copy of BITTER GREENS by Kate Forsyth? Winner announced 3rd June 2012.
* * * ENTER NOW * * *
Sunday, April 29th, 2012
Two arrivals for me this week, one the old-fashioned way and one via email, both for review:
NINEPINS by Rosy Thornton
(Amazon)
Deep in the Cambridgeshire fens, Laura is living alone with her 12-year old daughter Beth, in the old tollhouse known as Ninepins. She’s in the habit of renting out the pumphouse, once a fen drainage station, to students, but this year she’s been persuaded to take in 17-year-old Willow, a care-leaver with a dubious past, on the recommendation of her social worker, Vince. Is Willow dangerous or just vulnerable? It’s possible she was once guilty of arson; her mother’s hippy life is gradually revealed as something more sinister; and Beth is in trouble at school and out of it. Laura’s carefully ordered world seems to be getting out of control.
With the tension of a thriller, Ninepins explores the idea of family, and the volatile and changing relationships between mothers and daughters, in a landscape that is beautiful but – as they all discover – perilous.
 MR SOMETHING by Jay Baker
(Amazon)
Isaac Ward knows that a man should obey the law, protect his country, do what’s right. But when an improbable corpse leads to an impossible device, these duties collide head on – and only one can win. Dreaming of changing the world for the better, Isaac takes the device for himself. This is his chance to do something. Be someone. But he has his work cut out for him. The world is big, stubborn, and not so easily changed – and before he can even try, he has another, far more pressing problem. How to stay alive. Mr. Something is a fast-moving and provocative adventure story, ranging from the towers of San Francisco to the villages of Malawi. It examines duty, significance, and one of the world’s greatest issues: the one billion human beings living – and dying – in extreme poverty.
I really enjoyed Rosy Thornton’s last novel The Tapestry of Love and my mum has her eye on this copy of Ninepins sitting in my To-Be-Reviewed Pile already.
The very original premise of Mr Something has certainly caught my attention and it is rating very well on Amazon so far.
What did you get in your mailbox this week?
Mailbox Monday is currently being hosted by Cindy @ Cindy’s Love of Books.
Sunday, April 22nd, 2012
When the email arrived in my inbox this week telling me I had my latest Audible credit I decided I couldn’t wait any longer. I first listened to The Hunger Games in audio (Carolyn McCormick’s narration was first class) and I just have to find out what happens to Katniss, Peeta and Gale…
CATCHING FIRE: HUNGER GAMES Book 2 by Suzanne Collins
(Audible | Amazon | TheNile – Aus | Kobobooks)
 Katniss Everdeen continues to struggle to protect herself and her family from the Capitol in this second novel from the best-selling Hunger Games trilogy.
For my iphone
What did you get in your mailbox this week?
In My Mailbox is hosted by Kristi @ The Story Siren.
Mailbox Monday is currently being hosted by Cindy @ Cindy’s Love of Books.
Sunday, April 15th, 2012
I have already devoured what arrived in my inbox last week, Socialpunk by Monica Leonelle (click on review link for chance to win an Ipad/KindleFire).
Something a bit different this week:
LOVE AND OTHER STORIES by Lucille Redmond
(Amazon)
Love is a collection of short stories, ranging from Elsewhen, in which an alternative Muslim Ireland is the home to a doomed love affair, to Wolf and Water, a Stone Age adventure, to And the Green Sea Ebbs Away, among colonists and natives on a sea planet, to the title story, Love, a murder story, to Our Fenian Dead, in which an Irish revolutionary tries to make a new life in the Wild West, to Affect and Repression, a psychoanalytic comedy.
For my Kindle, from the author for review
THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING EARNEST by Oscar Wilde
 (Audible)
This final play from the pen of Oscar Wilde is a stylish send-up of Victorian courtship and manners, complete with assumed names, mistaken lovers, and a lost handbag. Jack and Algernon are best friends, both wooing ladies who think their names are Ernest, “that name which inspires absolute confidence.”
Wilde’s effervescent wit, scathing social satire, and high farce make this one of the most cherished plays in the English language.
For my ipod, free for Audible subscription holders
What did you get in your mailbox this week?
In My Mailbox is hosted by Kristi @ The Story Siren.
Mailbox Monday is currently being hosted by Cindy @ Cindy’s Love of Books.
Monday, April 9th, 2012
Look what arrived in my inbox this week courtesy the author and an upcoming blog tour.
 SOCIALPUNK by Monica Leonelle
(Amazon / B&N )
Ima would give anything to escape The Dome and learn what’s beyond its barriers, but the Chicago government has kept all its citizens on lockdown ever since the Scorched Years left most of the world a desert wasteland. When a mysterious group of hooded figures enters the city unexpectedly, Ima uncovers a plot to destroy The Dome and is given the choice between escaping to a new, dangerous city or staying behind and fighting a battle she can never win.
The Socialpunk Trilogy by Monica Leonelle includes Socialpunk (April 2012), Socialmob (July 2012), and Socialhood (October 2012).
Mailbox Monday is currently being hosted by Cindy @ Cindy’s Love of Books.
Tuesday, April 3rd, 2012
 Looking for an Easter Gift healthier than chocolate? Or something to help the kids burn off the chocolate high?
One of the Grabarchuk Family Kindle puzzle books may be just the thing.
They have an Easter themed selection of puzzles available for only 99 cents!
The puzzles are colourful and completely interactive, i.e. you choose your answer and are then told whether it’s right or wrong. If the latter you are directed back to the question to try again.
The puzzles are visually oriented and in my opinion suitable for all ages and difficulty levels.
My mum (an avid puzzler) and I, enjoyed completing this Easter selection together. A great way to keep your mind active and look at things a little differently!
Don’t have a Kindle or like me, have a black and white Kindle? While these books work just fine on black and white Kindle models, I also got the benefit of the colourful diagrams by viewing the book on the free Kindle for PC reading application.
In addition to the above, I was lucky enough to be offered their Puzzle Trilogy – 303 Puzzles to review. Still working my way through those whenever I have a minute to spare – finding them very inventive so far.
Monday, April 2nd, 2012
Look what arrived in my mailbox this week courtesy of Bloomsbury.
 THE GOLDEN SCALES by Parker Bilal
(The Nile / Kobobooks / Amazon / B&N )
A lost child. A missing hero. A bitter rivalry. In Cairo the ghosts of the past are stirring… Makana is a former police inspector who fled for his life to Cairo from his native Sudan seven years ago. Down on his luck and haunted by the past, he lives on a rickety Nile houseboat. When the notorious and powerful Saad Hanafi hires him to track down a missing person Makana is in no position to refuse him. Hanafi, whose past is as shady as his fortune is glittering, is the owner of Cairo’s star-studded football team. His most valuable player has just vanished and Adil Romario’s disappearance threatens to bring down not only Hanafi’s private empire, but the entire country. But why should the city’s most powerful man hire its lowliest private detective?
Thrust into a dangerous and glittering world, Makana’s investigation leads him into the treacherous underbelly of his adopted country- where he encounters Muslim extremists, Russian gangsters and a desperate mother hunting for her missing daughter. It becomes a trail that stirs up painful memories, leading him back into the sights of an old and dangerous enemy…
The Golden Scales is the first title in a new detective series set in modern-day Cairo, Makana Mysteries – sounds like something I will really be able to sink my teeth into!
Mailbox Monday is currently being hosted by Cindy @ Cindy’s Love of Books.
Monday, March 26th, 2012
Look what arrived in my mailbox during the last fortnight!
Two books by great Aussie authors and a musical treat.
 BITTER GREENS by Kate Forsyth
(Amazon / Kobobooks / Booktopia )
Charlotte-Rose de la Force has been banished from court by the Sun King, Louis XIV, after a series of scandalous love affairs. She is comforted by an old nun, Sœur Seraphina, who tells her the tale of a young girl who, a hundred years earlier, is sold by her parents for a handful of Bitter Greens …
After Margherita’s father steals a handful of greens – parsley, wintercress and rapunzel – from the walled garden of the courtesan, Selena Leonelli, they give up their daughter to save him from having both hands cut off.
Selena is the famous red-haired muse of the artist Tiziano, first painted by him in 1513 and still inspiring him at the time of his death, sixty-one years later. Called La Strega Bella, Selena is at the centre of Renaissance life in Venice, a world of beauty and danger, seduction and betrayal, love and superstition.
Locked away in a tower, growing to womanhood, Margherita sings in the hope someone will hear her. One day, a young man does …
Three women, three lives, three stories, braided together to create a compelling story of desire, obsession, black magic, and the redemptive power of love.
 FIVE BELLS by Gail Jones
(The Nile / Amazon )
On a radiant day in Sydney, four adults converge on Circular Quay, site of the iconic Opera House and the Sydney Harbor Bridge. Crowds of tourists mix with the locals, enjoying the glorious surroundings and the play of light on water.
But just as Circular Quay resonates with Australia’s past, each of the four carries a complicated history from elsewhere. Each person is haunted by past secrets and guilt. Ellie is preoccupied by her sexual experiences as a girl, James by a tragedy for which he feels responsible, Catherine by the loss of her beloved brother in Dublin, and Pei Xing by her imprisonment during China’s Cultural Revolution.
Told over the course of a single Saturday, Five Bells describes four lives that come to share not only a place and a time but also mysterious patterns and ambiguous symbols, including a barely glimpsed fifth figure, a young child. By nightfall, when Sydney is drenched in a summer rainstorm, each life will have been transformed by the events of this day.
And for a bit of fun, I bought myself a fantastic album “Some Nights” by a band aptly called Fun. This is a feel-good album with anthemic tunes and a great percussive beat.
Mailbox Monday is currently being hosted by Anna from Diary of an Eccentric.
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