Dog-ears

Five books to inspire connection

Adorable cows, shimmering deserts, and the deep currents that connect us. Found Found has some of the most adorable cow drawings you’ll ever see; their limpidly lashed eyes and big wet noses nuzzling you from the page. Blue Mountains artist, and descendant of the Bundjalung people, Charmaine Ledden-Lewis, has engaged beautifully with Bruce Pascoe’s story

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Five things slow and soulful

In iso-limbo, these things helped me to drift rather than row against the tide. Life unplugged Covid-19 iso offered inklings of a slower, soulful existence but would any of us go as far as Mark Boyle? In winter 2017, he turned off his phone, laptop, internet and electricity and started life afresh with just a

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Five things in iso

Here are five things I got up to in isolation during the Covid-19 lockdown (four of them book-related of course). Step away from the fridge With people’s focus on the refrigerator and what they can and can’t buy in the supermarket, it made sense to avert my eyes momentarily from the Covid-19 pandemic and fix

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Summer Reading Highlights

These five books helped me weather a fiery summer … Salt steps Raynor Winn had not thought much about homelessness before it happened to her and her terminally ill husband in their 50s. With little alternative, Winn and her husband Moth decided to walk the South West Coast Path in the UK and wild-camp along the

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These highlights of 2019 hummed through the haze

Here are the highlights of my reading in 2019. These books hummed through the haze of the devastating bushfires Australia has experienced in the last few months of 2019 and into 2020. If you’re suffering from the smoke – grab one and head inside to read! Wolfe Island by Lucy Treloar – ‘Ideas came to

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‘What My Net Dragged to the Surface’

I dived and resurfaced with some of the best poetry I read in the last half of 2019 dripping through my fingers … ‘The Vulture and the Body’ by Ada Limón What if, instead of carrying // a child, I am supposed to carry grief? The great black scavenger flies parallel now, / each of

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Oh, Canada!

My recent trip to Canada filled me with joy. Here’s why … Lakes, mountains and Indigenous wisdom I was gobsmacked by the natural beauty of Waterton National Park, the Rockies and Algonquin Provincial Park and, despite it being the height of the tourist season, I felt blessed by their serenity. One of the best interpretive

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Top five touchpoints in June

Indigenous wisdom, refugee children, the complexity of kinfolk … it’s all here. Australia’s first farmers Young Dark Emu (Magabala Books) by Bruce Pascoe helps younger readers to see Australia as it was before Europeans arrived – a land of cultivated farming areas, productive fisheries, permanent homes and thriving villages. Also, that our Indigenous people can

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Poetry gems from the first half of 2019

Turning lyrics inside out and backward, hope kissing rust, heavy butterflies, and a ditch of a brain … read on to enjoy these and other wonderful turns of phrase I lapped up from the poems I read from January to June 2019. Hiss and spit Rae Armantrout says: ‘you can hold the various elements of

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Top five from the festival

Sydney Writers’ Festival is one of my favourite weeks of the year – a time for musing. This year’s festival in May was no exception. I had a great time! Jamming ABC TV’s Monique Schafter was MC for Spineless Wonders’ Little Fictions – a fabulous live show at Knox Street Bar Chippendale. Actors Eleni Schumacher, Felix Johnson

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