Emily Paull

Well, I keep forgetting but today is the last day of 2012.  I don't really know how I feel about this.  In many ways, it's been a terrible year but in others it's been one of the best and I feel like I really know myself now.  I know that I am not going to be an academic; I am going to be a writer (and for the foreseeable future, the cute indie princess at one of Perth's beloved small bookstores). One thing that I can say for sure is that I read a lot of wonderful books this year, so here is a list of my favourite reads.  Anything published this year is in bold.  I've also included links to any reviews I posted. * The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas * Beneath the Shadows- Sara Foster * To Kill a Mockingbird- Harper Lee * The Hunger Games  trilogy- Suzanne Collins (I know, I know, how lame...) * Bye, Beautiful- Julia Lawrinson * The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society - Mary-Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows * The Drowner  -...

Friday Brown Vikki Wakefield Text Publishing Goodreads Friday Brown is quite possibly the best book I have read all year.  I read it with a breathless anticipation, hung off every word on the page, and felt heartsick when Friday did.  It is a book filled with poignant and subtle imagery and characters so realistic that you start to wonder if you've actually known them your whole life. It begins with a mother and daughter telling stories.  The mother tells the daughter about the family curse.  Each woman in the Brown family for generations has drowned on a Saturday, and so Vivienne has named her daughter Friday in the hopes that she will ward off the curse.  "Run like hell," she tells Friday.  "Or dive in."  These simple words seem like a mantra for living, and they stay with Friday on her journey.  When Vivienne succumbs to a cancer- she drowns in the fluid that builds up in her lungs- Friday hits the road.  She meets Silence, a l...

Goodreads "How far would you go to save someone you love?" Desi Priest returns to her seaside home after two years in prison.  What she did has polarized her friends and family.  Her daughter Maya is growing up without a mother, but she still feels Desi's influence when Luke, the town firebrand, begins bringing injured joeys to her caravan.  Pete, who has never stopped believing in or loving Desi, is still dealing with the consequences of supporting her.  He's had to give up working with the orang utans he loves to look after the woman he loves.  And her brother Jackson has met a girl who knows something that Desi does not.  Plus, everyone knows something more than they will say about the thing Desi did. This is a complex novel with multiple plots, most of them revolving around human reactions to looking after animals.  There are dolphins, whale sharks, orang utans and elephants, all of their plights heart breaking and moving.  In fact, in...