Emily Paull

Goodreads I read a lot, but it's actually very rare for me to read a book in a day, which is why I'm so impressed with this début novel from Melbourne author, Graeme Simsion. When it first arrived in my local book store I was somewhat put off by the little Women's Weekly sticker on the front.  Uh oh, I thought to myself, here comes 200 pages of fluff.  I didn't buy it, purposefully.  But I looked at it increasingly covetously... and then, at the Writers Festival.... There is something about this book.  Once I had it, I couldn't put it down.   The Rosie Project is part Marian Keyes story (think: Mystery of Mercy Close ), part Big Bang Theory.   Its protagonist, Don Tillman may not have full blown Asperger's Syndrome but he's certainly very high functioning and his emotions are about a kilometre away from him at all times.  But he's lovable, and he's charming, and because the book is written from his point of view, as the reader you ...

The Sense of an Ending Julian Barnes 9780099564973 It won't be long before I'll have to stop using "Summer" as a heading for these reviews!  The hot weather certainly hasn't gone away though.  Weekends lately have been perfect for snuggling up in front of a fan (sometimes turned up so high I also need a blanket, which defies logic) with a great book and a glass of something cold.  As you've no doubt already seen, this past weekend was the Perth Writers Festival, which always puts me in a tizzy of reading.  This year was no exception, and in the last three days I have finished reading three (!) books.  The first was Julian Barnes' The Sense of an Ending  which won the 2009 Man Booker prize, but was more recently drawn to my attention by my good friend Jaime's Instagram account.  Bless her.  She made it look so good, the next time I saw it, I bought it.  And can I just take a moment to talk about this edition?  It's absolutely exquisit...

Another Perth Writers Festival has been and gone, and I have to say that this was one of the best yet.  Maybe this is a product of my increasing age (I am almost 22) and independence, or perhaps (as I suspect is the case) the Perth Writers Festival team are well and truly lifting their game. I always go along expecting one of three things. 1) I expect to learn things 2) I expect to go home wanting to write or read A LOT 3) I expect to buy many, many, MANY books This year was no exception.  Check it out: I started my festival going on Thursday night with the official opening address presented by Ahdaf Soueif.  This session was not only informative and moving, it satisfied some of the cravings for academic lectures that I've recently been experiencing.  Ms Soueif's lecture style was largely informal, and it was touching to see the degree of passion behind her presentation of the subject matter.  I think a lot of the audience got more than they barga...

9780007441303 Fourth Estate Jeffrey Eugenides was always one of those writers I never thought I would read.  I'd seen Middlesex  around, and that was about the only book of his that I was aware of.  First of all, it's cover didn't appeal to me AT ALL, and second of all, the title made me think that it was going to be some navel-gazing novel about human sexuality and all that nonsense.  I think what this probably tells you about me is that I was an opinionated adolescent and it doesn't tell you jack about Eugenides except that maybe he needs to fire the person who does his covers. I bought The Marriage Plot  for two reasons. I'd just watched Sanne of Booksandquills fame review The Virgin Suicides  and I had pretty much decided that I wanted to read that book.  Then, I had a customer come into the bookshop where I work and request The Marriage Plot  for his book club.  We didn't have it, so as a consequence, I learned that it was available...

9781921997068 Chasing the Sun Robin Baker Pantera Press With the recent infestation of vampires and werewolves in our fiction market, it's no surprise that Robin Baker's second novel Chasing the Sun  never once uses the word 'Vampire' to describe its main character and his friends, the back cover excepted.  Vampires such as those featured all over the YA market have become synonymous with a kind of overly sexualized lifestyle of affluence, where gore hardly features; yet by nature, a vampire is a frightening creature of the night who feasts on human flesh. Robin Baker's vampires are certainly not going to sparkle in the sunlight, that's for sure. As a former funeral director, Baker is no stranger to death, and this book doesn't hold back.  From its early chapters, descriptions of 'bleedings' are written in great detail- this climaxes in the depiction of a scene in which a member of the Vampire Hunting group Rising Sun is tortured and disfigu...

" It was once said of Catcher In The Rye, "That rare miracle of fiction has again come to pass: a human being has been created out of ink, paper and the imagination." I am no J.D. Salinger, but I have witnessed a rare miracle. Any writer can attest: in the luckiest, happiest state, the words are not coming from you, but through you."  - Ruby Sparks, 2012   There is a little over a week to go until my deadline is here. When I say "My Deadline", I am quite sure that I have given you the impression that all this time I have secretly been working on a publishing contract that none of you knew about, but it's not true. My deadline is actually the cut off for a competition that I am entering.  I have about 13 000 more words to write until I have enough to submit, but this is child's play because I am just re-doing a novel that I have written and rewritten and rewritten again.  What's different about this time is that I have done research, ...