Emily Paull

I used to be quite organised with my bookshelves. I used to categorise them all via publisher so those neat symbols lined up. These days my bookshelves are pretty chaotic. I moved from Sydney to Castlemaine a bit over a year now, and books are still in boxes. In Sydney, the removalist said to me, 'my god, you have a lot of books!', as if I was a lunatic, and after I'd just taken a whole bookshelf's worth to the op shop! In pride of place is a top bookshelf that has all my autographed books. I have always been an autograph hunter. I have Germaine Greer, Jonathan Franzen, Margaret Atwood, Elizabeth Jolley, Kate Grenville. I like to meet the authors and get the books signed directly. But many are gifts that people have given me too. Also on this shelf are all my dad's books. Yes, he's a novelist... My books are generally divided into fiction and non-fiction and sometimes I have all authors' works together, eg Murakami, because I love the bla...

Walking on Trampolines Frances Whiting Pan Macmillan, 2013 9781742611204 If you've ever had a best friend and you are a woman, you will probably identify in some way with this book.  In fact, if you have ever had a first love, parents, or setbacks, you will probably identify in some way with this book.  Because this book gets it.  This book is about the universal experience of finding yourself in your twenties and overcoming the little bits of baggage that you pick up on your way there. Tallulah (Lulu) de Longland has a slightly more complicated than average name, and a slightly more complicated than average teenage experience.  Growing up in the small town of Juniper Bay, Australia (coastal, of course, this is the country that produced Puberty Blues after all) nothing much has ever really happened to Lulu until the day that Annabelle Andrews decides that Lulu is going to be her best friend.  Annabelle is part of a family of notable, eccentric artists...

Sense and Sensibility Joanna Trollope for The Austen Project Harper Collins, 2013 9780007461790 Am I going to get pelted with rocks for saying that I read this?  Will I be burned alive for saying I enjoyed it?  Tune in and find out... In all seriousness though; let's talk Jane Austen spinoffs.  Cry until you are blue in the face, Jane-ites, it isn't going to stop these getting written or published, despite the idea being removed from fan fiction only in name.  It's undeniable-- these Jane Austen revisitation novels appear to be cash cows.  Which means they'll be coming off the presses for years to come, so either get used to it, or learn to live with it my dears, because guess what?  No one is going to press a gun to your head and force you to read one of them. I was appalled by the idea too.  What?  I thought to myself. They expect me to read a modern updating of Sense and Sensibility written by a woman whose novels are widely regard...

If you asked me about my recent publications, I wouldn't be able to tell you anything.  Not because I have a contract that's stopping me- just because there isn't anything.  I don't think I've been published anywhere or won anything since 2011 but perhaps that's a pessimistic cloud in my eyes.  Correct me if I'm wrong.  I'll thank you for it. One thing I am learning as I grow older is that the writing world is a really really big place, and there are a lot of people attempting to break into it.  It seems to me that every rejection email I get begins with "We had an astonishing number of entries" or, "We have chosen from 280 entries" or even "We were inundated with high quality entries."  Actually, once I won a competition and the Judge's report began with something along the lines of "I was concerned by the general tendency for navel-gazing amongst all stories submitted this year," which is just a great way t...

I have bookshelves in most rooms, including the bathroom! There's no official filing system, though I do try separate YA, non-fiction, poetry, short stories, and general fiction. YA shelves: these are two of my YA shelves, mostly recent titles. I have another YA shelf with older books, such as Adrian Mole, and other fantasy series. Research shelf: this is for the books bought to help me plan my next book, which is speculative fiction. There's a mix of non-fiction (bees, geology, sustainability, indigenous cultures, Tasmanian history) and some sci-fi fiction. Beneath these are some of the 'how to' books I sometimes dip into. I recently read Stephen King's 'On Writing' and loved it. On loan from library shelf: I visit the library weekly and have to keep these separate otherwise I forget to return them! They're all for research into topics such as oceans, anthropology, technology, plants, and even nuclear power. ...

Bridget Jones Mad About the Boy Helen Fielding Jonathan Cape/ Random House $32.99 9780224098106 It is a truth universally acknowledged that the author of a best selling series will be in want of a sequel. Such is the case with Helen Fielding's Bridget Jones , who is back for more singleton adventures in the latest book, Mad About the Boy.   Yes, that's right- even though Bridget got her man at the end of The Edge of Reason , she's once again a singleton.  And if you don't want the book spoiled for you, I suggest you close this window right now.  I'll wait. Alright, so if you're still reading this, you've either already seen the big revelation about this book or you just don't care if I ruin it.  Which is good, because in order to talk about why this book even exists, something big must be revealed. Helen Fielding has killed off Mark Darcy. In an interview , Fielding has defended her decision to kill top human rights barrister, Mark Darcy, ...

I have a bookshelf in my study. It is a particularly cluttered and disorganised affair. Pulp fiction shares space with philosophy text books while Batman comics jut out from between literary classics. Every now and again, I attempt to organise my bookshelf into genres or authors or alphabetically but this never lasts for long. Inevitably, the books will leap back into a chaotic jumble the moment my back is turned. I have come to accept this and to understand this is their natural state. Like my imagination, these books refuse to be tamed or tidy. That’s fine. A little messiness never hurt anyone. The bottom shelf contains a few interesting titles but by far the most significant is this one: The title on the spine has more or less disintegrated but it once read The Great Book of Movie Monsters. It was given to me nearly thirty years ago by my dad. I’m sure he didn’t know that giving his five year old such a book would ignite a life long passion for the macabre, th...

Every month I will be updating what I've been reading for Perth local bookstore, Bookcaffe, complete with short blurbs and reasons why you'll love those books too.  Check out September here  and remember to support local independent booksellers who support local writers who support local readers.  Aw yeah. You can also connect with me on Goodreads and let me know what you're reading. my currently-reading shelf: May your day be full of words.   

The Narrow Road to the Deep North Richard Flanagan 9781741666700 Vintage Books/ Random House Review copy courtesy the publisher Richard Flanagan's The Narrow Road to the Deep North is a novel which brings poetry, honesty, beauty and dignity to the now well known tales of atrocity along the Thai Burma Railway, or, The Railway of Death. Dorrigo Evans, named (it is revealed later in the text) for the town in which he is born, is a puzzle of a man.  He is imbued with a deep sense of selflessness, which baffles even him, when it comes to his army comrades, but in his personal life he is unable to remain faithful to his wife Ella, whom he marries because he believes she is the perfect partner for a man destined to be great, and also because everyone expects him to.  Quite beautiful, if misguided, is Dorrigo's sentiment that sex is not unfaithfulness, but sleeping all night beside someone else is, something he never does.  His inability to settle, is it revealed, com...