Emily Paull

The Book of Strange New Things Michel Faber Canongate (I own a copy courtesy the publisher) 9781782114079 When reformed drug addict turned priest, Peter Leigh, embarks on a long journey to the new interplanetary colony known as Oasis to serve as a spiritual advisor for the native population, he expects he will be home in a few months.  He leaves behind his wife Beatrice, and his cat, Joshua, and travels via space ship to the USIC base that will serve as his home.  But USIC, a governmental body shrouded in mystery, is far more alien to Peter than his new congregation, and while the Oasans are willing to receive the word of God, Peter's mission grows harder as he learns of the terrible disintegration of life back on Earth. Most alarmingly, his relationship with Beatrice is not faring as well through the separation as he'd hoped. Told from the point of view of Peter, with several "Shoots" (a kind of email) from both Peter and Beatrice, this novel represents an int...

Euphoria Lily King Picador, 2014 (I own a copy courtesy the publisher) 9781473534991 In the deepest part of the rainforest, a lone anthropologist named Andrew Bankson decides that he can no longer go on living, and wades into the Kiona River with his pockets full of rocks.  Moments before he drowns, he is pulled from the river by a native man, who laughs and tells him he had better be careful and clear the rocks out of his pockets before he goes swimming, lest he should accidentally drown.  Thus Bankson is prevented from killing himself, and not long after, he is informed of the arrival of two more European anthropologists.  Desperately lonely, he goes to meet them, and everything changes. Partly inspired by the life of Margaret Mead, Euphoria is a book which uses anthropologists as characters in order not to study a foreign culture, but to study our own.  The book takes place in the 1930s, and in the shadow of the second world war, which seems imminent. ...

I've done it again, left another big stack of books for reviewing next to my workspace, and it's getting so that work in said space is actually becoming difficult.  A lot of these books I read while I was in Residence at the Katharine Susannah Prichard Writers Centre, so if you think I read a lot more than usual this time around (considering this post only actually covers about two weeks of reading) then you would be right! I love this time of year for reading: there's not a lot going on, so long as you've finished your Christmas shopping, and it's too hot to do anything much.  When I get home from work, I like to change into comfy clothes or pyjamas and curl up with a tea and a book.  Last year, my summer read of choice was Eleanor Catton's The Luminaries-- I spent Christmas day reading it in between visitors and meals, and finished it on Boxing Day when I was sent home early from work (due to lack of customers, not due to a hangover, thanks very much.)  This...

My toughest critic was not invited to participate in the Young Writer in Residence program at KSP Writers Centre, and so I left her at home. I tried to remind myself, daily, that I had been selected to be there.  I had been given permission to not do laundry or vacuum or cook nutritious meals, and was really, in fact, expected to be writing for a large portion of the time.  It wasn't all that hard to remember.  Katharine's Place is a hub of writerly enthusiasm, and through reading the guest book, I could see my place in a long literary chain of names I knew and names I didn't... people like Tracy Farr, Alice Pung, PA O'Reilly and Annabel Smith. For the first time, I looked at my novel with properly new eyes.  The pressure was gone.  No, it was not perfect, but it was not awful either, and every new word I put down on the page was a mark of progress and improvement.  The work that I did over the ten days I spent in Greenmount was some of the most i...