I'm a Kiwi who until recently was living in Dublin, and prior to that in Melbourne, Australia. I read a lot for work but also love to read for pleasure, it is my way to armchair travel to other times and places. I like an 'edgy' read - not of the thriller variety, more the 'here's a different way to live your life' variety. Fond of science fiction, and anything that differs culturally. I like action rather than description ... hence not strong on many of the classics (probably need some help there). My early favourite book was probably 'Losing Alice' by Noel Virtue. More recently, 'Small Things Like These' by Claire Keegan; it brought me to tears. However, there are so many that it isn't enough to just read, you have to have them sitting on your bookshelf so you can revisit whenever the moment strikes you.

2024
The Axeman's Carnival by Catherine Chidgey - compelling
Beneath the Earth - short stories by John Boyne
The Bee Sting by Paul Murray
The Reed Warbler by Ian Webbe


2023
The Road to Wigan Pier by George Orwell
Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan
Death in Ecstacy by Ngaio Marsh
Female Friends by Fay Weldon
This Pākeha Life by Alison Jones
Women's Work by Elizabeth Wayland Barber
The Lagoon by Janet Frame
You Are Now Entering the Human Heart by Janet Frame
Man and Boy by Tony Parsons
Desperate Passage by Ethan Rarick (USA with GT)
Natural Causes by Barbara Ehrenrick
Let Me Tell You What I Mean by Joan Didion
The Book of Form and Emptiness by Ruth Ozeki (UK)
Conversations with Friends by Sally Rooney (UK)
A Room with a View by EM Forster
Moby Dick by Herman Melville
The Life and Times of a Teaboy by Michael Collins
Darke Matter by Rick Gekoski
The Autumn of the Ace by Louis de Bernieres
The Ballad of Peckham Rye by Muriel Spark - awful, didn't finish it

A new decade, a new start on recording my reading. The journey 2021-2022

American Gods by Neil Gaiman
A Spool of Blue Thread by Anne Tyler
The Sea by John Banville
Outside of a Dog by Rick Gekoski
Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens (Book Group)
The Huntress by Kate Quinn (Book Group)
Death in Ecstasy by Ngaio Marsh
A Man Called Ove by Fredrik Backman
I Am Pilgrim by Terry Hayes (Book Group)
Clock Dance by Anne Tyler
Bear by Marian Engel
The Passionate Puritan by Jane Mander
Amongst Women by John McGahern
The Coast to Coast Murders by James Patterson
The Curious Charms of Arthur Pepper by Phaedra Patrick
The New Zealanders by Maurice Shadbolt
Make it Scream; Make it Burn by Leslie Jamison
My Mrs Brown by William Norwich
The Famished Road by Ben Okri
Lark Rise to Candleford by Flora Thompson (UK with GT)
Still Glides the Stream by Flora Thompson (GT)
Brensham Triology by John Moore (GT)
The Cotswolds by John Moore
In the Heart of the Sea by Nathaniel Philbrick
Snow by John Banville
Still Life With Woodpecker by Tom Robbins (GT)
The Grass is Singing by Doris Lessing
English Journey by JP Priestley (GT)

The journey 2008 - 2010

The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
Erewhon by Samuel Butler
The Butcher Boy by Patrick McCabe
Allen Adair by Jane Mander
The Dead School by Patrick McCabe
Ulysses by James Joyce
Crime and Punishment by Dostoyevsky
Theft by Peter Carey
McCarthy's Bar by Pete McCarthy
Uncle Silas by J Sheridan Le Fanu
Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen
Magister by Jonathan Wylie
A Widow for One Year by John Irving
The Simultaneous Man by Ralph Blum
A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce
Red Dwarf by Grant Naylor
A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon
Past Mortem by Ben Elton
Half a Life by V S Naipaul
The Hammer of Eden by Ken Follett
The Aerodrome by Rex Warner
Appointment in Samarra by John O'Hara
Eat Love Pray by Elizabeth Gilbert
Drink Play F@#k by Andrew Gottlieb (KT)
Cloudstreet by Tim Winton
The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Shaffer & Barrows(KT)
Vanity Fair by William Thackeray
A Gate at the Stairs by Lorrie Moore
The Road to McCarthy by Pete McCarthy
Her Fearful Symmetry by Audrey Niffenegger
The Pickwick Papers by Charles Dickens
Running with Scissors by Augusten Burroughs
Dry by Augusten Burroughs
Frankenstein by Mary Shelley