How Now Brown Frau by Merridy Eastman
If you like funny, heartfelt memoirs, this one is for you. Meredith Eastman seems to have lived out her dream—successful career, great guy and a lovely family—and it’s always lovely to see that come true for someone.
At 41, Merridy Eastman had accepted that she would be single (and happy) for the rest of her life. Then she meets a lovely German while visiting Europe. A year later—also preggers—she moves to Bavaria to be with him and start a new life together. This is the story of her adventure.
I have to admit this book caught my eye based on the title alone. In real life I say ‘How now brown cow?’ to people instead of ‘What’s up?’ sometimes, a legacy of my school days when they had Hershey’s Brown Cow commercials. I read the back blurb and the first chapter and, always a sucker for funny travel memoirs, I got it.
Eastman, a former Play School presenter, writes a comedic, sometimes bittersweet tale of what it’s like to uproot yourself to a new country, learn a new language and fall in love with the country and its people, even if you can’t understand what they’re saying.
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Anonymums by Anonymous
A stocking filler for any mum struggling to remember who she was before she had kids or who one day realises she has a brand preference for cleaning sponges. Anonymums reveals some of our unspoken insecurities and fears with charm, wit and honesty.
The premise of this non-fiction book is simple. In an attempt to rediscover who they are outside of their roles as mother, wife and housekeeper, three mums agree to complete a dare and reveal a truth of the others’ choosing each month for two months. On the third month, they assign themselves a Big Dare. All the while, they reflect on their experiences and share it with the other two…and now with us.
Anonymums doesn’t try to be more than it is, and that’s its charm. Mums A, B and C—they remain anonymous to us—do things that any woman with kids, a husband and a mortgage may be prepared to do. As mid-life crises go, theirs are fairly inexpensive, harmless and non-fattening.
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Affection: a memoir of love, sex and intimacy by Krissy Kneen
Sometimes you find a book impossible to put down, not because of what it says about the world, but because of what it knows about you. Affection is that kind of book.
In Affection, Krissy Kneen intersperses past and present in brief but intense vignettes that readers of her blog, Furious Vaginas, may recognise. And yet the story flows—and does so lyrically, beautifully and at times enigmatically.
It begins with a playful tease—Kneen is bound, at her own request, in the middle of an otherwise perfectly domestic Sunday morning. ‘And that was just the sex part,’ she breaks off cheekily.
Kneen describes her childhood in Blacktown (NSW) and her teen years in Gladstone (Qld) almost always framed against the discovery of sexual pleasure—lying on the carpet, in a crawl space under the house, under her grandfather’s desk, on the beach—and her memories burst with texture.
When she leaves home to study in Brisbane, Kneen’s sexual exploration becomes more uninhibited and more complicated.
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Swept: Love with a Chance of Drowning by Torre DeRoche
A book for anyone with a sense of adventure, whether you’re an armchair traveller or someone who wants to see more of the world.
While working overseas in San Francisco for a year, Australian girl Torre DeRoche meets a hot Argentinian in a bar. Their romance is meant to be just a temporary thing, but somehow she ends up sailing around the South Pacific with him, despite a complete fear of sailing. Will their love survive the open water?
I first heard of the fearful adventurer by following a series of links and connections via Twitter. DeRoche’s book had not yet been published, but her story seemed so interesting. I immediately tried to get the ending out of her via Twitter but no, I was not allowed to kill a fairy and had to wait for the book to come out. When it did, I promptly downloaded the book, loaded it on the Kindle on my iPhone and, mid-book, left my phone on a bus…but not before skipping to the ending and killing a fairy!
What I love most about this book is that it combines two of my passions—travel and romance.
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Chasing the Devil: On Foot through Africa's Killing Fields by Tim Butcher
Someday, when these countries have become whole again and the world remembers that they can be beautiful, I might find myself there, gazing out of their harbour, chilling with a beer. In the meantime, I’m content to let Butcher do all the walking.
In 2009, Tim Butcher set out to retrace Graham Greene’s journey, from his book, Journey without Maps, wherein which he walked from Sierra Leone to Liberia (with a bit of Guinea in between). Through his travelogue he recounts the history of both countries, the effects of war, as well as some vignettes from his time as a war correspondent.
I first discovered Butcher years ago, when I read his book, Blood River, about journeying to the mouth of the Congo. I was, at that time, looking for more books/travelogues on Africa and was happy to try his book out. I thought it was extremely well written and was moved enough to buy the next one when it came out.
The thing about Butcher’s books is that they don’t make you want to travel to where he’s been. On the contrary, they usually make me want to do the opposite.
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Lunch in Paris: A Delicious Love Story, with Recipes by Elizabeth Bard
Well-written, poignant, and romantic. Each chapter comes with a few recipes, most of which feature in the story. I loved it all.
In line with Travel Tuesday (#traveltuesday) on Twitter, Wandergurl will review a travel book once a month.
Elizabeth Bard met her Frenchman at a conference, and later met up with him in Paris. On their first date, she slept with him before dessert. Thus begins Lunch in Paris, a beautiful story of romance, Paris, growing up and learning how to be an adult.
And, of course, there’s the food. All the glorious food. Each chapter comes with a few recipes, most of which have been described as part of the story.
And I really loved the romance:
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Vroom by the Sea by Peter Moore - Australian edition
An entertaining read about an enchanting part of Italy not always covered in travel books.
In line with Travel Tuesday (#traveltuesday) on Twitter, Wandergurl will be reviewing a travel book once a month.
Peter Moore is one of my favourite travel writers. I discovered him on a trip to Sydney in 2002, prompting me to return home with all his books at that time. He’s exceedingly funny and has a tendency to get himself into hilarious situations. When I found out that this book was released on Kindle, I just had to get it.
This book is a sequel of sorts to Vroom with a View, a book he wrote about travelling around Italy on a Vespa for his 40th birthday. This time around he takes a Vespa around southern Italy, partly to contemplate his impending fatherhood. There’s no need to read the previous book, as lord knows I didn’t remember much of it before reading this one. He does a good job of explaining any previous references.
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Foreign Correspondence: A Pen Pal’s Journey from Down Under to All Over by Geraldine Brooks
A lovely if at times a bit sad armchair read if you’re looking for a bit of recent history and adventure.
In line with Travel Tuesday (#traveltuesday) on Twitter, I’ll be reviewing a travel book once a month, since I read so many and love them so much. Fortunately, Australians love to travel, so there’s no shortage of books to choose from for Aussie Author Month.
Geraldine Brooks grew up in a sleepy neighbourhood in Sydney without a car, without ever making an international phone call or getting on a plane. To explore the world from her house she made pen pals and wrote to people from New Jersey, France, Israel and even not so far away in the Eastern Suburbs. Later in life, she decided to meet them all.
This story isn’t just about Brooks—who later became a foreign war correspondent—meeting her pen pals and finding out what became of them, but it is also a capsule of history of what Sydney was like in the 60s and 70s when she was growing up.
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Wandergurl’s recommended reads from 2010 and a self-imposed challenge to conquer her TBR pile.
Book picks for 2010
The Forbidden Rose by Joanna Bourne
Effectively the prequel to The Spymaster’s Lady, this equally wonderfully written novel is about ‘Maggie and Doyle’. Marguerite de Fleurignac, a French noblewoman, encounters William Doyle in her burnt out chateau. They both pretend to be people they are not, as she is trying to desperately smuggle out people during the revolution and he is an English spy looking for her father. The romance is lush and lovely, the spy plot moves around nicely, and I was kept captivated. Highly recommended.
Feet of the Chameleon by Ian Hawkey
This is a largely anecdotal history of modern African football and how it has shaped various countries’ political histories. I read this book during the football (soccer) world cup while in Africa so it was especially poignant. It explained a lot of things that were interesting to me, and would be interesting for anyone with an interest in Africa, its people and its history.
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A Local Habitation by Seanan McGuire (October Daye #2)
A Local Habitation by Seanan McGuire (October Daye, Book 2)
Toby Daye is sent by her liege, the Duke of Shadowed Hills, to the County of Tamed Lightning to check on his niece, the reigning countess. Toby thinks that this will be an easy job, but once she and her assistant Connor arrive, she finds it more complicated than that—people are dying and their souls aren’t being carried away by shades, the traditional soul bearers of the fae.
Toby has grown from the previous book, and it shows—I liked how her character didn’t remain static and bitter. She has become more stable, has found herself on more solid footing. She even has girlfriends and goes on night outs. Her situation (explained in the previous book, Rosemary and Rue) sucks but she’s learnt to deal with it better. She’s still a strong character and you can’t help but barrack for her.
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