She was a woman in her late twenties, maybe thirty, even, with eyebrows plucked bare and hairline neatly outlined, her face caked in white powder and her lips painted blood-red, like those of a hound that had just eaten a man. The woman they called O-Riki was slender and of average height. Her freshly washed … Continue reading Troubled Waters | Ichiyō Higuchi
The other day, I discovered an alarming possibility. No, worse: an alarming fact. The alarming fact in question was about IAM's, or involuntary autobiographical memories. As the name suggests, it is a series of spontaneous memories, or flashbacks and in the case sited by Julian Barnes in his latest (and last) novel Departure(s), the patient … Continue reading Departure(s) | Julian Barnes
We are all shards in the smash-up. Our lives, even the unruptured ones, bounce around on the seafloor. For a while we might brush tenderly against one another, but eventually, and inevitably, we collide and splinter. About a decade ago, I started reading Let the Great World Spin (2009) because the owner of the bookshop I … Continue reading Twist | Colum McCann
They show you how to make bombs on the internet. If you know where to look. A year has gone by since last we spent time in the company of Elizabeth, Joyce, Ibrahim and Ron. A quiet year to mourn and grieve their loss. No murders or mysteries have occurred in or around Cooper's Chase … Continue reading The Impossible Fortune | Richard Osman
I'm a little behind in posting about these two Historical Fiction prizes, but I was saving it for a week when I needed a 'filler' post. I still have several unreviewed books to write up, but it has been a busy month so far, with not enough time for thinking and writing, so I will … Continue reading Historical Fiction Prizes 2026
The Climate Fiction Prize is gradually becoming one of my favourite prizes to watch even though this is only its second outing. Climate fiction is already one of my prefered genres to read. In fact, most of the contemporary literature I read these days would be described as speculative or eco or climate fiction. Hopefully … Continue reading The Climate Fiction Prize 2026
I am not a bushwalker. I like art exhibitions and grotty little bars. Jane Rawson's opening lines in her introduction, 'On avoiding nature', grabbed my attention straight away. Since moving to the Blue Mountains eighteen months ago almost everyone asks me how many bushwalks I've been on or which bushwalks are the best? I don't … Continue reading Human/Nature: On a Life in a Wild World | Jane Rawson
It’s time for another Classics Club spin. This is the Classics Club's 43rd CC Spin...and mine. What is a CC Spin? Simply pick twenty books that you’ve got left to read from your Classics Club List. Post that list, numbered 1-20, on your blog before Sunday 8th February. A number from 1-20 will be announced. Read … Continue reading Classics Club Spin #43
A dry, restless sound. Insects, each alone barely audible, covering every branch, large and small, down to the tips in heavy clusters, some slipping to the ground, perhaps a hundred, no, hundreds, fervently gnawing away at the leaves, emitting a sound that builds in layers, a whirlpool, a wave, expanding in ever-widening circles around the … Continue reading Wildcat Dome | Yūko Tsushima
As part of my Reading Non-Fiction project throughout 2026, I thought it might be nice to highlight some of the books that have been lingering on my TBR shelves for too long. I thought the pile containing books about people reading books might have been larger than six, but I do try to limit my … Continue reading #ReadingNonFiction2026: Books on Books
It starts and we are not even there. Everyone in the world is talking about it. People say to us, you must be going. No, we answer. No. No. No. So why did they end up going? Why did Helen Garner, Chloe Hooper and Sarah Krasnostein end up saying yes? And why did I (someone … Continue reading The Mushroom Tapes | Helen Garner, Chloe Hooper & Sarah Krasnostein
© Brona’s Books 2026 | Maroubra Beach As you can see below January turned out to be an amazing reading month, but not so much a blogging month. I wasn't in the zone for writing very often, so took that as a sign to just keep on reading! It has also been pretty hot this summer, so … Continue reading Book Diary | January 2026
The hands do not belong to me. Lying on the hotel bed in the sun-drenched light of a late September morning, I hold them up for study, turning them in slow circles. Brown and slender, long arms stretch above their parallel shadows on the white sheet. Tapered fingers, imprinted in darkening script, bend and extend, … Continue reading The Flower Bearers | Rachel Eliza Griffiths
Helen heaved her bag up each step, hoping the timber wouldn't break beneath her weight. The front door was dimpled glass, backed inside by a curtain of thin floral fabric her grandmother Iris had strung across plastic wires. I'm way behind in review writing at the moment, so I've made the decision to push out … Continue reading Iluka | Cassie Stroud
It would be Babel all over again. Sympathy Tower Tokyo would throw our language into disarray; it would tear the world apart. Not because, dizzy with our architectural prowess, we had reached too close to heaven and enraged the gods, but because we had begun to abuse language, to bend and stretch and break it … Continue reading Sympathy Tower Tokyo | Rie Qudan
