It’s Monday! What Are You Reading? #SundaySalon #Sunday Post

 

Linking to: It’s Monday! What Are You Reading? at BookDate; Sunday Post @ Caffeinated Reviewer; and the Sunday Salon @ ReaderBuzz

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Life…

It’s been a quiet week.

It’s nearly officially the start of winter here (June 1st) and the weather is getting chilly. I unearthed my handful of long warm pants midweek, only to find the waist bands had perished in all of them. Despite my non existent sewing skills I decided to replace the elastic, it took me an entire day, and I have a bruised thumb from continually pushing the elastic (attached to a safety pin) through the casings, but the minute I put on my absolutely favourite pair, which I’ve had for nearly thirty years, it was all worth it!

Aside from my binging on the TV series Nikita after it came up in a post last week on Tessa Talks Books, hubby, I, and the only kid who voluntarily spends time in the same room as us, discovered two new-to-us trivia/quiz shows. ‘Insert Name Here’ is a British show hosted by Sue Perkins, and the Australian show ‘Think Tank’ hosted by Paul McDermott. We prefer game shows like these that have a comic bent, rather than overstylised productions like The Weakest Link or The Chase, though we do like Jeopardy too. We’ve actually been on quite the quiz show kick recently, Spicks and Specks, an Australian music quiz show hosted by Adam Hills, is back on air after a long hiatus, and we’ve been catching up with Hard Quiz hosted by Tom Gleeson too.

(* If you don’t live in Australia and have a VPN you can watch all of these on ABC iView, or see bits and pieces on YouTube)

What’s your favourite quiz/trivia show?

 

It’s the last Monday of the month so time for a challenge update!

Nonfiction Reader Challenge 6/12

Australian Women Writers Challenge 42/50

Aussie Author Challenge 11/20

Historical Fiction Challenge  12/25

Books In Translation Challenge 1/4

What’s in a Name Challenge 5/6

Cloak and Dagger Challenge 16/25

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What I’ve Read Since I last Posted…

Flash Jim by Kel Richards

The Menopause Manifesto by Dr. Jen Gunter

You Had It Coming by B.M. Carroll

The Girl Remains by Katherine Firkin

The Nancy’s by R.W.R. McDonald

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New Posts…

Review: Flash Jim by Kel Richards

Review: The Menopause Manifesto by Dr. Jen Gunter

Review: You Had It Coming by B.M. Carroll

Review: The Girl Remains by Katherine Firkin

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What I’m Reading This Week…

 

Darwin, Summer, 1963.

The humidity sat heavy and thick over the town as Senior Constable Ned Potter looked down at a body that had been dragged from the shallow marshland. He didn’t need a coroner to tell him this was a bad death. He didn’t know then that this was only the first. Or that he was about to risk everything looking for answers.

Late one night, Charlotte Clark drove the long way home, thinking about how stuck she felt, a 23-year-old housewife, married to a cowboy who wasn’t who she thought he was. The days ahead felt suffocating, living in a town where she was supposed to keep herself nice and wait for her husband to get home from the pub. Charlotte stopped the car, stepped out to breathe in the night air and looked out over the water to the tangled mangroves. She never heard a sound before the hand was around her mouth.

Both Charlotte and Ned are about to learn that the world they live in is full of secrets and that it takes courage to fight for what is right. But there are people who will do anything to protect themselves and sometimes courage is not enough to keep you safe.

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When 24-year-old lawyer Romy learns that she is at her ‘optimal stopping point’ (the mathematically designated point at which one should select the next ‘best person’ who comes along in order to have the best chance at happily ever after), she knows it’s time to get serious about her love life.

Ruthlessly rational, with a belief in data over destiny, Romy knows that reliability and consistency are dependable options, while passion and lust are transitory and only bring pain and disillusionment.

That’s why sensible Hans the engineer is the right choice, as opposed to graphic designer James who exhibits the kind of behaviour that has got her into trouble before. Isn’t he?

The twenty-first century may have brought technological advances in how we communicate, but this warm and funny novel shows us that the search for love is as fraught as ever.

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From the author of All That Remains, a tour through the human skeleton and the secrets our bones reveal.

In her memoir All That Remains, internationally renowned forensic anthropologist and human anatomist Dame Sue Black recounted her life lived eye to eye with the Grim Reaper. During the course of it, she offered a primer on the basics of identifying human remains, plenty of insights into the fascinating processes of death, and a sober, compassionate understanding of its inescapable presence in our existence, all leavened with her wicked sense of humor.

In her new book, Sue Black builds on the first, taking us on a guided tour of the human skeleton and explaining how each person’s life history is revealed in their bones, which she calls “the last sentinels of our mortal life to bear witness to the way we lived it.” Her narrative follows the skeleton from the top of the skull to the small bones in the foot. Each step of the journey includes an explanation of the biology—how the bone is formed in a person’s development, how it changes as we age, the secrets it may hold—and is illustrated with anecdotes from the author’s career helping solve crimes and identifying human remains, whether recent or historical. Written in Bone is full of entertaining stories that read like scenes from a true-life CSI drama, infused with humor and no-nonsense practicality about the realities of corpses and death.

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Lara McIntyre and journalist Toby Paxton are thrust into the limelight when an accident puts the beating heart of their community in jeopardy.

The small country town of Bridgefield can’t manage without their general store and post office, but Lara can’t stomach the idea of out-of-town buyers running it into the ground either.

With the help of the close-knit community, they rally together to save the general store. Featuring a black tie ball, a fun run, a magpie called Vegemite and a snake-chasing kelpie called Basil, Magpie’s Bend is a story about rural lives, family, love and letting go.

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Thanks for stopping by!