The Unfinished Bookshelf

Writing and reviews

Everything Beautiful by Simmone Howell

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everything beautiful

Riley Rose doesn’t want to be at Spirit Ranch Holiday Camp. Riley wants to be partying with her best friend Chloe at the beautiful Ben Sebatini’s house. She has a plan to get away from the jumpsuit-wearing counsellors, the feel-good mantras, do-gooder campers and the monotonous schedule of team-building exercises and outdoor activities. But is everything at the Spirit Ranch as it appears? What secrets are waiting for discovery in the abandoned Fraser house? And why doesn’t anyone want to talk about the accident that landed the mysterious Dylan in a wheelchair last year?

I really can’t believe it’s taken me so long to read Everything Beautiful, given how much I adored Girl Defective. It’s one of those gorgeous, underrated Aussie YA books which captured my heart from the very first page. It didn’t take me long to fall for almost every character and become completely absorbed Riley Rose’s story. 
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Uglies by Scott Westerfield

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Everybody gets to be supermodel gorgeous. What could be wrong with that? Tally is about to turn sixteen, and she can’t wait. Not for her license — for turning pretty. In Tally’s world, your sixteenth birthday brings an operation that turns you from a repellent ugly into a stunningly attractive pretty and catapults you into a high-tech paradise where your only job is to have a really great time. In just a few weeks Tally will be there. But Tally’s new friend Shay isn’t sure she wants to be pretty. She’d rather risk life on the outside. When Shay runs away, Tally learns about a whole new side of the pretty world and it isn’t very pretty. The authorities offer Tally the worst choice she can imagine: find her friend and turn her in, or never turn pretty at all. The choice Tally makes changes her world forever.

To be quite honest, I wouldn’t have picked this book up if it hadn’t been on my university reading list. Which really would have been a shame, but I think every book nerd can relate to the overwhelming sense of never being able to read all the fabulous books being published. But that’s another story. I’m so glad university forced me to read Uglies, because I really think I may have found a series I might actually finish. Although, you never know with my incredibly lazy reading habits…
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Before I Die by Jenny Downham

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before I die
Tessa has just a few months to live. So she compiles her bucket list, her To Do Before I Die list. Number one is sex. Released from the constraints of ‘normal’ life, Tessa tastes new experiences to make her feel alive while her failing body struggles to keep up.
I’ll admit, I avoided that book about a girl with cancer. You know the one? Okay? Okay. I watched the movie and, I know I’m the odd one out when I say it wasn’t really my thing. I definitely had a hangover of that movie when I started Before I Die and I was wary. Was this book going to make me roll my eyes too? (Yes, I know that probably makes me heartless). This was a tough book to read and not at all something I could consider enjoyable, but it did make me think and sometimes that’s the best outcome from any book.
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This House of Grief by Helen Garner

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Garner
On the evening of 4 September 2005, Father’s Day, Robert Farquharson, a separated husband, was driving his three sons home to their mother, Cindy, when his car left the road and plunged into a dam. The boys, aged ten, seven and two, drowned. Was this an act of revenge or a tragic accident? The court case became Helen Garner’s obsession. She followed it on its protracted course until the final verdict. In this utterly compelling book, Helen Garner tells the story of a man and his broken life. She presents the theatre of the courtroom with its actors and audience, all gathered for the purpose of bearing witness to the truth, players in the extraordinary and unpredictable drama of the quest for justice.
The heartbreaking case Helen Garner explores in This House of Grief is one I’d really only known the barest details on. I vaguely remember the initial news reports, but living in Queensland I’m sure something closer to home soon took up the headlines. While we studied part of the media coverage at university, various legal appeals were ongoing and there seemed to my memory no definitive outcome. Was this a tragic accident or the most horrific and unthinkable murder? Read More

Talking Points: Why I don’t read series

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series
This post will probably make me sound like a big grump, but when it comes to choosing books I try to avoid reading series as much as possible. Don’t get me wrong, there are a lot of positive things about reading a series. If you love the characters, you get to revisit them over and over in new and exiting situations. In recent years, it has also been the ‘blockbuster’ series which have been made into seemingly endless movie adaptations. Read More

Second Glance by Jodi Picoult

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second glance
In a small Vermont town, an old man puts a piece of land up for sale, igniting a firestorm of protest from the local Abenaki Indians, who insist it is an ancient burial ground. To appease them the developer looking to buy the property hires a ghost hunter, Ross Wakeman. Ross is a suicidal drifter desperate to cross paths again with his fiancee, who died in a car crash eight years earlier. But after several late nights all Ross can lay claim to discovering is Lia Beaumont, a skittish, mysterious woman who, like Ross, is on a search for something beyond the boundary separating life and death. Thus begins Picoult’s enthralling and ultimately astonishing story of love, fate and a crime of passion.
Jodi Picoult is one of my favourite authors for a reason: every single book she writes challenges my world view. Her books explore euthanasia, racism and white supremacism, the Holocaust, and whether you can sue for medical emancipation from your parents. But Second Glance was perhaps the most challenging of her books for me because it asked me to believe in the paranormal, something I’ve always relegated to the realm of fiction.
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Big Magic by Elizabeth Gilbert

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big magic
Readers of all ages and walks of life have drawn inspiration and empowerment from Elizabeth Gilbert’s books for years. Now this beloved author digs deep into her own generative process to share her wisdom and unique perspective about creativity. With profound empathy and radiant generosity, she offers potent insights into the mysterious nature of inspiration. She asks us to embrace our curiosity and let go of needless suffering. She shows us how to tackle what we most love, and how to face down what we most fear. She discusses the attitudes, approaches, and habits we need in order to live our most creative lives. Balancing between soulful spirituality and cheerful pragmatism, Gilbert encourages us to uncover the “strange jewels” that are hidden within each of us. Whether we are looking to write a book, make art, find new ways to address challenges in our work,  embark on a dream long deferred, or simply infuse our everyday lives with more mindfulness and passion, Big Magic cracks open a world of wonder and joy.
One of my earliest memories is of trying to draw a picture. I don’t remember what I was drawing, just that I was so frustrated because I couldn’t translate what was in my head onto the page. It was just a bunch of squiggles. That was the first time my perfectionism clashed with my creativity. Over time, perfectionism won and convinced me I wasn’t a creative person. I ended up a professional writer, yet I still believe I’m not creative. I weave words together almost every day, but I still don’t think my factual writing makes me a creative person. Big Magic made me look at things in a new light. Read More

Highly Recommended: Celebrating International Women’s Day

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women To celebrate International Women’s Day, I want to share some of my favourite books written by women. Looking at my bookshelves, the majority of things I read are by women so narrowing down this list was a little challenging. I also noticed my shelves were severely lacking in diversity, something I’d like to amend because I believe feminism needs to be intersectional. So, I really want to hear your recommendations. Read More

Ctrl Alt Delete: How I Grew Up Online by Emma Gannon

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Ctrl Alt Delete
Emma Gannon was born in 1989, the year the World Wide Web was conceived, so she’s literally grown up alongside the Internet. There’ve been late night chat room experiments, sexting from a Nokia and dubious webcam exchanges. And let’s not forget catfishing, MSN, digital friendships and #feminism. She was basically social networking way before it was a thing – and she’s even made a successful career from it. Ctrl Alt Delete is Emma’s painfully funny and timely memoir, in which she aims to bring a little hope to anybody who has played out a significant part of their life online. Her confessions, revelations and honesty may even make you log off social media (at least for an hour).
It’s astonishing how the internet has totally transformed society in just a few decades. It’s hard to imagine life without social media and the abundance of apps most are lucky enough to have at their fingertips now. We shop online, get news online and date online. Hardly a day goes by when I don’t check Facebook at least once. Needless to say, I could absolutely relate to Emma Gannon’s debut. Read More

The Bricks that Built the Houses by Kate Tempest

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The Bricks that Built the Houses
It gets into your bones. You don’t even realise it, until you’re driving through it, watching all the things you’ve always known and leaving them behind. Young Londoners Becky, Harry and Leon are escaping the city in a fourth-hand Ford Cortina with a suitcase full of stolen money. Taking us back in time – and into the heart of London – The Bricks that Built the Houses explores a cross-section of contemporary urban life with a powerful moral microscope, giving us intimate stories of hidden lives, and showing us that good intentions don’t always lead to the right decisions. Leading us into the homes and hearts of ordinary people, their families and their communities, Kate Tempest exposes moments of beauty, disappointment, ambition and failure. Wise but never cynical, driven by empathy and ethics, The Bricks the Built the Houses questions how we live with and love one another.
Put simply, Kate Tempest is writing goals. From page one, I was in awe of her beautiful, lyrical style. The Bricks that Built the Houses weaves together the lives of several South Londoners with so much depth, it’s simply stunning. Tempest has become an acclaimed poet, but this book is evidence she is a force to be reckoned with as a novelist as well. Read More
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