It's a Classical Life

  Playing Beatie Bow was my January pick for the 2025 Aussie Reading Challenge that I joined with Paula at Vince Review . It came under the category "Time Travel." This was a reread for me and I'm so glad that I picked it up again. Park is one of my favourite writers (in fact you'll see her later in the challenge with another one of her books) and really captures the essence of a place in her writing. Playing Beatie Bow is set in The Rocks , a famous area of Sydney almost directly under the Harbour Bridge. Home to the traditional Gadigal First Nations People, it was also the site of the landing of the first settlers, and thus home to Sydney's first gaol, hospital and dockyard, all made from the sandstone that was the geological foundation of the landscape.  Written in 1980, it is considered a modern Australian classic children's novel. I think it can be a bit confronting for children these days so I'd definitely recommend reading it before giving it you...

  Paula Vince, over at Vince Review has come up with a reading challenge for 2025 that I would love to join, so I thought that I would share with you how I get on throughout the year. I currently don't have any reading goals for 2025 so this little challenge should be fun and easy to commit to. In fact, I already have a few titles in mind to fit each of the categories, but there are some that I am going to do have to do some research for.  If you would like to see Paula's original post, you can see it here . Basically, she is inspired to read more Australian literature and has stipulated that each novel must have an Australian setting and not simply an Australian author. I think it's really important to support Australian authors and literature, and as I tend to gravitate towards European or American classics, I am keen for the challenge. Australian literature really does have a flavour all of its own and I have read embarrassingly little of it. This is something that I wo...