A Bookseller never forgets?

I just had a terrible bookseller moment trying to recall the books I have read this week and coming up completely blank, however working backwards it has all returned. Finished Fall this month’s bookclub book. Loved it. Still going with Terror of Living (Urban Waite) incredible writing very Cormac MCarthy. I love that Canadian award The Giller Prize the books are always just my type, beautiful writing and an exploration of human nature, also there is usually a picture of water on the cover. Anyway I completely loved the latest Winner The Sentimentalists by Johanna Skibsrud. Onto the new Sleepers book This too Shall Pass by S.J Finn we are so lucky in Australia to have these small and exciting publishers, so let’s support them. Finally started that incredibly well written and compact story of illness and snails The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating by Elisabeth Tova Bailey. So very excitingly the Miles Franklin Prize Longlist has been announced. The Short list will be announced next month. I am jumping up and down because my favourite book of last year is on the longlist. Bereft by Chris Wormesley. On the 27^th of April Chris will be attending the Sun Bookclub so get reading and come on down.

Here is the Miles Franklin Longlist list in case you missed it.

Jon Bauer - Rocks in the Belly / Honey Brown - The Good Daughter / Patrick Holland - The Mary Smokes Boys / Melina Marchetta - The Piper's Son / Roger McDonald - When Colts Ran/ Stephen Orr - Time's Long Ruin / Kim Scott - That Deadman Dance / Kirsten Tranter - The Legacy / Chris Womersley – Bereft

So many good Australian Writers, so little time.

Visible Ink 22

Forget about American novels recommended by Oprah. Delve into some eye-opening new Aussie writing and art. The Visible Ink anthology is a collaborative project, run out of RMIT for 22 years. Each year a fresh team of editors calls for submissions Australia-wide, and publishes a selection of delectable stories, poems and images by some of our most talented and innovative emerging writers and artists.

Libbi Gorr Event

Yum, ate gorgeous french food at PM 24 last night, Lemon Curd to die for, and as you may already know chef Phillipe Mouchel along with Rita Erlich has a new book called More Than French recipes and stories, divine! Let me feed you two morsels of information.Wednesday April 6 at 12pm we are hosting an event at the Sun Theatre with Rebecca Barnard chatting to Libbi Gorr about her book The A-Z of Mummy Manners, an hilarious look at etiquette for the modern mother. Run away from home or work and join us for Dips, biccies and a glass of wine it is not PM24 but its free, book on info@sunbookshop.com.My second morsel is that I was lucky enough to see the Williamstown Festival Programme so far and I feel very excited loads of excellent people and events I would love to attend.

Scary Times

Well in these times of floods, earthquakes, tsunamis nuclear meltdowns and so on, I feel the need to escape and escape I did, yesterday, into the excellent psychological thriller by Julia Crouch called Cuckoo. Cuckoo is a page turner of a first novel. When Rose, who is seemingly, contented with her life, invites her recently widowed best friend, Polly, to stay she opens a very nasty can of worms. Glamorous, fragile, Polly arrives at the graceful English home with her wild young boys and the unravelling of everything Rose has strived to perfect, begins. I had a couple of quibbles but all in all so enjoyable.

Last time I blogged (so exciting) I mentioned an Indian restaurant in Victoria st, Seddon. The restaurant is Indian Palette and has perfect small dishes of delicious traditional Indian food with real spices to put to one side, like cardamom pods and cloves. Indian Palette puts me in mind of another book I recently read, Snake by Australian author Kate Jennings which is just about to be reissued. Snake was fabulous; a novel told in small portions, the story of a marriage, it is rich and beautifully executed. Snake was first published in 1996 and is well worth revisiting. Also loving the bookclub book, Fall by Colin Mc Adam and The Terror of Living by Urban Waite (an apt title).

From this day forward The Sun Bookshop really will post blogs

We at The Sun Bookshop, have been very slack, unlike our co-workers at the Younger Sun, from this day forward we promise to be conscientious bloggers giving you our thoughts on what we are reading, exciting, newsy, booky stuff and very interesting information about very interesting things.

So to begin I must sing the praises of Jasper Ffordes’ great new Thursday Next tale ‘One of our Thursdays is Missing’. If you have not read any Jasper Fforde you should beg, borrow or even purchase ‘The Eyre Affair’ and work your way through the series to this new one, which is, as always, hilarious, inventive and chock full of literary references.

In the latest instalment there is trouble in book world, the real Thursday Next has disappeared but is urgently needed for peace talks to head off a Genre War between The Racy Novel and Women’s Fiction. Fictional Thursday is called to stand in for real Thursday, but fictional Thursday has her own troubles with a growing backlist readership and an understudy who can’t handle crowds. Too funny, found myself laughing in public when eating Indian food in Seddon, which is great if you want Daal shooting out of your nose.