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.

Good deeds at Christmas : Buy a present for a local Sudanese child

The Younger Sun (in cahoots with the Sun) bookshop is going to be giving a bunch of books as Christmas presents to young Sudanese children this year. The majority of these kids have arrived in Australia as refugees or are the children of refugees from South Sudan.

Most of these kids are otherwise unlikely to receive anything at Christmas and by giving books we're also increasing their access to reading materials within their homes. So if you would like to donate a book too - you can! Just come into the shop and choose one you think is great.

The books will be distributed amongst young Sudanese families in Melbourne's west by the Lost Boys Association.

Already our hearts have been warmed by the generosity of our customers. Thank you!

Win Keith Richard's Life...autographed!

The Sun Bookshop is giving away an exclusive signed copy of Keith Richards' biography!

Just buy a copy of Life - a Christmas present perhaps - and you are instantly in the running to win a copy signed by the man himself.

We aren't kidding around.

Enter today!

Right now!

With the Rolling Stones, Keith Richards created the riffs, the lyrics and the songs that roused the world, and over four decades he lived the original rock and roll life: taking the chances he wanted, speaking his mind, and making it all work in a way that no one before him had ever done.Now, at last, the man himself tells us the story of life in the crossfire hurricane. And what a life. Creating immortal riffs such as the ones in 'Jumpin' Jack Flash' and 'Street Fighting Man' and 'Honky Tonk Women'. Falling in love with Anita Pallenberg and the death of Brian Jones. Marriage, family and the road that goes on forever.In a voice that is uniquely and intimately his own, with the disarming honesty that has always been his trademark, Keith Richards brings us the essential life story of our times.

Michael Hyde : All along the watchtower

All along the watchtower, Michael Hyde (Vulgar Press)

Local author Michael Hyde has written a memoir of his years as an activist during the 1960s and his opposition to Australia's involvement in the Vietnam war, his trips to China and Cambodia - and he has also given us a wonderful insight into the life of young, political and wild youths of that time.

Michael is fortunate enough to have recently recovered his ASIO file and he found that writing All along the watchtower was so much easier with with all the records of his phone calls, movements - and photos too!

The book is being released to coincide with an SBS documentary on Michael.

Review : Hand Me Down World

Hand Me Down World, Lloyd Jones (Text Publishing)

Lloyd Jones, author of the wonderful and highly acclaimed novel Mr Pip, has produced another gem. An African woman washes up on the shores of Sicily, after fleeing Tunisia to search for her kidnapped son, her destination is Berlin and we travel the journey with her as the world literally hands her down. Ines, is almost unknowable for the first half of the book, we see her journey through the eyes of those she encounters along the way. Her story is a chimera, a jigsaw of different perspectives gathered by the investigator on her tail and the truth is never clear, even her real name is unknown. The only thing that is always apparent is the powerful love for her son, and the determination to be with him that drives her forward against tremendous odds. When the investigator catches up to her, we finally hear her story told in her own voice pulling apart all that has come before it. The unique structure, the masterful writing, and the heartbreaking picture that it illustrates of the life of a refugee all make this a brilliant and timely novel.

--Michelle--