Catherine Meyrick's Blog, page 5

My Reading – May & June 2024

Long Island by Colm Tóibín
‘That Irishman has been here again,’ Francesca said, sitting down at the kitchen table.

The Labour of Loss: Mourning, Memory and Wartime Bereavement in Australia by Joy Damousi
‘No event has ever destroyed so much,’ wrote Sigmund Freud a year after the outbreak of the First World War, ‘that has confused so many of the clearest intelligences, or so thoroughly debased what is highest’.

Exiles by Jane Harper
Think back. The signs were there. What were they?

C...

Faces in the Street – Where have I seen you before?

One thing that has struck me as I have trawled through hundreds of photographs over the past few years is the way some people look to be people of their time and others, despite the period clothing and arrangement of the hair, have thoroughly modern faces.

The members of this family certainly look to be people of the late 1860 or early 1870s.

Photographer: Andrew Rider
Williamstown, c1870

Yet to me, this couple, the woman especially, look as if they are modern people who have dressed up t...

Snippet: Murder on West Main by I M Foster

Today I’m delighted to be sharing a snippet from I M Foster’s novel Murder on West Main as part of a blog tour hosted by The Coffee Pot Book Club. Murder on West Main is a cozy murder mystery set on Edwardian Long Island and is part of the South Shore Mystery series.

Blurb

When Colin Brissedon arrives at work one summer morning to find his new boss murdered, all eyes turn to him. After all, the man had threatened to fire him just a few days before, and his colleagues are more than h...

Handy Household Hints – The Art of Making Do

Historical newspapers are a treasure trove of information about the ways people lived in the past. The Wanted Ads can provide us with information about everything from the types of jobs on offer, the people offering services, the range of accommodation, and the wide variety of goods traded and sold, not to mention the infinite preferences of those seeking a spouse. As well, from the 1860s on, newspapers started to regularly print columns of household hints. These clearly illustrate the frugality...

Handy Household Hints – Making do

Historical newspapers are a treasure trove of information about the ways people lived in the past. The Wanted Ads can provide us with information about everything from the types of jobs on offer, the people offering services, the range of accommodation, and the wide variety of goods traded and sold, not to mention the infinite preferences of those seeking a spouse. As well, from the 1860s on, newspapers started to regularly print columns of household hints. These clearly illustrate the frugality...

West of Santillane by Brook Allen

Blurb

Desperate to escape a mundane future as a Virginia planter’s wife, Julia Hancock seizes her chance for adventure when she wins the heart of American hero William Clark. Though her husband is the famed explorer, Julia embarks on her own thrilling and perilous journey of self-discovery.

With her gaze ever westward, Julia possesses a hunger for knowledge and a passion for helping others. She falls in love with Will’s strength and generous manner, but, like her parents, he is a slave...

My Reading – April 2024

Flesh in Armour by Leonard Mann
Through the chill blur of an afternoon early in August, 1917, the figures of two men in long, tawny greatcoats, lurched wearily out of the London throng and seated themselves on the stone railing in Trafalgar Square with their backs to the classical portico of the National Gallery and the Spire of St Martin’s in the Fields. Their hats distinguished them as Australians.

Benton’s Conviction by Geoff Page
Benton, at the very top now, collected his breath and l...

Wordless Wednesday – Whiskers

The First Anzacs

Often we think we know our country’s history, particularly if we are only one degree of separation from those who made that history. Many people of my age had grandfathers who fought in World War One. We have some of their stories, though often highly sanitized if they were told to us as children. I would say that, until recently, I had a general grasp of the war’s chronology and Australia’s part in it but no deep understanding of what it was like for those who lived through that war, both a...

The Viola Factor by Sheridan Brown

Today I’m delighted to be presenting Sheridan Brown’s recently released novel, The Viola Factor, as part of a blog tour hosted by The Coffee Pot Book Club.

Book TrailerBlurb

The Viola Factor takes place at a time when the country faced division and growth after the American Civil War. Viola Knapp Ruffner (1812-1903) struggled with what was just and fair, becoming a little-known confidant for a young black scholar from Virginia. But Viola was much more than a teacher; sh...