Storytime 2023

Books read to Jan 1 - Feb 5

The hot summer weather lends itself to lazy days and time to read.

Here's a selection I have enjoyed this year.

If you enjoy stories set in Australia I seem to have read quite a few of these in the last month.

• The Orphans by Fiona McIntosh  - Port Adelaide, Farina, shearers, undertakers and morticians, struggle for female recognition
• Exiles by Jane Harper - South Australian wine country, crime fiction, country towns
• Outback by Patricia Wolf - Crime, Tourism, Drugs, detectives
• Mackenzie Crossing by Kaye Dobbie - 2 eras in the Australian alps, 1939 Black Friday bushfires, 1997 search for lost family details and romance
• The Cedar Tree by Nicole Alexander - station life, family feud
• Keeping up appearances by Tricia Stringer - SA country life, small town setting, women and their interactions and relationships
• Burnt Out by Victoria Brookman - Blue Mountains, bushfires, capitalism, media

This post first appeared on https://carmelgalvin.info

Read and Listed in 2022

A year of books

Each year I read about 100 books and record them on LibraryThing. It appears that I recorded 104 books on that platform this year. When I read books that I think are not worth recording they don't make it to my list, so I probably read at least another 10 not added in. Then there are the times when I have returned books to the library and forgotten to record their titles

Having just seen Jill Ball's post about books she had read in 2022, I looked for the cover display of the most recent 100 books I have read. 

The covers below display some books from most recently read back to January 2022.

Lots of fiction, some favourites this year in no particular order but historical fiction dominates.

• The Swift and the Harrier by Minette Walters 
• Dawnlands by Phillipa Gregory
• Horse by Geraldine Brooks
• The Little Wartime Library by Kate Thompson
• The Brightest Star by Emma Harcourt
• The Diamond Eye by Kate Quinn

Some crime and mystery fiction enjoyed

• The Chalk Pit by Elly Griffiths
• The Murder Rule by Dervla McTiernan
• The Way it is Now by Garry Disher
• Portrait of an Unknown Woman by Daniel Silva

This post first appeared on https://carmelgalvin.info

Writing quick Ancestor biographies

Here’s a quick tip to stop one revising and spending editing time on every sentence written. Get the draft written by voice.

• Open your timeline of research on an ancestor, whether it is in your genealogy software, in a spreadsheet or an online database.
• On your phone open a Google doc or any notes app or Office and tap the microphone.
• Talk about each fact in the timeline adding as little or as much as you want.
• Now you have a draft document you can return to, edit and enhance later.

This works for me, have you tried it? 

This post first appeared on https://carmelgalvin.info