Kathryn's Inbox

This week I am participating in Think Out Loud, a weekly meme hosted by Thinks Books . With this meme, book bloggers can say or post about any topic they like. So I am going to use this as an opportunity to discuss a topic that I think should have been addressed a long time ago: That's right. Krispy Kreme Doughnuts, I have a big problem with you. See, the thing is, I live in Adelaide. And not only do I live in Adelaide, but I (gasp, shock, horror,) actually dare to enjoy living in Adelaide. I also enjoy Adelaide cuisine and eating out at many of our fine restaurants such as La Trattoria and Good Life.  Apparently, this is wrong of me. I should not be enjoying fine cuisine at all. Instead, I should be making a big deal about some semi-global chain that makes doughnuts and crying myself to sleep every single night because the closest Krispy Kreme franchise is located somewhere in Melbourne. And if I should travel to Melbourne, the point of my visit shouldn't b...

Just had to share one of my all-time favourite Peanuts Strips. This one hails from 1953 when the strip was still in its (relative) infancy. For the first time, we see a glimpse of the psychoanalyst that Lucy Van Pelt will become in later strips. (Though we're still a few years off her offering psychiatric help for the sum of five cents from a small, stand in the Van Pelt's front yard.)  In many ways the resident bitch of the Peanuts gang (or crabby as she was known in the strips,) Lucy had the uncanny ability to accurately and bluntly point out everyone else's problems and failings, while remaining oblivious to her own--of which there were many. Lucy could never resist pulling the football away from Charlie Brown for no other reason than pure malevolence, could be cruel to her younger brothers Linus and Rerun simply because they existed and remained insensitive to the fact that Schroeder, the unlikely object of her affections, was simply not interested. Lucy pro...

Okay. Here is a confession. Back in the mid-1990s, when I was in my early teens and spending my weekends buying Dolly magazines, reading Sweet Valley High novels, staring longingly at the clothes in Miss Shop and hanging out at the local skating rink with my best friend Hayley, I was also hiding a dark and sinister secret that I didn't dare reveal to anyone. A secret so dark that it stayed firmly in my closet until one day ... I was old enough to laugh about it. My secret was this. I was a closet fan of Isla Fisher, the red haired star of Australian soap opera Home and Away.  And when it was revealed in TV Week that nineteen year old actress was also an author, I just had to read her book. Eagerly, I devoured the sample chapters that appeared in Dolly the following month and begged my mother to buy me a copy for Christmas. (Mum obliged and also bought me a copy of Isla's second novel, Bewitched .) Eagerly, I read Seduced by Fame from cover to cover. Th...

Woot! It's Friday and we all know what that means ... I'm planning to knock back a cup of Haighs Hot Chocolate, bust out the DVDs of Doctor Who  and Daria, stuff some popcorn up my nose and ... Just kidding. It's Friday and that means it's time for Feature and Follow Friday, an awesome weekly meme hosted by Parajunkee and Alison Can Read . This weeks all-important question is: Q: What book do you think everyone should read? If you could gift the entire population with one book? Just one? I can think of a few ... E.M. Forsters A Room With a View  is one of the most beautiful stories that I have ever read. I'd love to gift the entire world that one, just so that everyone could share in and enjoy the sheer beauty of the story. Life of Pi by Yann Martel offers an interesting and thought provoking concept.  Finally, I would choose To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee.  Which books would you choose?  PS As always, leave me ...

In the wake of Fifty Shades of Grey , it's unsurprising to see a flood of classic erotic titles finding their way back into print and placed on romance shelves inside bookstores. One such novel to enjoy a reprint is Edith Templeton's classic novel, Gordon.  Once upon a time, this novel of a headstrong young woman who enters a horrific relationship with a brute was published under a pseudonym and eventually banned in England under the Obscene Publications Act. (Read more here .)  It's certainly not reading for children, or for the lighthearted. In 2003 the novel was rereleased, with the author named for the first time. This time around, Gordon has enjoyed a much quieter reprint and will most likely be ignored by the scores of women who all so obsessively devoured Fifty Shades of Grey and its sequels.  Far from light reading and with sex scenes that are as brief as they are disturbing, Gordon offers an interesting and believable psychological study...

We all have that book. You know, the one that sits on the to-read pile practically forever, often cast aside in favour of bigger and brighter books. Then, the day comes when the pile is getting smaller, I idly pick it up and ... It turns out to be an absolutely brilliant novel. That is exactly what happened to me with Girl, Stolen . I bought it from Dymocks a few months ago along with several other books (thanks for that gift voucher you got me for my birthday, Carolyn,) and somehow got stuck on the to-read pile. I picked it up on the weekend, having just finished and reviewed Daughter of Light and ... unputdownable.  Completely and utterly unputdownable. The novel tells the story of sixteen year old Cheyenne. Suffering from pneumonia and sleeping in the back seat of the family car while her stepmother collects Cheyenne's prescription from the pharmacy, she finds herself as an accidental victim of a kidnapping when the car is stolen. But that isn't the only prob...

While on the official V.C. Andrews facebook page today, I asked V.C. Andrews ghostwriter Andrew Neiderman (who moderates the page) if he had ever considered writing a novel about bullying. His reply both pleased and surprised me:  Maybe not a whole novel, but certainly it could be part of a novel...how others treat our  lead girl...this happens in a novel upcoming entitled Bittersweet Dreams... So it looks like we will be seeing a V.C. Andrews novel titled Bittersweet Dreams sometime in the near future. The next V.C. Andrews titles to be released (in the United States at least, often Australia is behind,) are Forbidden Sister (February 2013) and Roxy's Story (September 2013).

From the moment I finished  Daughter of Light , I knew one simple truth. Reviewing this novel was going to be hell.  As a reader, I'm pretty black and white. I know what I like and I know what I don't like. I know what constitutes as good writing and what doesn't. As a reviewer, I like to add my emotional reaction into the mix to create what I hope is not only an honest, but a unique book review. Consequently, reviewing a novel that contained a mix of good and bad writing, as many convincing plot twists as there were plot holes and that fantastic lead up to a disappointing climax, was always going to be difficult. And then there was the fact that ghostwriter Andrew Neiderman inserted a couple of "No worries" into Lorelei's dialogue.  How can I possibly hate or give a damning review to an American novel that uses "No worries" in its proper context? On the other hand, how can I possibly love a book that has the name of a much-loved and ...

Time once again for Feature and Follow Friday an awesome weekly meme hosted by the equally awesome Alison Can Read and Parajunkee , who will no doubt be helping us all to survive the apocalypse in the coming hours. (It's okay guys, I'm just kidding.). On a more serious note, this week's question is: Q: What have you learned from book blogging that you didn't know before about the publishing industry? That sometimes if you can prove that you know your stuff, have a genuine interest in the book or subject and if you ask nicely they will send you a review copy of new or upcoming releases, which is just awesome.  So, what have you learned? As always, feel free to share your links. I click on them all. Except for that spammer who keeps sending links to porn sites. That person (or robot) can kindly bugger off.

The California Diaries was one of the final spin-off series from the Babysitters Club and the only BSC spin-off to be aimed at young adult, rather than preteen, readers. As always, Ann M. Martin is credited as the author, though it is doubtful that she actually wrote any of the books in the series. Given the fact that the books were aimed at a slightly older audience, the California Diaries are darker than the BSC and discussed a number of real-life themes such as anorexia, a parent who is dying of cancer and friendships turned sour. Somehow, this series passed me by during my own adolescence (I suspect I was just that bit too old when they were released,) and I had never even heard of them until earlier this year when I researched a blog on the Babysitters Club. More recently, I found a few of the books and well, curiosity got the better of me ... The first volume in the series is titled Dawn and features that California Cool girl from the BSC, Dawn Schafer, wh...

Easy reading is damn hard writing.  ~   Nathaniel Hawthorne

Time once again for Feature and Follow Friday, an awesome weekly meme designed to help like-minded book bloggers connect, hosted by the equally awesome Alison Can Read and Parajunkie . This weeks all-important question is: Q: What is the last book that made you cry? Tell us about the scene... Definitely Fifty Shades of Grey. Oh, the pain. Tears of pure frustration running down my reddened cheeks as I cried, "Ana, Ana, how can any grown woman be so bloody stupid ..." Actually, as regular visitors to this blog would know, the last book that made me cry was The Time Keeper by Mitch Albom. The scene was when Sarah discovers the extent of Ethan's cruelty and is so distraught that she decides to take her own life. I also cried a second time at the end, when I learned what eventually became of Sarah--without including any spoilers, it's certainly a triumphant ending and not in the way that younger readers might expect. What book did you...

UNITED STATES--The small town of Sweet Valley, California has been hit with some very unusual weather patterns this December. While local residents are used to consistent beautiful days, with perhaps a small touch of snow on Christmas Eve, it appears that this December there has been a odd shift in the weather patterns. "Frankly, the weather is shithouse at the moment," Sweet Valley resident Bruce Patman, 16, told our reporters. "Twice now I've had my Porsche bogged in the mud because it won't stop raining. The second time, the mud was so bad that after I got out, no one could see my special personalised licence plates that say 1Bruce1." The situation was nearly as dire for Patman's friends, identical twins Jessica and Elizabeth Wakefield,  16, who were forced to put up the top on their red Fiat Spider for the first time ever. "I couldn't believe it," Elizabeth stated. "I was on my way to the next town, to donate some books to th...

Found this awesome Mr Men picture and just had to share. I'm familiar with the series and the characters thanks in part to my own childhood (my brothers and I had many of the books and a record that featured Arthur Lowe reading some of the stories,) and the fact that I can now share them with my nieces-- Little Miss Naughty seems to be a firm favourite. However, and maybe it is just my own ignorance speaking here, this picture would have to be the first time I've seen the characters paying tribute to popular culture (in this instance, the immortal Abbey Road cover). But the Mr Men characters (and my only criticism of the picture is that only Mr Bump should have been barefoot, in keeping with the album cover,) are not the only characters to pay tribute to the cover. Here are some more great pictures: Dedicated Peanuts Fan Spoofs Abbey Road The Simpsons get in on the act. Even Sesame Street is not immune. It seems that practically everything linked with e...

My Dad loaned me this short, simple fable because he thought that I would enjoy reading it and it might make good material for a review. My poor dad didn't know what he was getting into. Three times I nearly gave up on this one and twice it had me in tears. Why? Because the story hit me so very close to home. The Time Keeper is a fable about a man called Dor, who was responsible for the invention of time six thousand years ago. After climbing a tower that is destroyed by God (yes, many biblical implications there, no comment,) Dor is sent to live in a cave where he is made to suffer the consequences of his invention--basically he listens to every man, woman and child on earth begging for more or less time. Then Dor is granted a chance at freedom, on the condition that he find two people--one who is begging for more time on earth and one who wants less time on earth--and help them. And so begins Dor's trip to New York City where he meets the two individuals he can help. ...

Big shout out to Nicole Suzanne Brown who tagged me and my awesome novel Being Abigail for this author blog hop.  What is the title of your book? My book is titled Being Abigail . It is a humorous novel about a young woman who attempts to rebuild her life after a suicide big goes spectacularly awry. Where did the idea come from for the book? Being Abigail is based on a fiction blog that I used to write titled Who Was Abigail Carter ? The main characters themselves have been around for a lot longer though. When I was in my upper high school years, I wrote a number of interconnected short-stories featuring a teenage version of the same character. I started the blog one afternoon after I began to wonder what Abigail Carter would be like as an adult. What genre does your book fall under? Either chick-lit or contemporary life. Or maybe total lunacy. (Is that a genre, lol?) Which actors would you choose to play your characters in a movie rendition? Pr...

Yeah! It's time once again for Feature and Follow Friday, an awesome weekly meme hosted by Alison Can Read and Parajunkie designed to help like-minded book bloggers connect. This week's all-important question is: Q: Activity! Who do you want to be? If you could choose any character from a book. What do you think that character looks like and what do you have in common? This is an interesting question. Clearly, I am that delightful darling, Severus Snape, owing to the uncanny resemblance between myself and Alan Rickman. See: Kathryn Snape What is that camera doing in front of half of Snape's face? Okay, in all seriousness, I don't know how to answer this question. I think that family and friends have compared me to Jo March from Little Women, or more specifically Winona Ryder's portrayal of Jo March in the 1994 film adaption of Little Women, which can be summed up in part here: Ahh, the young writer with big dre...

For reasons that are unknown to me, people keep coming to my blog searching for this clip. So for all your souls out there looking for that Family Guy Cookie Monster moment, here it is ... Oh, and just so that there is some kind of discussion here (thus avoiding nasty copyright laws,) do not eat too many cookies. Cookie addiction is bad and can have some far reaching consequences, as demonstrated in the video above. Even in rehab, Cookie Monster finds himself hiding cookies and then insatiably eating the evidence when confronted with them, thus hindering his progress in the rehabilitation process.

This book was a little gem that I discovered shortly after my grandmother passed away in 2003. We were tidying up her house and this book was discovered at the bottom of a suitcase. Assuming that it was simply a comic book, I took it home. What I got was a highly subjective analysis of the popular peanuts comic strip and a search for religious meanings and messages within the Peanuts comics. Apparently, this book was quite a big deal during the 1960s, and (at least according to wikipedia ) sold more than ten million copies.  Interestingly, Charles Schulz himself liked the book, though he described himself as a Secular Humourist, rather than belonging to a particular religion. This to me seems more consistent with the comics, which seem to comment more on human nature, rather than making the case for any one religion. If Christianity appears dominant throughout the comics, it is probably more a reflection of American suburban life in the 1960s, rather than an overt religious...

Woot! It's time once again for Feature and Follow Friday, that completely awesome meme hosted by Alison Can Read and Parajunkie that is designed to help like-minded bloggers connect and share their opinions on all things bookish. This week's all-important question is: Q: Activity! Who is your to-die-for book crush? What do you think they look like? Add an image to make us all happy. Okay, my crush is Jon Arbuckle from the Garfield comics. I mean who could resist a guy like this: Just kidding! My to-die for crush, as many of you will know already is a Mr Fitzwilliam Darcy from Jane Austen's wonderful novel, Pride and Prejudice. And I always imagined that he looked like Colin Firth, even before I saw the BBC television adaption with Colin Firth. But just because I cannot get enough of this particular individual, I'm going to post a picture: Mmm, lovely ... So who is your book related crush?

Don't get me wrong. I really enjoy using facebook. I enjoy catching up with family and friends, hearing the latest news, sharing in their successes and hoping that I can say or do something to ease the pain during troubled times. I like exchanging funny photographs, getting to know people better and a whole lot of other good things that come with the site. But with the good comes the bad, and I don't just mean repeated photographs of pets or babies doing something funny with an equally ridiculous caption to go alongside. And really, there is only so many times I can look of a photograph of Gene Wilder as Willy Wonka with a smart arsed caption underneath before I grow bored. No, this latest trifling piece of annoying is the sheer number of hoaxes and scams that I see on my newsfeed every day. (And on a related topic, my compassion is not measurable by liking or sharing a photograph of a sick child/abused animal/senior citizen being deprived of their Jim Reeves record collectio...

It is eight o'clock on a Tuesday evening. And where am I right now? Sitting at my desk, watching the sun set over the tiny patch of ocean that can be seen from my window and wondering why am I still bothering to do this. By this I mean, my blog, my books, my facebook page, anything else that is even vaguely associated with writing or the written word. Or more to the point, my written words. Who am I? What am I doing, really? I slave away at this, feverishly writing, meticulously editing and doing my best to promote my work in an already saturated market, filled with indie writers, many of them far more extroverted and willing to put it all out there than I. And I cannot, simply cannot imagine life any other way. I love what I do. I love expressing my internal thoughts, fears and feelings through the written word. I love to write about the things that I have read and the things that have somehow captured my imagination. Sometimes I write to make sense of various event...

As regular followers will know, I did a short piece on BSC character Mallory Pike recently. I've decided to follow that one up with a piece on her best friend, Jessi Ramsey. Jessica "Jessi" Ramsey was the seventh person to join the Babysitters Club (not counting associate members Logan Bruno and Shannon Kilbourne,) and first appeared in Hello Mallory as the new girl in Stoneybrook. Her family had bought Stacey McGill's old house and at first had some difficulty settling in as they were the first black family to settle in the predominantly white, middle-class Stoneybrook. (I say predominantly as the Kishi family are one notable exception.) This would later lead Jessi to falsely believe that anyone who did not like her was doing so out of racial prejudice, such as when she encounters a standoffish girl at the school winter camp. Jessi was said to be a talented ballerina who practiced in the family basement daily and took weekly lessons in Stamford. The firs...

Don't ask me why I felt a sudden pang of nostalgia, because apart from a minor subplot of small social change in Ireland in the late 20th century, there is nothing terribly remarkable about this book. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that, like Naomi Campbell's Swan or Disco Daddy by Morag Prunty, I am constantly seeing copies of it inside various secondhand bookstores. (Sidenote: My uncle used to own a secondhand bookstore. He once told me that if he ever sees "that bloody Naomi Campbell book" again, he will scream.) If I recall right, I first read this one at about the time I graduated from high school. I found it on the shelves at my local Target and took it home, simply because I had exhausted the stores supply of Anne Rice and V.C. Andrews novels.  Racing the Moon tells the story of fraternal twins, Sophia and Darcy. Beautiful Sophia is almost angelic in her behaviour, Darcy is her opposite in every way. The blurb would have you believe that ...

A compelling study of one young woman's struggle to stand tall and do what is right in the face of adversity. Question: What book did I just review?  Answer: The Naughtiest Girl is a Monitor by Enid Blyton.  The real blurb for this one reads: When Elizabeth Allen is chosen to be a school monitor, she's delighted. But she soon finds out just what a responsible job it is. The harder she tries, the worse she behaves! Will the naughtiest girl in the school EVER learn to be good? Well before I started this blog, actually probably around the time I started reading, I discovered one inescapable truth. Book reviews are a highly subjective business. With a strong grasp of the English language and the ability to manipulate evidence to prove your argument, you can write a good or bad review on practically any book you please.  But does that make for a good book review? Of course not. The general public are not stupid. One sincere review for a novel is alway...

It is time once again for Feature and Follow Friday, a fun weekly meme hosted by Alison Can Read  and Parajunkie  which is designed to help like-minded bloggers connect and have some fun. This weeks all important (and somewhat American,) task is to feature a blog that we are thankful for. This is going to take me a mighty long time to choose, so I'm going to highlight a few blogs that I stop by regularly and think that you should check out: O E Books  always has something interesting and intelligent to discuss. Write Now  doesn't update regularly any more, but there is still much great advice to be found there for aspiring writers. Nicole Suzanne Brown  always has something interesting and encouraging to say. The Readdicts  is fast becoming one of my favourites for their great reviews. Australian Bookshelf  for consistently intelligent reviews. And I could probably go on. Feel free to share links of your favourite blogs and your...

Today I'm paying tribute to one of the more ahem, troubled, members of the Babysitters Club, Mallory Pike. Although Mallory was one of the less interesting characters in the series (let's face it, she didn't wear weird clothing like Claudia did,) Babysitters Club author Ann M. Martin surprised the now grown-up fans of the series when she stated that she had no strong feelings about Mallory Pike. (Read more about it here .) But who is Mallory Pike really, and what did she contribute to the BSC? Mallory Pike debuted as a ten-year-old sitting charge in the first book in the series, Kristy's Great Idea . The oldest of eight kids, Mallory was annoyed that she still had to have a babysitter. As the series progressed, the members of the BSC released that Mallory was mature for her age and eventually asked her to help out as a junior helper at a playgroup that they established one summer. Later, after Mallory had turned eleven and Stacey left the club to return to New Y...

Trip to my local suburban bookstore this weekend. Now, being an Adelaide girl, my local bookstore is actually located quite some distance from my house, but that is a sad reflection of the time and era I live in. For the past four or so years, no bookstore has existed within the confines of my local shopping centre, meaning that I have to bus it to another, much larger shopping centre in order to experience a visit to a real, bricks and mortar bookstore. (Or cement with plaster inside walls, as the case is.) Anyway, the trip itself was a bit of a disappointment. I was hoping to find a copy of the new Virginia Andrews novel Daughter of Light  so that I could read it, get mad at the crappy writing and then review it. The store had plenty of other Virginia Andrews novels in stock, including a pretty awesome looking edition of Petals on the Wind with an updated cover but, alas, there were no copies of Daughter of Light to be found anywhere. In fact, there wasn't anything else there...

Just for fun, I thought that I would share an extract from my latest novella, Best Forgotten . Part 1 The Killer April 16 2010 Purse. Car keys. Textbook. Mobile. Okay, I can do this. Act cool. Pretend everything is normal. I slip on my sunglasses and dump my satchel on the front passenger seat of the Hyundai. I take a deep breath. So far, so good. It is amazing, really, just how ordinary everything seems today. Here I am, going about my morning routine like nothing strange or out of the ordinary happened last night. Like I’m still the same innocent, untainted girl who stood in this same place, at exactly this time yesterday. I wonder if anyone knows that I killed a man between now and then? I cast my eyes across the car park, just to see if anyone from the flats is out and about yet. On the other side of the fence, at the front of an old weatherboard shack, James is trying to persuade his son to get into the car so that he can go to school. ‘I do...