Kathryn's Inbox

Juliet Takes a Breath is a novel about a young college student from a loving but slightly crazy Puerto Rican family who comes out shortly before flying away to start a summer internship with her favourite feminist writer. Once she gets there she wonders if things will ever be the same between her and her mother again. And why won't her girlfriend answer her calls? Add to the mix that Harlowe Brisbane's motives may not be as pure as they seemed in offering Juliet the internship, and readers are left with an entertaining story of identity, feminism, what it truly means to come out and, ultimately, the importance of having--and using--your own voice. Juliet was a joy to read about as she grew emotionally and spiritually over the course of the novel. Harlowe is portrayed quite realistically as a white saviour who nearly always misses the point and whose motives more often than not are quite self-indulgent.  Ultimately this is a well written, novel of self discovery. ...

The debut novel of journalist Karina Kilmore (better known in the papers are Karina Barrymore,) is a gritty tale of backstabbing, corruption and murder set in Melbourne. New Zealand journalist Chrissie O'Brien has moved to Australia to start afresh after a personal tragedy. Which would be fine, if it wasn't for the fact that she is in a near constant state of self-loathing, and that her boss and most of her colleagues resent her very presence, landing a good job just at the point when many other journalists are being fired. Determined to prove herself, Chrissie begins work on a story about possible corruption on the docks. But when a female dockworker turns up dead (shortly before she was due to talk to Chrissie,) things start to take a very nasty twist. And Chrissie won't give up her battle to expose the truth, no matter what the cost. If you are searching for is a twisty crime novel that features a main character who is both flawed and interesting, then Where the ...

The Light After the War is a gently written story of two best friends, Vera and Edith who find themselves displaced after the tragic events of the Second World War. In 1946 and in their late teens, these two Hungarian women find themselves as refugees in Naples. They have lost everything they loved after a daring escape from a train headed to Auschwitz. What follows is a story that spans from Italy, to Venezuela, to New York to Australia as Vera carves out her career--and finds true love along the way. Just as the title hints, this one is very light reading. Vera has clearly had a difficult time of it, but her extraordinary childhood (during which she became proficient in several different languages,) helps her to make the most of every situation while she pulls her dear but slightly less responsible best friend Edith along with her. Though they suffer some setbacks, many things came a little too conveniently, or easily, to Vera, which became annoying in places. Ultimately, th...

My third and final (for now) clip from the Curiosity Show is this awesome number puzzle. 

The first instalment of American author Katharine McGee's futuristic Thousandth Floor trilogy opens with a young woman falling from an apartment block one thousand floors high. We know nothing of her, apart from the fact that she is young, female, at a party and she deeply regrets speaking with someone only referred to as 'him.' From there, the plot takes a step back in time to two months earlier (but don't worry, this book is set in 2118 so we're still well into the future,) and begins to depict the lives of several teens. There is Avery, a genetically designed beauty, whose combination of wealth, looks and sweet personality mean that she could have anything--except for the boy she truly loves. Her best friend is Leda, a slightly bitter young woman who has been cruelly let down by the boy she loves, and whose anger soon becomes an obsession. The third member of their group is Eris, equally as kind as Avery, but whose life takes a dramatic twist when her parent...

View this post on Instagram And the Fringe begins! The East End was looking mighty fine this evening, ahead of the official opening tonight. #adelaidefringe #adelaide #southaustralia A post shared by Kathryn White (@kathryns_inbox) on Feb 14, 2020 at 2:44am PST

Following on from last Friday, I thought that I would share another fun clip from The Curiosity Show. This clip concerns the QE2, and has a problem to be solved for viewers. 

Everyone was there. Everyone remembers it differently. That's the premise of Daisy Jones and the Six , a fictional biography of a band who hit the big time in the 1970s and then broke up for reasons that have remained a secret. Until now.  Written as a series of time-ordered interviews, intended to sound a little like something out of Rolling Stone magazine this one is a light read.  While it Daisy Jones and the Six certainly had a lot of readers offering up positive reviews since it was released last year, I am sorry to report that I cannot share their enthusiasm. For me, this one was mildly entertaining, but perhaps not as clever or as insightful as I had been led to believe, or, perhaps, I as I had led myself to believe.

Emma , Jane's Austen's third novel, shows a slight change of direction for the author. After penning two similar but different tales of young women whose futures depended on them marrying well (and in spite of some surprising odds,) Austen turned her hand to Emma, a story featuring a spoiled and imperfect heroine.  Emma is beautiful, part of England's upper middle classes and basically born into a life of privilege. She has no need to marry and is determined that she will not--however that does not stop her from trying to matchmake her friend Harriet, who is not quite so well off. Or to be more honest, for Emma to meddle and break up the blossoming romance between Harriet and a local farmer and set her up with the local clergyman, which has disastrous results--something which her good friend Mr Knightly cautioned her against. After this, several months pass in which Emma learns a number of useful life lessons, mostly in not interfering, being a bit nicer to people a...

Following on from my review of Curious Recollections yesterday, I thought that it would be fun to share one of the videos from The Curiosity Show's excellent YouTube Channel. This one is short and a bit of fun, check it out!

Like many kids who grew up in Adelaide (or anywhere in Australia, really,) in the 1980s I used to tune in to The Curiosity Show every week. I was part of the last generation to experience first run broadcasts of the show; sadly it finished up in 1990 when I was nine years old and just old enough to try out a least a few of the experiments on the show for myself. I can still remember some (or at least parts of,) the segments now. Where else could a kid learn how ships were able to be placed in bottles, how pencils were made, and how you could make your own pair of sunglasses using a bit of cardboard? In Curious Recollections ,   Curiosity Show co-host Rob Morrison gives a fun and honest insight into his time with the show--from the time his demonstration led an errant Humphrey B Bear shout the f-word on television, to how he was called upon to give expert evidence about dingoes in the famous Lindy Chamberlain trial. (Morrison gave evidence in the Morling Inquiry in 1986.) T...

With permission from the P.G. Wodehouse Estate, British author Ben Scott has created this clever tribute to Jeeves and Wooster, suggesting that Jeeves was a British Intelligence agent all along, and now  both he and Her Majesty's Government require the assistance of Bertie Wooster to ferret out a fascist spy. This one was an entertaining enough read that brings back some of the greatest characters from the original series (think Madeline Bassett and Roderick Spode,) and the author creates some truly funny situations. However, it ultimately lacks the punch of the original, and I'm not sure that I approve of how the storyline featuring Iona was wrapped up. While I'm all for artistic licence, an important part of these novels is their predicability and the fact that we know that at the end, both Jeeves and Wooster are going to be basically back to where they started from again. That said, the author delivers some great lines and his prose often feels like a fine tribut...

New York Times bestselling authors Becky Albertalli and Aisha Saeed have teamed up to create a fun, fresh novel about politics, religion and adolescence. Jamie and Maya are both having a lousy summer. For Jamie, his whole summer has been about helping his mother organise his annoying (but cute) little sister's Bat Mitzvah. Meanwhile, it's Ramadan, Maya's parents have announced a trial separation and not only is her best friend about to move away to college (while Maya still has a year left at high school,) but she seems to have more or less forgotten Maya's existence. Oh, and add to that their parents are expecting them to go about canvassing door-to-door on behalf of a local political candidate. Together. When they barely know one another. What follows is a summer where the pair learn a lot about themselves, about speaking up for the things that matter, and the niggling feeling that they may just be falling in love ... This was a fun and fresh read that...

With the Baby-Sitters Club Graphix novels proving so popular with readers, it was only a matter of time before the Little Sister books got a look in. And Katy Farina does a commendable job of developing the first book in the series into a beautifully illustrated graphic novel that has a far more contemporary feel than the original.  Just as with the original series, the novel opens with Karen Brewer being six going on seven. There is a big emphasis on the fact that Karen and her little brother Andrew divide their time between two houses, however, this story takes place over the course of a weekend at their dad's mansion. (This is a theme that continued through the first three books of the original series, with each of them focusing on a weekend spent at the Brewer's mansion.) Anyway, this time around Karen is a bit freaked out by the crazy old lady who lives next door, who she is convinced is a witch. Along with her friend Hannie, Karen searches about for evidence, whi...