The Helpline, by Katherine Collette is plain good fun. Set in a local council in one of Melbourne’s bayside surbubs, Geraldine is the unwilling newest employee on the Senior Citizen’s Helpline. It irritates her that some of the local residents seem to be calling just for a chat. It’s so… inefficient. The Helpline is somewhere […]
humour
Book review: You Wish, by Lia Weston
What if you could erase your ex from your history entirely? What if you could go back and change that hideous choice of wedding dress you made 30 years ago? Or watch your deceased child grow into adulthood, picture by picture? You wish. Enter IF, the Melbourne-based creative team, headed by Tom Lash, which can […]
Stand-up comedy in print: Kitty Flanagan’s ‘Bridge Burning & other hobbies’
I thoroughly enjoyed this book, it gave me plenty of laughs when I was very much in need of them. Kitty Flanagan is one of my favourite comedians. Reading Bridge Burning & other hobbies was like enjoying a stand-up routine in print – and every bit as funny! The first time I came across Kitty Flanagan was […]
Book review: The Daily Struggles of Archie Adams (aged 2 1/4), by Katie Kirby
Beware: This book will make you laugh out loud and you’ll want to read excerpts from every second page to anyone standing near you. You might want to warn your nearest and dearest. I bought Katie Kirby’s second book, The Daily Struggles of Archie Adams (aged 2 1/4), while we were in the middle of renovating […]
Book review: Life After Coffee, by Virginia Franken
It’s got ‘Coffee’ in the title, it’s about a nowhere-near-perfect mother and it’s funny. That was enough to convince me to open Life After Coffee, the debut novel from Virginia Franken. After the first few paragraphs I had several problems: I couldn’t put it down I drove everyone around me nuts by reading them out […]