Girlbooker's Tea and Toast

Now that I have a fancy new corporate job, I’m regularly walking between train and office, and I often listen to a couple of songs along the way. Last week it was The Jackson 5, and I was struck by what an odd experience it is to listen to a young Michael Jackson singing. As an audience, we know so much about the future of that voice’s owner, none of which is known to him. We know about his past as well, more than most people would have known contemporaneously. That voice is a fly trapped in amber, frozen between the weight of knowledge on either side of its timeline. And amber feels like an apt analogy for the sound of that voice too. The texture, the grain, the way it gently rumbles and cracks through sweet lightness. It’s warm and a little rough, with an oh-so-poignant catch to it that belies its youth. Is it the incongruity of the poignancy and the youth what draws us to that voice? I wonder whether people in 1967 could hear that poignancy and whether they recognised it as suc

Readers of this blog will know that I have been looking for my ‘forever job’ for a few months now. Although I am currently working, it isn’t full time, so I have been getting into the groove of  a slower pace. Yet I am surprised at how busy life still feels. A few reflections on what that so called slower pace looks like. Life is simpler. Because I don’t have money to splash around, I am conscious of not spending unnecessarily. Apart from a couple of times, this has generally made life a whole lot simpler. I am spending way less time agonising over what to buy, how much to spend and whether I need one or two of something. The default answer is ‘no’ and it saves a lot of mental energy. When I do spend money, I really relish it as something special, even if it’s just a muffin as well as a coffee . I’m also doing quieter things, like staying home and reading, and the extra time to read has been such a beautiful gift. I have read more in the last six months than I have in the previou

In what is currently masquerading as my day job, I was asked to list my top 5 books for the year. For various reasons, I wasn’t able to list the books that I had read and REALLY loved, so here is the list of my heart: books I read (that were not necessarily published) last year, and would bore anyone about at a dinner party/bus stop/ queue for overpriced pastries in some hipster laneway, as long as they were stupid enough to ask me about what I’d been reading: The Answers - Catherine Lacey I love this woman’s work so much I would read a toilet roll if she wrote on it. Just amazing, amazing, amazing; here is another review if you want to know more. Swing Time - Zadie Smith  I’ve never read any other Zadie Smith, but this book got completely under my skin. It's one of those books that tackles big, broad themes yet also delves into a really captivating small, character-based story, and I adored it. The Green Road - Anne Enright Enright won the Booker a few years