What do you like to do in the summertime? That was a question posed at our Toastmaster meeting last night. Members and guests responded enthusiastically on the topic and shared myriads of pastimes. This prompted my thinking about my own favourite summertime pastimes and I volunteered one of my own.

Getting lost in a good book!

Now I usually have 2 or 3 print books on the go at any one time, plus one or two more ebooks on Kobo or Kindle apps. I often borrow ebooks from my local library through Borrow Box by Belinda digital. I love to see my books in bookshelves; I pile them up on coffee tables and select a few to keep beside my bed! I subscribe to GoodReading and BubBooks, and I often purchase books online through the Book Depository. How about you? What are you reading? Where are your books? Post a comment, I’m interested.

I like to skip from one story to another depending on my mood and location. This may be a ‘brain programmed’ activity from one who is used to leaping about in technology; from a laptop, to an iPad to an iPhone; from recorded movies on Foxtel to the latest offerings from Netflix. Or maybe it is a known trait of Geminis?

I am easily distracted it seems and have the concentration span of a flea! Did I regress somewhere, sometime – back to my youth? In summertime it does not really matter much, the days are my own and I stretch them to fit my reading. Occasionally I might look up and wonder if I should be doing something else! Is there a meal to prepare, some shopping to be done or was I meant to be somewhere else? The call of a good book overrides all these and hooks me into another world.

The latest book I am lost in is The River House by Janita Cunnington. It is a new release and one that I believe will surprise and engage readers who love stories of Australian living and family intrigue.

In my opinion this has all the right ingredients for a movie. I would put it on a par with The Dressmaker by Rosalie Ham!

Product Description

THE BOOK CLUB PICK OF 2016! The River House is a spellbinding debut novel, resonant of childhoods past and the beauty of the Australian countryside.

It is the late 1940s, and the Broody River runs through a maze of sandbanks into the Coral Sea. On its southern bank lies the holiday town of Baroodibah. But its northern shore is wild – unsettled except for the River House, an old weatherboard box on stumps where the Carlyle family take their holidays.

For four-year-old Laurie Carlyle the house and its untold stories fire the imagination. It is a place of boating trips and nature collections, of the wind howling, the sheoaks sighing and the pelicans soaring into the blue sky.

But when a squabble between Laurie and her older brother Tony takes an unexpected turn, she detects the first hints of family discord. As the years pass, the River House holidays seem to shine a light on the undercurrents in the family: the secret from her mother’s past, the bitterness between Tony and their father Doug, and her sister Miranda’s increasingly erratic and dangerous behaviour . . .

Following the family’s story through the decades, The River House is a richly nostalgic novel about love and betrayal, personal tragedy and thwarted ambition, illusion and remorse. Above all it is about change, and the slow but relentless march of time.

“Evocative, deeply Australian and beautifully written. A treat to read” Susan Duncan

https://ljonesedition.wordpress.com/friday-reads/