Friday Recap - Week Four

Some more great writing by our guest authors on Reading for Australia this week - check them out after the jump.


On Monday, Barry Jonsberg told us how he fulfilled his childhood dream of becoming a writer by...writing.  Living the Dream is a very funny account of one writer's start in the book publishing world. I'm very glad that you kept the dream, Barry, and hope that, one day, you get the Porsche - or at least one of the wheels.

Dianne Wolfer wrote of her love of writing historical fiction in Small moments in big pictures on Tuesday. I got a little teary at the bit about the war horses and I'm quite curious about the lady who kept a possum in her bra...

Wednesday and Jess Black wrote about book series in What Makes a Book Series Seriously Good.

I hadn't thought about the differences between book series that you have to read in order (Harry Potter) and those that can be read in any order (Famous Five) before reading Jess' article. One of the reasons that the Harry Potter books got longer and longer as the series went on was because the story lines in each successive book build on (and so have to explain) previous happenings. Books in series that can be read in any order tend to follow the same narrative structure and be approximately the same length because the plot of each story is not one of the elements that give the stories cohesion as a series. Interesting...

On Thursday we got to meet the third all boy team in the 2014 World Final - the boys from St John's Prep in Johannesburg. Congratulations once again to Team South Africa. We look forward to meeting you in Cornwall.

We also got to meet the some of the winners of the Phendulani Literary Quiz, an extension of the Kids' Lit Quiz to under-resourced schools in South Africa. Congratulations to these schools and students as well. Phendulani schools are always looking to build their school libraries - if you have books you'd like to donate to a good cause, please send them to the address given in Thursday's post.

Next week, Team Singapore!

Book reviews today from Hong Kong, Durban and Adelaide.  Thank you Cameron, Nicholas and Indigo. 

Two of today's posts review Veronica Roth's Divergent - another book series - and they're both worth reading. If you're a fan of dystopian fantasy you might also want to check out the books on this list:

Faction: reading lists for fans of Divergent

And if you're not a fan, then have a look at the books on this list:

21 Books for those so over dystopian fiction

There's something for everyone!

A Little News

The Kids' Lit Quiz is all about reading for pleasure and now there's more support that reading for pleasure is not just fun but it also makes you smarter. The main testing body for school kids in Ontario Canada say that kids who read for pleasure also do better in reading and writing tests. Have a look here.

We're getting close to the end of this month-long reading adventure. Next week, the last of our guest authors' posts. Until then, happy reading everyone.