{"id":37375,"date":"2013-10-28T09:44:29","date_gmt":"2013-10-27T22:44:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.booktopia.com.au\/?p=37375"},"modified":"2016-03-01T09:31:09","modified_gmt":"2016-02-29T23:31:09","slug":"caroline-overington-who-has-time-to-read","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/2013\/10\/28\/caroline-overington-who-has-time-to-read\/","title":{"rendered":"Caroline Overington : Who Has Time to Read?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Author:<\/a>Walkley Award-winning journalist and bestselling author Caroline Overington ponders the age-old question, who has time to read?
\n<\/strong><\/p>\n

Do you know that I\u2019ve done in the last two months?<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve read three books.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s probably not amazing to anyone that reads a book a month \u2013 or even a book a week \u2013 or to people who have several books on the go at once \u2026 but it\u2019s pretty amazing for me.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve been writing<\/i> a book a year for the past five years.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve also got a job. I\u2019m the associate editor of the iconic The Australian Women\u2019s Weekly<\/em>.\u00a0 Just this month, I interviewed Anna Bligh, who is going through cancer treatment, and profiled the world\u2019s richest woman, Gina Rinehart, which involved going out to the Pilbara for several days.<\/p>\n

Also this year, I\u2019ve interviewed Ellen DeGeneres, in Los Angeles. And Helen Mirren, in London. \u00a0And Ricky Martin \u2026 and quite a few other people. I\u2019m also involved in a long-running investigation into Carmel Brookes, a kind-hearted Brisbane woman who is missing at sea. I\u2019m trying to find out what happened to her, and I\u2019ve been to Thailand, trying to retrace her steps.<\/p>\n

I also have two children \u2013 twins, aged 13. They\u2019re doing year eight, so I\u2019m helping out with homework, and making sure they eat well, and generally loving them a lot.<\/p>\n

I have a husband. I\u2019ve got a blue dog, and we\u2019ve got a lizard. I volunteer at our local surf lifesaving club. I go to the personal trainer three times a week. I have friends that I like to see whenever I can \u2026 and my family is spread all over the country \u2026 so it\u2019s not often that I get time to sit down and really lose myself in a great book, let alone three.<\/p>\n

Maybe I just got lucky, but all three of the books I read were brilliant. All were by Australians \u2013 and I can\u2019t tell you how wonderful it felt, to be truly lost in their pages. I felt like I was on holidays! Transported. Which is how a good book should make you feel.<\/p>\n

Here are the books I read:<\/strong><\/p>\n

Stop Press<\/strong><\/em><\/a>\"Click<\/a><\/strong><\/em>:The Last Days of Newspapers<\/strong><\/em> <\/a>by Rachel Buchanan: I know Rachel (who, now I think of it, might technically be a New Zealander.) We used to work together at The Age in Melbourne. We were all kids then. The Age had so much money to spend on journalism. Everyone read it. Politicians shook their fists at it. Rachel\u2019s has written about the slow decline in the paper\u2019s circulation, about the giant presses that have fallen silent, and about the challenges currently facing the once-great lady. I wept a bit.<\/p>\n

MORE DETAILS<\/a><\/p>\n

\n

\"Click<\/a>The Night Guest<\/a><\/strong><\/em> by Fiona McFarlane: the main character is so loveable. She\u2019s getting on a bit, and her husband has recently died. She thinks that a tiger is coming to visit her at night. She can hear it padding about on its big paws, in the lounge room. She tells her son, who lives abroad, and he gets concerned, and the next thing, a government worker turns up, to give the old lady a hand, but pretty much straight away, you can tell that something is not right with this government worker. I wept a bit more. This is a lovely book.<\/p>\n

MORE DETAILS<\/a><\/p>\n

\n

\"Click<\/a>Murder in Mississippi<\/a><\/strong><\/em> by John Safran: this is a true crime book about how John met a white supremacist in Mississippi, and later became a Facebook \u2013 and even a real friend – of the black man who killed him. I didn\u2019t weep with this one, except at the beauty of it. John\u2019s book is one of the best pieces of sustained, rigorous journalism I\u2019ve read in 20 years. It is absolutely magnificent \u2013 \u00a0smart, and wry, and emotional too. \u00a0Obviously, if you are going to buy one book this Booktoberfest, I think you should buy mine. But if you\u2019ve already gone mine, buy John\u2019s.<\/p>\n

MORE DETAILS<\/a><\/p>\n

\n

Thank you, Caroline. You’re always welcome on the Booktopia Blog!<\/strong><\/p>\n

Click here for more details about Caroline’s thrilling and controversial new novel No Place Like Home<\/em><\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

\"Click<\/a><\/p>\n

No Place Like Home<\/h2>\n

By: Caroline Overington<\/a><\/p>\n

From bestselling author and award-winning journalist Caroline Overington comes another thought-provoking and heart-rending story, that reaches from the heart of Bondi to a small village in Tanzania.<\/p>\n

Shortly after 9.30 in the morning, a young man walks into Surf City, Bondi’s newest shopping complex. He’s wearing a dark grey hoodie \u2013 and a bomb around his neck.<\/p>\n

Just a few minutes later he is locked in a shop on the upper floor. And trapped with him are four innocent bystanders.<\/p>\n

For police chaplain Paul Doherty, called to the scene by Superintendent Boehm, it’s a story that will end as tragically as it began. For this is clearly no ordinary siege. The boy, known as Ali Khan, seems as frightened as his hostages and has yet to utter a single word.<\/p>\n

The seconds tick by for the five in the shop: Mitchell, the talented schoolboy; Mouse, the shop assistant; Kimmi, the nail-bar technician; and Roger Callaghan, the real estate agent whose reason for being in Bondi that day is far from innocent.<\/p>\n

And of course there’s Ali Khan. Is he the embodiment of evil, as the villagers in his Tanzanian birthplace believe? Or simply an innocent boy, betrayed at every turn, who just wants a place to call home?<\/p>\n

About the Author<\/b><\/p>\n

Caroline Overington is the Associate Editor of the iconic magazine, The Australian Women’s Weekly.<\/p>\n

Caroline has won the Walkley Award for Excellence in Journalism twice, and she’s a former winner of the Sir Keith Murdoch prize for journalism, and of the Blake Dawson prize.<\/p>\n

She is the author of five bestselling novels: Ghost Child<\/a>, I Came to Say Goodbye<\/a>, Matilda is Missing<\/a>, Sisters of Mercy<\/a> and No Place Like Home<\/a><\/i>.<\/p>\n

Click here for more details about Caroline’s thrilling and controversial new novel No Place Like Home<\/em><\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Walkley Award-winning journalist and bestselling author Caroline Overington ponders the age-old question, who has time to read? Do you know that I\u2019ve done in the last two months? I\u2019ve read three books. That\u2019s probably not amazing to anyone that reads a book a month \u2013 or even a book a week \u2013 or to people who have several books on the go at once \u2026 but it\u2019s pretty amazing for me. I\u2019ve been writing a book a year for the past five years. I\u2019ve also got a job. I\u2019m the associate editor of the iconic The Australian Women\u2019s Weekly.\u00a0 Just this month, I interviewed Anna Bligh, who is going through cancer treatment, and profiled the world\u2019s richest woman, Gina Rinehart, which involved going out to the Pilbara for several days. Also this year, I\u2019ve interviewed Ellen DeGeneres, in Los Angeles. And Helen Mirren, in London. \u00a0And Ricky Martin \u2026 and quite a few other people. I\u2019m also involved in a long-running investigation into Carmel Brookes, a kind-hearted Brisbane woman who is missing at sea. I\u2019m trying to find out what happened to her, and I\u2019ve been to Thailand, trying to retrace her steps. I also have two children \u2013 twins,…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":""},"categories":[4,9],"tags":[1163,2001,2197,2535,2880,3571,3812,3983,4405,5046,5784],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37375"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=37375"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37375\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":56629,"href":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37375\/revisions\/56629"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37375"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=37375"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37375"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}