Peeps are the world’s tiniest Sandpipers.

They weigh 3/4 of an ounce and stand just a couple inches tall.

They run speedily along the beach like frenetic tiny housekeepers, catching all sorts of little crabs to eat.

Here they are politely sharing a sandcrab lunch!

You can see how tiny they are in comparison to a Western Gull and a Godwit Sandpiper.

These peeps are Western Sandpipers.

They winter along the California coast and breed in Alaska and Siberia.

These constantly busy little birds are super entertaining to watch.

Cheers to you from California’s winter peeps~

For my birthday weekend, my family and I decided to run away from the busy city of Johannesburg where we live to go to the beach. As it was five of us we wanted a entire house for ourselves. Airbnb was the solution to what we wanted. The simple and easy to use app generate thousands of houses, bedrooms and luxurious mansions to suit all budgets.

We found a beautiful three bedrooms house in Bluff Durban called My destiny holiday home. The pictures looked great, it was within our budget and the house was situated close to the beach. The day we arrived, the house looked exactly as what we saw on the pictures, plus a little treat was prepared for us by the lovely Jabu as a welcome gift. Little attention always goes a long way. The owner of the house Beverley, although we didn’t physically meet her…

Maybe anti-romantic is a little harsh. Not romantically inclined? Like a little bit of darkness in your love story (or a lot) such as it were? With Valentine’s Day right around the corner I thought I’d offer some ideas for books that have just the right amount to appeal to the person who likes a certain kind of love story.

I’m always really pleased when an author makes the leap from producing acclaimed short stories to writing a full length novel.  (I know, I know, short stories are not a lesser form, but they are often part of the pathway to publishing novels – and novels are what I like to read).   A.S. Patrić is an ‘edgy’ writer, and IMO the longer form of Black Rock White City allows that edginess to flourish in a way that his shorter works have hinted at.  (See my reviews of Las Vegas for Vegans, and Bruno Kramzer).

Set in the suburbs of Melbourne at the turn of the last century, Black Rock White City opens with a hospital cleaner, Jovan, tasked with the removal of graffiti that keeps mysteriously appearing throughout the hospital.  This graffiti takes various forms and becomes increasingly menacing, triggering consequences that shock the reader out of the complacency that comes…

Tonight I went to a book launch at Readings St Kilda, and had the pleasure of hearing A.S. Patric read from his new collection of short stories called Las Vegas for Vegans.  I haven’t read the entire collection yet, but I’ve read enough to know that Patric is a most interesting author and I want him to finish his novel, please!

Paddy O’Reilly, author of The Fine Colour of Rust and The Factory, launched the book with some interesting thoughts about risk-taking for novelists.  She said that risk-taking is satisfying, but that asking readers to explore difficult terrain where they may not like the answers needs good technical skills, that is, at the sentence level: the selection and arrangement of words. It takes precision but it’s worth it because the world we live in is always being challenged, and small things can make or unmake us.  (I hope I’m not…

Any book that arrives as a hardback these days, is an event.  Even Big Names are mostly published in paperback these days, and it’s rare to see time and effort put into book design and covers.  But The Butcherbird Stories, a collection of short stories by Miles Franklin winner A.S. Patrić, has elegant pale mint boards, thick enough to have the title and author’s name embossed into the front cover.  The dustcover design is by Peter Lo:  it features an image increasingly common in the Aussie backyard: a swimming pool.  But in this image there are ominous clouds on the horizon.  Those clouds also feature on the endpapers.

And then there’s the title…

Two Grey Butcherbirds perching on a suburban paling fence (Wikipedia*)

Butcherbirds are pretty to look at, but…

Butcherbirds […] get their name from their habit of impaling captured prey on a thorn, tree fork, or crevice…