#Websters vocab quiz how to
#Websters vocab quiz series

I was particularly interested in the way the relative isolation impacts people's day-to-day lives, and I thought a remote cattle station in the outback offered a beautiful-and brutal-backdrop for a story with a strong element of suspense. While I was planning The Lost Man, I became fascinated by the lives of those in far-flung outback communities. It has a strong presence and offers incredible variety. The Australian landscape is such a gift for a writer. What keeps drawing you back to the remote Australian terrain? I get to know them better through the writing, and they become clearer and clearer to me. When I start to plan a novel, I always have an idea of who I think the characters are, but by the end they have often grown in different ways than I expected. It's also important to me that the setting is more than just a backdrop, so I aim to weave it in throughout the story and use it to help shape characters and their actions. I always know how the novel will end often that's clearer to me than how it will start.

Which do you come up with first, or is it different for each book?Īll three evolve constantly while the novel does, so it's hard to say which comes first. Your setting, characters and plotlines are equally indelible elements. Like her previous books, her third mystery, The Lost Man (Flatiron, $27.99 see our review below), is set in Australia, where she lives with her family. Her novels are now published in more than 35 territories worldwide. It inspired her shift to creative writing, and the manuscript for her first novel, The Dry, won the Victorian Premier's Literary Award in 2015. Kerry McHugh, blogger at Entomology of a BookwormĪfter 13 years as a journalist, Jane Harper wrote a short story that was one of 12 chosen for publication in the Australian magazine Big Issue. And if that way of living isn't for you? Well, there's always The Joy of Leaving Your Sh*t All Over the Place(Countryman Press, $14.95), which is exactly what it sounds like: a slightly absurd (if still heartfelt) response to the book that started this whole decluttering trend. Cozy Minimalist Home (Zondervan, $24.95) reminds us that minimalism does not have to be ascetic-it can simply be a way of living. Perhaps more meaningful connections to the things we choose to keep will remind us that there is more to life than the number of things we have.įor a long while, I'd held on to the idea that minimalism was inherently cold and distant, picturing black-and-white functional furniture and sparsely decorated spaces. Adamson encourages readers to reconsider things themselves: their purpose, their craftsmanship, their use. Glenn Adamson's Fewer, Better Things (Bloomsbury, $27) drives home a similar lesson using a different approach. Both accounts are drastic, but can provide inspiration for any reader desperate to declutter (even if not to such extremes).

In Year of Less (Hay House, $15.99), finance blogger Cait Flanders documents her one-year experiment with not shopping for anything beyond the absolute essentials (like groceries). In Goodbye, Things (Norton, $21.95), Japanese editor Fumio Sasaki recounts his experiences getting rid of nearly everything he owned (including his bed).

#Websters vocab quiz how to

Which is not to say I'm not a fan of decluttering on the contrary, it has me thinking about how to stick to the goal of a more minimalist lifestyle after the original clearing out.

#Websters vocab quiz series

Is it just me, or is everyone in the process of decluttering at the moment? I blame the new Netflix series Tidying Up with Marie Kondo for this resurgence of decluttering (originally made popular by Kondo's 2014 book, The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up Ten Speed Press, $16.99).