Unwind Book Club

Anneli McKinnon, a Coronet Bay resident and avid reader, created a book  group and a reading retreat where people can read, meet, discuss and relax with other likeminded Gippslanders.

‘I started both these events as I wanted to meet with other readers but also have the time to connect and have meaningful conversations,’ Anneli said. ‘I belong to two book clubs, and they are brilliant groups of women but not everyone can commit to reading a certain book in a certain time frame and I wanted to create an environment where women could come and share whatever they are reading and also come away with other ideas of books to read.’

Books on the Menu is an intimate monthly dinner where about six people meet and share a book that they have read. Each person gives a five-to-ten-minute review of their chosen book. 

‘I have intentionally created small group activities so that the opportunity for connection is maximised. I want people to feel seen and heard and to allow for meaningful conversations,’ Anneli said.

‘It’s very relaxed and the review can be formal or informal- it’s not school and no one is marking or judging your performance! 

‘It’s a chance to tell people about a book you enjoyed and in return you hear about other books. It’s a great way to be introduced to books that may have never crossed your path.’

The Women’s Reading Retreat is a relaxing weekend away where the main focus for the weekend is to read a book, eat, and relax in peace. 

‘Many of us dream of having a day of uninterrupted reading and this is the opportunity. All meals, snacks, drinks are taken care of, and you can read as much or as little as you like,’ she said. 

‘We have access to the beach and are staying surrounded by nature so it’s also a chance to unwind and connect with likeminded women in a beautiful environment. Everyone has their own room so each guest can read in their room, on the couch, outside or by the fire.’

For Anneli,  who enjoys surfing, swimming and gardening, reading is one of her favourite forms of self-care- having read more than 40 in different genres already this year.

‘I read every day. It’s one of my favourite things to do,’ she said. ‘I always have a book with me and read whenever I can. I love to end my day snuggled up in bed with the lamp on and reading a book.’

As for her favourite author?

‘I love books by Elif Shafak, Holly Ringland or Charlotte McConachy,’ Anneli said.

‘It’s hard to choose just one favourite author, but I will always pick up books by Elif Shafak’s. There Are Rivers In The Sky blew me away this year!’

See below to read Anneli’s picks for Unwind’s Book Club- Books That Leave a Lasting Impression.

 The Women’s Reading Retreat was held on 12 to 14 September and the Books on the Menu dinners are usually on the third Thursday of the month.

For more information, follow Anneli on Instagram @tbr.retreats or email at tbr.retreats@gmail.com to sign up to the mailing list. 

Unwind Book Club- Books That Leave a Lasting Impression

For Anneli McKinnon, an avid reader and founder of Books on the Menu and Women’s Reading Retreat, choosing a favourite book is like having to choose a favourite child or pet. It’s impossible!

But when Unwind gave Anneli the difficult task of picking ten for our Unwind Book Club, she did just that. Here are Anneli’s top ten books that left a lasting impression.

Brb…heading to my nearest book store now!

There Are Rivers In The Sky by Elif Shafak

There Are Rivers in the Sky is a rich, sweeping novel set between the 19th century and modern times, about love and loss, memory and erasure, hurt and healing, centred around three enchanting characters living on the banks of the River Thames and the River Tigris – their lives all curiously touched by the epic of Gilgamesh.

A storm is approaching Nineveh, the sky swollen with impending rain. One of the clouds approaching the world’s largest and wealthiest city, built on the banks of the river Tigris, is bigger and darker than the others-and more impatient. It floats suspended above a majestic building adorned with marble columns, pillared porticos and monumental statues. This is the North Palace, where the king resides in all his might and glory. The cloud casts a shadow over the imperial residence. For unlike humans, water has no regard for social status or royal titles. Dangling from the edge of the cloud is a single drop of rain – no bigger than a bean and lighter than a chickpea. For a while it quivers precariously – small, spherical and scared. How frightening it is to observe the earth open down below like a lonely lotus flower. Remember that raindrop, inconsequential though it may be compared to the magnitude of the universe. Inside, it holds a miniature world, a story of its own.

The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue by V.E. Schwab

For someone damned to be forgettable, Addie LaRue is a most delightfully unforgettable character, and her story is the most joyous evocation of unlikely immortality. Neil Gaiman
A Sunday Times-bestselling, award-nominated genre-defying tour-de-force of Faustian bargains, for fans of The Time Traveler’s Wife and Life After Life, and The Sudden Appearance of Hope.

When Addie La Rue makes a pact with the devil, she trades her soul for immortality. But there’s always a price – the devil takes away her place in the world, cursing her to be forgotten by everyone.

Addie flees her tiny home town in 18th-Century France, beginning a journey that takes her across the world, learning to live a life where no one remembers her and everything she owns is lost and broken. Existing only as a muse for artists throughout history, she learns to fall in love anew every single day.

Her only companion on this journey is her dark devil with hypnotic green eyes, who visits her each year on the anniversary of their deal. Alone in the world, Addie has no choice but to confront him, to understand him, maybe to beat him.

Until one day, in a second-hand bookshop in Manhattan, Addie meets someone who remembers her. Suddenly thrust back into a real, normal life, Addie realises she can’t escape her fate forever.

The Seven Skins of Esther Wilding by Holly Ringland

The last time Esther Wilding’s beloved older sister Aura was seen, she was walking along the shore towards the sea. In the wake of Aura’s disappearance, Esther’s family struggles to live with their loss.

To seek the truth about her sister’s death, Esther reluctantly travels from Tasmania to Copenhagen, and then to the Faroe Islands. On her journey, Esther is guided by the stories Aura left behind in her treasured journal; seven fairy tales about selkies, swans and women, alongside cryptic verses Aura wrote and had secretly tattooed on her body.

The Seven Skins of Esther Wilding is about the far-reaches of sisterly love, the power of wearing your heart on your skin and the way life can transform when we find the courage to feel the fullness of both grief and joy.

Jitterbug Perfume by Tom Robbins

Jitterbug Perfume is an epic. Which is to say, it begins in the forests of ancient Bohemia and doesn’t conclude until nine o’clock tonight (Paris time). It is a saga, as well. A saga must have a hero, and the hero of this one is a janitor with a missing bottle. The bottle is blue, very, very old, and embossed with the image of a goat-horned god. If the liquid in the bottle actually is the secret essence of the universe, as some folks seem to think, it had better be discovered soon because it is leaking and there is only a drop or two left.

The Alchemist by Paolo Cohelo 

This story, dazzling in its powerful simplicity and soul-stirring wisdom, is about an Andalusian shepherd boy named Santiago who travels from his homeland in Spain to the Egyptian desert in search of a treasure buried near the Pyramids. Along the way he meets a Gypsy woman, a man who calls himself king, and an alchemist, all of whom point Santiago in the direction of his quest.

No one knows what the treasure is, or if Santiago will be able to surmount the obstacles in his path. But what starts out as a journey to find worldly goods turns into a discovery of the treasure found within. Lush, evocative, and deeply humane, the story of Santiago is an eternal testament to the transforming power of our dreams and the importance of listening to our hearts.

Station Eleven by Emily St John Mandel

What was lost in the collapse: almost everything, almost everyone, but there is still such beauty.

One snowy night in Toronto famous actor Arthur Leander dies on stage whilst performing the role of a lifetime. That same evening a deadly virus touches down in North America.

The world will never be the same again.

Twenty years later Kirsten, an actress in the Travelling Symphony, performs Shakespeare in the settlements that have grown up since the collapse.

But then her newly hopeful world is threatened.

If civilization was lost, what would you preserve? And how far would you go to protect it?

Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi

Effia and Esi: two sisters with two very different destinies. One sold into slavery; one a slave trader’s wife. The consequences of their fate reverberate through the generations that follow. Taking us from the Gold Coast of Africa to the cotton-picking plantations of Mississippi; from the missionary schools of Ghana to the dive bars of Harlem, spanning three continents and seven generations, Yaa Gyasi has written a miraculous novel – the intimate, gripping story of a brilliantly vivid cast of characters and through their lives the very story of America itself.

Four Letters of Love by Niall Williams 

Nicholas Coughlan and Isabel Gore were made for each other — but fate doesn’t always take the easiest or the most obvious route to true love. For a start, Nicholas and Isabel have never met and nor are they likely to, without some kind of divine intervention. But as God, ghosts, a series of coincidences and seemingly chance events and encounters conspire to bring the couple together, other — often more human — forces attempt to keep them apart. ‘What will be, will be,’ of course, but that doesn’t guarantee a happy-ever-after ending, nor answer the question ‘Will they, won’t they?’

Written in a lyrical, lilting tone, ‘Four Letters of Love’ is a glorious, uplifting story about faith, about seizing the moment, believing in your instincts and acting on impulse — and about following your heart, no matter where it may lead.

What I Loved by Siri Hustvedt

This is the story of two men who first become friends in 1970s New York, of the women in their lives, and of their sons, born the same year.

Both Leo Hertzberg, an art historian, and Bill Weschler, a painter, are cultured, decent men, but neither is equipped to deal with what happens to their children. Leo’s son drowns when he is 12, while Bill’s son Mark grows up to be a delinquent, and the acolyte of a sinister, guru-like artist who spawns murder in his wake. Spanning the hedonism of the eighties and the chill-out nineties, this multi-layered novel combines a plot of mounting menace with a deeply moving account of familial relationships and a superbly observed portrait of an artist, set against the backdrop of a society reaching new depths of depravity in its frenetic quest for the next fashion, drug and thrill.

The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon

Barcelona, 1945: A city slowly heals from its war wounds, and Daniel, an antiquarian book dealer’s son who mourns the loss of his mother, finds solace in a mysterious book entitled The Shadow of the Wind, by one Julian Carax. But when he sets out to find the author’s other works, he makes a shocking discovery: someone has been systematically destroying every copy of every book Carax has written. In fact, Daniel may have the last of Carax’s books in existence. Soon Daniel’s seemingly innocent quest opens a door into one of Barcelona’s darkest secrets–an epic story of murder, madness, and doomed love.