2014: My Year of Reading

2014 was the year I discovered GoodReads, and now I can’t imagine how I was keeping track of my reading without it. In fact, I don’t think I was at all. Last year’s list of the books I read was compiled from memory, but I don’t think my mind can encompass that this year. According to GoodReads (bless ‘em) I read 71 books, which is 9 more than last year. 

I read and reviewed slightly fewer books for the Australian Women Writers Challenge (read 42 and reviewed 10 in 2014, as opposed to reading 43 and reviewing 14 in 2013), but I also increased the time I gave to the Challenge by organising guests authors, giveaways and interviews (more of this in a soon-to-be posted post on my year of writing). Given my hectic schedule, I’m aiming to read and review roughly the same number this year, but I’m also signing up to the 2015 South Asian Women Writers Challenge. This was prompted by a Twitter conversation with a lady who pointed out that there was only one woman on a list of 10 award-winning books by Asian writers which I had re-posted in my feed, and I realised my own ignorance about our neighbouring women writers.

The standout book for my year was Tan Twan Eng’s The Garden of Evening Mists, a story about a woman brutalised in a Japanese prisoner of war camp in Malaysia, who, once she’s free, creates a Japanese garden as an act of penance. The writing was crisp and restrained, the story symbolic and suspenseful. The setting, in the Cameron highlands of Malaysia, was familiar, as we holidayed there when I turned 14 (another overseas birthday, this one in a hotel in Malacca with a cake from a bakery), but richly detailed.

Close on the heels of this was Ellen van Neerven’s Heat and Light, which I loved for its sensuality, and also because I’d read nothing like it before. And Kristell Thornell’s Night Street about artist Clarice Beckett (although I read it in 2013, I reviewed it last year), which was a poignant, moving book.

Other fantastic reads (in no order) were Donna Tartt’s The Goldfinch for its dense and luscious prose; Diane Cook’s uneasy, dystopian stories in Man V. Nature; Nicola Griffith’s Hild, a lengthy historical fiction novel about a smart and perceptive girl who used her brains for power in a Christianising England; Donna McDonald’s indispensable memoir The Art of Being Deaf; Nike Sulway’s speculative fiction novel Rupetta for its originality and sadness; the quiet, contained and peculiar Traitor by Stephen Daisley, about an old New Zealand soldier; Inga Simpson’s tender Mr Wigg, which had a slow and cumulative power; Barbara Kingsolver’s climate change novel Flight Behaviour which every man, woman & household pet should read; and Andrew McGahan’s novels Wonders of a Godless World and Underground. McGahan is the kind of novelist I aspire to be: he’s not afraid to try new genres, and each time he does so masterfully. 

Below is the complete list of my the books I read, more for my own records than for the assumption that anyone will be interested (!)

Australian Women Writers Challenge – books reviewed

1.    Heat and Light, Ellen Van Neerven 

2.    Ghost Wife: A Memoir of Love and Defiance, Michelle Dicinoski

3.    The First Week, Margaret Merrilees

4.    Snake, Kate Jennings

5.    The Art of Being Deaf: A Memoir, Donna McDonald

6.    Rupetta, Nike Sulway

7.    Thornwood House, Anna Romer

8.    Kayang and Me, Kim Scott    

9.    The Singing Gold, Dorothy Cottrell

10. Night Street, Kristel Thornell (read in 2013)

Australian Women Writers Challenge – books read

11.    The Women in Black, Madeleine St. John

12.    Foreign Soil, Maxine Beneba Clarke

13.    The Etched City, K.J. Bishop

14.    Resurrection, P.A. McDermott

15.    Beams Falling, P.M. Newton

16.    A Kindness Cup, Thea Astley

17.    Wrong Turn at the Office of Unmade Lists, Jane Rawson

18.I for Isobel, Amy Witting

19.    Amy's Children, Olga Masters

20.Dancing on Coral, Glenda Adams

21.    The Ark, Annabel Smith

22.Madness: a Memoir, Kate  Richards

23.All the Birds, Singing, Evie Wyld

24.When the Night Comes, Favel Parrett

25.The Good Daughter, Honey Brown

26.Red Queen, Honey Brown

27.Darkness on the Edge of Town, Jessie Cole

28.Nest, Inga Simpson

29.The Seal Woman, Beverley Farmer

30.The Disappearance of Ember Crow, Ambelin Kwaymullina

31. The Great Unknown, Angela Meyer

32.Anguli Ma, a Gothic Tale, Chi Vu

33.The Romance of a Station, Rosa Praed

34.Unpolished Gem, Alice Pung

35.Camera Obscura, Kathryn Lomer

36.The Bride Price, Cat Sparks

37.An Australian Heroine, R Murray Prior

38.The Watch Tower, Elizabeth Harrower

39.The Swan Book, Alexis Wright

40.Mr Wigg, Inga Simpson

41. Policy and Passion, Rosa Praed

42.My Beautiful Enemy, Cory Taylor

43.Red Dirt Talking, Jacqueline Wright

Other Australian books:

44.To Name Those Lost, Rohan Wilson

45.Barracuda, Christos Tsiolkas

46.Traitor, Stephen Daisley

47.The Weaver Fish, Robert Edeson

48.Over the Water, William  Lane

49.The Tribe, Michael Mohammed Ahmad

50.Wonders of a Godless World, Andrew McGahan

51. Underground, Andrew McGahan

52.The Roving Party, Rohan Wilson

53.The Local Wildlife, Robert Drewe

Other international books:

54.We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves, Karen Joy Fowler

55.The Goldfinch, Donna Tartt

56.Watership Down, Richard Adams

57.Deep: Freediving, Renegade Science, and What the Ocean Tells Us about Ourselves, James Nestor

58.The Forever War, Joe Haldeman

59.Man V. Nature: Stories, Diane Cook

60.Hild, Nicola Griffith

61. How to Build a Girl, Caitlin Moran

62.Nora Webster, Colm Toibin

63.Daniel Deronda, George Eliot

64.The Shadow of the Wind, Carlos Ruiz Zafón

65.Flight Behavior, Barbara Kingsolver

66.Don't Cry, Mary Gaitskill

67.Winesburg, Ohio, Sherwood Anderson

68.Blue Is the Warmest Colour, Julie Maroh

69.The Lover, Marguerite Duras

70.The Mermaid Chair, Sue Monk Kidd

71.  My Family and Other Animals, Gerald Durrell

72.The Garden of Evening Mists, Twan Eng Tan