2015: My Year of Reading
Once again I’m a bit slow on the uptake with my end-of-year summaries of my literary life in 2015, but better late than never!
Last year I participated in the Australian Women Writers Challenge and the GoodReads challenge. While I met my goal of reading 20 books and reviewing 10 books for the former (I read 44 and reviewed 10), for the latter I only made it to 76 out of 100 books, which was 5 more books than last year’s.
One of my absolute favourite books for the year was Michael Faber’s The Book of Strange New Things, which I read on a dark and wintry New Year’s Day in Newcastle in England, in the house of some lovely friends. It’s a peculiar work about a missionary sent to colonise aliens on another planet. About six months after I read it, I realised the swirling rain on the planet, which came and went like a three-dimensional thing, was a metaphor for grief, and my admiration for the book was renewed.
I also loved Kazuo Ishiguoro’s The Buried Giant, a retelling of the fable of the Green Knight, because I could never quite work out what was happening and I like being unsettled by texts. I also liked the almost child-like way in which it was narrated. While in Rome I finished Peter Watts’ Rifters trilogy which my boyfriend suggested to me as research for my mermaid book. I still think often about that pressurised, underwater world with its attenuated bodies and tough female protagonist.
Closer to home, Fiona Wright’s Small Acts of Disappearance, about her struggle with anorexia, was exquisite. I would have written a review of it except that it was a little too close to home and I couldn’t have been objective. I also enjoyed the clever puzzle of Debra Adelaide’s latest novel, The Women’s Pages.
My reading of Indigenous women writers over the year was woeful – I only managed two books, Ali Cobby Eckermann’s Too Afraid to Cry and Gayle Kennedy’s Me, Antman and Fleabag. I’m aiming to redress this in 2016. I’m also going to try and read and review books of poetry, as I’ll be writing more of this and need to study it.
In terms of international writers, for whom I wasn’t setting myself a target or making myself aware of gender bias, I read 5 more books by male writers (15 books) than female writers (10 books). Last year this was the opposite, with 7 books by male writers and 11 by female writers, so it doesn’t look like there’s a pattern yet.
I’ve set myself the same challenges again this year, and am more hopeful of meeting them, if only because I’ll be forcing myself to have the evenings off to read and rest. Having just come back from a gorgeous holiday in Thailand with plenty of luxurious reading time, I’m already ahead!
The list below is more for my own records than anyone else’s, and because I find the interface at GoodReads to be almost impossible.
Australian Women Writers (reviews have hyperlinks)
1. Waiting Room: A Memoir, Gabrielle Carey
2. The World Without Us, Mireille Juchau
4. Puberty Blues, Kathy Lette and Gabrielle Carey
5. Remotely Fashionable: A Story of Subtropical Style, Nadia Buick and Madeleine King
6. Anchor Point, Alice Robinson
7. The Women's Pages, Debra Adelaide
8. The Bone Chime Song and Other Stories, Jo Anderton
9. The Golden Age, Joan London
10. Small Acts of Disappearance, Fiona Wright
11. The Dangerous Bride, Lee Kofman
12. Elemental, Amanda Curtin
13. Vulture's Gate, Kirsty Murray
14. Stanley and Sophie, Kate Jennings
15. Grimsdon, Deborah Abela
16. Pieces Of A Girl, Charlotte Wood
17. The Landing, Susan Johnson
18. The Natural Way of Things, Charlotte Wood
19. Too afraid to cry, Ali Cobby Eckermann
20. The Delinquents: Text Classics, Criena Rohan
21. Salt Creek, Lucy Treloar
22. In My Mother's Hands, Biff Ward
23. Georgiana Molloy: The Mind That Shines, Bernice Barry
24. The Life Of Houses, Lisa Gorton
25. That Oceanic Feeling, Fiona Capp
26. The Night Guest, Fiona McFarlane
27. Me, Antman & Fleabag, Gayle Kennedy
28. Hopscotch, Jane Messer
29. My Blood's Country: A Journey Through the Landscape that Inspired Judith Wright's Poetry, Fiona Capp
30. The Strays, Emily Bitto
31. The Floating Garden, Emma Ashmere
32. The Anchoress, Robyn Cadwallader
33. Snowy River Man, Lizzy Chandler
34. The Adventures of Holly White and the Incredible Sex Machine, Krissy Kneen
35. Salt Rain, Sarah Armstrong
36. Deeper Water, Jessie Cole
37. Razorhurst, Justine Larbalestier
38. Sustenance, Simone Lazaroo
39. This House of Grief, Helen Garner
40. Reefscape: Reflections on the Great Barrier Reef, Rosaleen Love
41. Only the Animals, Ceridwen Dovey
42. The Coral Battleground, Judith A. Wright
43. Piano Lessons, Anna Goldsworthy
44. The Midnight Dress, Karen Foxlee
Australian Male Writers
45. Ugly: My Memoir, Robert Hoge
46. The Narrow Road to the Deep North, Richard Flanagan
47. The Horses, William Lane
48. A World of Other People, Steven Carroll
49. The Reef: A Passionate History, Iain McCalman
50. Clade, JamesBradley
51. The Element of Need: Murder and Memory in Adelaide, James Bradley
International Women Writers
52. Allegiant (Divergent, #3), Veronica Roth
53. Insurgent (Divergent, #2), Veronica Roth
54. Divergence (Divergence, #1), Veronica Roth
55. Blue Nights, Joan Didion
56. Station Eleven, Emily St. John Mandel
57. A Girl Is a Half-formed Thing, Eimear McBride
58. Not That Kind of Girl: A Young Woman Tells You What She's "Learned", Lena Dunham
59. Bad Feminist, Roxane Gay
60. H is for Hawk, Helen Macdonald
61. Reading Victorian Deafness: Signs and Sounds in Victorian Literature and Culture, Jennifer Esmail
International Male Writers
62. The Dreaming Land, Martin Edmond
63. Loosed upon the World: The Saga Anthology of Climate Fiction, John Joseph Adams
64. The Slow Regard of Silent Things, Patrick Rothfuss
65. All the Light We Cannot See, Anthony Doerr
66. Railsea, China Mieville
67. The Wasp Factory, Iain Banks
68. The Buried Giant, Kazuo Ishiguro
69. These Are the Names, Tommy Wieringa
70. Aquarium, David Vann
71. The Hare With Amber Eyes: A Family's Century of Art and Loss, Edmund de Waal
72. Behemoth (Rifters, #3), Peter Watts
73. Maelstrom (Rifters, #2), Peter Watts
74. A History of Silence: a memoir, Lloyd Jones
75. Starfish (Rifters, #1), Peter Watts
76. The Book of Strange New Things, Michel Faber