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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