WRITER AND RESEARCHER

Blog

2016: My Year of Reading

While everyone is gearing up for 2017 with their best books to watch for lists, I’m still straggling behind with my notes on 2016. One day I’ll catch up, but alas, ‘tis not to be this year.

I signed up for GoodReads’ 100 book challenge but only made it to 84, which at least is 8 more than last year. So I’m slowing inching towards that target.

By far, my favourite books were Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan novels. I loved the rich emotional lives of the female characters, which provided the work with drama and momentum. I find it rare to come across character-driven works in my reading, unless I pick up something 19th century, though Ann Patchett always does a good job of it.

I also adored Amy Liptrot’s The Outrun, an ecobiography which I found more seamless and elegant than Helen McDonald’s H is for Hawk. And on things environmental, Sarah Hall’s The Wolf Border, about the repopulation of England with wolves, was superb. It was thick with money and politics, animals and sex, and I loved the protagonist – a strong, pregnant woman. The only other pregnant protagonists which I’ve come across are in films – Steve Zissou’s The Life Acquatic and the Coen brothers’ Fargo.

In terms of contemporary Australian literature I was pretty disappointed. I was part of a reading group of Australian women’s writing that made its way through the Stella Prize, then the female shortlistees of the Miles Franklin. Aside from the power of The Natural Way of Things and the delicacy of Small Acts of Disappearance I was underwhelmed, & I certainly didn’t think that Leap or Hope Farm deserved to be on the shortlist of Australia’s richest literary prize. I picked A.S. Patric’s Black Rock, White City to see if it was on a par with Wood’s book and I thought it was, but if you hold Australian shortlists up to shortlists in the UK or America, their innovation seems fairly lacklustre by comparison. Are Australian publishers more conservative? It often feels like they are; I guess a lack of money makes them less inclined to take risks. Thank god for publishers like Text & Transit Lounge, who go out on a limb.

I read 8 books by Indigenous writers (5 more than last year) and 3 books of poetry. I’d intended to read more of both those categories, so have made some incremental progress with that too. I read 37 Australian women writers, 28 international women writers, 9 Australian male writers and 8 Australian international writers.

This year I’m hoping to keep up with the poetry & Indigenous writerss, and to go back to some more 19th Century fiction.

But here’s my list of books, which I post more for myself than anyone else, so I can track my tendencies. The links are to my reviews for the Australian Women Writers Challenge, for which I read 38 books & reviewed 10 – I met my target, but only just (I was writing most of my reviews after Xmas!).

 

Australian Women Writers

1.     The Soul of Countess Adrian, Rosa Praed

2.     The Romance of Mademoiselle Aisse, Rosa Praed

3.     Cloudwish, Fiona Wood

4.     Painting Red Orchids, Eileen Chong

5.     Six Bedrooms, Tegan Bennett Daylight

6.     Fishing in the Devonian, Carol Jenkins

7.     A Short History of Richard Kline, Amanda Lohrey

8.     Dying: A Memoir, Corey Taylor

9.     Everywhere I Look, Helen Garner

10.  The Eye of the Sheep, Sofie Laguna

11.  Defying Doomsday, ed Tsana Dolichva & Holly Kench

12.  A Loving, Faithful Animal, Josephine Rowe

13.  The Well, Elizabeth Jolley

14.  Leap, Myfawny Jones

15.  Barbed Wire and Cherry Blossoms, Anita Heiss

16.  His Sister’s Eye, Vivienne Cleven

17.  Body/Landscape Journals, Margaret Somerville

18.  A Few Days in the Country: And Other Stories, Elizabeth Harrower

19.  Resurrection Bay, Emma Viskic

20.  Seven Poor Men of Sydney, Christina Stead

21.  The Timeless Land, Eleanor Dark

22.  Hope Farm, Peggy Frew

23.  Second Half First, Drusilla Modjeska

24.  Not Just Black and White, Lesley and Tammy Williams

25.  Dying in the First Person, Nike Sulway

26.  The Dressmaker, Rosalie Ham

27.  Talk Under Water, Kathryn Lomer

28.  Thunderwith, Libby Hathorn

29.  Where the Trees Were, Inga Simpson

30.  Under the Wintamarra Tree, Doris Pilkington

31.  Follow the Rabbit Proof Fence, Doris Pilkington

32.  Close to Home, Robin Barker

33.  A Faithful Picture: The Letters Of Eliza And Thomas Brown At York In The Swan River Colony 1841-1852, Eliza Brown

34.  Thursday’s Child, Sonya Harnett

35.  Stradbroke Dreamtime, Oodgeroo Nunukul

36.  Elemental, Amanda Curtin

37.  Bad Behaviour, Rebecca Starford

38. Comfort Food, Ellen van Neerven

 

Australian Male Writers

39.  Black Rock, White City, A.S. Patric

40.  Moon and Rainbow: The Autobiography of an Aboriginal, Dick Roughsey

41.  One, Patrick Holland

42.  Island Home, Tim Winton

43.  The Salamanders, William Lane

44.  Invisible Country: Southwest Australia: Understanding a Landscape, Bill Bunbury

45.  Taronga, Victor Kelleher

46.  Jodie’s Journey, Colin Thiele

47.  The Promise, Tony Birch

 

International Women Writers

48.  The Mandibles: A Family, Lionel Shriver

49.  Commonwealth, Ann Patchett

50.  Life After Life, Kate Atkinson

51.  A Little Life, Hanya Yanagihara

52.  The Outrun, Amy Liptrot

53.  The Wicked Boy: The Mystery of a Victorian Child Murderer, Kate Summerscale

54.  Everyone is Watching, Megan Bradbury

55.  White is for Witching, Helen Oyeyemi

56.  The Bone People, Keri Hulme

57.  First There is a Mountain, Elizabeth Kadetsky

58.  She Came to Stay, Simone de Beauvoir

59.  Tar Baby, Toni Morrison

60.  The Girl on the Train, Paula Hawkins

61.  My Brilliant Friend, Elena Ferrante

62.  The Story of a New Name, Elena Ferrante

63.  Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay, Elena Ferrante

64.  The Story of the Lost Child, Elena Ferrante

66.  Carol, Patricia Highsmith

66.  Alex, Tessa Duder

67.  Alex in Winter, Tessa Duder

68.  Sleeping on Jupiter, Anuradha Roy

69.  My Name Is Lucy Barton, Elizabeth Strout

70.  The Wolf Border, Sarah Hall

71.  The Chronology of Water, Lidia Yuknavich

72.  Ancillary Mercy, Ann Leckie

73.  Ancillary Sword, Ann Leckie

74.  Ancillary Justice, Ann Leckie

75.  The First Bad Man, Miranda July

76.  Lament for the Afterlife, Lisa L. Hannett

 

International Male Writers

77.  His Bloody Project, Grame Macrae Burnet

78.  Gardens of Fire, Stevan Eldred-Grigg

79.  Going Sane: Maps of Happiness, Adam Phillips

80.  The Martian, Andy Weir

81.  Every Heart a Doorway, Seanan McGuire

82.  Z for Zachariah, Robert C. O’Brien

83.  2312, Kim Stanley Robinson

84.  The Beach, Alex Garland