2017: My Year of Reading

Everything leading up to Christmas is such a mad rush of tying up loose ends while running on an empty battery, that I can never get to my yearly reviews until January. Ah well, c’est la vie.

Once again I tried to reach my goal of 100 books. I fell short by 8, which was still 9 more than last year. As I was trying to cut back on my workload, for the first time in five years I didn’t participate in the Australian Women Writers Challenge. I also stepped back from my role as contributing editor of diversity, although I continued to co-ordinate (albeit in a not-very-organised way) guest posts. I wondered if this would have an impact on my stats, but it didn’t, really - 47% of my reading was of Australian women writers, compared to 45% last year. 13% were Australian male writers, meaning that half of my reading consisted of Australian writers and the other half were international. I like that!

The absolute highlight of my year was Norwegian author Roy Jacobson’s The Unseen, set on the island of Barrøy. It chronicles the lives of the family members on the island with writing that is alive with sensation and sound, including the region’s dialect. It’s also written in present tense, which I enjoyed. I also loved other non-Australian authors I encountered, particularly Octavia Butler, whom I taught in my Women Writers Course. Muriel Spark, Colette and Marguerite Duras were also memorable, although the George Eliot I picked up (The Lifted Veil) was a dud. Burton’s The Miniaturist was a delight, Kingsolver’s The Lacuna was reassuringly engaging, and pretty much all the YA books I picked up (to read before giving to niece & nephew) were great: Donnelly’s A Gathering Light, Gray’s Defy the Stars and Rowell’s Eleanor and Park which b/f found on the feeds & recommended to me. By contrast, my worst book of the year was Saunders’ Lincoln in the Bardo. What a waste of time.

Of Australian authors, I fell in love with Fiona McGregor’s Indelible Ink, something that’s been on my TBR list for a while. It was vivid and imaginative and I loved its rendition of Sydney, something McGregor also captured in her Sydney Review of Books essay, ‘Surro’, on Surry Hills. I was moved by Mary-Rose Maccoll’s For A Girl; although it was simply written, it captured her solid and continuing grief over the loss of her child. I adored the quiet artfulness of Heather Rose’s The Museum of Modern Love (on a par with her earlier fable The River Wife); was impressed by the plotting of Moriaty’s Big Little Lies, and was totally entertained and absorbed by Belinda Burns' The Dark Part of Me. Krissy Kneen’s An Uncertain Grace was an intellectual delight, with its tentacular explorations of different consciousnesses and ethics, while the heft and scope of Mahood’s Position Doubtful left me puzzling over the book for weeks as I unpicked it for an essay on ecobiography, and was ultimately rewarded once I understood (even in part) its complexity.

Sadly, my reading of Aboriginal authors was pretty dismal this year, with only three books – Kim Scott’s Taboo, Clare Coleman’s Terra Nullius and Marie Munkara’s A Most Peculiar Act. Being an editor in diversity at the AWW Challenge obviously pushes me in this area. I continue to find it interesting how Aboriginal authors exploit the elements of different genres to express their & their community’s experiences of invasion and colonisation – in this instance realism, speculative fiction and satire.

My year ended on a high note with Andrew McGahan’s Ship Kings series, which showed such mastery of plotting that I’m going to take the books apart to see how he did it. I loved the themes of passion, desperation, courage and love; the developing complexity of the protagonist; and there was barely a line out of place. McGahan continues to be one of my favourite authors because he isn’t afraid to try something new, and he writes well in a range of genres rather than churning out the same stuff.

I didn’t get to any reading of poetry, as I’d hoped to do – that’s on the list again for this year. As is a great deal of reading for my ecobiography, so I’ll be canvassing many more environmental books this year. So below is my list of books canvassed - here's hoping it propagates in 2018.

Australian Women Writers

1.     The Long Goodbye: Coral, Coal and Australia's Climate Deadlock, Anna Krien

2.     Moloch A Story of Sacrifice, Rosa Praed

3.     On Doubt, Leigh Sales

4.     Nightsiders, Sue Isle

5.     Stravinsky’s Lunch, Drusilla Modjeska

6.     Goodwood, Holly Throsby

7.     A Country in Mind, Saskia Buedel

8.     The Dry, Jane Harper

9.     For a Girl, Mary-Rose Maccoll

10.  Foal’s Bread, Gillian Mears

11.  Terra Nullius, Clare Coleman

12.  Parting Words, Cass Moriaty

13.  And Fire Came Down, Emma Viskic

14.  Storyland, Catherine McKinnon

15.  Storm and Grace, Kathryn Heyman

16.  A Most Peculiar Act, Marie Munkara

17.  Big Little Lies, Liane Moriaty

18.  In the Quiet, Eliza Henry-Jones

19.  Indelible Ink, Fiona McGregor

20.  Poum and Alexandre: A Paris Memoir, Catherine de Saint Phalle

21.  An Isolated Incident, Emile Maguire

22.  Understory: A Life with Trees, Inga Simpson

23.  The Other Side of the World, Stephanie Bishop

24.  Between a Wolf and a Dog, Georgia Blain

25.  Whisper, Chrissie Keighery

26.  The Museum of Modern Love, Heather Rose

27.  From the Wreck, Jane Rawson

28.  The Helen One Hundred, Helen Razer

29.  Invisible, Cecily Anne Paterson

30.  Lotus Blue, Cat Sparks

31.  A Hundred Small Lessons, Ashley Hay

32.  Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land: A Story of Australian Life, Rosa Praed

33.  An Uncertain Grace, Krissy Kneen

34.  Only, Caroline Baum

35.  Music And Freedom, Zoe Morrison

36.  Family Skeleton, Carmel Bird

37.  Position Doubtful: Mapping Landscapes and Memories, Kim Mahood

38.  Truly Madly Guilty, Liane Moriaty

39.  Craft for a Dry Lake, Kim Mahood

40.  The Children’s Bach, Helen Garner

41.  Monkey Grip, Helen Garner

42.  The Dark Part Of Me, Belinda Burns

43.  Jack's Story, Donna McDonald

Australian Male Writers

44.  The Ocean of the Dead, Andrew McGahan

45.  The War of the Four Isles, Andrew McGahan

46.  The Voyage of the Unquiet Ice, Andrew McGahan

47.  The Coming of the Whirlpool, Andrew McGahan

48.  Things We Didn’t See Coming, Steven Amsterdam

49.  Holding the Man, Eliot Conigrave

50.  The Running Man, Michael Bauer

51.  The Last Days of Ava Langdon, Mark O’Flynn

52.  Taboo, Kim Scott

53.  The Restorer, Michael Sala

54.  1988, Andrew McGahan

55.  Burning Down, Veny Armanno

International Women Writers

56.  Not to Disturb, Muriel Spark

57.  A Gathering Light, Jennifer Donnelly

58.  Defy the Stars, Claudia Gray

59.  The Paying Guests, Sarah Waters

60.  How to Paint a Dead Man, Sarah Hall

61.  Eleanor and Park, Rainbow Rowell

62.  The Miniaturist, Jessie Burton

63.  What Lies Between Us, Nayomi Munaweera

64.  The Lacuna, Barbara Kingsolver

65.  Moderato Cantabile, Marguerite Duras

66.  Ripening Seed, Colette

67.  History of Wolves, Emily Fridlund

68.  The Lifted Veil, George Eliot

69.  Autumn, Ali Smith

70.  The Essex Serpent, Sarah Perry

71.  The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, Rebecca Skloot

72.  Kindred, Octavia Butler

73.  The Golden Notebook, Doris Lessing

74.  Parable of the Talents, Octavia Butler

75.  Fledgling, Octavia Butler

76.  Parable of the Sower, Octavia Butler

77.  A Very Easy Death, Simone de Beauvoir

78.  The Vegetarian, Kang Han

79.  The Wonder, Emma Donoghue

80.  The Shore, Sara Taylor

81.  The Girls, Emma Cline

82.  Run, Ann Patchett

83.  The Faraway Nearby, Rebecca Solnit

International Male Writers

84.  Far Tortuga, Peter Matthiessen

85.  Lincoln in the Bardo, George Saunders

86.  Reservoir 13, Jon McGregor

87.  Winter Count, Barry Lopez

88.  Engleby, Sebastian Faulks

89.  The Unseen, Roy Jacobsen

90.  Being Dead, Jim Crace

91.  The Three-Body Problem, Liu Cixin

92.  The Moth Snowstorm, Michael McCarthy