2018: My Year of Reading

After being slammed by a freight train full of work for the last six weeks, I’m only now getting to my summaries of reading & writing for last year. For the first time I met my goal of reading 100 books, which is a good thing – it meant that I was taking time to read (a critical tool in any writer’s toolbox) and that I was resting more. As with last year, approximately half of my reading was by Australian writers and the other half by international writers. In both instances I read more literature by women writers, although I didn’t participate in the Australian Women Writers Challenge again, being too time-poor (75:25 for Australian writers and 70:30 for international writers).

The highlight of my reading year was Italian author Paolo Cognetti’s The Eight Mountains, a bildungsroman set in the mountains around the village of Grana. It follows the relationship between Pietro, who visits the mountains with his family every year, and Bruno who is a local at Grana. I loved the novel’s understatement and the descriptions of the mountains, and the friendship between the boys as they grew into men. I also loved Andrew Sean Greer’s Less, which was hilarious, Anna Burns’ thick and gritty Milkman, and Jenny Erpenbeck’s Go, Went, Gone about refugees in Germany. These book came out of a new bookclub at Avid Reader focussing on award-winning fiction and I have loved pretty much all of the books we’ve read.

Annie Proulx’s Barkskins, Eowyn Ivey’s The Snow Child, Kamila Shamsie’s Home Fires, Sally Rooney’s books, Curtis Sittenfield’s American Wife and Min Jin Lee’s Pachinko were also great reads. Nell Zink’s The Wallcreeper was a nice surprise and Under the Skin by Michel Faber (whose novel The Book of Strange New Things is one of my favourites) gave me the absolute creeps & I still can’t stop thinking about it – always the sign of a good book.

In terms of Aussie literature, I enjoyed Melissa Lucashenko’s Too Much Lip which I thought a better book than Mullumbimby in terms of its craft. I also liked Trent Dalton’s Boy Swallows Universe, Jennifer Livett’s Wild Island, Melissa Fagan’s What Will be Worn and Gabrielle Carey’s Falling Out of Love with Ivan Southall.

I didn’t get through much non-contemporary fiction, other than John Kennedy Toole’s A Confederacy of Dunces which was marvelous (& one of b/f faves) & Elizabeth Bowen’s writing, which didn’t set me on fire although her descriptions of bombed-out London were marvelous. I don’t know why people would bother to read contemporary fiction of WW2 when they could read Bowen. She also writes about the impact of the war on her own craft and this made for fascinating reading.

This year I aspire, as always, to read more poetry & 19th century fiction (my favourite genre), but it’s always difficult to balance this with the demands of keeping up with new releases. However, seeing as this is a year of trying to do something about my terrible work-life balance, I may just get there.

Australian Women Writers

1.     Dyschronia, Jennifer Mills

2.     Growing Up Aboriginal in Australia, Anita Heiss (ed.)

3.     Too Much Lip, Melissa Lucashenko

4.     Bird Country, Claire Aman

5.     Shell, Kristina Olssen

6.     Eggshell Skull, Bri Lee

7.     All Being Equal, Ashley Hay (ed.)

8.     Pulse Points, Jennifer Down

9.     Falling Out of Love with Ivan Southall, Gabrielle Carey

10.  Finding Theodore and Brina, Terri-ann White

11.  Last Day in the Dynamite Factory, Annah Faulkner

12.  What Will be Worn, Melissa Fagan

13.  Reckoning, Magda Szubanski

14.  Black Glass, Meg Mundell

15.  Wintering, Krissy Kneen

16.  The Geography of Friendship, Sally Piper

17.  The Rules of Backyard Croquet, Sunni Overend

18.  Australia Day, Melanie Cheng

19.  Bluebottle, Belinda Castle

20.  Luminescent Threads, Alexandra Pierce and Mimi Mondal (eds.)

21.  The Paper House, Anna Spargo-Ryan

22.  Staying, Jessie Cole

23.  Letters to Pessoa, Michelle Cahill

24.  The Life to Come, Michelle de Krester

25.  The Last Garden, Eva Hornug

26.  The Yellow House, Emily O’Grady

27.  Wildflowering: The Life and Places of Kathleen McArthur, Margaret Somerville

28.  The Lucky Galah, Tracy Sorensen

29.  The Death of Noah Glass, Gail Jones

30.  Trick of the Light, Laura Elvery

31.  The Eye of the Sheep, Sofie Laguna

32.  The Secrets at Ocean's Edge, Kali Napier

33.  Celebrant Sleuth, Hazel Edwards

34.  The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart, Holly Ringland

35.  Oodgeroo, Kathleen Cochrane

36.  Between the Leaves: Stories of Australian Women, Writing and Gardens, Katie Holmes

37.  The High Places, Fiona McFarlane

38.  Wild Island, Jennifer Livett

39.  A Week in the Life of Cassandra Aberline, Glenda Guest

Australian Male Writers

40.  Boy Swallows Universe, Trent Dalton

41.  I Can Jump Puddles, Alan Marshall

42.  Hammers Over the Anvil, Alan Marshall

43.  To Become a Whale, Ben Hobson

44.  12 Edmonstone Street, David Malouf

45.  The Art of Time Travel, Tom Griffiths

46.  Scrublands, Chris Hammer

47.  The Buried Ark, James Bradley

48.  Common People, Tony Birch

49.  Dirt Music, Tim Winton

50.  Land’s Edge: A Coastal Memoir, Tim Winton

51.  So Much Smoke, Felix Calvino

52.  Letting Go: How to Plan for a Good Death, Charlie Corke

International Women Writers

53.  Conversations with People, Sally Rooney

54.  Washington Black, Esi Eougyan

55.  Normal People, Sally Rooney

56.  Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine, Gail Honeyman

57.  Milkman, Anna Burns

58.  The Women’s Courtyard, Khadija Mastur

59.  A Different Light, Elizabeth A. Lynn

60.  The Death of the Heart, Elizabeth Bowen

61.  The Demon Lover and Other Stories, Elizabeth Bowen

62.  The Heat of the Day, Elizabeth Bowen

63.  Barkskins, Annie Proulx

64.  Motherhood, Sheila Heti

65.  Convenience Store Woman, Sayaka Murata

66.  Home Fire, Kamila Shamsie

67.  The Cry of the Gull, Emmanuelle Laborit

68.  The Wallcreeper, Nell Zink

69.  The Round House, Louise Erdrich

70.  Larchfield, Polly Clark

71.  Pachinko, Min Jin Lee

72.  Digging to America, Anne Tyler

73.  Wilding, Isabella Tree

74.  Salt Fish Girl, Larissa Lai

75.  Everything I Never Told You, Celeste Ng

76.  Lab Girl, Hope Jahren

77.  An Unremarkable Body, Elisa Lodato

78.  Go, Went, Gone, Jenny Erpenbeck

79.  Magonia, Maria DahvanaHeadley

80.  Under the Sea Wind, Rachel Carson

81.  American Wife, Curtis Sittenfield

82.  To the Bright Edge of the World, Eowyn Ivey

83.  The Snow Child, Eowyn Ivey

84.  The Sound of Butterflies, Rachel King

85.  The Paris Winter, Imogen Robertson

International Male Writers

86.  The Shape of Water, Daniel Kraus and Guillermo del Toro

87.  A Confederacy of Dunces, John Kennedy Toole

88.  Census, Jesse Ball

89.  Less, Andrew Sean Greer

90.  Under the Skin, Michael Faber

91.  Revolutionary Road, Richard Yates

92.  The Eight Mountains, Paolo Cognetti

93.  The Hidden Life of Trees, Peter Wohlleben

94.  The Day of the Triffids, John Wyndham

95.  The Memory of Running, Ron McLarty

96.  The Remains of the Day, Kazuo Ishiguoro

97.  Letters of John Keats to Fanny Brawne, John Keats

98.  The Lamberts, Andrew Motion

99.  Little Brother, Cory Doctorow

100.  What I Talk About When I Talk About Running, Huraki Murakami