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
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