Stories & Shout Outs #19

During this pause in my writing reviews phase, I will use Stories and Shout Outs to list my week of reading, blogging and other bookish things.

List #1 What I'm Reading Right Now

• Becoming by Michelle Obama - enough people were kind enough last week to convince me to keep on with book this when I mentioned that I had got a little bogged down in the 1980's.
• How Green Was My Valley by Richard Llewellyn - #Dewithon19
• Accidental Feminists by Jane Caro

List #2 What I've Finished - Short Stories

Meanjin A-Z 

• Intelligence Quotient by Georgia Blain - not particularly memorable; made me feel lonely.

Griffith Review 63 Writing the Country

• Crossing the Line: Unknown unknowns in a liminal, tropical world by Ashley Hay - where I learnt for the first time that "current calculations suggest that the tropics are moving south at around 85km each decade." OMG! Really!?
• Lost and Found in Translation; Who Can Talk to Country? by Kim Mahood - lots of interesting stuff about songlines, stories, belonging, time and memory.

Desire by Haruki Murakami

• The Second Bakery Attack - odd little story about how hunger can drive you to crime or is that how an unfinished crime drives you to hunger?
• On Seeing the 100% Perfect Girl One Beautiful April Morning - or how you think of the perfect pick up line hours after the event!

List #3 Books in Books

Kim Mahood's essay (see list #2) was full of book references: 

• DH Lawrence, Kangaroo, Sons and Lovers & The Lost Girl. 
• Patrick White, Voss. 
• Randolph Stow, To the Islands, Tourmaline, Midnite, The Merry-go-round in the sea and Visitants. 
• Robyn Davidson, Tracks. 
• Bruce Chatwin, The Songlines. 
• Nicolas Rothwell, Belomor. 
• Philip Jones, Ochre and Rust.

List #4 New to the Pile

Islands by Peggy Frew

The Pillow Book by Sei Shonagon

The Feel Good Guide to Menopause by Dr Nicola Gates
Literary Places by Sarah Baxter (very excited about this one - just look at that cover!)

List #5 Shout Outs

• Cirtnecce @Mockingbirds, Looking Glasses and Prejudices has decided to read WOMEN ONLY authors during March in honour of International Women's Day on the 8th. Except for Richard Llewellyn, which I've already committed myself to read this month, I will endeavour to read as many women authors as I can, for the rest of the month.
• Thanks to #Dewithon19 I've just discovered that Chris @Calmgrove has another blog dedicated to all things Arthur called Pendragonry. It looks delightful.

The ones that got away...

At this time of year, more than any other time, I abandon books at a rate of knots.

So many books don't make it past the first cull (cover design and back cover blurb). The second cull occurs at the end of the first page when a huge number of books simply get put back on the shelf for someone else to be tempted by.

A number of books come my way thanks to word of mouth and interesting reviews - these books still have to pass the first page test. Sometimes I know that the writing is just fine and the story intriguing enough that it might work for me, if I was in the right mood for it, but that mood is not right now.

Then there are the ones that take me along for the ride...until about the 50-100 pg mark.

These are the books I want to like for various reasons, but it gradually dawns on me that they're just not working. I continue a little further to see if it's a temporary glitch or not. And then I abandon ship.

Life is too short, and there are too many books I really want to read, to waste my time on one that's not getting me there.

Books that didn't make it past the first cull

• Paris Echo by Sebastian Faulks (I always think that I should like Faulks' work because of my love of historical fiction, but the back cover blurbs never tempt me and my one foray into Faulks' territory, Charlotte Gray, left me cold).
• A Ladder to the Sky by John Boyne (another author I feel that I should like, but I prefer his junior fiction for kids).
• two old men dying by Tom Keneally (great cover, except for the uncapitalised title, but the back blurb - meh).

Books that didn't make the second cull

• The Silence of the Girls by Pat Barker (sounded intriguing, but the first few paragraphs failed to capture my attention or mood).
• The Life to Come by Michelle de Kretser (maybe, one day).
• Milkman by Anna Burns (will need to be in the right mood for this one).
• Less by Andrew Sean Greer (the first few pages left me sighing and not in a good way).
• The Overstory by Richard Powers (too wordy for my mood on the day I tried).
• So Much Life Leftover by Louis de Bernieres (I loved an adored Captain Corelli's Mandolin so much way back when that I keep hoping one of his other books will do the same. They never have, although I've heard promising things about Birds Without Wings).

The 50 pg cull

• An Ocean of Minutes by Thea Lim (I wanted to like this book & it started off fine, but I eventually realised that I was on the side of the mega-time travelling corporation rather than the annoying, whining protagonist!)

Should I give any of these books a second go in the new year, if the right circumstances or mood comes my way?

Stories & Shout Outs #16

I had forgotten all about my semi-regular Stories & Shout-Out meme, until a recent bout of blog-itis had me scrabbling for blog post ideas. The lovely, supportive NancyElin reminded me of this meme and a time when I used to have lazy, quiet Sunday evenings in which to write.

My Sunday evenings may no longer be quiet or conducive to writing and reflecting, but I'll give it a shot!

As many of you know, I enjoy checking out the longlists and shortlist of many literary awards. I know I will never read ALL these books, but I do like to see what is being rated by others, all around the world, as great contemporary literature.

One of the longlists I genuinely look forward to every year is the Canadian Giller Prize, partly for the pleasure of seeing some of my favourite bloggers reading and reviewing it as part of the Giller Prize Shadow jury.
I'm particularly keen to get my hands on a copy of Vi as I loved Thuy's previous two novels.

As for this year's Booker Prize...to say I'm feeling meh about it is an understatement.
I have The Overstory on my TBR pile, but I don't feel very inspired at all.

However, I have been inspired by Adam @Roof Beam Reader and his Sunday Salon.
With my life the way it is at the moment, I often don't actually read it until Thursday, but I really like his views on the world and his ability to source interesting articles across a broad spectrum of topics.

Mr Books & I started a travel blog a couple of years ago on the strength of our trip to Cuba.
We'd had lots of interest and questions about how best to travel around Cuba, so thought that we could document what we had learnt.
Like most of the stuff we dream up, it was a really great idea!
But finding the time to turn it into something we could be really proud of has been a struggle.
Life has thrown so much stuff at us in the past two years, I wonder how we're both still standing sometimes.
Part of our resilience though, comes from our many wonderful, happy travel memories.
Given that longer form travel posts are not in the foreseeable future, we decided to start a photography meme (called Thursday Travels) that could keep the site active as well as remind us of many of the amazing places we've experienced.
We hope you can drop by, share a pic of your own and spread the word to other bloggers who like to travel and take photos of the world around them.
#ThursdayTravels

Currently Reading:

Les Miserables - chapter a day
I'm back on track with this, just in time for Hugo to wax lyrical about young love - ugh!!

Now We Shall Be Entirely Free by Andrew Miller
I loved Pure (in a love/hate kind of way) but I'm loving this one in a less complicated fashion.
It's fabulous historical fiction, not done justice by the cover or the title.

The cover is actually quite lovely up close, but it doesn't jump out, visually, on a bookshelf with lots of other bright, new releases. I'm 3/4 of the way through and have so far failed to see why this cover was chosen or why the title is relevant.

The Nice and the Good by Iris Murdoch
A mystery with a Diary of a Provincial Lady twist?

As a write this, I realise that I am seeing some connections between these two books:

• families with unusual ideas about life and love.
• the sea.
• a mystery that follows us (and the main character/s) all the way through the story.
• post traumatic war disorder.

Coming Up:

FrankenFest with Marg @Books in Bloom to combine with The Classics Club's Goth Month.

I'm contemplating joining in or instigating some kind of Moby Dick readalong next year.

August 2019 will be 200 yrs since the birth of Herman Melville

The book has 135 chapters plus epilogue.

There is also the Moby Dick Big Read podcast.
I wanted to somehow combine the two as I've heard this classic can be a difficult one to get through on one's own.

My Weekend:

One of the things keeping me busy at the moment is my garden in the mountains.

It's mostly an Australian native garden, created by the original owner.
I've spent the past few years, tidying it up and making it my own as time and weather permits.
This weekend I thoroughly weeded, pruned and replanted one small section of it.
Finishing it off with some lovely, new, sweet-smelling chipped mulch.

I'm not thinking about how many more weekends I will need to do the entire garden!