#6degrees February

#6degrees is a monthly meme hosted by Kate @Books Are My Favourite and Best.

Oftentimes I haven't read the starting book for this meme, but I can assure you that I only play the next 6 books with ones I have actually read. 

If I've read the book during this blogging life, then I include my review, otherwise, you just have to take my word for it!

This month the starting book is Lincoln in the Bardo by George Sauders.

Are you game?

Old image alert - Kate @Books Are My Favourite & Best now hosts #6Degrees but this is a good refresh of the rules.

I've been rather distracted and all over the place these past few months.
November & December flew by in a blur of grief and busyness.
I sat down to write a January #6degrees post but inspiration failed me completely.

I'm hoping that February will turn things around.

1. It's my birthday month
2. I'm turning 50
3. It's my party & I'll cry if I want to
4. I'm enjoying my first w/e at home for ages
5. A lovely cool change blew in to Sydney during the week
6. I've had my first Saturday morning sleep-in this year
7. Lincoln in the Bardo was one of my favourite books of 2017

So where to next?
Lincoln in the Bardo was a courageous choice for the Man Booker Prize judges.
Many people are still struggling with the whole international (i.e. American) nature of the prize now.
And Lincoln in the Bardo was not, and is not, a conventional book.
It's structure and format frustrates and annoys many readers.
I however loved it from start to finish.

I had the same response to an earlier Booker winner that played around with structure and format, that many readers also failed to warm to... The Luminaries by Eleanor Catton.

One of the things I loved about it was Catton's ability to evoke such a strong sense of place.
It would be easy to now jump to Tim Winton as being another writer who has that amazing ability to write about place with such power, but I'm going to take a step to the right and pick Robert Drewe instead. His memoir styled story, Shark Net, struck a huge chord with me, even though I did not grow in WA in the 1960's!

Madeleine St John's The Women in Black is about a young girl coming of age in Sydney during the late 1950's. Even though I did not grow up in Sydney during this time, I did visit Sydney a lot in the 70's. Sydney in the 70's was obviously not that different to Sydney in the 50's - I recognised pretty much everything that St John mentioned.

Reading stories that reflect your own life and your own experiences are important.
Perhaps readers in England, Europe and the US don't feel this as strongly, but it took quite some time for Australians to feel comfortable with their fellow Australians telling stories to and about us.
I could write post after post on the Cultural Cringe that infected our artistic life for so long.
My childhood was spent reading about children living in England and Northern America in particular. The first story that I remember reading, that was set in Australia, occurred during my teen years when I discovered Pastures of the Blue Crane by H. F. Brinsmead in my school library.

Reading a book that was set in an area that I knew so well was such a powerful validation of identity. It was the first time that I was consciously aware of a sense of belonging and pride for this country that I was born into. 

Pastures of the Blue Crane also was my first introduction to an Indigenous perspective in literature.

Since that time, I have read many more stories and texts by indigenous authors.

The most recent was Dark Emu Black Seeds by Bruce Pascoe.

Lots of important ideas and issues were raised and discussed by Pascoe in this book, but one that continues to play through my mind is the idea of 'to the victor goes the spoils.'

History is so often written by the 'winners' - those that hold the power and all the resources.

Stories from the perspective of minority groups and the less powerful are forgotten, discounted or ignored completely.

In an attempt to address this imbalance one my current non-fiction reads is Inglorious Empire: What the British Did to India by Shashi Tharoor.

From a story about ghosts and letting go, we journeyed through sense of place and belonging, to a history populated with the ghosts of inglorious misdeeds. 

The trick, it would seem, after learning how to let go, is to move forward.

Which leads us to March #6degrees where our starting book will be The Beauty Myth by Naomi Wolf.