AusReading Month - Wrap Up Post

 

As they say in show business, that's a wrap folks!

AusReading Month is tucked away for another year. 

In a strange year of uncertainly, Covid-19 and change, it has been wonderful to pause a while to read, blog and celebrate Australian literature.

Thank you to everyone who contributed with reviews, comments and social media activity. Congratulations to the many who managed to combine two or three reading events in November with the one book - bravo!

A very special thanks goes to super-contributors, NancyElin and ShelleyRae for their outstanding reading and reviewing efforts across such diverse genres. The Fairy Bread Award goes to both of you, for your hundreds and thousands of AusReading Month words!

(incidentally International Fairy Bread day is celebrated on the 24th Nov)

For the first time ever, I have been organised enough to list all the incoming reviews in one final post, for future reference. I hope you find something inspiring in the list below, when next you wish to read an Australian book.

While you're waiting for next November's AusReading Month, you can cultivate your Australian reading habits by joining in these upcoming Australian reading events:

• Bill @The Australian Legend will be hosting Australian Women Writers Gen reading week January 17th - 23rd, 2021. We're up to Gen III, Part II. It is not necessary to have been involved in any of the previous reading weeks to join in this one. A list of possible reading choices are available via the link on Bill's name.
• Every July, to coincide with Naidoc Week, Lisa @ANZ LitLovers hosts Indigenous Literature Reading Week to encourage us to read and learn from Indigenous authors.

The List:

Susan Allott | The Silence (crime fiction) | reviewed by Grab the Lapels

Robbie Arnott | Flames (fiction) | reviewed by Reading & Viewing the World

Thea Astley | An Item From the Late News (fiction) | reviewed by Nancy

Capel Boake | Painted Clay (classic fiction) | reviewed by The Painted Garden

Karen Brooks | The Lady Brewer of London (historical fiction) | reviewed by Book'd Out

Ben Brooksby | The Naked Farmer (non-fiction) | reviewed by Book'd Out

Ada Cambridge | The Three Sisters (classic fiction) | reviewed by Adventures in Reading, Running & Working from Home

Gabrielle Carey | Only Happiness Here (biomemoir) | reviewed by Brona's Books

Lauren Aimee Curtis | Dolores (novella) | reviewed by Nancy

Antony Dapiran | City On Fire: The Fight For Hong Kong (non-fiction) | reviewed by Nancy

Tom Doig | Hazelwood (non-fiction) | reviewed by Nancy

Ceridwen Dovey | Life After Truth (fiction) | reviewed by ANZ LitLovers

Ali Cobby Eckermann | Ruby Moonlight (poetry) | reviewed by Nancy

Nigel Featherstone | Fall On Me (novella) | reviewed by Nancy

Richard Flanagan | The Sound of One Hand Clapping (fiction) | reviewed by Booker Talk

Kate Forsyth & Belinda Murrell | Searching For Charlotte (memoir) | reviewed by Book'd Out

Helen Garner | The Spare Room (novella) | reviewed by 746 Books and Brona's Books

Dennis Glover | Factory 19 (fiction) | reviewed by ANZ LitLovers

Anna Goldsworthy | Melting Moments (fiction) reviewed by Whispering Gums

Lisa Gorton | Empirical (poetry) | reviewed by Nancy

Charmaine Papertalk Green | Nganajungu Yagu (poetry) | reviewed by Nancy

Lana Guineay | Dark Wave (novella) | reviewed by ANZ LitLovers

Stephanie Gunn | Icefall (novella) | reviewed by Nancy

Rosalie Ham | The Dressmaker's Secret (historical fiction) | reviewed by ANZ LitLovers

Gail Jones | Our Shadow (fiction) | reviewed by Brona's Books

John Kinsella (Displaced: A Rural Life (memoir) | reviewed by Whispering Gums

Dominic Knight | Dictionary (non-fiction) | reviewed by Book'd Out

Dr Karl Kruszelnicki | Dr. Karl’s Surfing Through Science (non-fiction) | reviewed by Book'd Out

Penelope Layland | Things I Thought To Tell You Since I Saw You Last (poetry) | reviewed by Nancy

Bella Li | Argosy (poetry) | reviewed by Nancy

Melissa Lucashenko | Too Much Lip (fiction) | reviewed by Grab the Lapels

Charlotte McConaghy | The Last Migration (fiction) | reviewed by Brona's Books

Fleur McDonald | The Shearer's Wife (crime fiction) | reviewed by Book'd Out

Sophie McNeill | We Can't Say We Didn't Know (non-fiction) | reviewed by Nancy

Wayne Macauley | Simpson Returns (novella) | reviewed by Nancy

Melina Marchetta | The Place on Dalhousie (fiction) | reviewed by The Australian Legend

Lucie Morris-Marr | Fallen (non-fiction) | reviewed by Nancy

Les Murray | Dog Fox Field (poetry) | reviewed by Typings

Les Murray | Waiting For the Past (poetry) | reviewed by Nancy

Joanna Nell | The Great Escape from Woodlands Nursing Home (fiction) | reviewed by Book'd Out

Henry Handel Richardson | The Fortunes of Richard Mahony (classic fiction) | reviewed by Journey & Destination

Mirandi Riwoe | Stone Sky Gold Mountain (historical fiction) | reviewed by Brona's Books

Tansy Roberts | Girl Reporter (novella) | reviewed by Nancy

Josephine Rowe | Writers on Writers: Beverley Farmer (non-fiction novella) | reviewed by Brona's Books

Kirli Saunders | Kindred (poetry) | reviewed by Brona's Books

Margaret Simons | Penny Wong: Passion and Principle (biography) | reviewed by Nancy

Suzanne Smith | The Altar Boys (non-fiction) | reviewed by Nancy

Angela Thirkell | Trooper to the Southern Cross (historical fiction) | reviewed by The Australian Legend

Nicole Trope | The Girl Who Never Came Home (crime fiction) | reviewed by Book'd Out

Elizabeth and Her German Garden | Elizabeth von Armin (classic fiction) | reviewed by Brona's Books

Jessica White | Hearing Maud: A Journey For a Voice (memoir) | reviewed by Grab the Lapels

Anne Richardson Williams | Unconventional Means: The Dream Down Under (memoir) | reviewed by Grab the Lapels

Charlotte Wood | The Natural Way of All Things (fiction) | reviewed by Consumed by Ink

Georgina Young | Loner (YA) | reviewed by Brona's Books

Please let me know if I missed your AusReading Month review, so I can add it in.

See you next year!

AusReading Month 2020 Bingo

I had planned on squeezing in one more post for AusReading Month, but our Sunday in Sydney was the first super hot summer's day of the season, with temperatures going 40℃ + around NSW. After grabbing a quick early morning walk before the heat ramped up, I stayed inside with the air con, lazing around, reading. 

After lunch I summoned up enough energy to finish my Margaret Atwood post, but that was all the brain power I could manage!

Normally I'm a 1st of December Christmas tree decorator, but we will be out on Tuesday evening. So I decided to go early with the tree. At 5pm I made a Christmastini and tuned up the Christmas playlist on Spotify. I then spent a lovely hour remembering all the wonderful people in my life who have given me decorations over the years, the many holidays shared with Mr Books where we bought more decorations for the tree and the many childhood decorations belonging to the boys at various ages. 

When people ask me what my tree theme is (do people actually have tree themes?) I simply reply, 'love and memories'.

All that is to say, I woke up this morning, grateful for the cool change that blew in last night but regretful that I had no post for the last day of AusReading Month (the official wrap up post is scheduled for tomorrow).

Some of you may be wondering why I had a day left over. And some of you may have noticed that I did not post an Anticipation post. 

Blogger ate it!

The recent batch of Blogger updates has made editing posts on a touch screen laptop trickier. When I think that I am highlighting one word or a phrase to delete/cut, it will delete/cut the entire post! A quick hit of the 'undo' button would normally rectify this, but the new & improved Blogger has a 5 second autosave function (that cannot be turned off or adjusted). Before I had even realised what had happened, it had autosaved the blank page and the chance to 'undo' was gone. Forever!

The same thing happened with my Elizabeth and Her German Garden post. Thankfully I was in preview mode as part of the editing process. Although it was not possible to copy and paste the preview screen, Mr Books was able to save it as a PDF that I could then copy and paste back in. Without Mr Books' tech know-how, I wouldn't have had the heart to start that rather long post all over again. Which is how I felt about the all-but-completed Anticipation post. Gone forever. Leaving me with one empty slot for AusReading Month.

Hence the ramble/rant instead.

I can tell you that I have several Australian books almost finished. However, they will now have to count in next years stats!

• Ceridwen Dovey | Life After Truth 57% completed
• Richard Flanagan | The Living Sea of Waking Dreams 24% completed
• Richard Fidler | The Golden Maze 36% completed
• Ellen van Neerven | Throat 75% completed
• Julia Baird | Phosphoresce 23% completed

My BINGO card ended up being a hodgepodge of squares, with a plus formation through the middle. I guess that is officially two lines, which makes me a GREY NOMAD this year.

• Our Shadows | Gail Jones WA
• Stone Sky Gold Mountain | Mirandi Riwoe QLD
• The Spare Room | Helen Garner VIC
• Only Happiness Here | Gabrielle Carey NSW
• Josephine Rowe on Beverley Farmer TAS
• The Last Migration | Charlotte McConaghy FREE

In honour of AusReading Month I made my latest CC Spin list an all-Australian affair. My winning spin was Ernestine Hill's My Love Must Wait. It's a chunkster at 560 pgs, so I'm glad I have until the end of January 2021 to read it.

Hill also wrote a book called The Territory, about her time in the Northern Territory in the 1940's. Note to self - remember this for my 2021 BINGO card!

Note to self II - create a list of books and authors for Canberra and the ACT.

#AusReadingMonth2020

Kindred | Kirli Saunders #Poetry

 

2019 was the International Year of Indigenous Languages:

It is through language that we communicate with the world, define our identity, express our history and culture, learn, defend our human rights and participate in all aspects of society, to name but a few.

Through language, people preserve their community’s history, customs and traditions, memory, unique modes of thinking, meaning and expression. They also use it to construct their future. Language is pivotal in the areas of human rights protection, good governance, peace building, reconciliation, and sustainable development.

A person’s right to use his or her chosen language is a prerequisite for freedom of thought, opinion and expression, access to education and information, employment, building inclusive societies, and other values enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Many of us take it for granted that we can conduct our lives in our home languages without any constraints or prejudice. But this is not the case for everyone.

Part of the shameful role of colonial behaviour in Australia since 1788, is the conscious and unconscious effort to create a White Australia that only spoke English. This required new immigrants to forget their native language and assimilate by only speaking English, but more significantly, it completely denied Aboriginal Australians the dignity or right to speak their own languages. 

I grew up in an Australia that was almost empty of Aboriginal words.

Many rural towns and suburbs retained names derived from an Indigenous term to describe the local area and some of our plants and animals have a similar history. As a teenager, in particular, an Indigenous word would enter our language colloquially, but there was no systemic teaching, understanding or use of local languages.

Until recently.

Slowly, slowly, Indigenous languages are being revived, encouraged and celebrated. Dictionaries are being created, recordings are being made and Indigenous writers and artists are using their own words more often in their work.

Two of the poems in Saunders' collection, Kindred, caught my eye for this reason.

• My Apologies (written on Dharawal Country with Dharawal translations informed by Aunty Jodi Edwards) finishes with a list of English words, followed by their Dharawal counterparts.

as I recite a monologue | of apology | on behalf of anyone | that has ever branded you | with a name that isn't yours

• And Wirritjiribin: Lyrebird - The one who Remembers (written on Gundungurra Country with Gundungurra translations informed by Aunty Velma Mulcahy and Aunty Trish Levett) contains two stanzas that mirror each other. One is written in part English/part Gundungurra, the other is a full English translation.

arise wirritjiribin | tangara your truth

Saunders divides the book into three sections: Mother, Earth Child and Lover. Very delicately, she draws our attention to grief, loss and trauma new trees | old scars | there is trauma here

Nature and being on country is the healer. She reveals safe places, tender new growth and the journey back home. Home to country, home to culture, home to language.

Facts:

• Kirli Saunders is a proud Gunai woman, born on Gundungurra Country with ties to the Yuin, Biripi and Gadigal people.
• Interview for Kindred in the National Indigenous Times 27th May 2019.
• Saunders was made Gunai Woman NSW Aboriginal Woman of the Year 2020.
• She developed Poetry in First Languages project for Red Room Poetry.
• Inaugural winner Daisy Utemorrah Award 2019
• Winner University of Canberra ATSI Poetry prize 2019
• Shortlist ABIA Award Small Publishers' Adult Book of the Year 2020

#AusReadingMonth2020

Loner | Georgina Young #AWW

 

Oh, the existential angst!

Remember when you were 22 and you had no idea what you wanted to do or how you fitted into the big, wide world and it all seemed overwhelming, sometimes exciting, but mostly this big, huge, void of trying to be an adult, that you had no idea how to fill.

This is the story that Georgina Young has crafted in Loner. The title is a subtle play on our protagonist's name, Lona, and also sums up her beliefs about herself.

What I really liked about this story, is that Lona didn't have a big ah-ha moment or major crisis that suddenly dropped her into the adult world. It was far more real than that. Lona made some errors of judgement, nothing drastic, said no when she probably should have said yes, said yes when she probably should have said no, bumbled her way through moving out of home, caring for her sick grandfather, going out on dates, dropping out of uni because the art classes were leaving her feeling dead inside, alienating her best friend and working a couple of shit jobs.

Lona's voice was authentic and endearing, yet she was aimless, insecure and full of so much uncertainty that it made my heart ache!

One of my younger colleagues (closer in age to Lona than myself) also had a strong reaction to reading this book. She felt that she was still in the middle of Lona's angst, struggling to find meaning and purpose and confused about what it takes to become a fully fledged adult. 

I think we do ourselves (and our young people) a huge disservice, by not talking more about the journey we all go on to become an adult. It's not something that happens overnight on a certain birthday. Or when you move out of home for the first time, or get your first full-time job, or buy your first car. In fact, it's a lifelong journey that evolves with every decade and with each life experience. 

Having said that, though, there does seem to be a point in most people's mid-to-late twenties where things start to click into place. Maybe it's when you finally realise that this whole adulting thing is a lifelong journey after all and you finally feel significantly different to how you felt at 18 or 19 or 20. Or perhaps it's when everything stops being a 'first'.

Lona at 22 isn't there yet. Like the rest of us, she experienced no miraculous revelation or epiphany. There was no big character change or psychological growth. She didn't suddenly 'come of age' or work everything out. Lona simply clocked up some more life experience.

Facts:

• Winner of the Text Prize 2019
• Set in Melbourne, Victoria
• Kill Your Darlings interview with Georgina Young | 13th Aug 2020

#AusReadingMonth2020

Elizabeth and Her German Garden | Elizabeth Von Armin #NovinNov

It would be very easy to read this lovely novella about a woman called Elizabeth and her love of gardens, as an autobiography in disguise. At least, it was very easy for me to be led down this particular garden path for quite some time. 

At every turn, Elizabeth and Her German Garden felt biographical. From the diary entry dates, to the very personal, confessional tone.

Eventually, though, I had to confront the facts, that the lovely, audacious Elizabeth, had written a very modern story that combined facts and fiction, in a very fast and loose fashion. Just when you thought you had hold of a certain fact, she would skip away down a different path, throwing your certainty back in your face, with what sometimes felt like unseemly joy!

At first I felt a little cheated.

The facts known about the real Mary Annette (May) von Armin née Beauchamp are pretty basic and it can be very, very tempting to read more of her into her stories that actually exists. For a little while, I believed I had made discoveries about the real May that no previous biographer had ever discovered!

That was when I knew I had completely fallen for the charms and wiles of one Elizabeth von Armin.

Elizabeth, the writer, protected the identity and private life of May, yet happily trawled her feelings and
memories for scenes and vignettes that could be woven into her stories. She wrote about what she knew, and happily made up the rest.

For the second half of the book, I sat back and let myself be thoroughly entertained. I gave up all pretence at trying to tease out the fact from the fiction, the bio from the make believe, and I let the magic of Elizabeth's garden wash over me.

Nassenheide, Pomerania c. 1860

The specific garden she wrote about was the von Armin estate, Nassenheide in Pomerania, where Elizabeth lived and wrote from 1896 until 1908 (they had to sell the estate in 1910 to alleviate the Count's financial problems). In 1911, a recently widowed Elizabeth, moved to Switzerland and the newly built, Chalet Soleil. In 1930 she resettled to Mougins in the south of France, in a house she renamed Mas des Roses. At the beginning of WWII in 1939, she moved to the US, to be closer to her daughter, Liebet. She died in 1941 in Charleston, South Carolina. 

Elizabeth obviously loved her garden and the freedom she felt there. There was a wistful, wishful air to many of the passages and a search for belonging.

The garden is the place I go to for refuge and shelter, not the house. In the house are duties and annoyances, servants to exhort and admonish, furniture, and meals; but out there blessings crowd round me at every step-- it is there that I am sorry for the unkindness in me, for those selfish thoughts that are so much worse than they feel; it is there that all my sins and silliness are forgiven, there that I feel protected and at home, and every flower and weed is a friend and every tree a lover.

A nostalgia for a more innocent, carefree childhood appeared at times. Was she remembering her childhood years in Sydney, Australia?

Why should I not go and see the place where I was born, and where I lived so long; the place where I was so magnificently happy, so exquisitely wretched, so close to heaven, so near to hell, always either up on a cloud of glory, or down in the depths with the waters of despair closing over my head? Cousins live in it now, distant cousins, loved with the exact measure of love usually bestowed on cousins who reign in one's stead; cousins of practical views, who have dug up the flower-beds and planted cabbages where roses grew; and though through all the years since my father's death I have held my head so high that it hurt, and loftily refused to listen to their repeated suggestions that I should revisit my old home, something in the sad listlessness of the November days sent my spirit back to old times with a persistency that would not be set aside, and I woke from my musings surprised to find myself sick with longing.

I went from entranced, to cheated, to utterly delighted in less than a hundred pages. I wanted the story to be completely true, a proper biography. I wanted to think of Elizabeth rambling around her garden, chasing after her April, May and June babies, and rolling her eyes at the Man of Wrath and his conservative ways.

The people round about are persuaded that I am, to put it as kindly as possible, exceedingly
eccentric, for the news has travelled that I spend the day out of doors with a book, and that no mortal eye has ever yet seen me sew or cook.

As one would expect from a novella, Elizabeth and Her German Garden is a story with one simple central theme and very little character development. There is no crisis to be resolved or problem to be solved. It's simply a diary of one woman and her love of nature.

I don't love things that will only bear the garden for three or four months in the year and require coaxing and petting for the rest of it. Give me a garden full of strong, healthy creatures, able to stand roughness and cold without dismally giving in and dying. I never could see that delicacy of constitution is pretty, either in plants or women.

Elizabeth was also very funny, at times sarcastic and a feminist in the making. She obviously baulked at the Prussian way of doing things and found the strict gender roles expected in Germany to be restrictive. (These references in her book may be why she chose not to have the book translated into German!) Yet, it's her lively, playful character that makes this story so captivating, even more so than her descriptions of the garden.

What nonsense it is to talk about the equality of the sexes when the women have the babies!  

"Quite so, my dear," replied the Man of Wrath, smiling condescendingly. 

"You have got to the very root of the matter. Nature, while imposing this agreeable duty on the woman, weakens her and disables her for any serious competition with man. How can a person who is constantly losing a year of the best part of her life compete with a young man who never loses any time at all? He has the brute force, and his last word on any subject could always be his fist."

Elizabeth Jane Howard, in her introduction to the 1985 edition of the book, wrote that while the novella, 'appears to be an ode to nature; within that ode is a determined rebellion.' EvA wanted to do physical work in the garden, she wanted to control the money her writing produced and she wanted to be free from society's desire (as well as her husband's) to produce an heir to the estate.

I wish with all my heart I were a man, for of course the first thing I should do would be to buy a spade and go and garden, and then I should have the delight of doing everything for my flowers with my own hands and need not waste time explaining what I want done to somebody else.

 

I can imagine nothing more uncomfortable than a son-in-law, and besides, I don't think a husband is at all a good thing for a girl to have.

I loved every minute with Elizabeth in her garden.

Three early childhood years does not necessarily make you an Australian (whatever that means) with Australian sensibilities (whatever that means). But Elizabeth and her older siblings were all born in Sydney. As siblings do, they would have constantly retold and shared stories about their Sydney childhood years. The older ones would have talked about their Australian memories over family dinners and in front of their Swiss fire. 

As Gabrielle Carey said in her memoir, Only Happiness Here,

I am not certain that Elizabeth remembered her Australian beginnings but neither am I convinced that she had forgotten them altogether. 

The comments that evolved from that post had a number of bloggers wondering if we could really claim EvA as an Australian and did she even want to be remembered as being Australian. To my mind, she is as Australian, as say, Germaine Greer, Madeleine St John, and Clive James. Their particular feelings about their childhood in Australia are complex and complicated, as are their reasons for leaving, although 'cultural backwater' is a phrase that springs to mind. Elizabeth is also as Australian as J. M. Coetzee, who we now claim as Aussie, since he moved here from South Africa in 2002 (becoming an Australian citizen in 2006). They are all part of the 'Australian, maybe?' team.

Keeping secrets and protecting her privacy was something EvA was well-known for. It would seem that one of her very first secrets was about her place of birth. Perhaps it was this need to keep quiet about her early years in Australia that turned EvA into such a private adult?

Whenever I've travelled overseas (remember when we used to do that?), plaques stating that so-and-so was born here, lived here, died here were everywhere, celebrating their local writers and artists. Australia is not so good at doing this. Even the Sydney Writers Walk around Circular Quay has some rather dubious Sydney connections with the likes of James A Michiner, Charles Darwin and Anthony Trollope, simply because they visited once or wrote a passage in a book about Australia, but no Elizabeth. Why not?

I'm drawing some long bows, when all I really had to do was follow the wikipedia line, that Elizabeth von Armin was an Australian born, British novelist who married a Prussian Count.

My edition of Elizabeth and Her Garden was produced as a Project Gutenberg Australia anniversary edition in 1998.

Biblio File:

• Elizabeth and Her German Garden (1898)
• The Solitary Summer (1899)
• April Baby’s Book of Tunes (1900)
• The Benefactress (1901)
• The Adventures of Elizabeth in Rugen (1904)
• Princess Priscilla’s Fortnight (1905)
• Fräulein Schmidt and Mr Anstruther (1907)
• The Caravaners (1909)
• The Pastor’s Wife (1914)
• Christine (1917) (published as Alice Cholmondeley)
• Christopher and Columbus (1919)
• In the Mountains (1920)
• Vera (1921)
• The Enchanted April (1922)
• Love (1925)
• Introduction to Sally (1926)
• Expiation (1929)
• Father (1931)
• The Jasmine Farm (1934)
• All the Dogs of My Life (1936)
• Mr. Skeffington (1940)

#AusReadingMonth2020

#NovellasinNovember

The Spare Room | Helen Garner #AWW

I find reading Helen Garner a curious affair. There's a real push me/pull me effect, that intrigues me and wow's me, then repels me all in the same sentence.

I'm intrigued and wowed by her writing, the turn of phrase that captures a moment brilliantly. There's a candour and earthiness that seems grounded in her strong sense of self. Then there's the confronting intimacy about herself and her friends and family. Such awkward, uncomfortable personal details that make me flinch with their rawness, that seem to suggest someone not so sure of their place in the world.

Over the years, I've been impressed with Garner's habit of tackling difficult topics, especially in her non-fiction, like a father killing his own children after an access visit in This House of Grief. These books seem to suggest, that like me, she is on a constant journey to understand human nature. Why do human beings do the things they do? What are our motivations? What stories do we tell ourselves to make the truth, the hard facts palatable? How do we live with ourselves when we do something bad? Questions to make us confront our own biases and preconceptions.

Last year, I attempted to read her Diaries Vol I, but I had to stop. It felt too voyeuristic, like I was trespassing where I didn't belong. I didn't understand Garner's purpose in revealing such private details. Yes, the names were disguised with initials, but if that letter happened to belong to you, it would be easy to feel betrayed and exposed.

I am friendly with someone who will be an initial in Vol II of Garner's Diaries. She said enough water had passed under the bridge since then, but she does not feel the need to revisit the pain by reading about it. I'm beginning to understand why Garner writes so often of falling out with friends. One person's open frankness is often another persons hurtful loss of trust wrapped up in a sense of disloyalty.

Which brings me to The Spare Room. 

I've been hearing about this novella for quite some time now, and it has been lingering on my TBR pile for almost as long. I assumed it was a memoir from everything I had heard - Helen writing about the three weeks she nursed a dying friend from Sydney, who had decided to try some alternative treatments that had no scientific backing whatsoever in Melbourne.

Yet, The Spare Room is clearly and determinedly classified as a novel (or a novella). The name of the dying friend has been changed and no doubt, the timeline of events has been fictionalised to fit the constraints of the size of the book, but she is still Helen, living next door to her daughter's family in Melbourne. 

I read another fictionalised memoir earlier in the year, Homeland Elegies. I got completely caught up in trying to work out what was fact and what was fiction. I quickly established that a number of the details had been significantly changed from the author's wikipedia bio, but it became too difficult for me to tease it all out. In the end, I stopped worrying about it and sat back to enjoy the story for what it was.

I found myself applying the same approach to The Spare Room.

As a novella, it ticked all of the boxes. It was under 200 pages - just. There was one central theme or conflict with just one, Helen's, point of view. There was very little backstory, and a continuous timeline. The majority of the book was set in Melbourne, with a brief trip to Sydney at the very end. It would be possible to read this is one sitting, if one had 2-3 hrs in which to do so. But thanks to the subject matter, I was happier reading it over three nights, to fully digest the story and absorb the emotional impact.

The Spare Room is one of the books discussed in The Novel Cure: An A-Z of Literary Remedies by Ella Berthoud & Susan Elderkin. Under 'cancer, caring for someone with', this book is discussed along with Alberto Barrera Tyszka's The Sickness and A Monster Calls by Patrick Ness. They talk about the carer's agonising and the patient's denial. The rage that escalates to self-hatred and the 'bitter humour' that evolves. They finish by saying that this is,

a novel for those inclined to beat themselves up when they struggle to care for their patient 24/7....It's also a reminder that, however serious things are, it helps to laugh.

I came away from the story with a deep disgust for those people who work away in their shoddy rooms, milking sick and dying people of their money, with their bizarre, unverified treatments. 

Epigraph:

'It is a privilege to prepare the place where someone else will sleep.' Elizabeth Jolley

First Lines:

First, in my spare room, I swivelled the bed on to a north-south axis. Isn't that supposed to align the sleeper with the planet's positive energy flow, or something? She would think so.

Favourite Quote:

'What am I supposed to do?'

He put his hand on the dog's head and drew back its ears so that its eyes turned to high slits. 'Maybe that's why she's coming to stay. Maybe she wants you to be the one.'

'What one?'

'The one to tell her she's going to die.'  

Facts:

• Winner, Victorian Premier’s Literary Award for Fiction
• Winner, Queensland Premier’s Award for Fiction
• Winner, Barbara Jefferis Award
• Shortlisted, Commonwealth Writers’ Prize
• Shortlisted, Australian Literary Society Gold Medal
• Shortlisted, Colin Roderick Award
• Shortlisted, WA Premier’s Awards
• Shortlisted, NSW Premier’s Literary Award for Fiction

More Reviews:

• Cathy @746 Books
• Bill @The Australian Legend
• Lisa @ANZLit Lovers

#AusReadingMonth2020

#NovellasinNovember

Our Shadows | Gail Jones #AUSfiction

One gets to a time and place when one HAS to be done thinking about a book and what review to write for it. I have reached this point with Our Shadows by Gail Jones. 

I have done everything I can to put together some coherent, clever thoughts, from attending two zoom author talks with Avid Reader Bookshop in Brisbane and a week later with Gleebooks in Sydney, to reading other reviews and talking about the book with a friend who abandoned it half way through.

I really enjoyed Jones' previous book, The Death of Noah Glass, although it was not easy. So I felt prepared for Jones' themes of loss and grief wrapped in layers of art and ideas. However, I never really felt fully engaged with her characters or her purpose. Noah Glass got under my skin, but sisters Nell and Frances failed to become fully-fleshed characters in my mind.

About a third of the way through, I decided to engage with the book in a different way to help me get through (it was around this point my friend abandoned ship). I had noticed the number of times the word 'shadow' was being used by Jones, so I decided to list them.

• mud and shadow make him appear older.
• Let us say he is a man perpetually shadowed. He will always be in shadow.
• Frances began to accept that she lived in Nell's shadow
• their shadows were huge on the tunnel wall, they were monsters, not men
• dying in their shadows
• When Paddy saw their shadows walking alongside them, they were conglomerate creatures, lumpish and inhuman
• he felt himself splotched in shadow.
• ill-fated and shadowed.
• his lungs have been checked. No shadows.
• it was the shadow of wings passing over her
• the women trudged back, pulling their long shadows
• He was all shadows
• the story that hung shadowy

In discussion with Krissy Kneen (Avid Reader) and then with Bernadette Brennan (Gleebooks) I learnt that Jones set up the novel with a specific spatial logic whereby the scenes shadowed each other. The modern story of the sisters being followed by a chapter about their grandparent's history in a process described by Jones as the 'layers of life in your childhood that you spend the rest of your life excavating'.

The loss of the girls' parents also highlighted the shadow between generations. This family had an aching, missing step between grandparents and grandchildren, that caused a discontinuity in history and memory. Jones described it as 'looking forwards as memory leads us back'.

She used the mining processes of Kalgoorlie, WA to explore themes of darkness, what lies underground and beneath the surface. Through mining she explored different levels of knowing and interiority (a word she used several times to describe her writing).

Jones is also interested in scale and how a smaller, intimate story fits within the bigger narrative of history. In this story we glimpse the Irish potato famine, the gold rush/early settler life in Australia, the mining industry in WA and an Indigenous perspective. 

The importance and use of language is another device that Jones plays with here. The importance of naming things and naming them correctly, the act of translation and language making and what it means when we lose language through cultural appropriation or dementia. When the absence of language becomes like a shadowy presence, leaving a space or void waiting to be filled, yet full of expectation, anticipation, memory and loss. It's something that feels very close, within reach, yet impossibly far away, unable to be grasped. Which is probably a pretty good description of my reading experience!

I learnt that Australian POW's (& British, Dutch, US, Czech & Norwegian) were in Nagasaki (or nearby at least in Omuta) at the Fukuoka #17 Branch POW Camp (and other camps) when Nagasaki was bombed at the end of WWII. How had I never heard about this before? Most of the British, Dutch and Australian POW's were also survivors of the Burma railway.

I was moved by Fred's description of the pipeline and the country around Kalgoorlie:

He was surprised to realise how much he loved this landscape - the gimlets and casuarinas, the sweeping hawks and the streaking crows, the high shine of the cloudless, metallic sky. he loved the stiff grasses and the saltbush and the tiny tough flowers. The wind moving through them, and the scent of the red earth, baking. Alongside, the white pipeline stretched all the way from Perth. He loved it too. Water in the desert. And the story of how the pipeline was built.

Image source

And, for the first time I heard about the Lake Ballard statues, 'Inside Australia', by Antony Gormley. I first came across Gormley's work when it was referenced by Heather Rose in The Museum of Modern Love. So I was prepared for the eerie, startling nature of his statues, I just had no idea we had some in Australia.

They climbed a neat hill that reminded Frances of the cover of  The Little Prince, a hemisphere, like half a planet, in the middle of nowhere. From the top they stood in the salty wind and looked afar. Before them, beneath the white glaze of the sunlight, lay asterisk on asterisk of fanning trails, the footprinted patterns of earlier visitors who had tracked between the statues.

Image: Merlyn Cantwell

I'm not sure I can say that I enjoyed this novel, although I didn't dislike it either. Maybe the use of so many absences and shadows was a device to leave us feeling empty and unfulfilled on purpose.

It is now a month since I read Our Shadows, and very little has stayed with me about the story. I enjoyed researching things like the POW's in Nagasaki and looking at all the images available on Instagram for Gormley's statues, but I did not engage at an emotional level with the characters. I love a good intellectual exercise, but sometimes the storytelling can get overwhelmed in the process. Judging by the experience of the two readers I have to hand right now, I fear that is what has happened here. 

 Epigraph: 

Strange how things in the offing, once they're sensed,
Convert to things foreknown;
And how what's come upon is manifest

Only in light of what has been gone through.

Seamus Heaney
(Squarings xlviii)

Opening Line (in an untitled prologue): 

• So who is this girl, dreaming awake, of an entombed miner?

Only Happiness Here | Gabrielle Carey #AWW

 

Gabrielle Carey, with this book about Elizabeth von Armin, had the honour of being the very first author event by zoom, that I participated in during this Covid year. Also in attendance was Lisa from ANZLitLovers, who had alerted me to the event in the first place. It was lovely to be able to wave hello to someone I knew before proceedings started proper. For a thorough account of the author talk, please read Lisa's post here.

I had not read Only Happiness Here prior to the event, but it was high on my list for AusReading Month possibilities. By the end of the discussion, though, with Jessica White, it had moved up to be next on the pile! As had my desire to read Elizabeth and Her German Garden. 

Only Happiness Here refers to the sign that Elizabeth von Armin had over the door of her Swiss chalet. As Carey states in her book, Elizabeth may have been one of the 'earliest proponents of positive psychology.' It was this approach to happiness that attracted Carey. Enough so for her to reread all twenty-one of von Armin's books before embarking on a trip to the British Library to read her letters and diaries as well.

This is very firmly in the camp of biblio-memoir or bio-memoir. Carey is very much a part of the story, as she rereads the books and interprets what she finds there. It is also her personal search for happiness and peace of mind, as she delves into von Armin's life, looking for clues or signs on how to be happy. 

My quest was about how to understand Elizabeth's temperament and her way of seeing things, how she maintained such buoyancy, such apparent relish of daily living.

She eventually hits upon nine Principles of Happiness According to Elizabeth von Armin - freedom, privacy, detachment, nature & gardens, physical exercise, a kindred spirit, sunlight, leisure and finally, creativity. 

Carey developed each principle into a chapter or section that interspersed von Armin's writing with known facts about her life. Of which, there are not as many as a biographer would usually like. This was all part of von Armin's desire to remain very private, and happy. Towards the end of her life, she burned a large number of her 'notes and diaries in what she referred to as "the holocaust"'. Which, naturally, leads the rest of us to surmising stuff about how she felt and thought via the actions and words of her characters. 

So the first fact many of you may not know about Elizabeth is that she was born in Australia. In the prestigious suburb of Kirribilli in Sydney, to be precise, on the 31st August, 1866. She was christened Mary Annette Beauchamp, and known as May by her family and friends. Her home for the first three years of her life was most likely Beulah House (converted into an apartment block in 1908 and now only remembered by the name of nearby Beulah St and wharf). I've said it before, but Australians are hopeless at commemorating the birth places and homes of our well-known authors.

Her father, Henry Heron Beauchamp, came from an artistic, well-to-do family in London. He emigrated to Australia in 1850 to set up a business as a shipping merchant. His business thrived and in 1855 he married Elizabeth Weiss Lassetter (known as Louey). All six of the Beauchamp children were born in Sydney.

One of Henry's brothers, Arthur, moved with his young family to New Zealand in 1869. His son Harold is the father of Katherine Mansfield, making May and Katherine first cousins once removed. Katherine's last letter, before her untimely death, was to her cousin May.

In 1870, Henry and his Lassetter brother-in-law, decided to move their families back to the Continent. Enjoying three years in Switzerland together, before settling in London.

As May got older, she kept her Australian heritage very quiet. Any odd accent or 'twang' that people noticed in her voice, she would put down to 'Irish connections'.

Being a 'colonial' in class-conscious England was not much fun and could often be a hindrance to making one's way into good society. Curiously, this slur of the 'convict stain' still loomed large in the imagination of many of the Brits that I got to know in the year I lived in London (1991). I imagine that the 'good-natured' ribbing I received was a watered down version of attitudes a hundred years prior.

Carey wonders if May's 'awareness of her Australianness (was) just another one of Elizabeth's deep secrets?'

She married Count Henning August von Armin-Schlagenthin on the 6th February, 1891, effectively becoming a Prussian Countess overnight. She had three daughters in quick succession - Eva (1891), Elisabeth (1893) and Beatrix (1894), after which, the Count was apparently banished from her bedroom...until 1899 when Felicitas was born, then Henning-Bernd in 1902.

At the beginning of 1898, she sent her first manuscript, Elizabeth and Her German Garden, off to the publishers. It was published in September of that year under the pen-name, Elizabeth. After an initial celebratory remark in her diary, the following days were scrawled angrily with 'rows with H'. May never provided any detail about these rows, which leaves the reader to look for clues in her novels.

If happiness was something she often enjoyed privately, depression was also something she believed should be borne individually....Elizabeth believed that sharing misery only increased the gloom and risked infecting others. 

We know some of the basic facts about the less happy times in Elizabeth's life - the Count's arrest for embezzlement, the death of Felicitas as a teenager, her fear of ageing, the loss of their family home in Pomerania and Henning's sudden death in 1910 - but not how May felt about them. Once again, the only clues are in her books when her characters go through similar experiences.

Despite times of depression and sadness, May continued to find joy and solace in nature, especially gardens and appreciating beauty.

The rest of her books where published with the tag 'by the author of Elizabeth and Her German Garden' causing a lifetime of supposition and speculation in literary circles, although her friends, like E. M. Forster, H. G. Wells and Bertrand Russell, were well aware of her writing.

I finished Carey's book with a very strong desire to get to know May better. I will try to source her two more recent biographies, but in the meantime, I will start at the beginning of EvA's oeuvre with Elizabeth and Her German Garden, which will have the happy coincidence of counting for an #AusReadingMonth title as well as the #NovNov challenge.

Did Carey also find happiness in the end?

Like the rest of us, and like May, the answer is yes and no.

The trick, it seems, is to focus on the happy.

Not long after, the lockdown was announced and during the weeks of working from home, I took to having lunch under the frangipani tree. Oftentimes, following my salad and cheese and seeded bread, I stretched out on the picnic blanket, and as the world turned in turmoil, I lay in the dappled sunlight pretending I was Elizabeth von Armin.

Facts:

• The International Society Devoted to Scholarship on Elizabeth von Armin has some amazing articles and essays, including the one that led me to them, Family Life on Kirribilli Point in the 1860's: The Enigma of Elizabeth's Birthplace (Jennifer Walker, posted October 27. 2019). This piece includes a copy of G W Peacock's Government House ca 1850, which when blown up to expose the background, we can clearly see Beulah House and its gardens.
• There is a 1958 biography by one of her daughters, Elizabeth of the German Garden.
• Another in 1986 by Karen Usborne, Elizabeth the Author of Elizabeth and Her German Garden.
• And again in 2013 with Jennifer Walker's, Elizabeth of the German Garden - A Literary Journey.

Elizabeth von Arnim Monument in Buk, Poland

#AusReadingMonth2020

Stone Sky Gold Mountain | Mirandi Riwoe #AWW

I wasn't sure what to expect when I started Stone Sky Gold Mountain by Mirandi Riwoe. A gold rush story set on the Palmer River in Queensland (an area I did not realise even had a gold rush!) through the eyes of Chinese settlers, sounded intriguing. However, I struggle with blokey books about blokey men doing blokey stuff in the wild - which gold rush/pioneer books can often be - so I tempered my intrigue.

In a number of interviews, Riwoe mentions that she writes of things that move her. 

Naturally, they end up moving her readers too. In fact, her characters get under your skin and become a part of your daily life. You feel like you have inhabited their world. You think about them between reading sessions. You fear for their safety and sanity. You feel their pain and trepidation. You feel their disconnection and isolation. 

Far North Queensland becomes a character too. You could feel the heat, the humidity, the dust and dirt, the unrelenting nature of nature.

During Riwoe's research for this novel, she discovered that Cooktown and the Palmer River area, during the goldrush era, actually had a population that was significantly more Chinese than Anglo. Yet our settler narrative only ever talks about white people exploring and moving into the area. This was the trigger for her story.

The initial inspiration for my work is probably to do with what is of personal interest to me – being Eurasian, I like to write of those who are culturally hybridized or marginalized, and I also like to write of women and feminist issues. AsiaLink: University of Melbourne

From there it was only natural to weave in a story about a brother and a sister fleeing poverty in China, to find their fortunes in the goldrush of Australia. The sister could not safely stay on the goldfields as a woman, so she disguised herself as a boy. The only other women in Maytown were prostitutes or the wives of merchants. (Incidentally, Maytown is also the setting for Thea Astley's story It's Raining in Mango).

Some of the scenes are tough to read, especially the treatment of the Indigenous population by both the whites and the Chinese characters. The women don't always fair much better. The pecking order is clearly described and belies our belief that Australia is a classless society. The British and Chinese early settlers, all brought their own prejudices to bear on their new country; prejudices we are still trying to live down.

Many of the Chinese came to Australia with the sole intention of plundering the gold, making their fortune, then returning home as soon as possible. Getting to know Australia, or fitting in, was not part of the plan. When making a fortune didn't pan out as expected, staying in Australia became caught up in a sense of failure and exile. Australia was not a welcoming place, neither did it feel like home. That sense of disconnect and alienation became a daily lived experience. The isolation could send you mad or into the seedy rooms of the local opium den. The Australian landscape and society never lived up to their memories of China. Yet, as one of the characters made their way home again at the end, they realised how much personal freedom they were giving up by doing so.

Henry Handel Richardson's The Fortunes of Richard Mahony, was in the back of mind as I read Riwoe's goldrush story. Both stories reveal the harshness of this way of life, the sense of discrimination and displacement, the degradation of character and environment, regardless of your country of origin. The dream of striking it rich and the sense of adventure that started such a journey, inevitably ended in heartache and madness. The gold fields were an unforgiving place, full of broken dreams.

Stone Sky Gold Mountain first came to my attention when it was shortlisted for the Queensland Literary Award earlier in the year. I'm glad I tracked it down. It was a fascinating peek into another point of view of early Australia colonialism complete with ghosts, hardship and lawlessness. The violence and injustice was tempered by the tenderness of friendship in unexpected places. Riwoe is an elegant storyteller and she takes you on an unforgettable journey. 

Epigraphs:

• To search for gold was like trying to catch the moon at the bottom of the sea. Taam Sze Pui
• Taam Sze Pui (or Tom See Poy) was a Chinese Australian shopkeeper in Innisfail, Queensland. He spent five (unsuccessful) years panning for gold on the Palmer River goldfields, before working in market gardens and banana plantations, eventually setting up a shop in 1883.
• I wish to inform you that they are only strangers in this land themselves. Many of them have only been here a few moons, and none for more than one of two generations. Jan Chin from a letter to his father in Shanghai, The SMH, 1858

Opening Line:

• Ying dreams of her little brother, Lai Cheng.

Facts:

• Winner 2020 Queensland Literary Award – Fiction Book Award
• Winner of the inaugural ARA Historical Novel Prize 2020.

#AusReadingMonth 2020

AusReading Month - Promotion

 

AusReadingMonth has three ways to share your love of Australian literature - celebration, anticipation and promotion. You can combine all three in one post or spread them out over three separate posts. 

 

This week I'm in PROMOTION mode.

• This is your chance to shout-out your favourite book event, bookshop, or blogger that features Australian books. You can also promote a publisher or author website that has caught your eye this year.
• During this 'unprecedented' year, our usual way of hearing about new books by attending events at our favourite bookshops or literary festivals has changed. How have you found out about new online book events featuring Australian authors and books?
• Which ones stood out?

I have a number of Australian reading events  and bloggers that I would like to promote this year. Given that I found out about most of the events below thanks to other bloggers, I would like to pay this forward, to help you also find new Australian bookish events to explore.

• Writing NSW hosts a yearly event honouring an Australian author who has played a significant role in our literary culture. This year's event was Honouring Katharine Susannah Prichard. I was all set to attend in August, when a certain virus changed all that. The lovely folk at Writing NSW have redesigned the event to suit an online format. The celebration will begin on Monday 9th November. Many of my regular readers will not be surprised to hear that Nathan Hobby will be playing a pivotal role in proceedings.
• Bill @Australian Legend hosts an Australian Women Writers Gen reading week in January. He encourages us to think about how different generations of women writers fit into the social and cultural contexts of their time. January 2021 will see us tackling Gen III Part II. This year I read Mena Calthorpe's The Dyehouse, which slots in under the 'social realism' tag. In 2021 I will finally read The Pea-Pickers by Eve Langley (one of Bill's favourites) to capture the 'modernism' strand. I hope he considers running Gen III Part III the following year, so I can complete the set with Bush/Pioneering.
• Every year in July, Lisa @ANZ Lit Lovers host Indigenous Literature Week to encourage us to read and review books written by Indigenous authors. I've been meaning to read Kim Scott's award winning Benang for years, so I'm putting it out there, that this will be the book I read for 2021!
• The Australian Women Writers Challenge is a year-long commitment to read books by Australian women and to link your reviews to the site. The aim is to build up a bank of reviews to 'redress' the gender imbalance still evident in most major publications and newspapers.
• Avid Reader Bookshop in Brisbane have done a tremendous job during Covid to keep their author event program going. I've attended two of their free online events so far. Support their efforts by buying a book or two while you're at it. Visit their extensive events page here.
• Gleebooks in Sydney also has an extensive free author event program. I've only attended one so far, mostly because their events have often clashed with other things I have on (like bookclub and late work nights).
• My bookshop has also held a few free online author events. Our point of difference is a live filming of the author chat with a covid-safe number of guests. Everyone else is able to view via our facebook events page at home, or later, at their own convenience, via the youtube link. I have attended all but one of these events. 

I look forward to hearing about which book events you may have attended or discovered this year. I'm sure I can always fit one more into my schedule!

#AusReadingMonth2020

Australian Novellas

A few days ago, what I thought would be a very simple request to fulfil - to list a few Australian novellas to help those of you keen to combine two reading events with the one book - turned out to be anything but!

I naively believed that all I had to do was google 'Australian novellas' and there would be a lovely definitive list compiled by some intrepid Aussie list-making novella aficionado. 

But no. 

That has not turned out to be case at all. 

Wikipedia listed a mere handful of choices (included below) but I knew there had to be more.

Naturally, one of the first problems encountered was determining the exact nature of a novella. 

A word count of 17,500 to 39,999 is considered to be the norm, but I've also sited a 10,000 to 50,000 word limit range. Whichever word count you finally settle on though, makes no difference to the average reader in the end, as most books do not come with that kind of detail included.

Cathy and Rebecca have hit upon the 150 page mark with an upper limit of 200 pages. But, of course, it then depends on which edition of the book you are reading. As you can see, it was very easy to become pedantic and get caught up in the details, at the expense of making a list, that might actually be useful.

I also discovered that a novella usually (but not always) contains one central conflict, often from one point of view. Backstory is brief or non-existant, and most will have one location within a continuous time frame. A novella can usually be read in one sitting.

So here it is, after a bit of scrounging - a list!

Australian Novellas:

• Carly Cappielli - Listurbia
• Christy Collins - The End of Seeing
• Lauren Aimee Curtis - Dolores (review by NancyElin)
• Nick Earls - Wisdom Tree series (Noho, Juneau, Vancouver, Venice, Gotham)
• Delia Falconer - The Lost Thoughts of Soldiers
• Beverley Farmer - Alone 
• The Seal Woman 
• The House in the Light
• Nigel Featherstone - Fall On Me (review by NancyElin)
• Helen Garner - The Children's Bach 
• The Spare Room (review by Cathy @746Books)
• Lana Guineay - Dark Wave (review by Lisa @ANZ Lit Lover)
• Stephanie Gunn - Icefall (review by NancyElin)
• George Haddad - Populate and Perish
• Marion Halligan - Spidercup
• Elizabeth Jolley - Miss Peabody's Inheritance
• Cate Kennedy - Love & Desire: Four Modern Australian Novellas
• Michelle de Kretser - Springtime: A Ghost Story
• Mary-Rose MacColl - The Water of Life
• Colleen McCullough - The Ladies of Missalonghi
• Wayne Macauley - Simpson Returns (review by NancyElin)
• David Malouf - An Imaginary Life
• Fly Away Peter (review by Marianne @Let's Read)
• Drusilla Modjeska - Ripe To Tell
• Joseph Mostafa - Offshore
• Rose Mulready - The Bonobo's Dream
• Hoa Pham - The Other Shore
• Doris Pilkington - Follow the Rabbit-Proof Fence
• Julie Proudfoot - The Neighbour
• Jane Rawson - Formaldehyde
• Jane Jervis Read - Midnight Blue and Endlessly Tall
• Mirandi Riwoe - The Fish Girl (review by Sue @Whispering Gums)
• Tansy Roberts _ Girl Reporter (review by NancyElin)
• Stephen Scourfield - Unaccountable Hours: Three Novellas
• Nicole Smith - Sideshow
• Elizabeth von Armin - Elizabeth and Her German Garden
• Bryan Walpert - Late Sonata
• Marlee Jane Ward - Welcome to Orphancorp
• Patrick White - The Cockatoos (review by Bill @Australian Legend)
• Daniel Davis Wood - Blood and Bone
• Stephen Wright - A Second Life

The Griffith Review Novella Project is now up to its 7th edition. Some of the novellas can be read online through the links provided. You can only read a few for free per month, though, so click wisely.

If you know of any more Australian Novellas, please let me know.

#AusReadingMonth2020

AusReading Month - Celebration

 

AusReadingMonth has three ways to share your love of Australian literature - celebration, anticipation and promotion. You can combine all three in one post or spread them out over three separate posts. 

Celebration is all about what you've read this year. 

Simply list, collage and/or discuss the Australian books you've read since last AusReading Month.

• Tell us who you are and where you are in the world.
• What were your favourites Australian books or authors this past year?
• Did you favour a certain genre or author this year?
• Which ones do you recommend?

Firstly, for those of you new to Brona's Books, I am a Sydney-based blogger now into my 12th year of blogging. My favourite genres are historical fiction and the classics. I enjoy reading memoirs, nature books and history texts. Some of my all-time favourite Australian books include the Edith trilogy by Frank Moorhouse, The Fortunes of Richard Mahony by Henry Handel Richardson, Dirt Music by Tim Winton and The Ladies of Missalonghi by Colleen McCullough.

When I sat down to prepare this post about my Australian reads over the past 12 months, I was rather disappointed to say the least.

Only nine fiction books, seven non-fiction and a handful of kids' titles. That's it! 

Given I've read about 62 books this year (not counting the kids' books, which takes me to about 90) plus several short stories since the beginning of the year, I'm just not sure how on earth I only managed to read 16 Australian books?

The good news is I have four more Australian books waiting to be reviewed in November, and I'm halfway through four more.

• Gentlemen at Gyang Gyang | Miles Franklin (Brent of Bin Bin) (first published in 1956 and set in the Monaro region of NSW. G@GG is a sweet rural romance)
• The Dictionary of Lost Words | Pip Williams (a story about the women who helped to create the OED)
• A Testament of Character | Sulari Gentill (book 10 in the utterly delightful Rowland Sinclair series set in 1930's Sydney, although this one took us from Singapore to the east coast of America)
• The White Girl | Tony Birch (set in 1960's rural Australia, highlighting the lives of an Aboriginal grandmother and her granddaughter)
• The Rain Heron | Robbie Arnott (eco-dystopian probably set in Tasmania, beautifully imagery)
• The Good Turn | Dervla McTiernan (an Irish writer now living in WA. This is her third crime novel set in Galway)
• The Cardboard Crown | Martin Boyd (published in 1952, part memoir, part fiction about a creative Melbourne based family who pine for Mother England)
• Cherry Beach | Laura McPhee-Browne (a Melbourne based writer who has written an angsty young adult story about two friends who decide to move to Canada after they finish school)
• The Dyehouse | Mena Calthorpe (published in 1961, a fascinating, absorbing story about working and living conditions in Inner West, Sydney. Very evocative and highly recommended)

Three of my fiction reads were classics, two were historical fiction, one was contemporary, one eco-dystopian and two were crime fiction. 

I really enjoyed all three classics, although The Dyehouse stands out from the crowd.

I loved The Rain Heron, although the ending didn't quite live up the beginning. The White Girl was also an engrossing story and created a great discussion with my book group.

The stand out non-fiction reads were Fathoms and Truganini.

• 7 Steps to get Your Child Reading | Louise Park (a guide for parents to help their kids love reading)
• Truganini | Cassandra Pybus (a tragic story about the 'last' Aboriginal person in Tasmania)
• Fathoms | Rebecca Giggs (a WA based author writing about what she learnt about whales after witnessing a beaching event at her local beach)
• 488 Rules For Life | Kitty Flanagan (a funny take on how many rules we need to live our lives) 
• Ten Doors Down | Robert Tickner (a touching adoption memoir)
• Sand Talk | Tyson Yunkaporta (an Indigenous perspective on what we need to protect and save our world)
• The Feel Good Guide to Menopause | Nicola Gates (an up-to-date book on what we now know about menopause - still not much, but getting better)

If you would like to understand what it was like to live in Australia post WWII, then try The White Girl or The Dyehouse. 

To get a sense of our how colonialism has affected our Indigenous population, then Truganini is the book for you.

If you want to read the future of Australian literature then Robbie Arnott is your man with The Rain Heron (but also try his earlier book, Flames).

As for cosy crime, you cannot go past Sulari Gentill's series. You should start at the beginning though to enjoy each and every one in order.

#AusReadingMonth2020