It's Monday! What Are You Reading?

It's Monday! And it's the last calendar day of winter here in the Southern Hemisphere.
And I, for one, sing hallelujah!

I'm over feeling cold. I'm over all these layers of clothes and I'm definitely over the heating bills!

This afternoon, after work, as I sat here preparing this post, I realised that the setting sun was not only setting later than it did last Monday, but it had shifted further North.
Today the late afternoon sun created lovely window shaped patterns on my kitchen wall above the table where I type.
I then remembered that one of the pleasures of being in a new home, is discovering the way the light moves across the spaces at different times of the year.

Naturally, I had to try and capture the moment (the vase contains a pretty bunch of Geraldton Wax).

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This weekend I enjoyed a book event called Honouring Randolph Stow at the NSW State Library. I made an afternoon of it by lunching out at the nearby Hyde Park Barracks Cafe.

Earlier on this year I read Ru by Kim Thuy and last night I picked up her latest book, Man to read this week.

Mãn has three mothers: the one who gives birth to her in wartime, the nun who plucks her from a vegetable garden, and her beloved Maman, who becomes a spy to survive. Seeking security for her grown daughter, Maman finds Mãn a husband - a lonely Vietnamese restaurateur who lives in Montreal.

Thrown into a new world, Mãn discovers her natural talent as a chef. Gracefully she practices her art, with food as her medium. She creates dishes that are much more than sustenance for the body: they evoke memory and emotion, time and place, and even bring her customers to tears.

Mãn is a mystery - her name means 'perfect fulfillment', yet she and her husband seem to drift along, respectfully and dutifully. But when she encounters a married chef in Paris, everything changes in the instant of a fleeting touch, and Mãn discovers the all-encompassing obsession and ever-present dangers of a love affair.

Full of indelible images of beauty, delicacy and quiet power, Mãn is a novel that begs to be savoured for its language, its sensuousness and its love of life.

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Last week the Classics Club Spin spun me A Far Cry From Kensington by Muriel Spark.

I've only read The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie by Spark before, so I'm looking forward to trying another.

My edition is one of the lovely Virago Modern Classics designer collection.

Cover design "Calyx" by Lucienne Day

Mrs. Hawkins, the majestic narrator of 'A Far Cry from Kensington', takes us well in hand, and leads us back to her threadbare years in postwar London. There, as a fat and much admired young war widow, she spent her days working for a mad, near-bankrupt publisher ("of very good books") and her nights dispensing advice at her small South Kensington rooming-house.

At work and at home Mrs. Hawkins soon uncovered evil: shady literary doings and a deadly enemy; anonymous letters, blackmail, and suicide. With aplomb, however, Mrs. Hawkins confidently set about putting things to order, little imagining the mayhem which would ensue.

Now decades older, thin, successful, and delighted with life in Italy -- quite a far cry from Kensington - Mrs. Hawkins looks back to all those dark doings, and recounts how her own life changed forever.

She still, however, loves to give advice: "It's easy to get thin. You eat and drink the same as always, only half....I offer this advice without fee; it is included in the price of this book.

My new release read for the week is Slade House by David Mitchell. I loved The Bone Clocks last year and hope this new one lives up to my expectations.

Prepare to be chilled, electrified and entertained - a gem of a novel from 'one of the most brilliantly inventive writers of this, or any country' (Independent).

Walk down narrow, clammy Slade Alley. Open the black iron door in the right-hand wall.

Enter the sunlit garden of an old house that doesn't exactly make sense.
A stranger greets you by name and invites you inside.

At first, you won't want to leave. Too late, you find you can't . . .

A taut, intricately woven, reality-warping tale that begins in 1979 and comes to its turbulent conclusion at the wintry end of October, 2015. Born out of the short story David Mitchell published on Twitter in 2014 and inhabiting the same universe as his latest bestselling novel The Bone Clocks, this is the perfect book to curl up with on a dark and stormy night.

By the calendar, today is the last day of winter; even though we still have several more weeks of cold ahead of us before we can really say that winter has come to pass.

But now seems like the logical time to assess my 20 books of winter challenge?

Hmmmm.

I only completed 9 of the 20 listed books, and reviewed eight.

Another four titles are half-read.
For me, that's a pretty good end result. Especially when you consider that I moved house during the middle of this challenge.

Perhaps I should create a 20 books of Spring? Just kidding!

There's always next week.

#IMWAYR

It's Monday! What Are You Reading?

This week's potential reading list is a little ridiculous in it's scope, size and eclecticism!
I have no excuse, except it seemed like a good idea at the time.

Last week at work was dominated by the Children's Book Council Awards - with congratulations going to Freya Blackwood, in particular, for winning the award for three different books in three different categories.

The 2015 winners are:

Older Readers - The Protected by Claire Zorn
Younger Readers - The Cleo Stories by Libby Gleeson and Freya Blackwood
Early Childhood - Go to Sleep Jessie by Libby Gleeson and Freya Blackwood
Picture Book - My Two Blankets by Freya Blackwood (author Irena Kobald)
Eve Pownall Info Book - A-Z of Convicts in Van Diemen's Land by Simon Barnard
Crichton Award for New Illustrator - One Minute's Silence by Michael Camilleri (author David Metzenthen).

On the blogging front, I was excited to see the Classics Club announce their latest Spin.
I always love how a Spin encourages me to dust off my classics challenge list and re-engage with a fabulous community of classics readers.

Next weekend I will be attending the Honouring Randolph Stow event at the NSW Library. In preparation, I plan to read Moving Among Strangers by Gabrielle Carey (she of Puberty Blues fame):

As her mother Joan lies dying, Gabrielle Carey writes a letter to Joan’s childhood friend, the reclusive novelist Randolph Stow. This letter sets in motion a literary pilgrimage that reveals long-buried family secrets.

Like her mother, Stow had grown up in Western Australia. After early literary success and a Miles Franklin Award in 1958 for his novel To the Islands, he left for England and a life of self-imposed exile. Living most of her life on the east coast, Gabrielle was also estranged from her family’s west Australian roots but never questioned why.

A devoted fan of Stow’s writing, she became fascinated by his connection with her extended family, but before she can meet him he dies. With only a few pieces of correspondence to guide her, Gabrielle embarks on a journey from the red-dirt landscape of Western Australia to the English seaside town of Harwich in a quest to understand her family’s past and Stow’s place in it.

Moving Among Strangers is a celebration of one of Australia’s most enigmatic and visionary writers.

I recently picked up a copy If This Is a Woman: Inside Ravensbruck - Hitler's Concentration Camp for Women by Sarah Helm. I seem to have this almost compulsive lifelong urge to understand the Holocaust and man's inhumanity to man. Or in this case, man's inhumanity against women.

The compelling story of the only concentration camp for women by the acclaimed author of A Life in Secrets.

On a sunny morning in May 1939 a phalanx of 800 women - housewives, doctors, opera singers, politicians, prostitutes - were marched through the woods fifty miles north of Berlin, driven on past a shining lake, then herded through giant gates. Whipping and kicking them were scores of German women guards.

Their destination was Ravensbrück, a concentration camp designed specifically for women by Heinrich Himmler, prime architect of the Nazi genocide.

For decades the story of Ravensbrück was hidden behind the Iron Curtain and today is still little known. Using testimony unearthed since the end of the Cold War, and interviews with survivors who have never spoken before, Helm has ventured into the heart of the camp, demonstrating for the reader in riveting detail how easily and quickly the unthinkable horror evolved.

This is a chunkster of a book. The horrific topic also means that I can only read a little bit at a time. But hopefully I will finish it in time for Non-Fiction November.

The Dust that Falls from Dreams by Louis de Berniere:

In the brief golden years of King Edward VII’s reign, Rosie McCosh and her three sisters are growing up in an idyllic and eccentric household in Kent, with their ‘pals’ the Pitt boys on one side of the fence and the Pendennis boys on the other. But their days of childhood innocence and adventure are destined to be followed by the apocalypse that will overwhelm their world as they come to adulthood.

For Rosie, the path ahead is full of challenges: torn between her love for two young men, her sense of duty and her will to live her life to the full, she has to navigate her way through extraordinary times. Can she, and her sisters, build new lives out of the opportunities and devastations that follow the Great War?

Louis de Bernières’ magnificent and moving novel follows the lives of an unforgettable cast of characters as the Edwardian age disintegrates into the Great War, and they strike out to seek what happiness can be salvaged from the ruins of the old world.

The Days of Abandonment by Elena Ferrante:

A national bestseller for almost an entire year, The Days of Abandonment shocked and captivated its Italian public when first published.

It is the gripping story of a woman's descent into devastating emptiness after being abandoned by her husband with two young children to care for. When she finds herself literally trapped within the four walls of their high-rise apartment, she is forced to confront her ghosts, the potential loss of her own identity, and the possibility that life may never return to normal.

What will you be reading this week?
#IMWAYR

It's Monday! Remember me?

The best laid plans....

Last weekend I thought life was settling down and returning to normal after 'THE MOVE'. I didn't factor in getting sick though.

I've spent the last week feeling sorry for myself (& sleeping non-stop) as I've battled some kind of lingering winter throaty, chesty lurgy.

Thankfully I had scheduled a few posts to tide me over during the 'moving' weeks so that I didn't drop off the radar completely.
But now it's time to reclaim this blogging life.
What better way to get back into the groove than with Sheila's meme It's Monday! What Are You Reading? (The good news being that Sheila hopes to resume hosting IMWAYR in September.)

What have I been reading these past few weeks?

Last weekend I finally finished Gone With the Wind with much love and admiration in my heart for this classic epic story. My final review post is a 'work in progress'.

Last night I finished my reread of Emma for Austen in August and now feel at a bit of a loss as to what to read next.

I have Remarkably Jane by Jennifer Adams to tempt me...

The wit of Jane Austen has for partner the perfection of her taste.

Virginia Woolf, 1925

It wasn't really me that everyone went crazy about--it was the character [Fitzwilliam Darcy], who'd been around for a couple of centuries.

Colin Firth, 1997 

Every time I read Pride and Prejudice I want to dig her up and hit her over the skull with her own shin-bone.

Mark Twain, 1898 

For those of us who suspect all the mysteries of life are contained in the microcosm of the family, that personal relationships prefigure all else, the work of Jane Austen is the Rosetta stone of literature.

Anna Quindlen, 1995

Or perhaps I will dip into an AARC (yes, an advance, advance reading copy due for release in January next year) that came my way last week, Lady Helen and the Dark Days Club by Aussie #LoveOzYA writer Alison Goodman....

New York Times bestseller Alison Goodman’s eagerly awaited new project: a Regency adventure starring a stylish and intrepid demon-hunter!

London, April 1812. On the eve of eighteen-year-old Lady Helen Wrexhall’s presentation to the queen, one of her family’s housemaids disappears-and Helen is drawn into the shadows of Regency London. There, she meets Lord Carlston, one of the few who can stop the perpetrators: a cabal of demons infiltrating every level of society. Dare she ask for his help, when his reputation is almost as black as his lingering eyes? And will her intelligence and headstrong curiosity wind up leading them into a death trap?

My copy is so advanced, the final cover art has not been decided. Personally, I hope they pick the dark cover; the pink one brings to mind a bodice-ripper story!

I also have several books left-over from previous It's Monday! posts that I've dipped into over the past few months but have not yet finished. The inevitable chaos and distraction that moving house creates explains my ridiculously long goodreads 'currently reading' panel!

The only blogging effort I've managed to complete this past week is my bi-monthly roundup post for the Australian Women Writer's challenge (here).

What have you been up to lately and what will you be reading this week?

Twitter #IMWAYR

The Most Beautiful Walk in the World by John Baxter

Subtitled A Pedestrian in Paris, I was expecting The Most Beautiful Walk in the World to be all about walking around Paris, seeing the sights and getting some great tips for places to visit next time...one day....

But TMBWW is more of a memoir. Part boastful name dropping, part journal, with quite a bit of "look at me! look at me!" thrown in. It seems that Baxter wanted to impress us with his literary connections and elegant taste in food.

I wanted to love this book.
I wanted to lose myself in the streets and parks and cafes of Paris.
I wanted to dream, plan and hope.

Instead I clunked and shuddered from one anecdote to the next, always expectant, always waiting for that moment when Paris would reveal itself from underneath Baxter's seemingly endless supply of words.

I understood his "look at me" approach completely.
Growing up in rural Australia is not an easy thing when you're shy, with intellectual tendencies and a burning desire to not only see the world, but to make your mark on it. I just didn't feel in the mood to read his book about it though.

At some point I also realised that I was enjoying the well-selected chapter quotes more than I was enjoying the actual chapters.

The only section that really piqued my interest was early on when Baxter was talking about a French family Christmas.
His wife had a

stoneware vinegar bottle....Into it, she emptied a few trickles of red wine left after a dinner party. Inside, the mere, or mother, a gel-like colony of bacteria, transformed it into an aromatic vinegar. This bottle, with the mere already inside, came to Paris in 1959 with Aline, the housekeeper hired to cook for Marie-Do, her young sister, and their widowed mother. Before that, who knew...? As long as you kept it fed, the mere was immortal.

I had never heard of this before, although I guess it's like those 'live' cake mixes that go around every now and again. A regenerating vinaigrette is more my style though - and more anecdotes like this would have appeased me.

Sadly my one excursion into Paris for Paris in July has left me feeling a little 'meh', although I can still be found Dreaming of France :-)

Breaking News:
At work today, I picked up Snow Kimono by Mark Henshaw (winner of this year's NSW Premier's Literary Award for fiction) as my lunch time read. If the stars align this week, I may be able to get in one more Paris book before the end of July and also fulfill my Japanese Literature challenge at the same time.

On the same day that retired police inspector Auguste Jovert receives a letter from a woman claiming to be his daughter, he returns to his Paris apartment to find a stranger waiting for him.

That stranger is a Japanese professor called Tadashi Omura. What's brought him to Jovert's doorstep is not clear, but then he begins to tell his story - a story of a fractured friendship, lost lovers, orphaned children, and a body left bleeding in the snow.

As Jovert pieces together the puzzle of Omura's life, he can't help but draw parallels with his own; for he too has lead a life that's been extraordinary and dangerous - and based upon a lie.

This now also counts as my cheats-I'm-too-busy-packing-to-blog #IMWAYR post!

It's Monday! What Are You Reading?

I should be doing lots of other things rather than blogging tonight. But here I am, hunched up in front of the fire trying to keep warm, ignoring all the boxes that need packing and trying to pretend that the magic packing fairies will turn up in my sleep, wave their magic wands and sprinkle their magic dust and all the hard will be done!

Except I've moved enough times before to know that the magic packing fairies do not exist, or at least, they always forget to come to my place!

My dad was a Bankie, which meant that we moved every 4-7 years for his work. Curiously, as an adult, thanks to Uni, work and love, I have continued to move house every 4-7 years. Often it's just to another area of the town or suburb I'm currently in, but seven times, so far in this lifetime, it has meant a complete change of town/city.

The good thing about this is that I have fabulous friends all over Australia. The hard part for me though, is making those friends in the first place.

I am an introvert; it takes a while for me to form deep, close personal relationships. So the downside of moving is how much I miss those fabulous friends who live all over Australia.

Fortunately this move is basically just around the corner. No friend farewells required. We will miss our lovely neighbours, but we're already making coffee and dinner plans.

Moving is also great for decluttering.

It forces me to throw out old clothes and sort through my books and papers.
Going through the kitchen cupboards has revealed a whole kitchen shop of unused wine glasses, salad bowls, vases and platters...to be donated to the local op shop.
And what's with that drawer in the bathroom full of those tiny shampoo, conditioner and hand lotion bottles from holiday hotels and resorts?

When did I turn into my Nan?

(when Nan died and we were cleaning out her house, we found one whole kitchen drawer devoted to those silver tops on the old glass milk bottles (thankfully all washed and cleaned!) and another drawer full of the plastic square clips from bread bags! The laundry also revealed a muslin bag full of all the odd little leftover bits of soap.)

But this isn't getting any more boxes packed.

One of the things that I've really started reassessing with this move is photos.

Seven years ago when we moved in here, we had a digital camera and we were just starting to store photos on our computer and external drives, but mostly, I printed out whole packets of photos and put them in albums and photo frames.

It has now been two years since I ordered a print of a photo.
All our pics are digital. I've created a shuffle screen saver on all the family computers so we see these pics randomly throughout our days. As I've been packing up the photo frames, I've realised just how tatty and discoloured most of the photos have become. Why am I keeping them?
Is sentimental value enough?
Do I even look at them during my daily life?
If nobody is looking at them, then why do I keep them?

Obviously, I shouldn't be planning a reading week. All my thoughts and energies should be focused on getting those damn books packed instead!
Except my brain doesn't work that way.

I need to reward myself for each box packed. I need to know there is a little something pleasurable waiting for me at the end of the roll of packing tape. I need something to look forward to at the end of each trip to the car.

So far I have rewarded myself with a binge evening home alone with Olive Kitteridge - watching all four episodes in one heart-wrenching go. Last night Mr Books and I finally watched the last two episodes of Game of Thrones (season five) - OMG!!!! I'm not sure I want to or care to go on to season six after that final scene!!

I've also eaten my way through a pack of Magnum icecreams, got my hair done and had a massage.

There seem to more treats and rewards than boxes packed - slight flaw in plan! Time to reassess packing strategy.

This week, I hope to read ten more chapters of Gone With the Wind (only 13 to go!)
I may also finally get started on The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (the title seems appropriate somehow!)

However, I suspect I may get sidetracked by the wonderful treat that turned up at work today...

...my very own, shiny, new, months before publication date, reading copy of Geraldine Brook's lastest book, The Secret Chord (Hachette Australia release date October 2015).

Brooks takes on one of literature’s richest and most enigmatic figures: a man who shimmers between history and legend. Peeling away the myth to bring David to life in Second Iron Age Israel, Brooks traces the arc of his journey from obscurity to fame, from shepherd to soldier, from hero to traitor, from beloved king to murderous despot and into his remorseful and diminished dotage.

The Secret Chord provides new context for some of the best-known episodes of David’s life while also focusing on others, even more remarkable and emotionally intense, that have been neglected.  We see David through the eyes of those who love him or fear him—from the prophet Natan, voice of his conscience, to his wives Mikal, Avigail, and Batsheva, and finally to Solomon, the late-born son who redeems his Lear-like old age. Brooks has an uncanny ability to hear and transform characters from history, and this beautifully written, unvarnished saga of faith, desire, family, ambition, betrayal, and power will enthrall her many fans.

It may be a tad more religious than my usual fare, but I'm hoping that Brooks' storytelling ability will keep me enthralled. (Teeny weeny boasting moment - before moving to the States, Brooks was a local resident of my suburb and a regular in my bookshop. I had the good fortune to meet her during her last visit home :-)

This week's shout-out goes to:

Lisa @ANZ LitLovers Blog for highlighting the exciting new LoveOzYA initiative.

and to the host of bloggers that have helped to convince me that, yes, I will (when the unpacking is over and done with at the other end) read Go Set A Watchman - Melinda @ WestMetroMommy, Adam @RoofBeamReader, Melissa @AvidReadersMusings and Allie @ALiteraryOdyssey. Thank you.

Procrastination time is now officially over.

Note to self - packing a few more boxes will warm me up...but so will a generous glass of wine - hmmmmmm!

Twitter #IMWAYR
I'm also linking this post to Sunday Post hosted by Caffeinated Book Reviewer.

It's Monday - oh no, not again!

It's Monday! And what am I reading?

Not much as it turns out.

I have just had a week fully, completely and totally immersed in boys and soccer.
The boys have had a fabulous time and it is a lovely bonding week for the boys every year when we go to Canberra for Kanga Cup.
It's also a lovely bonding time for the families when we take the whole show on the road despite freezing our arses off on frosty, windy sidelines!
We usually find a good coffee shop or two and fit in the occasional cultural experience around the games. The shared meals each night are loads of fun too.

But relaxing it is not.
Sharing a cabin with four 15 yr old man-child's is definitely not conducive for reading either!

And this year, our Kanga week was bookended by two weekends back home madly looking at houses...to no avail.
And more soccer!

It may come as no surprise to anyone but me, but I seem to have come down with a head cold.

But I've used my spare time this evening productively. I have now changed my gravatar image across my entire social media spectrum so that everything matches.

Enough dawdling & daydreaming though.
It's time for some bookish stuff.

Back at work today and everyone was talking about Go Set A Watchman.

When is it due out? Why do they embargo books? Can it possibly be better than To Kill A Mockingbird? Can it live up to expectations? Is it doomed to fail? Will you be reading it?

All day I've had to manouever around our heavily embargoed boxes of stock.  

All day I've being having a 'will I? wont I?' argument with myself. 

One of our local Sydney papers has said that the book is more complex than TKAM but not as compelling. Do I really want to know how Scout grew up? Wouldn't I prefer to leave my high regard (okay! my love and adoration and idealisation) for Atticus untarnished by adult complications? Do I dare court disappointment and disillusionment?

Rereading my earlier review of TKAM (link above), reminded me that TKAM actually begins with an adult Scout recounting the Finch family history.

Perhaps GSAW will be like reading March by Geraldine Brooks. 


Initially I struggled to get into March as subconsciously I was expecting more of Little Women. But March is an adult book about adults. Little Women is a book for all ages about children and their relationships to each other and the adults around them. It has an innocence and wholesomeness that is totally appropriate for its audience & structure. 

March was far more complex and difficult and complicated, befitting a book about adult relationships for mature readers. Once I accepted this and my brain (& heart) shifted away from its childish desires, I was able to embrace and appreciate the story of March.

Will I need to make the same kind of brain (& heart) shift to read GSAW? 

Will you, dear reader, be racing out to get your hands on a copy of Go Set A Watchman? 

Somewhere, somehow, this week, I also hope to get my reading challenges back on track...maybe something Victorian? Something Japanese? Or Parisian or maybe an Aussie female author? 

Fingers crossed xx 

This week's shout-outs go to:

TJ @My Book Strings for her heart-warming and thought-provoking post about books and places. I love posts that reveal more of the blogger through their reading habits. This is a delightful exploration of the personal meaning of books and the places we read them.

And if you'd like to be reminded of how gauche, insecure and (ab)normal you were during highschool, then visit Rory @Fourth Street Review for her trip down memory lane with Are You There God? It's Me Margaret.

Happy Reading

It's Monday

This weekend just past may not have been the busiest weekend I've ever experienced, but it comes in a pretty close second.

I'm so exhausted I hurt.

My eyes ache, my legs throb & my head hurts!

After work on Friday we enjoyed a staff farewell party.

Saturday morning my family viewed four houses for rent....because, yes, we have to move. Not unexpected or even unwelcome, but a tiresome, tiring process nonetheless.

Then my sister and her family came to stay Saturday night...another late night ensued.

Sunday morning was an early start to get them off to the airport in time to start their holiday, followed by two huge semi-final soccer games with the boys (both went into extra time, one also went into penalty shoot-outs but both were ultimately successful).

A quick trip home to catch up with one of my dearest school friends who was also driving through Sydney with her family for their holiday on the North Coast, followed by another viewing of one more house, then cleaning up our house after the visitors, packing a few more boxes (why oh why did I buy all those books?) 

Finally, packing my own bags for my mini-break away this week!!

My mind had so many things going through it (mostly to with packing up & cleaning logistics) that I couldn't settle to anything. 

I needed a quick, easy, fun read and I needed it now!

The choice was obvious in the end. 

Miles Off Course is the third book in the Rowland Sinclair series and it starts off in the Blue Mountains...were I am right now!

In early 1933, Rowland Sinclair and his companions are ensconced in the superlative luxury of The Hydro Majestic - Medlow Bath, where trouble seems distant indeed.

And then Harry Simpson vanishes.

Croquet and pre-dinner cocktails are abandoned for the High Country where Rowland hunts for Simpson with a determination that is as mysterious as the disappearance itself. Stockmen, gangsters and a belligerent writer all gather to the fray, as the investigation becomes embroiled with a much darker conspiracy.

Murder, Treason, Trespass, Kidnapping, Betrayal...

Again, Rowland Sinclair finds himself in the middle of it all.

There's so much more I want to say about things like Paris in July, Japanese Literature Challenge, Gone With the Wind, great holiday reads & how do you turn your brain off to get a good nights sleep, when you have so much stuff going on that you feel like bursting?

But I'm feeling so very weary again & typing on my phone isn't helping. 

What do you do to unwind & switch off at the end of each day? Do you have a fun, easy series that you turn to in times of stress?

Please forgive any weird formatting issues & no links as I'm also posting this on my phone & won't be able to check on my laptop for a few days. 

Twitter #IMWAYR

It's Monday What Are You Reading?

I've been rather slack about keeping track of my reading lately.

A big part of that is thanks to Corinne's Gone With the Wind readalong.

GWTW is a reread for me and unlike my first read 20 years ago, where I raced through the story to see what happened, this read is far more leisurely and thoughtful. And made even more enjoyable by sharing it with a lovely group of other GWTW fans.

TJ @My Book Strings is hosting the next chapter round-up this weekend which means I need to get moving to finish chapters 31- 40 before then (you can see my hosting post for the last ten chapters here).

Curiously this has been the first section where Mitchell's rather romantic view of the South has irked. Up until now I've been able to accept it as a kind of pre-war-remember-the-glory-days nostalgia that I thought would contrast the pre and post war periods. However, romanticizing the early crimes of the Ku Klux Klan was a step too far for me in walking around in another's shoes (not enough to stop reading, but enough to make me question Mitchell's motivations more critically).

Closer to home, I've been attempting to read as many of this year's CBCA shortlisted books as possible as well as keeping up with my Australian Women Writer's commitments.

The Australian Women Writers Challenge was set up to help overcome gender bias in the reviewing of books by Australian women. The challenge encourages avid readers and book bloggers, male and female, Australian and non-Australian, to read and review books by Australian women throughout the year.

My bi-monthly summary post for the History, Memoir and Biography category went live today if you'd like to see what we've all been reading lately.

I seem to be on a Pulitzer prize winning streak at the moment, as I devoured All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr last week.

My next read - another Pulitzer prize winning book - comes from my Winter Reading list.  
A Good Scent From a Strange Mountain by Robert Olen Butler also has the added benefit of being connected to GWTW with the name Butler!

This 1993 Pulitzer Prize-winning collection of 15 stories evokes the ordeals of the Vietnamese people in the Vietnam War. Old or young, humble or arrogant, puzzled or proud, these are the characters for whom the absurdities of American popular culture and memories of war uneasily coexist.

This week's shoutouts go to:

JoAnn @Lakeside Musing for convincing me to read a book (Aquarium by David Vann) I had no intention of reading.

Melissa @Avid Reader's Musings has tempted me with the gorgeous cover of Bonjour Tristesse by Francoise Sagan - which may help me find another French book to read for Paris in July (since I got excited and read All the Light too soon!!)

What have you been reading and reviewing this week?
In Sheila's absence please feel free to leave a link to your IMWAYR post in the comments below. Or join the twitter hashtag #IMWAYR.

It's Monday...and it's Winter!

Whilst browsing twitter this weekend, I spotted a comment from Sarah (@Sarah Reads Too Much) about joining in #20booksofsummer at Cathy @746 Books.

I love these kinds of challenges even though I usually fail them abysmally! 

For instance, I challenged myself to read a selection of cosy autumnal books back in March. I only had 10 books on the list...and sadly, I only read one of them...and that ended up being a DNF! But I still have a week to go before that list officially finishes - perhaps I will knock over one more title in that time (ba ha ha!!)

So why am I drawn to writing up lists and challenges that I so often fail?

Why do I love making a list and a deadline only to watch them go sailing by?

My eagerness to join in Cathy's challenge has got me wondering and thinking.

What is it that makes lists, especially book lists, so attractive to me?

I've decide there are multiple factors at play.

My TBR pile is seriously out of control. Making lists helps me feel virtuous about addressing this problem. I feel a sense of power as I create order out of chaos!

Going through my stacks to compile the lists also helps me to rediscover what lovely surprises are lurking at the bottom. The occasional dead cockroach is not such a lovely surprise though!

I love crossing things off my lists. The sense of accomplishment with each tick is intoxicating. Being able to run a huge line through a completed list is heady stuff indeed (yeah, I know, I probably need to get out more!)

As a lifelong, slightly obsessive listographer it's actually a deeply ingrained habit. Blame my genetics or upbringing...whatever...lists are in my blood!

Finally, book lists have become a very cyber-social thing ever since I started blogging. I love being in a community of fellow bookoholics and listographers. I always end up adding to my wishlist (another list!) with every list challenge I read.

So here I go again with another book list (& a quickly devised Southern Hemisphere badge of moi rugged up for last winter).

Obviously I live on the other side of the world & in a different hemisphere to Cathy and Sarah. So my list has been retitled #20booksofwinter for any fellow Aussie, NZ-er's, Polynesian, South African, South American, Antartican bloggers out there.

Since the main aim of this list is to be practical and do-able. I will start with those books already half-started (or is that half-finished?)

1. Gone With the Wind (for Corinne's readalong)
2. You're Still Hot to Me by Jean Kittson
3. Coming of Age: Growing Up Muslim in Australia (shortlisted for this years CBCA)

Next up are three Vietnamese based books that I've collected since our holiday there at Easter.

4. Man by Kim Thuy
5. A Good Scent From a Strange Mountain by Robert Olen Butler (also a 1993 Pulitzer Prize winner so I can cross this book off two lists!)
6. The Book of Salt by Monique Truong

A few slim volumes and easy reads to keep this list manageable.

7. The Guest Cat by Takashi Hiraide (in readiness for Dolce Bellezza's Japanese Literature Challenge).
8. The Summer Book by Tove Jansson (to link me to Cathy's original idea :-)
9. Springtime by Michelle de Kretser
10. Remarkably Jane by Jennifer Adams (getting ready for Adam's Austen in August)
11. Miles Off Course by Gentill Sulari (third book in the Rowland Sinclair cosy crime series).

A couple more CBCA shortlisted titles

12. Nona and Me by Clare Atkins
13. The Protected by Claire Zorn

A few new releases

14. The Anchoress by Robyn Cadwallader
15. One Life by Kate Grenville
16. All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr
17. Undermajordomo Minor by Patrick Dewitt

To finish up, a few classic reads and rereads...

18. Watership Down by Richard Adams
19. Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Anne Bronte (to fit in with Allie's Victorian Celebration)
20. Emma by Jane Austen (a reread also for Austen in August)

On standby are 10 lovely tempting Penguin Little Black Classics, mostly poetry, just in case!

What will you be reading this season?
Do you feel compelled to compile a list? 

It's Monday!

Another week has gone by in a blur of family, work and life stuff. With a little reading and blogging time squeezed into the sides.

I'm loving my (re)readalong of Gone With the Wind with Corinne. The first discussion post was a lively, loving chat about Scarlett, slavery and Mitchell's intentions.

However Wharton Review month has been hijacked by the arrival of a new book.

I had planned on rereading The Age of Innocence, but this turned up instead....

Shedding the constraints that existed for women in turn-of-the-century America, Edith Wharton set out in the newly invented "motor-car" to explore the cities and countryside of France.

Originally published in 1908, A Motor-Flight Through France is considered by many to be the very best of Wharton’s outstanding travel writings. 

While Wharton’s novels are darkly funny and deliciously catty, and her short stories are populated by adulterers, murderers, and artists, A Motor-Flight Through France captures all of the riches and charm of France during the Belle Époque in gorgeous, romantic prose. Like many Americans, Wharton was utterly beguiled by France at the dawn of the twentieth century, and in this volume her brilliant sketches of "l’Hexagone" provide an enchanting and indelible portrait of the land during this era.

But Wharton’s travelogue is as much about the thrill of travel as it is about place. With the automobile in its infancy, Wharton was experiencing the countryside as few people ever had, liberated from the ugliness of train yards and the constraints of passage by rail. “The motor-car has restored the romance of travel,” she wrote, and readers of this wonderful book will be grateful to experience it through her eyes

Only two chapters in, but so far it is an utter delight.

Last week I attended a work function at Allen and Unwin. I came home with a lovely bag of goodies, including the ARC's photographed below.

I'm very excited about the new Kundera due out next month and I can't wait to dip into Charlotte Wood's October new release.

Mr Books has already snaffled Patrick DeWitt's Under Major Domo Minor and is loving it.

This week is the beginning of the Sydney Writer's Festival. I've booked into four events so far and I'm starting to get excited.

But for now it's time for my Monday Shout-out!

This is my weekly chance to share with you some of my favourite reviews:

For one of the most succinct reviews ever, check out Books are my Favourite and Best's review of The Paris Wife.

Nancy @ipsofactodotme has made me want to reread What I Talk About When I Talk About Running with this review.

Melinda @West Metro Mommy has also inspired me to try Roxanne Gay's Bad Feminist here.

This post is part of Sheila's It's Monday and Mailbox Monday.

It's Monday! What Are You Reading?

Monday, Monday - what will I be reading this week?

Hopefully more than last week!

I've been in a bit of a mood lately (third book down might explain why!) so I only managed to complete one book last week *sigh*.

I've also been very lax about checking in on my favourite blogs (sorry! I hope to get on top of things again soon).

But I did read a few of fabulous Zola posts from fellow Zoladdiction particpants:

O @Behold the Stars wrote a post that listed all the characters to be found in the Rougon-Macquart series with a helpful timeline.
Ruth @A Great Book Study has convinced me to try Virginia Woolf again with her review on The Voyage Out.
And Ali @Heavenali has helped bump My Beautiful Friend higher up my TBR pile with this lovely review.

But for now I am focused on finishing my readalong books - more Wharton's and Gone With the Wind.


The Reckoning (Little Black Classic #48) by Edith Wharton

'If marriage was the slow life-long acquittal of a debt contracted in ignorance, then marriage was a crime against human nature.'

Two moving stories of love, loss, desire and divorce, from one of the great chroniclers of nineteenth-century New York life.

Roman Fever by Edith Wharton

Edith Wharton was the first woman to win the Pulitzer Prize, in 1921, for her classic novel The Age of Innocence. She was also a remarkable short story writer, publishing more than seventy-two stories in ten volumes during her lifetime.

The best of her short fiction is collected here in Roman Fever and Other Stories. Her subjects range from erotic love and illegitimacy in "Roman Fever," to a ghost story with a wry twist in "The Angel at the Grave," to the aftermath of divorce explored in three very different and intriguing stories, "Souls Belated," "Autres Temps..." and "The Last Asset," Wharton emerges as a superb satirist "skilled in dissecting the elements of emotional subtleties, moral ambiguities, and the implications of social constrictions," as Cynthia Griffin Wolff writes in her introduction.

Roman Fever & Other Stories is a surprisingly contemporary volume of stories by one of our most enduring writers.

You're Still Hot to Me by Jean Kittson

A fact-filled conversation starter on menopause by comedian and health campaigner Jean Kittson.

When Jean Kittson hit menopause, she was amazed at what she didn't know. Given that 1.5 million Australian women are menopausal at any one time, why, she wondered, was menopause so little discussed and then only in hushed tones?

So Jean set out to write the sort of book she felt she needed to read: 'An easy-to-read book full of useful information that didn't make you want to put on an old chenille dressing-gown and a pair of comfortable slippers and throw yourself under a marching band.'

You're Still Hot to Me is a chatty - sometimes robust - conversation between women and with some of Australia's top experts. Discover how to recognise symptoms (would you like hot flushes with that chocolate?), get the medical attention you deserve, and the lowdown on which treatments really work. You will learn about combining menopause with work, sex and parenting, and how to emerge at the other end still talking to those you love.

Candid and frequently hilarious, this is your starter kit on how to cheerfully embrace and confidently manage this momentous time of life.

I'm also hoping to read and review a few more of this year's CBCA shortlist books including a few picture books and...

Coming of Age: Growing Up Muslim in Australia by Amra Pajalic and Demet Divaroren

In this refreshing and fascinating collection, twelve Muslim-Australians - some well known, some not - reveal their candid, funny and touching stories of growing up with a dual identity.

Muslim people in Australia come from over seventy countries and represent a wide variety of cultural backgrounds and experiences. Yet we are constantly bombarded by media stories feeding one negative stereotype. What is it really like to grow up Muslim in Australia? In this book, famous and not-so-famous Muslim-Australians tell their stories in their own voices.

The beard, the hijab, the migrant - these are all familiar images associated with Muslim people. But delve deeper and there are many other stories: the young female boxer entering the ring for her first professional bout; a ten-year-old boy who renounces religion; a young woman struggling to reconcile her sexual identity with her faith. These honest and heartfelt stories will resonate with all readers, providing different snapshots of Muslim life in Australia, dispelling myths and stereotypes, and above all celebrating diversity, achievement, courage and determination.

'Coming of Age is the kind of book that will change how readers look at the world... Coloured with many shades of humour, warmth, sadness, anger, determination and honesty, it will resonate with readers from all backgrounds and beliefs.

What will you be reading this week?
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It's Monday....

...and I'm finally caught up on all my half-finished novels!

I still have a few out-standing non-fiction titles by the bed, but it usually takes me months to read non-fiction anyway (biographies are the exception to this rule).

Perhaps if I could just read one book at once, I would get through more, but my reading is very much mood based. Some days are non-fiction and some days are not.

So what does this, the first week in May hold for me and my groaning bookshelves?

First up is the start of my month-long Wharton Review.

I will be rereading The Age of Innocence this year in the hope of knocking my Classics Club challenge into a higher gear.

Set in old New York, this novel details the thwarted romance between Newland Archer, a young dandy, and the beautiful, unconventional divorceee Countess Ellen Olenska. The cast of characters includes Newland's docile - and calculating - fiancee, May Welland and the lordly Mrs Manson Mingott.

In fact May will be the month of reread's for my Classic Club list.

The Great World by David Malouf is my Classic Club Spin this month. I first read The Great World in 1997, which also marks the beginning of my lifelong love affair with all things Malouf.

Every city, town and village has its memorial to war. Nowhere are these more eloquent than in Australia, generations of whose young men have enlisted to fight other people's battles - from Gallipoli and the Somme to Malaya and Vietnam. In THE GREAT WORLD, his finest novel yet, David Malouf gives a voice to that experience. But THE GREAT WORLD is more than a novel of war. Ranging over seventy years of Australian life, from Sydney's teeming King's Cross to the tranquil backwaters of the Hawkesbury River, it is a remarkable novel of self-knowledge and lost innocence, of survival and witness.

During May & June I also plan to join in Corinne's Gone With the Wind readalong @Pursuit of Happiness.

Margaret Mitchell's epic novel of love and war won the Pulitzer Prize and one of the most popular and celebrated movies of all time.

Many novels have been written about the Civil War and its aftermath. None take us into the burning fields and cities of the American South as Gone With the Wind does, creating haunting scenes and thrilling portraits of characters so vivid that we remember their words and feel their fear and hunger for the rest of our lives.

In the two main characters, the white-shouldered, irresistible Scarlett and the flashy, contemptuous Rhett, Margaret Mitchell not only conveyed a timeless story of survival under the harshest of circumstances, she also created two of the most famous lovers in the English-speaking world since Romeo and Juliet.

I first read GWTW during my uni days. I loved how Mitchell picked me up & swept me along in her wake. It was one of those books that made real life seem dull by comparison. I can't wait to see if it has the same effect on 40-something me!

What will you be reading this week?

Are you joining in any of the above readalongs or challenges?

Do you enjoy rereading old favourites?

If you'd like to add your It's Monday URL in your comments during Sheila's absence, I will try to pop by and visit. Or follow on twitter #IMWAYR

PS Can anyone see the column on the RH side of my blog? When I view the whole blog, the column seems to have disappeared from view. But when I open a post...there it is! Are any other blogger uses having weird format glitches?