Category: reading
-
Australian Women Writers’ Challenge 2013
In 2012, I made the committment to read 6 books by Australian women writers and review 3 (the ‘Miles’ level of the challenge). Ultimately, I read 11 books in this category and reviewed at least 9 and so, buoyed by the craziness of success, I this year vowed to read 10 and review 6 (the ‘Franklin’ level…
-
The Year of Reading & Writing
I thought I’d recap on my year of reading during my Year of Writing (since my ‘six months off’ kinda snowballed there). Goodreads tells me that in 2011, while I was allowing the bulk of my productive time to be sucked into the pitiful task of ‘earning money’, I read 26 books (plus another 23…
-
AWW2012 update
Whatever your preference, whether you’re a fan of one genre or a devoted eclectic, the 2012 Australian Women Writers Book Reading & Reviewing Challenge invites you to celebrate a year encountering the best of Australian women’s writing. Last December I signed up for the Miles challenge to read 6 books by Australian women writers &…
-
Women’s History Month
AND today is the day I rave about Shirley Hazzard on Gillian Polack’s blog for Women’s History Month (cross-posted below, for the curious): Novelist, memoirist and essayist Shirley Hazzard has won the Miles Franklin Award (2004), National Book Award (2003) and National Book Critics Circle Award (1980). She’s been nominated for the Orange Prize (2004)…
-
Checking my #aww2012 progress
Going back to my 18-December post, I wrote: I’m a Dabbler (according to the rules: more than one genre), & I’m aiming at the Miles challenge level (read 6 & review 3 books by Australian women). It’s a kinda modest number, but the challenge contradicts an earlier rule I’d laid down to minimise expenses next…
-
Shirley Hazzard’s TRANSIT OF VENUS (& slight rant)
It’s taken me a long time to write this review, mainly because I became aware of how negative it was becoming. But THE TRANSIT OF VENUS is a marvellous book, a literary love story which ponders beauty and time, and is written with Hazzard’s trademarked sharp, searing prose. Hazzard offers up deceptively tiny moments which…
-
Short stories down the (BBC) tube
BBC Radio 4 has been a fantastic champion of the short story and short story writers for many years. It provides one of very few opportunities in the UK for both new and established writers to have their short stories broadcast to a large national audience, and for radio listeners to enjoy readings of the…
-
Free Books put the fear into booksellers
World Book Night, 5 March, is freaking out booksellers. One million free books on the market are gonna kill independent book selling. (Obviously they’ve never heard about Bookcrossing. Shhh!) Which goes against a lot of the authorial commentary on Creative Commons & the value of the ‘first one free’ approach. And hasn’t Cory Doctorow discovered…
-
Crossed
The bf, familiar with my irregular craving for ‘brit cop drama’, was surprised to find an actual brit cop drama on TV last night that he hadn’t seen before. ‘Why haven’t we seen this?’ ‘Ah, yes. This is CRACKER. It’s very dark. I mean, it’s excellent but … too dark.’ ‘What, darker than WALLANDER?’ ‘Oh,…
-
The le Carre distortion
“‘The Spy Who Came in from the Cold’, my third book, changed my life and put me on bare-knuckle terms with my abilities. Until its publication I had written literally in secret, from inside the walls of the secret world, under another name, and free of serious critical attention. Once this book hit the stands,…