Regular readers here know by now that I only do one challenge, and that’s the Australian Women Writer’s Challenge. As in previous years, I signed up for the top level: Franklin-fantastic. This required me to read 10 books and review at least 6. I have now exceeded this. I will continue to add to the challenge, as I’ve done in previous years. However, one of the requirements of completing the challenge is to write a completed challenge post. Here is that post.
I have, so far, contributed 14 reviews to the challenge.
Here’s my list in alphabetical order, with the links on the titles being to my reviews:
- Jessica Anderson: One of the wattle birds (novel)
- Barbara Baynton: Billy Skywonkie (short story)
- Beryl Fletcher: Juno and Hannah (novel)
- Hannah Kent: Burial rites (novel)
- Kirsten Krauth: just_a_girl (novel)
- Catherine McNamara: Pelt and other stories (short story collection)
- Kathy Marks: Channelling Mannalargenna (essay)
- Margaret Merrilees: The first week (novel)
- Angela Meyer (ed): The great unknown (short story anthology including male and female authors)
- Sue Milliken: Selective memory: A life in film (memoir)
- Angela Savage: The dying beach (crime novel)
- Margaret Rose Stringer: And then like my dreams (memoir)
- Evie Wyld: All the birds, singing (novel)
Only two of these – Baynton and Anderson – are for non-recent works. I would like in the second half of the year to read more backlist, more classics. Let’s see what happens when I write my end-of-year post for the challenge.
Whispering Gums 
Brava! I’ve read just two from your listing – Hannah Kent and Kathy Marks (the latter thanks to you)!
Thanks Jim … And I remember your reading the Marks!
My posting is slow at present as I’m in Canada for a short time.
The year isn’t even halfway over and you have already finished the challenge? Good work!
Thanks Stefanie … It’s a bit of a cheat for me really. How can reading 10 books by Aussie women be a challenge, for me?!
Dunno how anyone sticks with challenges: it’d drive me bonkers. I’m only glad you hae a lot more spine, Sue ! 🙂
LOL MR … IT’s the only challenge I do because it’s not a challenge! And because I’m one of the volunteer coordinators!
What a yell! – know why ?
Because I am at this very moment writing up a post regarding a challenge I am setting up, just for me !!! 🙂
Oh good for you MR … Btw, please excuse me from commenting on your blog much at present. I’m barely keeping up with my own while I’m travelling.
Excuse you ? – there is nothing to excuse, Sue ! I’m just rapt when you have time … 🙂
TA, MR, now, must to bed as it’s well after midnight here.
Sleep well, m’dear !
This is a fabulous idea! It inspires me to take time away from my PhD in Literature at the ANU to read books for pleasure again. I’m a new reader of your blog, but really enjoying it so far – thank you!
Thanks Jessica .. What a nice thing to say, though a PhD in literature reading my blog makes me nervous!
What is your focus.
I wouldn’t worry – PhD candidates are the same as everyone else, but with less money, less guilt-free spare time, and a tendency to over-analyse!
Neo-Victorian fiction is my topic (that is, historical fiction set in the 19th century), since it is strikingly popular at the moment, but still under-studied (unlike Shakespeare). It’s a whole cultural phenomenon, and that is what is so interesting about it.
Oh, that sounds very interesting Jessica. I’m quite intrigued by the whole historical fiction thing. Are you looking at that set in England only, or also in the colonies? I’m thinking The luminaries of course. I suppose you are also doing things like The crimson petal and the white? What about something like Jack Maggs? Sorry, would just love to know. Are you looking at the literary end or the genre end, or are those divisions not relevant to you? Don’t answer any of this if you don’t wish to!!nor don’t have time to!
The colonies – I find them much more interesting, particularly since I’m attempting to take an ecocritical approach to their interpretation, and what historical fiction says about the nineteenth century English landscape is much less compelling than what it says about the colonial landscape!
I was very excited to see that The Luminaries had won the Booker last year, as it fits into my thesis perfectly. At least, I certainly hope that it will; I admit that I’m yet to read it!
I’ve looked at Jack Maggs in my Honours thesis (http://theneovictorian.wordpress.com/2014/02/27/jack-maggs-peter-carey/), so I probably won’t bother writing much about it again. And a good question about the ‘literariness’ of the books that I’ll be discussing – at this stage, the books have been on the “Booker” end of the scale. That is, neither trashy fiction, nor Nobel Prize fiction, but something in between, although I suspect that my chapter on speculative neo-Victorianism could bring in some steampunk.
Fascinating thesis Jessica. Will check out your linked post later as connections here are tricky. Steampunk! We are in Montreal and tonight are going to the new Cirque du Soleil show Kurios which is apparently steampunk inspired.
Sounds magical! I feel like academia that concerns neo-Victorianism but snubs steampunk is missing out on examining a lot of the most interesting part of the (re)visiting of the nineteenth century. On the other hand, I’ve never studied it before, so it should be interesting to see how it turns out!
It will be Jessica … just back from Cirque du Soleil. I’m not sure that it adds much to the “steampunk” discussion per se as it seemed primarily to provide a vehicle for fun costumes and settings for regular routines but it was visually beautiful.
This is a wonderful selection of reading. Well done. Pam
Thanks Pam … BTW, I’m travelling at present so am not getting around my blog friends much at present. Please excuse my absence from commenting on yours?
Well done you! The only one of those I’ve read is Burial Rites, but the Evie Wyld sounds really intriguing and is all over my social media feeds at the moment!
Ah, thanks Cathy. Is it in your TBR pile?? I think time-wise it could be but it might not have been on your radar enough to make it there?
No, it’s not I’m afraid and I’m reading so many good things about it!
I’m sure a shame … But I bet you have other good things to read, says she helping you on the straight and narrow!
That’s what I keep telling myself!
And is yourself winning?
For now 😉
You’re amazing! I’ve managed to review five and I’m patting myself on the back because it’s only May!
Ah, but you write too … and still have children at home! So, I reckon you can keep patting yourself on the back!
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