Month: January 2015

Blogging highlights for 2014

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Top posts for 2014

According to my tags and categories, my most popular posts according to WordPress still relate to Australian literature, Women writers, Australian writers, 21st century literature and Review-Novels. However, as in 2013, my most “hit” post* for 2014 was a short story by an English woman, Virginia Woolf’s “The mark on the wall“ (reviewed in March 2012), presumably because it’s a set text for schools/universities.

My other “top” hits for 2014 were:

  • Merlinda Bobis Fish-hair woman

    Cover courtesy Spinifex Press

    Australian novel (second highest hit overall): Merlinda Bobis’ Fish-hair woman (reviewed in April 2013). Interestingly, a large percentage of the hits came, I believe, from the Philippines – in the second half of the year. Was it set for study? Was it only just published there? Will it retain this position in 2015?

  • Australian short story (fifth highest hit): Barbara Baynton’s “The chosen vessel” (reviewed in November 2012). It was my top Australian hit last year. I’m guessing that, like the Woolf, it’s a set text.
  • Non-Australian novel (sixth highest hit): Pramoedya Ananta Toer’s This earth of mankind (reviewed in June 2009, about five weeks after I started blogging).

The interesting thing is that my top ten reviews are heavily slanted to older novels and short stories. Is this because newer works are widely reviewed across the web resulting in searches first reaching prime sites like newspaper reviews, whereas older works are covered more sporadically so that searches are more likely find them on blogs like mine? Regardless, for me one of the joys of blogging is giving life to older works on the web.

I’m also aware that many of my top hits are for older posts, which suggests that there’s some longterm value in this here litblogging! Then again, perhaps I’m drawing some long bows from minimal data!

Monday Musings on Australian Literature

When I started Monday Musings in August 2010, I’d been blogging for 15 months. I had no idea that I’d still be blogging over four years later, let along still writing Monday Musings, but here I am … I have, I believe, written 224 Monday Musings posts. At times I have wondered what on earth am I going to write about this week, but I’ve discovered that I enjoy the challenge of finding a new angle or a new piece of news or a new theme to explore. One of the reasons I enjoy it is because of all of you who read and comment on them. I love the conversations that often result – and have learnt much from the sharing that has happened. So, thank you for joining in with such enthusiasm and good grace.

Now, what shall I write about tomorrow?

Searches that reached my blog in 2014

Like most bloggers, I love to look at what the people who find my blog have searched on. Due to Google’s encrypted  searching, WordPress captures less information about search terms now, but we still get a few. Here are some of my favourites from this year:
  • describe wolf hall in 20 words: good luck with that. I wonder if my post helped!
  • poem for boys in love and gun: hmm … two of my posts mention poetry and guns so I suppose that’s what the seeker found, but whether s/he found what s/he was looking for I have no idea.
  • australian landscapes nice and simple: well, of course, I mention landscape a lot on my blog but I’d love to know what this person was looking for. A travel blog? An art blog?
  • pickingjob lengly night: no idea what this means but I’m guessing it brought the seeker to my review of Eve Langley’s The pea-pickers.
  • i got the wooden spoon my pants pulled down: whatthe? I think this reached my Delicious descriptions from Carrie Tiffany post.
  • smacking wooden spoon Facebook irish: see above!

Australian Women Writers’ Challenge

awwchallenge2015Of course, I plan to continue to participate in the Australian Women Writers’ Challenge this year, so let this be my announcement post. We are asked to choose a level or create our own. I plan to stick to the top level, “Franklin, read 10, review 6”. I always exceed it, but I don’t plan to challenge myself to read more than I did last year. As I’ve said before, my doing this challenge is a “cheat” because Australian women writers have been my particular interest since the 1980s. If I wanted to undertake a “real” challenge it would be to increase my reading of non-English language writers, but, as I don’t do challenges, I’ll leave that alone!

And finally …

Thanks to everyone who read, commented on and/or “liked” my blog in 2014. I really do appreciate your visiting me here. I wish you all happy reading in 2015.

* The ranking I’m giving excludes the top hit by far which is “Home page/Archives”. I don’t think that counts really.

Reading highlights from 2014

/ Whispering Gums / 27 Comments

Unlike last year when I crammed all my highlights into one post, this year I’m returning to the two-post approach. This keeps the posts shorter, which better suits this lazy time of year (southern hemisphere speaking anyhow!) So, this post will focus on literary/reading highlights, and the other will share my blogging highlights (such as they are!)

Literary event highlights

I didn’t get to many literary events this year, partly because my year was fragmented with many small trips out of town (overseas and within Australia). Consequently, I only have two event highlights, and a special – well, you’ll see:

  • Les Murray, probably the current grand man of Aussie poetry, at Poetry at the Gods. What can I say about this except that getting a chance to see and hear one of Australia’s most significant living poets in an intimate venue was a treat, and something I’ll treasure.
  • Mansfield Park Symposium during the Jane Austen Festival of Australia. For some reason I didn’t write this most enjoyable event up on my blog. It involved four academics talking about Mansfield Park from different aspects: Janet Lee on letters and letter-writing, Heather Neilson on education, Gillian Dooley on music and its relationship to morality, and Christine Alexander on landscape gardening and the urge for “improvement” in the era. I’m hoping the 2015 festival includes another targeted symposium.
  • Meeting overseas readers. I began discussing books on the Internet eighteen years ago in January 1997 when I joined the “bookgrouplist”. Through this and other online book discussion groups, I’ve “met” a lot of wonderful readers, cyberly! Over time I have also managed to meet some face-to-face. In 2014 I added to my “met” list by seeing* Emmy, Merrilee and Murph in Toronto, Canada, Cheryl in Montreal, and Trudy (a re-meeting, in fact) in Redondo Beach, California. All lovely people. It’s special being able to put faces to the names, and, of course, meeting locals adds to the joy of travel. I thank them all for making the time to catch up.

* POSTSCRIPT: I’m mortified that I forgot to mention meeting cheeky Cheryl and her husband Tony in Montreal – and receiving three sample jars of Tony’s delicious homemade maple syrup. Never name names because you’ll aways forget one!

Aussie reading highlights

Once again, rather than trying to list my “top [X] books of the year”, I’m going to share some highlights:
  • Classics: I didn’t make great headway this year in my reading of Australian classics, but I did read the last two short stories in Barbara Baynton’s Bush studies collection, having started it in 2013. She’s a significant Aussie writer who offers an important counterbalance to the bush-writing of people like Henry Lawson and Banjo Paterson. I have another classic part-read on my Kindle. With any luck you’ll see a review of that appear some time soon …
  • Juvenilia: At the aforementioned Mansfield Park Symposium I met one of the speakers, Christine Alexander, who also happens to be Director and General Editor of the Juvenilia Press. They have published several volumes of Jane Austen’s juvenilia, but they also publish juvenilia from around the world, including Australia. I bought several, and to date have enjoyed Mary Grant Bruce, Eleanor Dark and Ethel Turner. Fascinating stuff if you are interested in writers and their writing lives.
  • Awards: Three of this year’s award winning books particularly impressed me: Evie Wyld’s somewhat controversial All the birds, singing (Miles Franklin Award), Richard Flanagan’s generous The narrow road to the deep north (Prime Minister’s Literary Award, among others), and Clare Wright’s The forgotten rebels of Eureka (Stella Prize).
  • Catherine McNamara, PeltShort stories: While I always read short stories, I read more anthologies and collections in 2014 than in 2013. The standout anthology was Australian love stories edited by Cate Kennedy. It left me with such a buzz, for the variety of stories and styles, and the depth of emotions presented. I also loved the latest Margaret River competition anthology, The trouble with flying and other stories, and The great unknown edited by Angela Meyer. And I enjoyed expat author Catherine McNamara’s Pelt and other stories for its unsettling subject matter, often involving exploitation and power imbalances in relationships, and for her richly expressive style.
  • TBR reading: I actually read 4 books from my TBR pile. Three were Australian – and all were well worth diving into the pile for: Jessica Anderson’s One of the wattle birds, Sara Dowse’s Schemetime, and Tara June Winch’s Swallow the air.
  • Non-fiction: I read 7 Australian non-fiction books this year, including four memoirs and a biography. I was particularly moved by Margaret Rose Stringer’s tribute to her husband in And then like my dreams, and Olivera Simić’s passion for non-violence in Surviving peace. And I loved Helen Garner’s latest foray into non-fiction, This house of grief. I admire the way Garner can wear her heart on her sleeves while writing with such perspicacity.
  • Small presses: Once again I read some excellent offerings from our small presses, including Nigel Featherstone’s The beach volcano (Blemish Books), Howard Goldenberg’s Carrots and Jaffas (Hybrid Publishers), and Margaret Merrilees The first week (Wakefield Press). They deserve a shout out.
These are just a few from what was another great year of Aussie reading.

Reading highlights from other parts of the globe

While the greatest percentage of my reading was Australian this year, I did read some excellent books from elsewhere. Highlights were:
  • Simone de Beauvoir’s Memoirs of a dutiful daughter. It reminded me that no matter how radical people are, they can never completely escape their childhood influences and the values of their times.
  • Adam Johnson’s Pulitzer prize winning The orphan master’s son. A surprisingly compelling, yet discomforting novel critiquing politics and power in North Korea.
  • Wallace Stegner’s Crossing to safety. My fourth TBR pile read. I love Stegner’s ability to get to the heart of relationships – with warmth and generosity.

Innovative/experimental/different works

Finally, here are a few books that impressed or excited me because of their voice. Some are pretty grim, but I like my reading fare to include books that shock and/or surprise and/or test my expectations …

  • Kirsten Krauth’s just_a_girl: a story that challenges us to think about young girls, their sexualisation and how they might safely traverse our on-line world.
  • Morris Lurie’s Hergesheimer in the present tense: a novel in thirty stories about an ageing writer coming to grips with love, life and writing.
  • Annabel Smith. The arkEimear McBride’s A girl is a half-formed thing: a confronting story about family, disconnection and the urge to self-harm, told in an idiosyncratic voice that reaches your core.
  • Annabel Smith’s The ark: an inventive modern epistolary novel/app/e-book, dystopian speculative fiction set in a post-peak oil world.
  • Ouyang Yu’s Diary of a naked official: another challenging story, this one about sexualisation and self-indulgence in a materialistic world.

All in all, an exciting year of reading that included some challenging, confronting and controversial reads. I wouldn’t have it any other way.

What were your standout reads for the year?