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Monday musings on Australian literature: Australian Women Writers’ Challenge 2013

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Australian Women Writers ChallengeAs last year, I’m devoting my last Monday Musings for 2013 to the Australian Women Writers Challenge. This challenge, instigated by Elizabeth Lhuede in response to growing concern in Australian literary circles about lack of recognition for women writers, was so successful in 2012 that Elizabeth, with the help of a team of volunteers, decided to continue the challenge in 2013. I am one of those volunteers – responsible for the Literary and Classics area – and, of course, am also a challenge participant. It was a quieter year for the challenge as we settled into a routine, but that doesn’t mean nothing memorable happened. So, before I round-up my own challenge I’d like to comment on a few of the highlights for me.

The main excitement was, I think, the announcement of the inaugural Stella Prize. The prize was not created by our Challenge, but it grew out of the same concerns that inspired the Challenge. Marg (Adventures of an Intrepid Reader) attended the award ceremony on behalf of the Challenge and wrote a post on the experience. The winner, Carrie Tiffany (for her novel Mateship with birds), impressed us all by sharing a portion of her prize with the shortlisted authors. A lovely gesture recognising the complex and uncomfortable nature of literary competition.

In October, as a special “event”, the Challenge focused on women writers of diverse heritage, and asked four authors to write guest posts. If you’d like to read these posts, they are:

  • Tseen Khoo: on her frustration about “narrow interpretations of writing by Asian-Australian women writers”
  • Alice Pung: on, interestingly, “Ruth Park, class, and marginalisation”
  • Malla Nunn: on her experience as an African migrant turned Australian writer
  • Merlinda Bobis: on “the necessity of creating and defining ‘home’ both for herself, as a writer, and for her readers”.

Finally, one of the features I particularly enjoy about the challenge is seeing Australian women writers support it (and each other) by reviewing books by other women writers. Annabel Smith, Amanda Curtin and Jessica White are three who have been particularly active this year.

If you are interested in the challenge, you can check it out at the link above, and, if you’d like to join up for 2014, you can fill out the form on this page.  This year, it is possible to join up as a reader or as a reviewer. The challenge can also be found on Facebook, Twitter (@auswomenwriters), GoodReads and Google+.

As I explained in last year’s highlights post, the Australian Women Writers’ Challenge is my only challenge. Once again, I signed up for the Franklin-fantastic Dabbler level, which is that I’d read (and review) at least 10 books by Australian women writers in more than one genre/category. Here is my list (with links to my reviews) for this year.

FICTION

SHORT STORIES

POETRY

NON-FICTION

ESSAYS

ANTHOLOGIES

awwchallenge2014CHILDREN’S LITERATURE

I have enjoyed taking part in the challenge – for being part of a team of committed people keen to spread the word about the breadth of Australian women’s writing, and for being introduced to that breadth. I am learning a lot more about Australian women’s literature than I could possible have learnt by beavering away here on my own. Roll on the 2014 challenge.

Gabrielle Gouch, Once, only the swallows were free (Review)

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Gabrielle Gouch, Once, only swallows were free

Courtesy: Hybrid Publishers

Do you differentiate memoir from autobiography? I do. For me, a memoir, such as Gabrielle Gouch’s Once, only the swallows were free, deals with a specific aspect of a person’s life, such as a sportsman writing about his career when he retires from it or a person writing about her growing up, like, say, Alice Pung‘s Unpolished gem. An autobiography, on the other hand, I see as something more holistic, something written near the end of one’s life and summing up its entirety. What do you think?

Gabrielle Gouch was born in Transylvania, Romania to parents who’d both fled anti-Semitic Hungary. She moved elsewhere in Romania with her family before they emigrated to Israel, without her older half-brother, when she was around 20. A few years later, she emigrated on her own to Australia which has remained her home ever since. This is the basic chronology of her life, but Gouch is not really interested in telling us this story chronologically – and in fact, she’s not really interested in telling us the story of her life. What interests her is the brother, Tom, left behind. She wants to know about his life during and post communism in Romania. She also wants to know about the gaps in her knowledge of the family.

Gouch therefore doesn’t tell the story in a simple chronology. While she clearly signposts where you are as you read, I found it a little disconcerting to start with, until I felt familiar with the places and people she was writing about. This, however, could be due to other things going on in my life as I started this book. The memoir starts in 1990 with her first return to Transylvania after “the collapse of communism. The eternal and invincible communism”. A return that took place 25 years after she had left. As the book progresses, she visits Cluj several times, catching up with her brother, learning about her family. It’s a sad story – not surprisingly. Tom’s mother, the much beloved, vivacious Hella, died in childbirth. His – and eventually Gabrielle’s – father, Stefan, married the nanny, refugee Roza, hired in to look after the physically handicapped Tom. (As far as I can tell, his condition is hemiplegia, probably caused by the forceps birth). Roza and Stefan went on to have two children – Gabrielle and, somewhat later, Yossi – but country girl Roza was never accepted by Stefan’s well-to-do family.

The book proper starts in 1962 with the family expecting permission to migrate to Israel to arrive any minute. Of course, it doesn’t – and it is not until some 40 or so pages and three years later that they are finally able to leave. They leave without Tom, now well into his twenties, but exactly why this is so is not understood by Gouch. During the course of the book she finds out why – and she finds out what Tom’s life was like under the communist regime. It’s a very interesting story, and once you master the time shifts across the book’s seven parts, it’s a very readable one. The very short Part 2, for example, returns to the opening of the book, her return in 1990. Then Part 3 jumps to 2002 and another trip of hers “home”. From then on the focus is her time with Tom and the stories she gradually pieces together.

Gouch is a good writer. Her language is expressive, but not over-done. That is, she has some lovely turns of phrase that capture moments and people well. Here, for example, she describes her family’s reaction when her mother says something surprising:

We looked at her as if she had made her way into our home by the back door somehow, a woman we had never met before.

And I like this simple description of children:

Well, children are like shares, you never know how they will turn out.

There are two main threads in the book, one being life under communism, as experienced by Tom, and the other being the life of the emigrant, as experienced by her family. The book is enlightening for people interested in either of these topics, but I’m going to highlight the second, the emigrant’s life, because she explains it beautifully – from the tough life her parents experienced in Israel to her own experience of dislocation from culture. She writes, as she starts to reconnect with her brother:

Noone ever told me that you cannot turn physical distance into emotional one, you cannot forget your native country, you cannot give up your mother tongue. It deadens you inside.

She gives one of the best descriptions of the relationship of language to culture that I have read. She meets an old professor who had chosen to stay living under the repressive regime because, he said, “This is my native land, my language. I belong here.” She writes:

His words lingered. ‘My native land, my language.’ For most people, the sound of Hungarian is awkward; for me it is poetry and delight. When I say ‘flower’ in English I refer to a plant with petals and colours. But the word in Hungarian, virág, sounds to me melodious and joyful. Yes, you can learn to speak a language, you can even learn to think in a language but will you feel the same joy and sadness at the sound of those words? Feel the black desperation or be uplifted by hope? Will the word love evoke the same tenderness and ardour? I don’t think so.

Australian Women Writers ChallengeGouch also writes about “history”, about the impact on people of living through some of history’s trickiest times, as her family had. Her description of her father’s life – a loving father who had worked hard – is heart-rending:

A man who was a Jew but not Jewish enough, an Israeli but not quite, a Hungarian Jew among Romanians and a Jew among Hungarians. Finally he left this world with its divisive nationalisms, ideologies and religions which had marred most of his life. He was just another man on whom history had inflicted its painful and murderous pursuits: Nazism, the Second World War, the communist dictatorship, the Arab-Israeli conflict and Israeli religiosity. History had match-made him, history had controlled his life. It was over. He joined the infinite Universe.

I’ve possibly quoted too much, but Gouch’s words are powerful and worth sharing.

“Knowledge”, Gouch’s father once told her, “is your only possession”. Once, only the swallows were free is a story of discovery for Gouch, but for us, it provides a window into a particular place, time and experience that most of us know little about. The knowledge, the understanding, we gain from reading it is a precious thing.

Gabrielle Gouch
Once, only the swallows were free: A memoir
Melbourne: Hybrid Publishers, 2013
279pp.
ISBN: 9781921665998

(Review copy supplied by Hybrid Publishers)

Lesley Lebkowicz, The Petrov poems (Review)

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Canberra poet Lesley Lebkowicz has made a couple of brief appearances in my blog: first in my post on The invisible thread anthology, and then when she won this year’s ACT Poetry Award. I was consequently more than happy to accept for review her latest book, The Petrov poems.

English: Evdokia Petrova at Mascot Airport, Sy...

Evdokia being escorted by two Russian diplomatic couriers to a plane at Mascot Airport, Sydney (Presumed Public Domain, from NAA, via Wikipedia)

It’s intriguing that nearly 60 years after the events, we are still interested in the Petrovs. In fact, I have written about them before, in my review of Andrew Croome’s historical novel, Document Z. Most Australians will know who they are, but for those global readers here who don’t, the Petrovs were a Russian couple who worked at the Soviet Embassy in Canberra in the early 1950s. Vladimir (Volodya), Third Secretary, and his wife Evdokia (Dusya) were both Soviet intelligence officers (or, to put it baldly, spies). They defected in 1954. The defection was particularly interesting because Vladimir defected first, and Evdokia two weeks later at the airport in Darwin after some dramatic scenes at Sydney’s Mascot airport.

At first glance, The Petrov poems looks like a collection of poems but in fact it is a verse novel, albeit one comprising many short individually-titled poems. These poems are organised into four “chapters”: Part 1, Volodya defects; Part 2, Dusya defects; Part 3, The Petrovs at Palm Beach; and Part 4, The Petrovs in Melbourne.

I must admit that I wondered, initially, why Lebkowicz had decided to write about the Petrovs, given that they have already been picked over in novels, non-fiction, theatre, and television. But, as soon as I started reading it, I could see why. Lebkowicz gets into the heart of these two characters, bringing them back to ordinary human beings who were caught up in something that was both of and not of their own making. It is a rather pathetic story. There are no heroes here – and yet, as happens with these sorts of things, it captured the world’s attention for a short time.

Now, before I comment specifically on this book, I’d like to quote another Canberra poet Paul Hetherington from an interview with Nigel Featherstone in the online literary journal Verity La:

One of the ways I recognise the poetic is when I find works in which language is condensed, ramifying, polysemous and unparaphraseable. Part of what I wish to do when writing poems is to make works that speak in such ways – but to do so without resorting to any kind of trickery or artificial obscurity.

While I wouldn’t use words like “ramifying” and “polysemous”, and while we can paraphrase the ideas to a degree, this is pretty much what Lebkowicz achieves in The Petrov poems. In just 80 pages or so she manages to not only tell the story of their lives but get to the nub of their hearts and psyches – as much, anyhow, as anyone can do for another person. We learn that Volodya is not succeeding at spying:

He wants to succeed but stumbles. Failure
follows him like iron torn from a roof and
rattled along the wind.
(from “Glass I”)

We learn that he loves Dusya (“Dusya is his place in the world”), but that he loves booze, his dog and prostitutes more. He seems weak, but he’s a man struggling. With Stalin’s death and the arrest of his boss, he fears reprisals when he returns to Moscow. Here he is at the moment of defecting (which he does, after disagreements on the subject, without telling Dusya):

Once again he’s going to be wrenched from the soil.
He remembers his father – struck by lightning, buried up to his neck
by foolish men, and dying in the freezing night.
Then chaos and not enough food. Uprooting a full-grown plant
is no easy thing: so many roots
are wound through the earth. He mutters the Russian words
for sadness and home and ruffles his Alsatian’s fur.
(from “Loss”)

Dusya, on the other hand, is a stronger character, but she has suffered severe losses in her life, including her first love and her daughter:

This is something Dusya does not allow herself to think: how her
life might have been if Romàn had not been arrested. […]
If she had gone on taking happiness for granted. Living with
Romàn had been like walking along a winter street and arriving
in a field of warm poppies. If Romàn had not been broken in a
labour camp. If Irina had not died –
(from Romàn I)

While she understands Volodya’s fear, she fears even more what might happen to her family if she defects. At Darwin airport she doesn’t want to make a decision: “If only/this government man would abduct her”. But of course he can’t.

We then watch them as their relationship falters, first during ASIO’s interrogation, and then the years of living together in Melbourne, officially in disguise but known nonetheless. (“The whole street knows they are Petrovs -/too many photos, too much publicity”).

While I’m not a Petrov expert, I’ve read enough to feel that Lebokowicz’s interpretation is authentic. She explores what happens when the political interferes with the personal; she recognises the pull of culture and the despair that losing one’s home can engender; and she sees that corruption is not confined to communism:

so when ASIO falsifies (No! Not falsifies –
amends, adjusts, even corrects) the documents
he brought from the Embassy – of course he assents
(from “Bones”)

Australian Women Writers ChallengeThese are wonderful, readable poems. They are poetic but, to quote Paul Hetherington’s goal, without “trickery” and “artificial obscurity”. The imagery is strong but clear. I particularly liked the way Lebkowicz varies and plays with form. None of it is rhymed, but there are sonnets, couplets, poems with multi-line stanzas but closing on a single dramatic line, and others. There are poems with short lines or terse rhythms, indicating action or stress, and poems with long lines conveying thoughts and reflections. There is also a shape-poem, “Torment”, in which the zigzag shape mirrors Dusya’s distress (“Her life is a staircase that switches directions”).

Like any good historical fiction – if a verse novel can be called that – you don’t need to know the history to understand the story told here. And like any good historical fiction writer, Lebkowicz has produced something that enables us to reconsider an historical event from another perspective and to understand the humanity below the surface of the facts. An excellent and moving read.

Lesley Lebkowicz
The Petrov poems
Sydney: Pitt Street Poetry, 2013
95pp.
ISBN: 9781922080141

(Review copy supplied by Zeitgeist Media Group)

Lit Blogs and Lit Students

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If you are a litblogger like me, have you come across actions or comments that suggest your blog is being used by students? What do you think about it?

I’ve noticed three specific behaviours that suggest student use:

  • outright questions in the comments, some specifically telling me that they are a student and can I help them, and some simply giving their student-status away by the style of question. I don’t know about you, but my response varies depending on the sort of question. Mostly, I try to refer them to other sources and encourage them to think for themselves, rather than telling them outright what I think the theme is or what a metaphor means. If commenters (who may or may not be students) engage in discussion, as in “I thought x meant y”, then I’d happily respond back. Otherwise, I try to be wary about pontificating!
  • searches reaching my blog that seem to clearly be an assignment or school question of some sort, such as what significance does “whitaker’s table of precedency” have in “the mark on the wall” or what literary devices are used in “the mark on the wall”? They seem like giveaways to me.
  • searches reaching my blog that I suspect are made by teachers searching for, well, plagiarism. These are the most bothersome ones. They are ones where someone has entered in a sentence or two verbatim from a blog post of mine, as in, recently: “Clearly, given the story Ariyoshi has told, she rather agrees  – or, at least, agrees for such societies as she depicts here in which women’s lot is not only an inferior one but works to discourage them from cooperating and supporting each other. The novel may be set in Japan, but the fundamental truths, unfortunately, are not so confined.”  That’s a pretty convoluted thing to type into a search engine, don’t you think? Is testing for plagiarism the only reason something like this would be entered as a search term? Or, am I being overly suspicious?

Have you experienced these? What do you think? Are you flattered? Bothered? I don’t mind students using my reviews if they cite them properly. It’s their risk if the teacher thinks my ideas are up-the-creek after all, but the plagiarism issue is another matter. In those cases, I wouldn’t mind not being cited (so much), if the teacher thought it was rubbish!

If you’re a litblogger, have you had similar experiences, and if so what you do think or what have you done about it? Or, are you are student or teacher? What do you think?

Monday Musings on Australian Literature Special: Book Giveaway Winners

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Two weeks ago I announced my first blog giveaway, courtesy the generosity of Irma Gold, editor of the Canberra Centenary anthology, The invisible thread. Irma offered me two copies to give away, both signed by most of the authors represented in the anthology – and who are still living of course! Entries closed midnight, AEST, on 31August.

The invisible thread, by Irma Gold

Cover (Courtesy: Irma Gold and Halstead Press)

So, here are the winners, chosen using an Internet-based random number generator:

  • AUSTRALIAN ADDRESS winner is Rosemary, the lucky last Aussie to throw her hat in the ring; and the
  • OVERSEAS ADDRESS winner is Glenda in Switzerland

Congratulations Rosemary and Glenda … And commiserations to all you others. Thankyou though for showing interest. It’s a shame everyone can’t be winners.

Here is the deal, Rosemary and Glenda. You need to email me, at wg1775[at]gmail.com, your postal address by midnight AEST 7 September, 2013. I will redraw a new winner if I don’t have your address by that deadline.

Once again, a big thank you to Irma for offering this giveaway. … it is a real booklover’s treat.

Oh, and the book can be bought from Fishpond so all is not completely lost.

Reminder: a Book Giveaway

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Time is running out to win one of the multiply signed copies of The invisible thread. Anyone from anywhere can enter as the editor and donor of the copies, Irma Gold, and I have agreed to quarantine one copy for an overseas address, and the other for an Australian address.

The invisible thread, by Irma Gold

Cover (Courtesy: Irma Gold and Halstead Press)

To read more about the book – gorgeous centenary anthology, The invisible thread, edited by Irma Gold – click on the following links to see my post on its launch, my review, or my description of the beautiful Woven Words event inspired by it.

So to recap the giveaway:

Eligibility:  The giveaway will be open to Australian and international readers, with ONE copy to go to an international reader, and ONE to an Australian reader. I will use a random number generator to identify the winners.

How to enter: Leave a Comment on this post, and state which country you live in so I can place in the right giveaway group. I’d love to hear why you’d like to have the book – but it’s not essential.

The fine print: Entries will close at midnight AEST on 31 August. If you win, you must email me with a postal address by the deadline that I advise in the post announcing the winners. I will redraw a new winner if the deadline isn’t met.

I can’t thank Irma enough for this offer … and hope those of you who lurk here won’t be too shy to enter.  This is a booklover’s treat that doesn’t come around often.

Monday Musings on Australian Literature Special: a Book Giveaway

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Actually, the exciting thing is that this is not A book giveaway, as I have TWO books to give away. And, not only are there two books, but the books are signed by multiple authors! Intrigued? Then read on …

The invisible thread, by Irma Gold

Cover (Courtesy: Irma Gold and Halstead Press)

As many of you know this year is Canberra’s centenary. And, if you’ve been reading this blog, you are sure to have seen a mention or two (or more) of the gorgeous centenary anthology, The invisible thread, edited by Irma Gold. If, however, you don’t know what I’m talking about, click on the following links to see my post on its launch, my review, or my description of the beautiful Woven Words event inspired by it.

Hands up if you’d like a copy. Well, now’s your chance. The gorgeous, generous Irma has two copies of the book that have been signed by over 30 of the (still living) authors as well as by the editor (Gold) and the illustrator (Judy Horacek) … and has apparently been wondering what to do with them. To my astonishment, she asked me whether I would like to run a giveaway through my blog. Would I what?

The give-away is being timed to coincide with the last of the many events Irma has organised to promote the book – AN EVENING OF READINGS at the Paperchain Bookstore here in Canberra on Wednesday 28 August. It’s free but RSVPs are requested. Do consider going if you are in town. It will be great.

So to the giveaway:

Eligibility:  The giveaway will be open to Australian and international readers, with ONE copy to go to an international reader, and ONE to an Australian reader. I will use a random number generator to identify the winners.

How to enter: Leave a Comment on this post, and state which country you live in so I can place you in the right giveaway group. I’d love to hear why you’d like to have the book – but it’s not essential.

The fine print: Entries will close at midnight AEST on 31 August. If you win, you must email me with a postal address by the deadline that I advise in the post announcing the winners. I will redraw a new winner if the deadline isn’t met.

I can’t thank Irma enough for this offer … and hope those of you who lurk here won’t be too shy to enter.  This is a booklover’s treat that doesn’t come around often.

Australian Women Writers 2013 Challenge completed – and Miles Franklin Award Winner 2013

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Australian Women Writers ChallengeAs regular readers here know by now, last year I broke my non-challenge rule to take part in the Australian Women Writer’s Challenge. It was so satisfying, I decided to do it again this year. After all, it’s really the challenge I’d do when I’m not doing a challenge.

Like last year, 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 – and will continue to add to the challenge, as I did last year – but one of the requirements of completing the challenge is to provide a link to a complete challenge post. Here is that post.

I have, in fact, contributed 13 reviews to the challenge to date, but decided to wait to write my completion post until I’d read 10 books. I have now done that – with the other three being individual short stories or essays.

Johnston, House at Number 10 bookcover

Courtesy: Wakefield Press

Here’s my list in alphabetical order, with the links on the titles being to my reviews:

Except for the Baynton, Astley and Johnston reviews, they are all for very recent publications. I would like in the second half of the year to read some more backlist, more classics. Will I do it? Watch this space!

Miles Franklin Award winner for 2013 …

has been announced and it is Michelle de Kretser‘s Questions of travel. I’m pretty thrilled as this is the book my reading group decided to do in July (from the shortlist). As much as I enjoyed Carrie Tiffany’s Mateship with birds, it has won two significant awards this year already, and I don’t think it serves literature well for one book to have a stranglehold on a year’s awards – unless there really is only one great book published in a year but that would really be a worry wouldn’t it?!

You can read about the announcement on the Miles Franklin Literary Award site.

Monday musings on Australian literature: Australian Women Writers’ Challenge 2012 Round-up

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Australian Women Writers Challenge 2012 Badge

(Design: Book’dout – Shelleyrae)

It seems fitting that my last Monday musings for 2012 be devoted to the Australian Women Writers Challenge, partly because it turned out to be quite a significant event in Australia’s literary calendar for the year, and partly because I introduced it in my first Monday musings of the year. The challenge was instigated by Elizabeth Lhuede in response to growing concern in Australian literary circles about lack of recognition* for women writers here. This concern resulted in several tangible actions, besides this challenge, including the creation of the Stella Prize and the first Meanjin Tournament of Books being dedicated to novels by Australian women.

Elizabeth, I know, had no comprehension when she started the challenge of just how successful it would be. Not only did it end the year with around 350 participants, who wrote around 1500 reviews for over 550 authors, but it received significant recognition from multiple quarters, including:

  • Huffington Post, for which Elizabeth was asked to write an article
  • ABC Radio National, on which the challenge was mentioned at least once
  • The National Year of Reading, 2012, which recognised it as an activity in their program
  • Many bookshops, libraries and authors (too many to list), who got behind the challenge and promoted it on their blogs/sites

The challenge has infiltrated social media. It can be found on Facebook, Twitter (@auswomenwriters), and GoodReads, as well as on its dedicated website and blog. It has built up such momentum that it will continue in 2013, with a team to help Elizabeth manage it. I have agreed to be part of that team, with responsibility for the “Literary” area. If it sounds like the sort of challenge for you, please sign up here: Australian Women Writers Challenge 2013.

As I explained in yesterday’s highlights post, this is my first ever challenge. I’ve discovered that it is normal to do a round-up post at the end of a challenge, so here’s mine. I signed up for the Franklin-fantastic Dabbler level, that is, that I’d read (and review) at least 10 books by Australian women writers in more than one genre. I’m therefore listing them by category/genre (but please understand that the groupings are very loose and pretty arbitrary! They are indicative only).

CONTEMPORARY FICTION

HISTORICAL FICTION

CLASSIC FICTION

NON-FICTION

ESSAYS

SHORT STORIES AND POETRY

What did I learn from the challenge? Principally that there’s a whole world of Aussie women writers out there that I knew little or nothing about. They are beavering away in genres I tend not to read and they have big followings, many of whom posted their reviews on the challenge site. The existence of this band of writers was one of the reasons Elizabeth started the challenge, because she knew they were scarcely known outside their specialised fields. I suppose this is the case with all reading categories: we tend not to know what’s going on outside our sphere of interest. But, I’m glad to have had my eyes opened, even if I’m unlikely to greatly change my reading habits. So much to read … and all that, eh?

* Somewhat ironically, this year two books by Australian women – Anna Funder’s All that I am and Gillian Mears’ Foal’s bread – pretty well scooped our top literary awards. While I like to see awards spread around a bit because there’s a lot of quality out there, it was good to see these two wonderful writers receive such clear recognition.

Finally …

A big thanks to all you readers who add so much to my blogging experience. I truly appreciate the encouragement you give me by visiting, by “liking”, and best of all by commenting. I hope you have all had a satisfying 2012 and wish you every good thing, bookish and otherwise, for 2013.

Highlights of 2012: Blogging and the Reading Life

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It’s been a busy year chez Gums and so I’ve decided to write two highlight posts – one listing some favourite reads, and this one for other blogging and reading highlights. Here, in no particular order, they are …

The challenge to do when you don’t do challenges

I decided when I started blogging that I wouldn’t take part in challenges, much as some intrigued me. I wanted to be mistress of my own reading choices and not get drawn into “having” to read something to comply with a challenge. But then, along came the Australian Women Writers Challenge, and I couldn’t say no. It’s a bit of a cheat, really, to say I’ve engaged in a challenge because reading Australian women writers is not a challenge for me. It’s what I do anyhow, it’s my reading preference. And so, readers, I completed the challenge – and will take part again next year. Look for tomorrow’s Monday Musings for my challenge wrap-up …

Other blogging activities

This year I took part in two other blogger-initiated literary activities. One was the Shadow Man Asian Literary Prize team (which actually started in late 2011 but ran through the first quarter of 2012). With a team of 6 (Lisa, Fay , Matt, Stu and Mark), we reviewed the full longlist and chose our winning book, Kyung-Sook Shin’s Please look after mother, which was also chosen by the official judges. It was a great experience, and some of the books I read will be among this year’s reading highlights. However, I have not joined the team this year because I knew I wouldn’t be able to keep up. I’m missing reading some great books though, I know.

The other activity was the Bah-Humbook virtual gift exchange instigated by Guy Savage and Emma. My exchange partner was Stu (see Shadow Man Asian team above!). Stu chose two fascinating sounding books for me, so you can expect reviews of these in the coming months!

Blogging highlights

It has been a pretty exciting year for Whispering Gums blog. Firstly, I finally decided in October to buy my own domain name so that I’m now the proud owner of “whisperinggums.com”. It doesn’t mean much really – except that Google “lost” me for a few months – but it somehow feels more authentic. I’m still hosted by WordPress, giving me, for my needs, the best of both worlds.

Around the same time, an excerpt of my review of Gillian Mears‘ wonderful novel Foals’ bread was included, along with those from another blog (Reading Matters) and several newspaper/magazine reviewers, in the front pages of the “C” paperback edition of the novel.

And then, in December, my blog was added to the Pandora web archive by the National Library of Australia, meaning that, if I ever disappear, my blog will be available online in perpetuity (or until a librarian decides to deselect it!).

Literary events

I attended a number of literary events this year … though never as many as I’d like to! The highlight was probably the inaugural Canberra Readers’ Festival. With writers like Kate Grenville, Anita Heiss and Frank Moorhouse speaking, it had to be a winner, and it was. We Canberrans hope it continues next year.

I also attended the Prime Ministers’ Literary Prize post-announcement panel, and the launches of The invisible thread anthology, Nigel Featherstone’s novella I’m ready now and Suzanne Edgar’s poetry collection Love procession.

Reading goals

This heading is a bit of a misnomer, as I don’t set formal reading goals. However, I do have in my mind works and authors I’d like to read, and this year I achieved an important one, Gerald Murnane. He’s been on the Australian literary scene for a few decades but I had never managed to read him until now. And why now? Because of Text Publishing’s new Text Classics series – the publication of which is another highlight of my reading year. Text has made available, at a good price, a wonderful and diverse collection of Australian classics. I’m glad I finally met this goal, and look forward to more Murnane in my reading future.

Red Dog

I wrote a post in September about the number of ways people were reaching my blog by asking about the film Red Dog, particularly by asking whether Red Dog dies in the movie. Three months later – and some sixteen months after my review – my Red Dog post is still in my top five posts for the year. That movie seems to have really hit a chord. This doesn’t mean I am now going to tell you the answer, but I’m sorry to tell you that Koko, who played Red Dog in the movie, died this month. He was only 7 and had, apparently, won awards for his role. I didn’t even know there were awards for animal stars but apparently there are. All I can say is, Vale Red Dog, oops, I mean Vale Koko!

And that’s about it from me for my blogging/reading life highlights of the year. I’d love to hear if you have any highlights of the literary or blogging kind that you’d like to share …