Scrublands, by Chris Hammer, most read Libby ebook in 2021
16 December 2021
Canberra based Australian crime writer Chris Hammer’s 2018 novel Scrublands was the most read ebook on the Libby reading app this year in Australia. Unsurprisingly, Overdrive, the developers of the app, said 2021 saw record issues of digital titles, with the pandemic resulting in fewer than usual physical book loans, given many libraries were closed because of COVID lockdowns.
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Another win for Amanda Lohrey’s novel The Labyrinth
16 December 2021
It’s been a good year for Tasmania based Australian author Amanda Lohrey. In July her novel The Labyrinth won the Miles Franklin Literary Award, and yesterday the same novel was named winner of The Prime Minister’s Literary Awards for 2021, in the fiction category, with the judges describing the novel as a work of considerable literary artistry.
‘The Labyrinth’ is shadowed and haunted by strangeness. It is a novel in high realist mode that also has romance elements, if only in the way it encompasses a tragicomic mood and a certain formal audacity that brings to mind the moodiness and restless shifts of late Shakespeare. ‘The Labyrinth’ has a gravity that outstares everything that may seem grey or gaunt in a literary endeavour where autumn seems to sink to midwinter. It is a work of considerable literary artistry.
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Amanda Lohrey, Australian literature
Being the Ricardos, by Aaron Sorkin
15 December 2021
Being the Ricardos (trailer), by American playwright and filmmaker Aaron Sorkin, brings the life of late comedian Lucille Ball to the big screen. While early reviews of the film – which opened in Australian cinemas last week – have so far been mixed, Australian actor Nicole Kidman portrayal of Ball has been praised by some critics. Simran Hans, for example, writing for The Guardian, describes Kidman as “brilliant.”
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A book may be a writer’s baby, but babies are not books
15 December 2021
A writer’s second book, and having a second child, are similar experiences – difficult – says Australian author Anna Downes, writing for The Sydney Morning Herald. But don’t go thinking books are the same as babies, well, not most of the time anyway.
The difference with books is that one day you must let go. Once your novel is published, its success or failure in the world is out of your hands. You can’t control where it goes or with whom, can’t protect it from criticism. All you can do is love it, be proud of it, celebrate its birthdays, spend time with those who adore it, and maybe rescue it from a dark corner once in a while. Because your work is finally done. Your book comes through you, but it is not part of you. It is not who you are.
Downe’s second novel The Shadow House was published in September this year.
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Anna Downes, Australian literature
Voting open for Triple J’s Hottest 100
15 December 2021
Voting is open for Australian radio station Triple J’s annual Hottest 100 listener’s poll. I don’t hear too much radio format and have come to regard the Hottest 100 in the same way I do the long and short lists of literary awards, a great place to seek out quality music listening inspiration. Voting closes on 17 January 2022, and the countdown can be heard a few days later on 22 January.
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Vale Anne Rice, author of Interview with the Vampire
14 December 2021
American author Anne Rice, best known for her 1976 book Interview with the Vampire, and the subsequent series of sequels called The Vampire Chronicles, died on Saturday, 11 December 2021, aged 80. Other of Rice’s notable works include The Feast of All Saints, and Servant of the Bones.
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The books your favourite authors recommend
13 December 2021
Apart from literary award long and short lists, book recommendations from the world’s best authors are a sure fire way to find novels to add to your to-be-read list. Along with American writer Min Jin Lee, and British author Kazuo Ishiguro, Australian novelists Anna Funder, Helen Garner, Hannah Kent, Sofie Laguna, Alexis Wright, and Craig Silvey, talk about their favourite reads of the past twelve months.
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Wild Abandon, by Emily Bitto
13 December 2021
The year is 2011, and Will, a young Australian, heart-broken after his girlfriend Laura left him, buys a cheap flight to America. His plan is to spend a few months in New York City, partying and meeting people, hoping he can put the break-up behind him. But not long after arriving in the city that never sleeps, an unsettling incident sees Will pack his bags and travel to a small town in Ohio. Here an old school friend introduces him to Wayne, a former soldier, and Vietnam veteran.
Wild Abandon (published by Allen & Unwin, September 2021), the second novel of Melbourne based Australian author Emily Bitto, tells a familiar story. A displaced person, struggling to find direction at home, sets off into the wide blue yonder, on the belief travel to places new and exciting will be a panacea for their ills.
Once he reaches Ohio, Will begins working for Wayne, who owns a private zoo where he keeps exotic animals. What better way to heal, you might ask, than caring for the beasts inhabiting a menagerie. Better, surely, that the drug infused parties of the big city. But Wayne is man with deep problems, and before long Will is lurching towards another calamity.
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Emily Bitto, fiction, TBR list, writing
Sally Rooney voted top fiction writer in the 2021 Goodreads Choice Awards
11 December 2021
Beautiful World, Where Are You, by Sally Rooney, has been voted the best fiction title for 2021 by Goodreads members, who voted for books across seventeen categories in the annual Goodreads Choice Awards. Congratulations to all authors whose works were nominated this year.
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books, literature, novels, Sally Rooney
To all the people who’ve blocked me on Twitter
11 December 2021
“For everyone who blocked me on Twitter”… I can’t tell you much about the book itself, but there’s a book dedication you don’t see every day, as seen in The End of Gender, by Canadian sex neuroscientist Dr Debra Soh.
Via Paul Dalgarno, on Bookstagram.
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