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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Sci-fi and fantasy novels with disabled characters
11 December 2021
Kit Kavanagh-Ryan, a presenter of The Book Show, has put together a selection of five science fiction and/or fantasy novels featuring central characters who are disabled.
Sometimes, however, speculative fiction creates a space where readers and writers get to imagine ‘crip futures’ in our fiction: spaces real or imagined where we question our idea of what ‘normal’ bodies and minds look like – what normal means at all.
Maybe it’s the sort of novels I read, titles usually found on literary award shortlists, but now that I think about it, few of them include people with disabilities.
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The two hundred greatest Australian albums of all time
10 December 2021
Keeping it all Australian today, not the plan, just the way it turned out: Rolling Stone’s list of the top two hundred albums of all time. While the top twenty titles include household names, only the work of two artists, Tame Impala, and 5 Seconds of Summer, is less than ten years old. Many of the top albums were released in the latter part of last century, and I’ll be curious to see how they’ve fared in terms of chart position, in say twenty years’ time.
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Prime Minister’s Summer Reading List 2021
10 December 2021
Australian public policy think tank the Grattan Institute has selected six books for the Australian Prime Minister to read over the upcoming summer break.
This year’s list covers a wide range of important issues including the disparity between private and public education systems; land use and the environment; grief, loss, and the female voice; poverty; sovereignty of the First Nations of Australia; and technology’s impact on our lives, our politics, and our values.
The only fiction offering on this year’s list is She Is Haunted, by Melbourne based author Paige Clark, a collection of short stories exploring themes including grief, heartbreak, and illness. Here’s hoping the Prime Minister takes the time to read these titles, and others, during the holiday break.
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