In case you missed it – yesterday, I posted the first half of a list of thirty-five meditations on reading, writing and my life in books. Why? Because I’m turning thirty-five, and birthdays make me nervous. If you’re yet to read part one, click here to take a look.
As promised, here’s part two…
By the time I realise what’s going on, it’s already consumed me. I’m surrounded by it, like 
someone caught in the eye of a tiny cyclone.
You’d think I’d have learned to recognise the signs by now. But no. Not yet. Even though it happens once every year, it’s still new to me, every time.
The tell-tale signs: a sudden, unexplained agitation. Chewed fingernails. Three vertical lines between my eyebrows that won’t go away, An inability to remain still.
There are other things too; things more difficult to spot from the outside. The lingering worry over lost time, for instance. I twist and turn and tangle myself in heavy threads of introspection that, when unravelled, lead me precisely nowhere. I become intense, impossible.
Then I notice the date on the screen of my phone as I’m running for the bus, or I glance at the expiry date on the milk as I make my tea and all this sweaty-palmed panic finally makes sense. And that’s when it begins to lift.
Congrats to our Words finalists: @johnbirmingham, @danielle_binks, @andrewbifield, @booktothefuture, @readinasitting #bestblogs13
— Aust Writers Centre (@WritersCentreAU) April 23, 2013
Somehow, I’ve blundered my way into the finals of the Australian Writers’ Centre’s Best Australian Blogs competition.
I’m in the Words category, along with bookblogger extraordinaire, Stephanie from Read in a Single Sitting and John Birmingham (I know, right!? This comes to mind). Also in the Words category are Danielle Binks’ Alpha Reader and Andrew Bilfield for Lives of the Poets. Go and take a look – they’re all fantastic blogs.
I’d like to say a great big thank you to the Australian Writers’ Centre, as well as everyone who’s sent me messages on Facebook, Twitter and email.
But this post isn’t about Book to the Future at all. Actually, I have a favour to ask.
There’s a particular blog that I really think deserves recognition – and, if you’re fast, there’s still time to vote for it to win the People’s Choice Round of the competition.
So, if you haven’t already voted, I want you to go, right now, and vote for the Australian Women Writers Challenge Blog to win the Best Australian Blogs Competition People’s Choice award. It’s really easy. Just click here, tick the box next to the Australian Women Writers’ Challenge Blog (it’s on the first page!) enter a few basic details about yourself, and you’re done.
Oh, and while you’re in a clicking kinda mood, there are heaps of other blogs I love that you could also vote for. Like Tonile from My Cup and Chaucer, Louise from Stella Orbit, Annabel Smith, Walter Mason, Sue from Whispering Gums and the Momentum Blog. Also in the running, there’s Tim from Tim Writes India, Tony’s Reading List and Killings. Brilliant blogs all round.
Right. That’s it from me. Here’s the voting page again – go have your say!
It’s not every day you look at your phone and find a tweet telling you your name’s in the paper.
Along with a few of my book blogging idols, including Angela Meyer, Lisa Hill, Kim Forrester and John Boland, I was mentioned in Jane Sullivan’s Turning Pages column in Saturday’s Age. Click here to take a look.
(To the “informant” who brought Book to the Future to Jane’s attention, thank you so much!)
I’ve taken the drastic step of banning myself from reading any more books until I’ve posted a new review, so I’d better get my head out of the clouds and get back to writing…
I spent my entire train trip home tonight huddled over the screen of my iPhone, frantically refreshing my Twitter feed over and over again, waiting impatiently for the announcement of the winner of the very first Stella Prize.
When the result came through, I couldn’t have been happier.
The winner of the Stella Prize is my favourite novel of 2012, Carrie Tiffany’s Mateship with Birds!
Here’s Kerryn Goldsworthy’s lovely analysis of Mateship with Birds over on the Stella Prize website. My review is right here.
Congratulations to Carrie Tiffany (who announced in her acceptance speech that she’s giving ten thousand dollars of her fifty thousand dollar prize money to the authors shortlisted for the award – what a incredibly generous gesture!) as well as all the other short- and longlisted authors. Also, congratulations to the Stella Prize team on the successful launch of an award that’s already giving the Australian literary scene a much-needed shake.
Will I finally stop raving about Mateship with Birds now? Not likely. Especially now that it’s made the longlist for the Miles Franklin award. Could Mateship with Birds take out Australia’s “most prestigious” book prize as well as Australia’s newest literary award? Only time will tell.
Mateship with Birds is also nominated for the New South Wales Premier’s Literary Award (along with Charlotte Wood’s Animal People and Gillian Mears’ Foal’s Bread – another two of my favourites from 2012!) as well as the Kibble Literary Award.
It’s an exciting time to be a reader, and an exciting time for Australian women’s writing!
So. Once again, I find myself struggling to find the time to keep up with blogging, reading, writing and my full-time job. Blah blah blah, the usual. It’s becoming abundantly clear that I’m going to have to take a step back from something. A little hint – it’s not going to be blogging, reading or writing…
Anyway. I wanted to write a very quick update to my previous review.
When I really love a book, it makes me very happy to see that book receive the recognition it so deserves. Hence, I was very pleased to see that Carrie Tiffany’s Mateship with Birds was named on the longlist for the inaugural Stella Prize. The shortlist will be announced at midday this Wednesday, and I’ll be online for the announcement, holding my breath.
(Edited to add: and here’s the Stella shortlist…Mateship with Birds made it! Brilliant!)
In the meantime, I’m reading a few other books from the longlist. I’m completely, utterly mesmerised by Amy Espeseth’s Sufficient Grace right now, and Margo Lanagan’s Sea Hearts is next on my Australian Women Writers reading list. After that, I’m reading Cate Kennedy’s Like a House on Fire.
As pleased as I was to see Mateship with Birds on the Stella longlist, I was overjoyed when it made the longlist for the 2013 Women’s Prize for Fiction. And another of my favourite books of last year, Zadie Smith’s NW is also nominated. Many of the titles on the longlist are new to me but it’s such an exciting list. If only the pile of books I want to read wasn’t already so large it requires its own postcode, I’d read them all.
As a quick aside, I’m completely thrilled that my review of Mateship with Birds was selected as one of three winners of the Scribe Books Giveaway over on the Australian Women Writers Challenge blog. Thank you so much to the judge Annabel Smith, to Danielle, who was kind enough to nominate my review, to Elizabeth Lhuede – and huge congratulations to the other two winning reviewers.
Also on the subject of awards, Jessie Cole’s amazing debut novel Darkness on the Edge of Town made it to the shortlist of the ALS Gold Medal today, Brilliant news! I’ll be reviewing Darkness as soon as I can find the time – err, see the first sentence of this post.
And finally – the Miles Franklin Award longlist will be announced next week and it looks like exciting things are gearing up over at the Miles Franklin website.
Okay. Back to writing…
I’m going to begin writing about books from the Sixties very soon – but before I do that, I need to take care of one very important piece of unfinished business. One final indulgence, before I get on with things…
As I mentioned at the end of this post, Carrie Tiffany’s Mateship with Birds was one of my favourite literary discoveries last year. Tiffany’s debut novel, Everyman’s Rules for Scientific Living is sitting on my shelf, unread and so very tempting, but I’m hesitant to pick it up just yet. Anyone who loves reading will surely understand my anxiety: when you discover a new author you love, it’s important to balance the compulsion to devour everything they’ve ever written with the crushing feeling of desolation once you’ve read all there is to read.
However, I have a feeling that the temptation just might get the better of me sooner than I think…
When you’re two and a half years into an enormous reading project, the last thing you want to do is take on even more reading, right?
Um. Actually, that’s exactly what I want.
It’s the start of a new year, and I’ve set myself a New Year’s reading resolution – yes, aside from continuing this blog, and participating in the Australian Women Writers Challenge.
I started Book to the Future to help me fill in some of the huge gaps in my reading. And it’s working! Over the past two and a half years, I’ve discovered novels that have changed the way I think – novels that make me wonder how I was even alive before I’d read them.
But there’s still a whopping great big problem. A gaping hole in my reading so shameful, I’m rather reluctant to admit it.
I know next to nothing about poetry.
Poetry makes me feel stupid. While I soak up novels in the same way a sponge absorbs water, there are few poets I’ve taken to in the same way. Poetry is like glass. Though I try, I can’t find anywhere to grab hold of it – my fingers slide against the words and I make a hasty retreat back to the safety and familiarity of a book.
This year, I’m planning to get to know poetry a little better. The only problem? I don’t know where, or even how, to start. So – readers of poetry – I’m asking for your help…
Assume I know nothing; that I’ve read nothing – which, honestly, isn’t all that far from the truth. I won’t mention the names of the few poets I do enjoy, however, needless to say, most of them are also novelists. I’m eager to start again, and I could use all the advice I can get.
Old poems, new poems…what are your favourites? Which poems do you have sticky-taped to the wall beside your desk? How did you start reading poetry? Is reading poetry a skill you’ve acquired, or does it just come to you naturally?
I’m not planning to blog about poetry. I don’t have the tools or the words for that. This is a personal project, my attempt to address an absence I’ve felt for so long.
So tell me – where should I begin?