Emily St. John Mandel – Still Not Fussed

The best of the year in books so far

Books June 25, 2015

It’s half way through 2015 and time for a literary stock take of my year so far. The bare statistics underpinning six months of reading pleasure are: total number of books – 55 books consisting of 50 novels, three works of non-fiction, one book of poetry and one play. The gender breakdown was 33 women writers and 22 male, drawn from 13 countries, with the largest number coming from Australia and Great Britain. Below are my ten favourite books (so far), not in any particular order as just selecting the ten was hard enough. One of Us by Asne Seirstad, Waiting for the Past by Les Murray and The Eye of the Sheep by Sofie Laguna deserve a special mention because they would have been on the list if the Top 10 was actually a Top13.

Station 11 by Emily St John Mandel
Big Little Lies by Liane Moriarty
Snow Kimono by Mark Henshaw
The End of Days by Jenny Erpenbeck
River of Fire by Amitav Ghosh
The Truth and Other Lies by Sascha Arango
One Life by Kate Grenville
The Bees by Laline Paull
The Last Pilot by Benjamin Johncock
Department of Speculation by Jenny Offill

Full list:

Keep Reading

Counting the days to Sydney Writers Festival

Books May 11, 2015

As with travel, a great deal of the pleasure of book festivals lies in the planning. Hours can be whiled away pouring over brochures or web sites, drawing up timelines and bemoaning a clash of favorites. And as the almost final decisions take place there is that delightful frisson of anticipated pleasure followed by a flurry of preparatory reading.

Sydney Writers Festival, which kicks off next week, has grown from a rather modest, largely parochial affair, to a weeklong extravaganza with such variety of offerings that have earned it an international reputation. Although there are sessions spread around the city the main venue is the Walsh Bay precinct with its awesome outlook over Sydney Harbour. There is a constellation of internationally recognised guests from Australia and

Keep Reading

A very long long list for the Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction

Books March 10, 2015

How many books is too many? I confess there’s more than a little self interest involved in the question. The long list for the Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction has just been announced and it’s a whopping 20 books long, albeit from 165 original applicants. The prize, which was previously known as the Orange, is for a full-length novel written in english by a woman of any nationality and published in the United Kingdom.

Of course a plus for having long lists longer than the customary 10 or 12 titles is that many more authors are able to get their moment in the literary sunshine. This particularly applies to debut authors of which the long list has five including Emma Healey’s Elizabeth is Missing, which won the Costa Prize, and Laline Paull’s dystopian The Bees. It also gives the judges the opportunity to broaden the range of work celebrated beyond what might be viewed as more “conventional” subject and style.

On the downside, I know I am not alone in liking to read as many of the contenders for

Keep Reading

An Unnecessary Woman by Rabih Alameddine is a book to which you will want to keep returning

Books November 3, 2014

Aaliya lives alone in the second-floor apartment in a none too salubrious part of Beirut and contemplates the gaudy transformation of her city and the imminent arrival of old age with its growing catalogue of “accepted defeats”. She had been subjected to relentless pressure, and occasional threats, by her family after her (impotent, not that they knew that) husband had moved on leaving her with the social disgrace of divorce. No, she dug in. This was her home. And she needs the space for her enduring companions, her books.

“Books everywhere, stacks and stacks, shelves and bookcases, stacks atop each shelf … how many hours have I moved around this room, from nook to nook, making sure that everything is in its proper place, every book in its proper pile, every dust mote annihilated?” It is in their pages that she finds companionship, conversation and an often dryly-witty observation of the vagaries of life in a constantly changing Beirut. As

Keep Reading