Ten Favourite Books of 2024

December has arrived yet again! 

To my surprise I found I'd read only 49 books this year (will probably add at least three or four more by 31st December) but it's been a much busier year than I anticipated in January as I took over the presidency of The Society of Women Writers Victoria the following month.

Needless to say there is a huge pile of Waiting To Be Read books on my shelves.

If I add in the books I read to my granddaughters, then I could claim several hundred more as we get through several in a session! They thought this pile was suitable for one bedtime. 

From my reading, my favourites are the following - in no particular order. As always, I'm choosing from books published at any time.

Susan Hurley: Eight Lives. Library loan. A twisty turning mystery to uncover the issue of responsibility for the death of a scientist who is developing a new drug and dies after testing it on himself.  

Tom Rob Smith: Cold People. Library loan. Not my usual sort of choice but a page turner with huge ethical implications about the manipulation of genetics. And would you decide to escape death by living in Antarctica when the alternative is staying put and being eliminated in a month's time!

Gabbi Stroud: The Things That Matter Most. Purchase from local bookshop. Just how far do teachers' responsibilities go toward their pupils?

Alli Parker: At The Foot of The Cherry Tree. Bought at an author event. Of course I wasn't going to buy another book but Alli figuratively and literally sold it to me. The true story of her grandparents, Australian Harry and Japanese Cherry who meet in post-war Japan. Will Harry be able to bring his bride back to Australia?

Kristin Hannah: The Nightingale. On my bookshelf for some time - from a community bookshelf. Isabelle becomes a leader in the French resistance, helping allied airmen escape capture. Family issues complicate her work.

Sue Williams: That Bligh Girl. Bought at discount book shop. The story of Mary Bligh, daughter of William Bligh (yes, that one) when he was Governor of New South Wales in the early 1800s.

Kylie Orr: The Eleventh Floor. Bought at author talk. A new mother checks into a hotel alone for a decent night's sleep. She witnesses something alarming but cannot tell the police because there are serious implications for her if she does. How much responsibility does she have for what happened that night?

Annie Buist and Graeme Simsion: The Glass House. Bought at discount bookshop. Set in a psychiatric hospital we follow the lives of staff members over the course of several patient admissions. 

My daughter who is a mental health nurse vouches for its accuracy. The sequel is out soon!

Christian White: The Wife and the Widow. From my TBR pile - second-hand. Two murders in as a small Australian Island. Is there a link?

Lianne Moriarty: Here One Moment. Bought at discount bookshop. A woman on a delayed flight begins telling passengers the cause and their age at their deaths. Is she misguided but harmless or could there be some truth in her predictions? A thought-provoking read.

Flowers

I came home from the last meeting of the Society Of Women Writers Victoria with these two beauties. 

A bunch of native flowers and the ninth anthology from the society.

The stories, poems and non-fiction pieces are all by our members plus the four winning stories from our recent short story competition. The cover was designed by a member from one of her original paintings. 

The Dickens Twist

Quite a few pieces of my writing have been inspired by people I met through my work. My piece 'A Girl Can Dream' published in Yours magazine was fiction but inspired by two real people whose names I chose to keep. The title was not of my choosing! The real Cathy would probably have laughed, and - providing she'd had a vodka and orange which she rightly maintained helped her speech become clearer - agreed the original title was better.

Another recently published flash, 'A Rose Petal Falls' was not inspired by an actual person but the fact that occasionally elderly people in our care, died with no-one to mourn them. Our unit manager would attend their funerals and often be the only mourner. 

'27th January 1995' is a part fiction / part truth flash as a tribute to a modest man who, on the 50th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, quiety mentioned he had been held there. 

There is also a piece about an actor who filmed part of an episode of a long running police drama series on the farm where I lived when I was twelve. Fifty years later we met again when he presented at my clinic with a minor voice problem. At the end of our second session, I felt he would not mind my mentioning our first meeting and described the scene he'd filmed as an undercover cop. 

'Good lord,' he said. 'I was dressed as a hippie wearing a yellow shirt, wasn't I.'  He certainly was - my twelve year old self had thought he looked rather wonderful (I didn't tell him that bit.) I was amazed that he could remember part of a single episode when he'd filmed goodness knows how many in his long career.

The latest piece soon to be published is from two separate and very different patients both of whom stood out in my memory. I spotted a callout for pieces about working life for an anthology and dusted off a piece my writing group had read, spruced it up and sent it off, with no real expectation of it being selected. To my delight it was and this time the editor's suggested title, 'The Dickens Twist' is much better than mine! Is This Working will be launched in Brisbane on September 21st 2024.

 

It's been rather a long time....

 

Yes, it's been ages since I posted here. I've been pretty busy. 

At the beginning of the year the committee of the Society of Women Writers Victoria began its work as usual after the Christmas break ready for the first meeting of the year in February. Then our president stepped down which left rather a gap. And I stepped up! So here I am, the Interim President until the AGM later this year. I felt a bit like a politician who takes over mid-term. But one thing I can promise, I'll do a better job than the UK Prime Minister who was in the role for a mere 44 days. To be fair she didn't set the bar very high so I'm not promising the impossible.

As well as undertaking lots of governance issues, which thankfully another committee member (also called Lindsay) understands far better than I do, we have just run a short story competition, have undertaken a member survey and are planning not only our regular monthly meetings but some additional ones too. So there's a fair bit going on as well as the admin that goes with changes of office. 

Needless to say I haven't done as much writing as I'd like, but was pleased to have two acceptances to Australian anthologies, Older (Bequem Publishing) and Is This Working (Tiny Owl Workshop) to be published later this year. A small prompted piece was showcased in the most recent Furious Fiction competition - 55 hours to write up to 500 words. Mine was done in less than five hours as inevitably the timing coincided with others matters requiring attention. Yes, there have been rejections too, but there's no point dwelling too much on those. 

I have been focusing on a family story. It started out as a single short story but the members of my writing group (within SWWV) suggested I expand it so the episodes keep coming. This means lots of research as it's set in the early years of the 19th century and is set in England and Australia. 

I've attended some good local author events too - including Alice Pung and Kylie Orr - there's never a shortage of bookish events here in Melbourne. And of course there are plenty of great books to read. 

So that's my 2024 so far. Hopefully it won't be six months before my next post. 

This year's favourite books.

The end of year book lists are ubiquitous - I often wonder whether those by literary figures really do feature the books they liked the most or ones they want the public to think they liked the most because their lists always feature books that have won lots of acclaim. But many good books don't get much of a look in!

My year's reading has been good - I've read 61 books
with only one prize-winning novel abandoned as I couldn't stand the characters. This has been my reason for giving up on several books - they've been well-written and have often won prizes or the acclaim I mentioned above but the characters are just so annoying I don't care what happens to them. 

I'm perfectly able to like books with irritating or unlikable characters because something else is at stake and that keeps me reading. Just like life, sometimes we bear with people who annoy us because there is a reason to persist but if there is no upside why keep them in your life? 

Anyway here is my list and because I don't mind if people don't consider me a literary force, I have chosen the books I enjoyed the most - not all from this year - and yes, some are those major prize winners! Of course there are loads of excellent books that I haven't read yet (some of which, I'm sure, are on my TBR pile.)

Thanks to library loans, community book shelves, gifts and purchases, here is my top ten in no particular order.:

Shankari Chandran: Chai Time at Cinnamon Gardens (independent bookshop purchase)

Vicki Petratis: The Unbelieved (bought at author event)

Bonnie Garmus: Lessons In Chemistry (online purchase)

Barbara Kingsolver: Demon Copperhead (independent bookshop purchase)

Celeste Ng: Our Missing Hearts (library loan)

Toni Jordan: Prettier if She Smiled More (chain bookshop purchase)

Lisa Genova: Left Neglected (op shop purchase)

Pip Williams: The Bookbinder of Jericho (chain bookshop purchase)

Christian White: The Nowhere Child (gift)

Kerryn Mayne: Lenny Marks Gets Away With Murder (library loan)

In Praise of Postcards

My mother had an extensive collection of 'tourist' postcards stuck on one wall of her kitchen - with five children and eight grandchildren who all travelled it was a worthy collection boasting pictures from numerous countries as well as UK. 

When she left her flat for a residential home many of our postcards were returned to us if we wanted them so I have my cards from Mongolia and Timbuktu among others. 

I always liked receiving postcards from friends and family on holiday and I used many cards of iconic views in my speech therapy work with people with aphasia making interesting naming activities and stimulating conversation. 

I recall a collection of old postcards in the attic of the farmhouse where I grew up mostly addressed to the previous resident before her marriage. The messages weren't from holiday makers but were used as a quick way of sending notes in the pre-telephone era when there were up to four deliveries a day including an evening delivery. A local card could be posted and delivered on the same day.  One of my sisters rescued some of them and the messages are a mixture of banal and intriguing. 

This one dated 15th November 1914, says "This is some of the wounded I saw at Southend, Our Police Court Case came off this week. I am so glad it is over, although it is always in my thoughts. 20 months hard labour for each. Much love, Ida."  One can only wonder.

Another of my postcard collections is my art cards. A regular visitor to art galleries since my teens I always purchase a few of my favorite or particularly interesting pictures and some I have received from friends. One such card of a Waterhouse simply reads, 'We must do this again, J.' To my shame I have no recollection of J or indeed what we did or whether we ever did it again! Perhaps it was a visit to the Tate but I really don't recall visiting with a J. (I do recall visiting with a witty R and a rather tedious R and an M who kept making stupid comments which I was only able to turn off by visiting the cafe like the French and Saunders sketch.)

My travel card collection hasn't grown lately as people don't seem to send cards from their travels any more and many aren't travelling so much nowadays so receiving cards is infrequent - or was until I discovered PostCrossing 

This world-wide organization allows you to sign up with your address and a few details about yourself including languages in which you can communicate. You are assigned a person to whom you send a card. When it is received and registered on the site your name will be assigned to someone so for every card you send, you receive one. Over 74 million cards have been sent through the scheme.

This is a world-wide scheme but you are limited by language – English is of course a world language which is an advantage. Cost is something to bear in mind. Some PostCrossers have sent thousands of cards – perhaps their postage is cheaper or they think of it as a hobby worth the cost.

So far, I’ve sent and or received cards from 33 countries. One to USA, one to Slovakia and one to Thailand have gone astray but sometimes they do turn up eventually. I received one from China that took 84 days and one I sent to China arrived after 111 days. I wonder where the missing cards  are lurking!

On my profile I mentioned liking art cards and several of those sent to me are cards of artworks, some of which I knew while others have added to my education.

Further reading:

Two books detailing postcards dating from around 1911 and the stories behind them.

Posted on the Past & Second Delivery by Helen Bagott. 

A book about the history of postcard published in USA: Postcards The Rise and Fall of the World’s First Social Network by Lydia Pynel

 Cuckoo in The Nest:   Fran Hill.     

Narrated by fourteen-year-old Jackie, Cuckoo in the Nest is the story of Jackie, an aspiring poet who is wiser beyond her years. She’s had to be since her mum died and her father slid into alcoholism alternating between violence and helplessness. Jackie has kept the pair of them going but when the authorities eventually step in, she is fostered by Nick and Bridget Wall whose daughter Amanda does not welcome the newcomer.

 Set in Britain’s heatwave summer of 1976, there are plenty of cultural references including music for those of us who remember this era, and setting the scene for those who don’t. (Gammon slices with pineapple sauce, anyone? Or a drive in a mustard-coloured Ford Escort?)

As Jackie negotiates her new situation, she is aware that her foster parents also have to find their way with the arrangement as much as she does herself. Amanda does too but without any consideration towards Jackie or, indeed, her parents.

Jackie gets through the days guarding her emotions carefully, but we see small snippets of her pain and vulnerability – always understated but saying so much. ‘It was about finding Carolines or perhaps Janes or Marions with my dad and wearing my mother’s silk dressing gown.’   

As the story unfolds, we see that Bridget is hanging onto her middle-class aspirations by her fingernails. How does she negotiate the minefield of a resentful teenager and the proverbial cuckoo in the nest when things go awry?

Jackie narrates her story with sardonic humour although occasionally I found this a little too adult for even a bright and precocious fourteen-year-old. However, it didn’t mar my enjoyment of reading.

This story is fiction but Cuckoo in The Nest is informed by the author’s own experience of living with a foster family, giving it authenticity and allowing the reader insights into the experiences of children in the care system and perhaps breaking down preconceived ideas about children in care.