Wednesday 26 July 2017

2017 Reading Challenge - Halfway Summary

Arya is doing a summer reading challenge at the library, but due to busy
weekends is unlikely to complete it.
So, I guess the big news is that I'm about two months behind. If I can finish up Carpentaria, I'll have read 9 of my target 14 books; everything up to April and the first of two books for May.

In part, this is because really good books are much more demanding than books that are just okay, or even quite good. There's a density of text in truly great literature that defies speed reading or - in my case - casual listening. A few moments of distraction or a noisy bus can cause you to miss days of meaning. It also makes them really difficult to tackle while tired, and I am so often tired at the moment, what with parenthood and all.

I began the year with 'Magic Realism', and one of the remarkable things I've noticed is how deeply that concept pervades the other books I've approached. Gothic is the sinister twin of magic realism anyway, but if Sylvia Plath didn't coin the term in The Bell Jar, she defines it, and Carpentaria reads like the antipodean One Hundred Years of Solitude.

Moving forward, I think I'm going to ditch the monthly targets and just stick with my themes:

Australia

  • Carpentaria - Alexis Wright
  • That Deadman Dance - Kim Scott

Emancipation

  • Beloved - Toni Morrison
  • The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood

India

  • A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
  • The God of Small Things - Arundhati Roy

The Luke Cage Syllabus

  • Little Green - Walter Mosley
  • Crime Partners - Donald Goines

Africa

  • Dust - Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor
  • We Should All Be Feminists - Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Undefined Theme

  • Travel Light - Naomi Mitchison


Muslim Authors

  • Persepolis - Marjane Satrapi
  • Reading Lolita in Tehran - Azar Nafisi

Mother Russia

  • Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
  • The Secret History of Moscow - Ekaterina Sedia

Poetry and Music Bonuses

  • Guante - A Love Song, A Death Rattle, A Battle Cry
  • Edgar Allen Poe - Collected Verse
  • Te Vaka - Havili
  • Freida Hughes - Wooroloo

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