AWW2013: Halfway Recap!

In January, I signed up for 2 reading challenges this year (alongside my regular Goodreads challenge). The first of these was Ellie's 2013 Translation Challenge, which I recapped recently here. The second was the Australian Women Writers Challenge.

I set myself a target of reading 4 books by female Australian authors over the course of the year. Looking back at the halfway stage, I realise I have reached my target! These are the books I have read so far:

Nicole Hayes - The Whole of My World

YA with an interesting Aussie Rules setting.

Emily Gale - Steal My Sunshine

Coming of age YA with an intriguing subplot that delves into an interesting piece of Australian history. One of my top ten books of the year so far.

Simmone Howell - Everything Beautiful

YA set at a Christian summer camp. I had high expectations but was a little bit underwhelmed by this.

Melissa Keil - Life In Outer Space

Another of my top ten books of the year so far. Great YA with fab male characters.

Maureen McCarthy - Rose By Any Other Name

More coming of age YA - good, but didn't blow me away.

Anna Funder - All That I Am

Based on a true story, focusing on the German political resistance in the early 1930s.

I've really enjoyed this challenge so far - the Aussie YA has been strong, and I was excited to read Funder's latest novel. I'm hopeful that I will be able to add to this list by the end of the year, and I'd definitely recommend Gale and Keil's books in particular to any YA fans out there!

Challenge status: Complete.

Top Ten Books of 2013 (so far)

Top Ten Tuesday is hosted by The Broke and the Bookish.

This week's Top Ten Tuesday topic is Top Ten Books of 2013 (so far), and I decided to participate and share some my favourites since January! Some of these are 2013 releases, but for the most part they're just my top reads.

1. Life In Outer Space - Melissa Keil
Quirky Australian YA with a great, believable trio of teenage boys at its centre.

(The US edition of this book looks to be currently 'Read Now' on Netgalley, if you're interested!)

2. The Dinner - Herman Koch
Dutch novel that busies itself skewering the middle classes over appetisers.

3. Steal My Sunshine - Emily Gale
More Australian YA, this time focusing on an uncertain teenage girl and the secrets of her grandmother.

4. Gone Girl - Gillian Flynn
Twisty, genuinely gripping thriller that everyone and their aunt seems to have read by now!

5. Lola and the Boy Next Door - Stephanie Perkins
A worthy follow up to Anna, and another YA novel from Perkins with real, heart-warming characters and one of the coolest protagonists I've met in a while.

6. Speechless - Hannah Harrington
This one totally exceeded my expectations - bratty girl is transformed by her pledge to remain silent after a horrifying incident.

7. Geek Girl - Holly Smale
Fun British YA - smart and daft and highly recommended.

8. Nemesis - Philip Roth
Roth's final novel, and a poignant one at that, focusing on the polio epidemic in New Jersey in 1944.

9. Be Awesome - Hadley Freeman (review coming soon!)
Friends with kids, terrible dating advice, magazines that do nothing but tear women's bodies apart - and how to deal with it all. Extremely funny.

10. My Mad, Fat Teenage Diary - Rae Earl
It's 1989, and 17 year old Rae is writing her diary in the depths of Lincolnshire, agonising over boys, analysing shitty friendships and writing bad poetry. A wonderful, hilarious book.

Review: Steal My Sunshine, Emily Gale

Steal My Sunshine

Emily Gale

Random House Australia, 2013

[New release: May 1st, 2013]

Goodreads

During a Melbourne heatwave, Hannah's family life begins to distort beyond her deepest fears. It's going to take more than a cool change to fix it, but how can a girl who lives in the shadows take on the task alone? Feeling powerless and invisible, Hannah seeks refuge in the two anarchists of her life: her wild best friend, Chloe, and her eccentric grandmother, Essie, who look like they know how life really works. But Hannah's loyalty to both is tested, first by her attraction to Chloe's older brother, and then by Essie's devastating secret that sheds new light on how the family has lost its way. Even if Hannah doesn't know what to believe in, she'd better start believing in herself. 

If I can liken Steal My Sunshine to any particular holiday-related chocolate product, then it'll have to be the good old Easter egg. What appears to be one story actually turns out to be two, one nestled inside the other and revealing a whole extra layer of history, family and reconciliation. On the surface, this novel is about Hannah - a typical, if somewhat shy, teenage girl living in Melbourne. She lives at home with her mum and dad and her older brother, Sam, who is at uni but still manages to infect the house with his stinky trainers and capacious appetite, a la every brother ever. Hannah also has a bubbly, popular best friend, Chloe, who works in her dad's bar and manages to seem cooler and more grown up that Hannah can ever hope to be. Hannah's home life isn't particularly brilliant - her brother is always sniping at her, her mum is perpetually angry and quite brittle with Hannah, and her dad is just in it for the quiet life. I really felt for Hannah in the first couple of chapters as she struggles to understand why she and her mum seem to be on the opposite sides of everything, while at the same time dealing with a best friend who is a little bit disdainful and dismissive of her.

So far, so ordinary - but then the second layer of the story begins to unfold, focusing on Hannah's grandmother Essie, who is agoraphobic and increasingly needs help with day-to-day things. She's a sparky old woman, always full of gin, and Hannah is always worried that Essie thinks she's somehow too boring and too safe, not like Essie herself. Hannah discovers that her grandmother has a secret, and over the rest of the book it is Essie's story that begins to unfold. Here Gale brings in a particular issue of Australian history, that of the use of laundries (quite often known as Magdalene Laundries, at least in the UK and Ireland) run by nuns, which were used to house teenage girls who got pregnant, or "fallen women", as they were known. (There's a Sydney Morning Herald article entitled "Bad Girls Do the Best Sheets" that I found on the same subject.) Girls would give birth and have their babies taken away and adopted by "respectable" couples, and while they were pregnant (and it wasn't quite clear, but I think afterwards as well, for some of them) they were required to work for free in these laundries, overseen by the nuns.

Through Essie, Hannah discovers a part of her family history that she didn't know about, and through this she  begins to see the bigger picture and where she fits into it. Essie's story was really interesting, and I enjoyed the historical element, which prompted me to go away and look up these laundries after finishing the novel. In between all of this, Hannah struggles with more typical teenage problems - tentative dating, her parents, having to speak in the school play, whether or not she even likes her best friend anymore - and the balance was just about right between the past and the present storylines, as Hannah tries to find more confidence in herself. A solid young adult read made much more powerful by the historical details that Gale chooses to include.

Overall rating: 7/10

Book source: ebook ARC received via Netgalley.

This book counts towards my Australian Women Writers Challenge 2013.

Showcase Sunday #21

Showcase Sunday is hosted by Vicky at Books, Biscuits and Tea.

I spent last weekend hanging out with The Boy, who came to stay for a few days, so this is a round up of the last couple of weeks' worth of books.

From the library:

Gone Girl - Gillian Flynn

I have already finished this, and all I can say is: go read it. (It's a difficult one to talk about without giving stuff away, so I'm not how the review will go yet!)

Now You See Me - S. J. Bolton

Recommended to me by Vicky, this is a crime novel focusing on a young policewoman and her fascination with Jack the Ripper. A copycat is on the loose, and he appears to be targeting Lacey...

Pushing the Limits - Katie McGarry

I received the second book in this series (Dare You To) for review a couple of weeks ago, so I thought I'd read them in order. It doesn't look like something I would normally pick up, but we'll see how it goes!

Received for review:

Steal My Sunshine - Emily Gale

Ebook copy received from Random House Australia (expected publication May 2013). Contemporary Australian YA with some added historical elements (according to the blurb, to do with forced adoptions). Looking forward to starting this one!

I also got my thesis back from my supervisor for my final edits, which means in WEEKS, rather than MONTHS or even YEARS (and it seems like not very long ago at all, sometimes, since it really was YEARS), I will be submitting. 80,000 words and a lot of brain-aching, brain-expanding, brain-frying thoughts later, my doctoral thesis is in its final stages. So if my posting is a little sporadic until that point, please excuse it...

Thanks for stopping by!