Pretty happy with January reading! In December I only managed 12 books so to hit 19 was a nice little surprise. I’m off to a good-start challenge wise, reading 5 books for the Australian Women Writers Challenge for 2012 and managing to get one in for the What’s In A Name?5 Challenge that also qualified for the Around the World in 12 Books Challenge. I’m hoping to avoid having to cram a lot of books in for challenges at the end of the year and I think I’m doing ok for that so far.

I also managed 4 books by men, mostly in the first half of the month, so my male/female split is improving a little, bit by bit! I don’t ever expect to get it up to 50/50 because that’s just not really the way I read (reading a lot of YA and lots of women’s fic obviously tips the balance well in favour of women authors) but I do like to make sure I include some books by men.

I read 3 books from my Kindle, which is a good start! It got a bit neglected last year so I’m hoping to change that this year as I have a lot of books on it that I really need to start reading. As always I utilised my local library pretty extensively, reading 11 books from there!

Have lots of exciting books to read in February. Looking forward to it!

Top 10 Tuesday is a weekly bookish meme created & hosted by The Broke & the Bookish featuring a different topic each week. This week it’s:

Top 10 Books That Would Make Great Book Club Picks

1. Never Let Me Go, by Kazuo Ishiguro. I read this one only recently and mentioned in my review that I thought it would make a great book for a club. There’s so much that rises out of it to discuss and debate, whether you liked the book or not (and ultimately I wasn’t sure that I did like it).
2. Forbidden, by Tabitha Suzuma. Because I think this book challenges views that would normally be set in stone – a touchy subject that I’m sure would ignite some pretty heated discussions.
3. The Post-Birthday World, by Lionel Shriver. One of my favourite books ever, The Post-Birthday World is a Sliding Doors-esque type of book where after the first section, the narrative splits into two scenarios – in the first, the MC does something she shouldn’t, in the second she doesn’t and goes home. Her lives in the twin narratives take very different courses and then also converge in a way, with similar events and happenings occurring no matter what path she’s on. It’s a fascinating book on the matters of actions and consequence.
4. Ready Player One, by Ernest Cline. This book is so fun and I think it would make an awesome choice, especially for those who consider themselves 80′s aficionados! There’s a lot in this book, so many pop-culture references and layers and it’s just a book that you could really just have a fun, drama-free discussion about.
5. Tall Man, by Chloe Hooper. A non-fiction account of an Aboriginal death in police custody on an island off the coast of Queensland and the resulting riots and hugely expensive court case to determine whether the fault of death lay with the arresting police officer. A hot-bed of Australian-Indigenous issues and it’s pretty hard to agree with the eventual court findings.
6. The Help, by Kathryn Stockett. I think this one could inspire some fired up conversations too! We live in a pretty different time now and I’m also talking from the point of a country that has never really had that sort of coloured worker situation going on either! The political situation is only really touched on here but would still also provide plenty of conversational fodder.
7. Genesis, by Bernard Beckett. This book’s ending blew me away – I’d love to know in a book club situation if everyone was as clueless as me as to how it was going to end!
8. Into The Woods, by Tana French. Seriously what happened in the woods? Anyone want to speculate? I’d love to know what other conclusions people came to, as well as the relationship between Rob and Cassie.
9. The Hunger Games, by Suzanne Collins. There’s so much in this book – the situation the citizens find themselves in, especially the poorer districts, and the Hunger Games themselves can provide days of conversational topics! There’s a certain sort of sick fascination with them in that I think even though they’re horrific, you’d watch it religiously should you be in that position.
10. IQ84, by Haruki Murakami. Because then maybe everyone can get together and decide wtf it’s all about! I’m only 400p into a 1000p monstrosity but so far it’s been 400p of umm…what? and where is this going? Maybe the next 600p will help give me the answers, but Murakami is always a good author to have a group read/book club discussion on, I think!

There’s my top 10 picks for book club – I’ve never been in a book club but it’s something I’ve always wanted to be a part of, given that not a lot of people in my life have liked to read as I do, especially as I was growing up and going to University etc. Finding book blogs and an online community has helped with that somewhat but I still think it’d be nice to have a group of people all reading the same book each month and being a part of the discussions around that.

The Chosen One
Carol Lynch Williams
St. Martin’s Griffin
2009, 213p
Read from my local library

Kyra is just thirteen, living in a religious community in Utah. Her father has three wives and she has twenty brothers and sisters. Their upbringing is strict – the new Prophet of the compound has very set rules that focus on discipline, obedience and the holy scriptures. Books are banned – burned when the new Prophet came to be. Kyra knows how to read and reading is one of the few pleasures she takes in life, along with playing the piano. She is out roaming one day when she comes across a mobile library – she begins borrowing books, striking up a tentative friendship with the driver Patrick, that is restricted by Kyra’s lack of social skills and her fear of being caught. She hides the books she borrows high in her favourite tree and reads them in secret.

Kyra also has a blossoming friendship with one of the boys in the compound, a young man named Joshua who is almost at the age where he can ‘choose’ to take his first wife. Before Joshua can choose Kyra though, the Prophet comes to visit Kyra and her family, saying that he has had a vision about her – a vision that is straight from God. He decrees that she is to be married to one of the Brothers high up in the church, who happens to be her sixty year old uncle, her father’s brother. He already has six wives with Kyra destined to be the seventh. There is no refusing, the Prophet has spoken of his vision and obedience is something drummed into everyone in the compound but most importantly, especially the women and children. Failure to be obedient, any acting out done by a wife or child falls back on the man, the head of the household. It is a failure on his part to ensure his family’s respect and obedience and he can and will be punished by having his wives and families taken away, by being beaten, or worse. Kyra’s whole being screams out in rejection of this destiny for her, she is revolted by the thought of having to marry her uncle and she desperately wants to get out any way she can. But she knows that her actions, any rebellion in them will all come back on people she truly loves – her father, his wives and their children, her brothers and sisters.

The Chosen One broke my heart. I saw it in someone’s Top 10 Tuesday post a couple of weeks ago and I admit, I do have a fascination with the extreme fundamentalist Church of Latter Day Saints culture. It horrifies me, yet I want to read about it. And this…well this one horrified me more than most. Kyra is thirteen – thirteen. The thought of a child that age (and she is just that, a child) being married off to anyone is sort of horrifying, given the culture I myself am used to, but the idea of such a girl being married off to a sixty year old man -and one she is related to at that!-is abhorrent, especially at the whim of some ‘Prophet’ and his ‘dreams’. I knew it was going to be a tough read but I didn’t realise just how much it would touch me.

Kyra is a beautiful character. She struggles between the desire to be herself, to learn, to read, to explore a little innocent romance with a boy she likes, with her duty to be good, obedient, chaste and pure. Her body and her life, for that matter, is not her own to do with what she chooses, she is subject to the orders of the church elders. She has been brought up to obey without question and her inner turmoil after being told that she must marry her uncle and there is nothing her father can do to stop it, is beautifully, touchingly written. This book moved me to tears at least twice – there’s a horrifying scene of “discipline” in this book, a heinous act practiced on an 8 month old baby at the command of the Prophet that had me speechless. At the same time, the dynamic between Kyra’s family is different. Her parents love her, she’s close to many of her siblings. They try to advocate for her, to get her free of this because of how wrong it is, even they in their faith and obedience to the Prophet and teachings, see that. Even when they can’t flat out tell her how wrong they think it is, they sympathize with her and they grieve for the order she has been given. They know how this will affect her, what it will do to her spirit, to who she is. They see the wrongness of it even as they’re helpless to stop it, so ingrained is their faith and servitude to their Church and its teachings.

Kyra desires to leave because she knows that she can never be what they want her to be, it’s just not in her. At the same time she is just a child and she knows that if she managed to escape -and it’s a big if- then she would be utterly alone in the world. Her family wouldn’t or couldn’t, be able to follow her and for anyone, let alone a thirteen year old girl, that is a terribly daunting and lonely prospect to face, no matter how brave and courageous.

The Chosen One is a wonderful book – emotional, disturbing, compelling and superbly written. It’s one of those books that will stay with you for a very long time.

8/10

Book #14 of 2012

April is a sixteen year old girl living with her father and stepmother when they drop a bombshell on her. They’re moving from her hometown, the town she has lived in all her life, to Cleveland, Ohio where her father has gotten a new job. Having seen one parent, her mother, move away to France with her new husband after the divorce with April’s younger brother, April refused to move then and refuses to move now. She’s a junior, and doesn’t want to disrupt her schooling and more importantly she doesn’t want to leave her friends, or her wonderful boyfriend Noah.

So she comes up with an idea and pushes to make her father agree to it. She will stay out the rest of her junior year here, living with her friend Vi and Vi’s mother, a free spirited theatre actress type. Only April’s father doesn’t know that Vi’s mother has gotten a role in a play and has basically moved herself to Chicago for the entire foreseeable future! April knows that her father would never consent to her staying alone with Vi in a house for the rest of the year so she and Vi concoct some elaborate schemes, setting up a fake email address for Vi’s mother to email April’s dad from and a fake email address for April’s father to email the real Vi’s mother from (that’s #1 – lying to parents). Their intentions are good, but well, it isn’t long before they’re doing stuff like skipping school, hosting friends for TV and video nights, throwing parties and buying a hot tub!

In all of the middle of this is April’s relationship with Noah, which they are negotiating to take to ‘the next level’. They’ve been together for years and April thinks they’re perfect together. She wants to be safe and careful and she wants to make sure that she’s 100% ready. Noah means a lot to her but lately she’s thought that he’s a little bit distant from her, a bit stand-offish after she told him that she’d be staying in town. Things seem like they’re not as perfect as they normally are, and April finds that when Noah is pulling away from her, her thoughts are wandering to the mysterious Hudson, brother to one of Vi’s friend who has been hanging around a lot lately. She finds Hudson funny and supportive in ways that Noah isn’t, and doesn’t know why she can’t stop thinking about him when she is with Noah and loves Noah.

Browsing Amazon one day I came across this title, which was all of 0.99c so I decided to buy it. I’d seen a few reviews for it around and most of them seemed pretty favourable and I was looking for something that I could whiz through for a bit of fun. And although I usually dislike YA books that dispatch with the parentals pronto, I found myself not really minding this one – maybe because it’s sort of like every teenager’s dream. Living with a good friend in a nice house, having money to pay the bills courtesy of the departed, guilty parents, being the centre of the party and all that is fun etc. I’m sure there are parents out there that would probably allow their child to move into a friend’s place to finish school, but I have to say, my parents are not those parents. I’d have been going with them, no matter what so April’s story was a bit of fun to me.

Although April and Vi do get up to a bit of mischief, in all actuality, they’re pretty good when left alone together for months. They have a few friends nights, bunk off school once or twice and throw a massive party but really, for a 16yo and a 17yo they get themselves together and do things that girls of that age really shouldn’t have to be doing on top of qualifying for college, etc. Vi has a neglectful mother who got pregnant with her young, stepped away from her career to raise Vi and now sees a chance to get back in, leaving Vi behind to fend for herself. Vi is in her last year of high school, so older than April but it’s clear to see in this book that the stress of being alone, of taking care of herself and the house, eats away at her and causes problems and I’m really glad that Mlynowski didn’t just play this as all fun and games. It is  a big responsibility and it comes with negatives as well – plenty of them.

I also like books that deal realistically with teens having sex and the possibility of teens having sex and I think this book got that pretty right, even if the ending was a touch dramatic, it does happen and people should be aware of it, especially teenagers. There’s plenty of information to be found in here on safe sex and being ready/sure, all wrapped up in a pretty likable story. I enjoyed the way the relationship between April and Noah played out and I -really- liked Hudson. Although he at first seems like the overly mysterious, unattainable popular boy, he has a few secrets which turn out to be something totally unexpected. In fact I thought the supporting cast of characters were all strong in this book – Vi at first seems like a stereotype, older, glamorous, worldly, used to being on her own but her hidden depths come out during the novel. Lucy, the girl from school who manipulates herself into their circle of friends really grew on me over the course of the story – she was an irritant at first and you felt for April and Vi when she blackmailed them but by the end it all sort of made sense! Dean, Hudson’s brother was another fun character and I thought the group dynamics of the friendship were really good – they were a circle of friends you could want to be a part of.

Although there’s not a lot of realism in the main story line, within that is a lot of realism. The friendships, the frank discussions on sex, the birth control talk, the STD issues, keeping things from parents (although usually on a smaller scale) are all things that affect teens. It’s enjoyably well written, witty and good fun.

7/10

Book #13 of 2012

Sex, Lies and Surveillance
Stephanie Julian
Carina Press
2012, eBook
Copy courtesy of the publisher

For Mal Laughlin, this job is anything but straight-forward. Infiltrate the business of two of the country’s most renown and respected operatives, Frank and Grace DeMarco. They’ve been implemented in a gun running syndicate and even though their clearance is one of the highest in the country, their reputations impeccable, the NSA has to get to the bottom of why they’ve been named as associates of such a notorious criminal. So they’ve selected Mal to go deep undercover at the DeMarco’s agency to discover if there’s any truth to any of the claims. It’s not going to be an easy job because not only does Mal have to try and find evidence one way or the other, he’s personally invested. In more ways than one. And he also has to avoid being detected as a plant by two of the smartest intelligence gatherers that there might ever have been. And he’s finding Janey DeMarco absolutely irresistible which is beyond distracting and making it very hard for him to get his job done. Especially when everything keeps coming back to her.

Janey is the youngest DeMarco, the last of Frank and Grace’s three children. She’s smart – more than smart and right now she’s working the family business as a computer whiz, cracking codes, hacking, whatever is needed. When Janey was 5 she was kidnapped by people looking to hurt her parents and although it wasn’t long until they got her back, the whole family has been overprotective of Janey ever since. An exclusive boarding school, prestigious college degree and then straight into the family business, Janey’s urge to stretch her wings and become an operative doing field work is clipped by overbearing older brother Dominic and the fact that her father had a health scare and she doesn’t want to worry him right now. She’s intrigued by the new recruit to the business and well, more than just a little attracted. But she’s tired of her family trying to set her up and run her life for her so when her mother suggests Mal as a possible match, she can’t dispel the idea quick enough. After all, it could get messy. Very, very messy.

It isn’t long before sharp Janey notices that Mal is hiding something. That his demeanor around the office isn’t always the same and he can change roles to fit into just about any situations. She makes up her mind to do a little bit of digging to find out just what is going on, unaware that while she’s digging for dirt on Mal, he’s doing exactly the same on her. Someone is going to get hurt.

Sex, Lies & Surveillance was a fun afternoon read that I zoomed through quickly on my Kindle. What I liked was being in Mal’s head a lot of the time – I always like hearing from the male point of view how much they’re attracted to the female MC because so often all we get is the female lusting after the male and the male being all cool and gorgeous and unattainable. This book isn’t like that, there’s plenty of lusting going on on Mal’s part (in fact, quite a lot) and he’s the sort of guy who is former Navy turned undercover operative for the NSA so he’s basically a bit of an alpha bloke. For his role at the DeMarco’s PI agency, he plays a bit more of a shy computer geek which makes for trouble staying in character when Janey is around. I liked their chemistry together and the progression of their relationship and why they kept it a secret from Janey’s overachieving and overprotective family. They also both had secrets that they were keeping.

Janey as a character was a little less easy to like because she worried too much! I get that her dad had a bit of a health scare and she was super worried about stressing him out, but I felt this whole plot line was really taken a touch too far in the book. Janey made herself indispensable in the family business when she’d had job offers from the NSA that she didn’t take because she didn’t want to cause any stress to her family. Her family were no ordinary family though, given the legendary status of both her parents as former intelligence operatives. Janey’s repetition about not wanting to cause worry to her father got a bit old and really, I just wanted her to stand up for herself to her brother Nic, go and get her own life and actually enjoy herself some more.

I see potential for spin off novels – eldest DeMarco child Dominic and Janey’s best friend come to mind as the logical choice for the next pairing. I’d definitely read it if it happens. All in all it was what it looked like it’d be – a fun, sexy quick read to enjoy. It would be the sort of thing I’d make sure was on my eReader for a trip to the beach, or a nice holiday away when you just want those sorts of books that you fly through and don’t need to think too hard about.

6/10

Book #12 of 2012

Cassandra was the hottest thing in PR in Sydney. It had bought her a beautiful apartment in Manly overlooking the water, a Ferrari and a reputation as being the best. She had a handsome if slightly boring male hairdresser boyfriend and the hottest wardrobe and appointment book in town. Everyone wanted to book her to manage their events.

And then it all came crashing down. A scandal involving a potoroo means that Cassandra’s name and reputation are mud. Her boss is forced to let her go to distance himself from the scandal and she’s humiliatingly advised to stay away from any public events. Cassandra knows that she just needs to lay low for a while, maybe 6-12 months and then she’ll be back. There’ll be another scandal, people have short memories and she can come back and resume her glittering career.

She interviews for a job as a PR for the tiny town of Beechville in far northern NSW close to the border. Barely more than a dot on the map, Cassandra shudders at the thought of living there but she knows that they probably don’t read the newspaper that brought her down so therefore they don’t know of her disgrace. Surely enough they can’t wait to offer her the job and Cassandra trades her apartment for a tiny cabin in the rainforest with a frog in the toilet and cockroaches that run across the floor.

Cassandra has always been able to get what she wants, especially with men. There’s no one she can’t bring around to her way of thinking with a smile, a flick of her hair and a twitch of her hips. So when the local ranger Mac shows no signs of falling for her charms, Cassandra is both piqued and intrigued. The more he makes out he actively dislikes her, the more determined she is to make him like her. She senses he’s attracted to her but he’s steadfast in his refusal to warm to her, making life difficult for her in the small town and waging what Cassandra sees as a small one-man campaign to get her to leave.

But Cassandra’s from Sydney and she’s made of sterner stuff than that! There might be different challenges here in this small town but she’s not the type to let anyone get the better of her. Until she starts to wonder just what is going on in this town and what people, especially the taciturn Mac, might be hiding from her.

Liar Bird is the first novel from Australian author Lisa Walker and I have to say, I quite enjoyed it. We’re introduced to the not-very-likable Cassandra in her preferred environment, which is being a PR genius in the city of Sin, Sydney, admiring her lovely northern beaches apartment and her pretty-but-not-very-substantial boyfriend. Cassandra isn’t at all a sympathetic character at first and it’s almost kind of satisfying to see her brought down for lying, the scandal forcing her to reassess her priorities. She needs to lay low for a while, so she picks a tiny dot town on the map of far northern NSW to hide out in until the terrible scandal dies down. She dislikes everything about it at first – it consists of a pub, information office, supermarket and little else and her home is a supplied cabin that comes with an assortment of wildlife flatmates, none of which Cassandra has much love for.

Despite the Manly polish, Cassandra (Cassie) is really just a girl from Blacktown, in the Western Suburbs of Sydney and I love how this novel slowly strips away the facade she has established, the persona she has developed. She starts to care for other people and for the town of Beechville itself and especially for Mac, the rather standoffish ranger who first draws Cassandra’s attention with his lack of regard for her. I really liked their interactions, Cassandra trying to get his attention and him desperately trying to avoid her knowing that he was aware of her. Mac knows that she’s not the sort of girl he should be attracted to but it’s a losing battle he’s fighting.

The other thing I really enjoyed about this book was the frog in the toilet situation. When I was at my first university in Western Sydney, in our second year we had to be moved out of our dorms due to an OH&S issue and placed in some of the houses around campus that were generally for international/guest lecturers. Myself and three other students were placed in this huge gothic-style house on the second floor, which was really only four bedrooms, a sunroom and a bathroom. We shared a kitchen with the downstairs residents, a lecturing couple from America. In our upstairs bathroom we would frequently lift the lid and find a tiny frog swimming around in there. Usually he’d disappear at the lift of the lid but occasionally he didn’t seem bothered and we’d have to scare him back down as it’s not nice to pee on frogs! He stayed there for the entire length of our stay (about ten weeks) and we gave him a name and treated him like a house member. Cassandra’s situation with the frog in the toilet of her cabin reminded me a lot of the time I spent in that house!

I felt the characterisation was well done here – I grew up in an area not too far from where Beechville is supposed to be and am familiar with a lot of the small towns in the area and the people within them. The “countryfication” was well done without the locals seeming like hick stereotypes and having also lived in Sydney, I’ve met a few people like Cassandra as well! I admired the way Cassandra became a character I really felt for by the end – I was nearly crying for her when she discovers a deception towards the end of the book! I always enjoy a writer who can make me feel a myriad of emotions for a character and Lisa Walker certainly achieved that in this book.

7/10

Book #11 of 2012

Liar Bird is the third novel read for the Australian Women Writers Challenge 2012. It’s set in Manly, Sydney briefly and then in a remote part of NSW right up near the border with QLD. The setting is crucial to the story and actually helps really enhance the reader’s enjoyment of the book. The descriptions of the small town are fantastic, the restricted facilities, Cassandra’s run-down cabin and wildlife friends, the rainforest surrounds all help paint a picture. The two settings also seem to reflect Cassandra’s image or personality changes – in Manly certain things are very important to her, she projects a certain image and she rates material possessions, such as her apartment and her car, highly. As she settles in to Beechville and becomes a part of the town, she cares less about material things and a perfect, well groomed look.

Top 10 Tuesday is a weekly bookish meme created and hosted by The Broke and the Bookish with a different theme each week. This one is a freebie theme, so we get to choose our own. In honour of 2012 being the National Year of Reading here in Australia, and also the fact that it’s Australia Day this week, I’m going to go a touch patriotic and celebrate my love of our local literature. So my TTT this week is:

Top 10 Books By Australian Authors

1. Ghost Child, I Came To Say Goodbye and Matilda Is Missing, by Caroline Overington. All three of these novels are a little hard to categorise but they’re roughly contemporary crime/mystery told in an indirect way. I’ve talked about Caroline Overington here on my blog before – she’s a former journalist who has a real gift for writing from an unusual viewpoint, often that of an older man. I always feel her characters are very true ‘Australian’ for me.
2. Past The Shallows, by Favel Parrett. I only read this last year, a debut novel set along a remote stretch of Tasmanian coastline and was amazed at the emotions it stirred up. The novel is about two boys, sons of a tough Abalone fisherman. Two likable, curious boys and their life now that their mother has been killed. It’s so well written and the ending is killer.
3. Looking for Alibrandi, by Melina Marchetta. I read this in school and I’ve only read it once since but it’s a novel that stays with you. Marchetta is well loved, for this novel and also for On The Jellicoe Road, which I’ve not read yet (one that I really need to get around to). Looking for Alibrandi is about Josephine Alibrandi, a teenage girl living with her mother and grandmother and she’s in her last year of high school (strict Catholic high school no less). It’s a sort of journey of self-discovery book, she learns about her father, about boys. It’s amazing that we got to read it in high school only a couple of years after it was published. My high school wasn’t a fan of giving us contemporary novels to read.
4. Tomorrow, When The War Began, by John Marsden (and the 2 books following). I read this in year 7 or 8 I think and absolutely fell in love with it. A bunch of teenagers go camping deep into the bush and when they return home they find that basically, the country has been invaded. Everyone in their town is gone, rounded up into a central place. They retreat back into the bush and plan on how to avoid being captured and also how they might get their town back. And it has a Corgi. I had a Corgi at the time of reading this, so I loved that because other than with the Queen, you don’t see/hear a lot about Corgi’s these days. I also loved the next 2 books but then I turned 14 or 15 and decided teen books were no longer for me and I should step up into adult fiction. I really need to re-read this entire series.
5. The Book Thief, by Markus Zusak. Although I don’t love this book as much as lots of other people, that’s mostly because it fuels my desire to know more – it cuts off at a really interesting point and I would’ve loved to have known what happened to Liesel after the book ended. But basically it’s a beautiful story – Nazi Germany, hiding a Jew in the basement, stealing books, music, etc. The character of Liesel’s foster father is one of my favourite characters in literature. I think their relationship is perfection.
6. Animalia and The Eleventh Hour, by Graham Base. I have to put these ones in – two of my absolute favourites as a child and I used to still look at my high school library’s copies all the time! They’re both exquisitely illustrated and there’s so much more to them that meets the eye, especially The Eleventh Hour. There are so many hidden things to find in the pictures, they’re hours of fun. I must buy copies of both of these for my children.
7. Raw Blue, by Kirsty Eagar. Only read this month and this book about Carly, a university drop out who heals herself through surfing, has already rocketed into my list of faves. Its raw emotion and beautiful writing made it a page turner and one that will stay on my shelves for a long time! Can’t wait to read more from Eagar.
8. Of A Boy, by Sonya Hartnett. Another one my husband urged me to read, this time after we moved in together. He once told me he never read YA, not even realising that Harnett writes YA. This one is not for those looking for fun and happy times. It’s about a boy, who lives with his grandmother after being removed from his mother’s care. It’s an amazing book – everyone needs to read it!
9. The Obernewtyn Chronicles, by Isobelle Carmody. Because an Australian list isn’t complete without this series! One of my favourites of all time! I’m so looking forward to re-reading them all this year in an on-line read-a-along hosted by Shannon from Giraffe Days. Anyone who hasn’t dived into this post-apocalyptic world where there are ‘Misfits’ (genetic mutations resulting in special abilities after something like a nuclear wipeout) needs to give it a go.
10. Monkey Grip and The Spare Room, by Helen Garner. Also not for people wanting a fun or happy read, Garner writes bleak books on human relationships.

Compiling this list has really made me think that I need to read some more Australian fiction. I looked through a couple of Goodreads lists of top 100 Australian novels etc and there’s an embarrassing amount that I haven’t read! Really need to start tossing more Aussie books into the pile and trying to get through some of those ‘always wanted to, never gotten around to it’ books.

Looking forward to everyone’s topics today!

Douglas Rogers was born in Zimbabwe back when it wasn’t even Zimbabwe. His family owned a chicken farm, a grape farm and then sold up and bought a piece of land and established a backpackers and tourist lodge. Douglas left Zimbabwe to go to University in South Africa and then traveled to England and then America to live. He made periodic visits home to see his parents but his pilgrimages really stepped up when the country began to go downhill under the iron grip of Robert Mugabe. In the late 1990s, the regime started ‘taking’ land from white Zimbabwean farmers, usually by force. It was determined that white Zimbabweans had little to no rights at all, despite having been in the country for generations. Douglas’ parents watched their friends and neighbours slowly lose their farms all the while remaining steadfast that this would not happen to them.

They had to adapt. As the country nosedived economically and socially, the atrocities reaching the broader community, tourism dwindled down to almost nothing. The Rogers’ weren’t making any money so they had to change and provide a service that would be utilised. Drifters, their property became a brothel, marijuana den, refuge for displaced local farmers (both white and black) and later on, a watering hole for smugglers of illegal diamonds. By managing to make their property seem unattractive to the fat cats in government and the war veterans who were entitled to make a claim to a farm, as Drifters was land unsuitable for farming, the Rogers’ managed to hold onto it, even though the government rescinded their title to the property in 2005. They fought any way they knew how – shooting the dogs of poachers who came to trap and hunt their animals, making it known that they were armed and weren’t afraid to use a 12 bore, petitioning various government agencies to keep their land and have their title reinstated, calling in favours from friends in likewise situations and as mentioned, making the place look overgrown and uninteresting. They had several scares, faced bureaucratic difficulty concerning citizenship and passports but still they would not leave their beloved Zimbabwe. Douglas and his three sisters tried more than once to get them to leave, with one sister offering them her piece of property in Mozambique to build a similar place to Drifters and run it. They refused, like a few others in their valley and around Zimbabwe who had bought and paid for these lands and weren’t going to give them up to people who didn’t know how to farm them. They’d seen bountiful, prosperous lands taken and given to the war veterans and other settlers who were borderline squatters and had no idea how to farm, driving the lands to ruin and despair. The country which had been forward-thinking with excellent education, heath facilities and a thriving economy with international investment went into free fall. Eighty per cent of the population was unemployed. The currency blew out to about $400,000 Zimbabwean to $1US. The government just kept printing more money as an answer which of course only fed the inflation and soon they were dealing in trillion dollar notes.

All through this, Douglas’ parents remained. Through rolling blackouts, a famine, the constant threat of being kicked off their land with little notice and the possibility of death if they didn’t co-operate. They stayed and they adapted and they managed to make Drifters something that would keep on providing for their country. The Last Resort is a story about loyalty, about true patriotism and most of all, about being able to laugh in the face of adversity.

My husband and I don’t often share the same taste in books. I bought this for him for his birthday, picking it and a couple of others off his wishlist at random and after he finished he told me how brilliant it was and that I absolutely had to read it. He caught me at the right time because I’ve been reading a lot of fiction set in Africa, particularly around Zimbabwe and I had been enjoying it. I’d read about the land purges in one of those and thought that it might be interesting to hear a first hand account of reality.

The Last Resort is somehow hilariously funny and yet terribly sad at the same time. You can laugh at these things because you’re so far away from it. A couple in their sixties growing a bit of dope and basically running a brothel to make some cash while their country tanks around them! It’s so surreal to someone sitting in a living room in Australia reading it, but it was their reality. Their love and passion for Zimbabwe was both admirable and baffling. I have to admit that in their position, I’d be on the first plane out and sunning myself on the piece of land in Mozambique! But they never considered leaving the country, even at the request of their children. Like others, they didn’t rule out dying for their right to stay on their land.

This is something I’ve noticed in other books about the region, fiction and non-fiction. Zimbabwe inspires a huge sense of national pride and loyalty in its citizens. They love it fiercely, passionately even when it was becoming the stuff of nightmares. They had helped build this country, nurturing the land, damming areas so they could be farmed, exporting for foreign dollars which they then plowed back into the country. They trained people to farm properly, the respect the land and are desperate for it to remain their homes. In many cases, this didn’t happen and some of the stories of the refugees, cast out, their lands taken off them and just given to others, as they find their way to Drifters, are heartbreaking to read. But they rarely ever seemed bitter and hardly any of them left Zimbabwe. And some of them always hoped, worked tirelessly, campaigning to get their lands back.

The Last Resort subtly educates without ever getting preachy or overly wordy about the mess that is Zimbabwean politics and elections. Rogers’ is of course, personally invested and the main topic is his parents and his parents’ friends and neighbours but he also does portray the ‘other side’ as such, and touches on why Mugabe won’t lose elections. But the book isn’t really about the politics. They’re just the reasoning for the stories coming to the surface. It’s really about the people and the love they have for this country.

8/10

Book #10 of 2012

Benny Griessel is an alcoholic. Not just a too-many-drinks-after-work every night sort of alcoholic. Not a bottle-of-red-with-dinner-every-night alcoholic either. But a drinking-during-the-day-at-work and every night until he passes out sort of alcoholic. A shoving around the wife and having to be helped drunkenly to the couch by his teenage son sort of alcoholic. And then the shoving around of the wife turns into whacking her one.

Benny’s wife Anna decides she’s had enough and for her sake and the sake of their two teenage children, Benny has to go. If he can stay sober -fully sober- for six months, then they’ll talk. Benny is on the knife edge of losing everything so when a new case comes in, he’s the best they’ve got, even if he is an alcoholic. Because Benny is a cop. And he needs to stay sober and catch a killer.

Thobela Mpayipheli lost someone close to him, someone that meant the world to him. He watched the justice system screw him over and when he sees a report of a child rapist going free on a technicality, something inside of him snaps. Who is standing up for the children? Who is fighting for their rights and for justice? The system isn’t working. Thobela thinks that he might be able to do a bit of a better job than the system. He turns vigilante, tired of reading things that sicken him in the media. Tired of feeling helpless over his own loss and the lack of justice within it. He’s already fought in wars. This is just another one.

Christine is a prostitute in Cape Town, a single mother who finds that sex work pays a heck of a lot more than waitressing . When she stumbles into something dangerous, she sees opportunity. Her world, Thobela’s world and Benny’s world will collide as Benny fights to solve not only the case of the vigilante killer but also a crime involving a Colombian drug lord. His professional life and his personal life will also collide in the worst way and everything will threaten the sobriety he clings to so precariously and his family relationships and the respect from his colleagues.

Devil’s Peak is my third Deon Meyer book in the last month or two and because I’ve read Trackers (although it was published later) it certainly helped with the experience of reading this one. What you get here are threads of stories that at first seem entirely unconnected. The narrative jumps back and forth -often without announcing that it’s going to do so, or that we’re switching the perspective- and the information is dribbled out in bits and pieces, often while other stuff is going on. This probably shouldn’t work as well as it does, but there’s something so seamless about the writing that all three strands of this plot weave together effortlessly.

Benny is an interesting protagonist (this is the first of two Benny Griessel novels that I know of). He’s a drunk – there’s really no other word for him. He’s ruled by alcohol, sinking into it to escape the demons he faces in his work in the Serious and Violent Crimes unit. His wife has had an absolute gutful of him and his drinking and the fact that he gave her a bit of a whack during his most recent binge has tipped her over the edge. Benny is now faced with a choice – get off the drink and try and win back the family he began to lose when the alcohol became more important, and try and regain some respect as a good cop who knows what he’s doing…or not. Succumb to the lure of the drink, to just drift through life in a wasted way, like so many other washed up cops. Benny’s thoughts revolve around alcohol, the compulsion to drink is enormous and he goes through hospitalisation, the DT’s and treatment via naltrexone in this novel. I won’t spoil if he slips up or not in this book but I already have the next novel out from the library and I’m interested to see how he’s going there!

The story line is clever in that the vigilante killer is a hard one to dislike. Criminals guilty of atrocities the world over get off on technicalities and when the atrocities committed are violent and sexual crimes against children, or even tiny babies, it’s easy to get inflamed over the lack of justice and the often pathetic punishment. It’s hard not to sort of like Thobela for the choices he makes, although this novel also highlights an extremely important point about undertaking such a role – you want to be very, very careful about being absolutely certain the person you’re seeking is the right one. And that they’re utterly 100% guilty of the crime.

As I’m reading this for Shannon’s Around The World in 12 Books Challenge, where the January month is South Africa, I’m going to talk just briefly about the points she wanted us to consider when reading a book for this challenge. My knowledge of South Africa isn’t extensive, limited to videos watched on apartheid during high school. Although this novel doesn’t touch on that and is set after it, it certainly addresses the divide that still exists between blacks and whites socially. Thobela is black, but it is assumed he is white by the police and profiler because he visits white neighbourhoods without arousing suspicion or even being detected, something that seems very difficult given how surprised and impressed people were about it.  There are remarks made by white cops about having to work with black cops, people are distinguished by their colour immediately whereas in other novels set in other countries, that wouldn’t be the first thing mentioned. Does this novel want to make me visit South Africa? Not really, but that’s not because I didn’t like what I read! It’s a plot driven crime novel, so it deals with the seedier side of things – importation of drugs, child abuse crimes etc. Not things that happen exclusively in that country (they happen everywhere) but that’s what the novel focused on. It was set mostly in Cape Town, so there wasn’t too much descriptively about the landscape or the geographic features. Blood Safari, another novel of Meyer’s made me want to visit the country but the setting wasn’t strictly important here – it was all about the story, with not a lot about the cities/towns/villages and lifestyles therein. I am finding the area (and southern Africa in general) fascinating though and have read 5 or 6 novels set in this part of the world in the last couple of months and have a couple more on my shelves. So with each novel I read, it does make me want to read more books set here and learn about this part of the world.

8/10

Book #9 of 2012

This is my January novel for the Around The World In 12 Books Challenge, set in the first nominated country, South Africa.

I’m also counting this novel towards the What’s In A Name?5 Challenge. It fits into the first category: Read a book with a topographical feature in the title. Devil’s Peak is actually part of the mountain range near Cape Town in South Africa, where this novel takes place. So it doesn’t just feature a land formation, it is one!

Both challenges allow books to cross-qualify.

Meredith has been called back to where she grew up because her former childhood best friend is marrying her brother and although they don’t speak anymore, that wasn’t a good enough excuse not to attend the hens night. Whilst she’s back at home, Meredith’s dad is involved in a car accident as he is returning from driving her mother to the airport for her flight to Europe for the ‘trip of a lifetime’ with her sister. He breaks his leg and as their house is ‘made up entirely of stairs’ it’s determined that someone has to look after him. Meredith’s brother and sister take giant steps back despite the fact that they still live at home (younger sister) and nearby (brother). Meredith now lives in Atlanta (the home is in New Jersey) but somehow it’s decided that Meredith is the perfect option. After all she doesn’t mind, she is always the nice one, doing nice things for people. And her job isn’t that important, not like her brother Christian’s job! And although her younger sister Hope has graduated from college and is just bumming around before doing some travelling, she’s playing the young and wildly irresponsible card. So Meredith arranges leave, tells her boyfriend Travis that she won’t be home for a while and settles back into her childhood bedroom to play nursemaid to her father.

Whilst in town she runs into Scott Sheridan, the school geek that Meredith’s brother bullied relentlessly, to the point of making up a game entitled “Scotty Sheridan sucks because…” that they would play on long car trips. Although Meredith never participated in the bullying as she was far too nice for that, she acknowledges that she didn’t exactly help either. But Scott Sheridan doesn’t look like a geek these days. Actually, Scott Sheridan is sort of hot. And Meredith finds herself oddly attracted to him and it seems he can’t stay away from her either.

Her time at her parents place will make her question everything – from what makes her happy, to her job and career options, to her wonderful relationship with Travis and if it is what she really wants. Her and her family will lay secrets and animosities bare and Meredith will face some home truths about her personality.

I read one of Megan Crane’s books, Frenemies, last year on a whim and really liked it. I was looking for something light and fluffy to read after completing Never Let Me Go so I thought another of her books might suit. While I liked this one, I didn’t like it as much as I liked Frenemies. And that’s because I kept getting infuriated when I read it. So mad in fact, that I’d have to put it down and take a few deep breaths and calm myself down before picking it up and going on with it. The reason?

Meredith. The main character. She was an insufferable doormat!

I know she truly saw herself as the good daughter/sibling, eager to please. The one that was nice, that was never mean to people, the one that people turned to. But when her father has an accident and needs care – although he only has a broken leg, so I’m not sure why that equals round the clock care, but anyway – her brother and sister basically bully and belittle her into doing it. Christian, her brother, is quite frankly, a massive douche. If my brother spoke to me the way Christian speaks to his sisters, I’d sock him in the mouth. He’s arrogant, self-important, patronising and a huge jerk who seems to think that he can boss people around whilst simultaneously stepping back because he’s far too busy and can’t be involved, despite living 30-40 minutes drive away from their father. His snide little “Oh Meredith can do it, she loves that sort of stuff, don’t you Meredith?” made me dislike him instantly and after that I couldn’t come back around to him at all, no matter what.

Meredith’s younger sister Hope is only fractionally better. Twenty-two and having just graduated, she actually still lives in the family house sponging off their parents, but isn’t available to do any of the caring because she can’t be bothered. Meredith is the reliable sister so Hope is embracing the young and irresponsible label to the point of ridiculousness. And people are fine with it. The father even makes a crack that he’s her only source of income presently but not sharply enough to actually suggest she earn it. She sleeps most days and goes out most nights and does very little at first but she sort of redeems herself a little during the course of the book by helping Meredith learn to loosen up and have a bit of fun and remember that she’s only in her late twenties, not seventy.

Even though her siblings annoyed me, I think Meredith herself annoyed me more for allowing herself to be treated this way. She’s basically belittled as having some unimportant job and life and told to uproot herself and look after their father and then her brother admonishes her several times for not doing a good enough job of it, but he’s not concerned enough to actually help out himself! I’d have told him to shove it but Meredith doesn’t stand up for herself because good girls apparently don’t do that. It meant that I couldn’t really settle in and enjoy the story, particularly the interactions with Scott Sheridan as much as I would’ve liked because I was always so irritated with the family dynamics.

6/10

Book #8 of 2012