Disharmony – Leah Giarratano

Disharmony
Leah Giarratano
Penguin AU
2012, 345p
Copy courtesy of the publisher

A psychopath. An empath. A genius.

They are supposed to be the ones who can save the world – the thousands of years of wars, tragedies and disasters. Who can restore the natural balance and peace, the way things used to be. Before.

They are siblings. Two of them are twins. They know nothing of their destiny – they don’t even know the others exist. They know nothing about the mysterious thing known as The Telling, which their destinies are tied up within. They are fast approaching a time where they will be hunted. They are useful to more people than they could ever imagine and they are about to learn all about who they are, and about each other.

Because saving the world isn’t the only possible outcome. They could also destroy it.

Disharmony is the first young adult novel from acclaimed Australian adult crime author, Leah Giarratano. Already well known for the Detective Jill Jackson series, Giarratano has tried her hand at something very, very different for her YA debut and the result is incredibly interesting. This is the first in the series and it’s fabulous at setting up the story, introducing the reader to several of the very important characters but also creating a shroud of mystery around some others. It’s one of those books where I’m going to be annoying and say ‘I don’t want to spoil it’ because I think that to write my usual detailed review would seriously detract from the experience that is reading this book knowing very little about it. All I knew was the blurb when I picked it up, which is brief to say the least. It had been talked about a little at a Penguin YA event I attended last year but mostly, the plot of this book has been a well kept secret.

The story switches between a juvenile detention centre near Windsor in Sydney’s north-west and a Roma gypsy camp near Bucharest, Romania. Luke Black is a teenager who was abandoned by his mother as a baby and bounced from one foster home to the next. He has a rap sheet a mile long and is currently serving time in the centre, targeted by one of the employees, a Mr Holt and the little band of inmates that are Holt’s personal favourites and perform all his dirty work, including beating ‘lesser’ inmates. He finds himself befriended by Zac Nguyen, a freakishly fast young kid. Together they realise it’s in their best interests to no longer be in the detention centre. I really enjoyed the sections that revolved around Luke, I found both him and his background fascinating and I was always wanting to know more about his previous foster homes and the sort of things he’d done that had landed him in the juvenile facility. His friendship with Zac was awkward and often strange, with Luke not really having much of an idea just why Zac had befriended him to possibly his own detriment and the two of them go from tentative reluctant alliance to two people on an important quest.

By contrast, Samantha White may not have known her real parents, but she has always known love. Raised by a group of Roma, with one in particular raising her as if Samantha was her own daughter. She spends her days telling fortunes to the non-Roma population and shyly crushing on Tamas, a gypsy boy in the same camp who works with the horses. I think I enjoyed the scenes set in Romania even more than the ones in Australia. The gypsy culture was so well portrayed and I could picture their campsite, the horses, their celebrations and their caravans. There’s a carnival that takes place during the book and I think it might’ve been one of my favourite scenes. It was like so many carnivals I’ve been to as a teen, overpriced rides and sideshow stalls but with a colour and atmosphere that still hooks you in, no matter how many times you’ve been before.

Disharmony is such an exciting and unique concept – it’s like nothing I’ve read and that itself makes it so interesting to me. The whole idea of these three different but connected characters, the psychopath, the empath and the genius who are so utterly unaware of their importance and their connection to each other, just going about their individual lives in different parts of the world….until they all get a serious shock. People trying to kill them, or capture them. They have to find each other and they have to learn all they can about the mysterious thing known as The Telling. I have no idea when the next installment will be out (2013 I’m guessing?) but I already want to know more. The last section of this book was action packed and contained such development and then it ended on not a cliffhanger exactly, but at a spot that left me wanting more about the third point in the triangle. Plus there’s that curious narrator that kept popping up….

One of those enjoyable, appealing reads that had me seriously thinking, trying to figure out bits that we haven’t been told yet.

8/10

Book #88 of 2012

Dr Leah Giarratano is an Australian clinical psychologist, an expert in psychological trauma, sex offences and psychopathology. She is the author of four Detective Jill Jackson crime novels and now Disharmony, her first book for young adults. This is the 31st book read and reviewed for the Australian Women Writers Challenge 2012.

June Read-A-Long – My Hundred Lovers, by Susan Johnson

In June I am very excited to be hosting a read-a-long for publisher Allen & Unwin of My Hundred Lovers, a new book by Australian author Susan Johnson. From the blurb:

A woman, on the eve of her fiftieth birthday, reflects on one hundred moments from a lifetime’s sensual adventures. After the love, hatred and despair are done with, the great and trivial acts of her bodily life reveal an imperfect, yet whole self. By turns humorous, sharp, haunting and wise, this is an original and exhilarating novel from one of Australia’s premier writers.
Lyrical and exquisite, My Hundred Lovers captures the sheer wonder of life, desire and love.

For the first three weeks in June myself and other bloggers will be reading this book in sections and then discussing it both here on my blog and also on the participants own blogs, should they choose. I’ll be posting weekly, highlighting key points and hopefully there’ll plenty of conversation and opinions as we talk about this exciting novel. I can’t wait to read it, I think it sounds fascinating and I’ve been warned that it’s very, very brutally honest in its style which I think should definitely promote some very interesting topics of discussion.

If you’re an Australian blogger who wants to take part in the read-a-long then please email me your details at 1girl2manybooks {@} gmail {.} com with: your name, link to your blog and postal address so that I can pass your details on to the publisher. There are still some spots open so if this sounds like something you’d like to read and take part in, don’t hesitate to get in contact. You can read at your own pace and come back and comment on the relevant posts  whenever you’re ready, there’s no actual requirement to read along exactly to the schedule (which will be posted when I’ve received my copy of the book and can best divide it up into equal parts).

If you’re already signed up through A&U, add your link to the Mr Linky below so we can all get to know each other!

Feel free to introduce yourselves in the comments too. For those taking part who don’t know me, I’m Bree. I’m 30 years old, I live in Melbourne and I’m a mother of two boys – my eldest will be 4 in August and my youngest is 8 months old. Reading has been my escape for as long as I can remember – my parents bought me a 6ft x 3ft bookcase for my 8th birthday and I filled it that day. I’m a book lover, a book hoarder and I started this blog 2 years ago (this week actually!) in order to keep a record of what I was reading in the year and my thoughts on each book. I never dreamed it would lead me into such an amazing community of other book lovers and bloggers. I’ve participated in several read-a-longs before and really enjoyed them and talking to so many other people about the book, but this is the first one I’ve hosted myself so I’m really excited about that. You can follow me on twitter @1girl2manybooks if you like and I’ll tag any twitter posts with the hashtag #MyHundredLovers

I hope you all have fun, enjoy the book and join in the discussion.

I’ll be linking up all the discussion posts with the Australian Women Writers Challenge 2012 database and counting the reading of My Hundred Lovers towards my personal goal. Anyone who is also taking part in this challenge, don’t forget that this book qualifies!

The Lifeboat – Charlotte Rogan

The Lifeboat
Charlotte Rogan
Virago Press
2012, 275p
Read from my local library

Grace has just married wealthy banker Henry Winter in London and how the two are making their way back to America to announce their news to his family. It is 1914 and Henry has booked passage on the Empress Alexandra. En route to New York, an explosion rocks the ship, which suffers such catastrophic damage that there’s no chance it isn’t going down. Everyone must get themselves to lifeboats and quickly.

Henry secures safe passage for Grace aboard one of the boats being lowered into the water and that is the last she ever sees of him. On board with nearly 40 other people, Grace and her fellow passengers soon realise their lifeboat is drastically overloaded and could sink in the rough, choppy seas at any moment. It seems that in order for some of them to live, some of them must also die.

At first they can wait it out, distributing the weight in the boat in ways that make it easier to stay afloat. Fortunately for them, they have one of the ship’s crew on board, a man who knows about boats, sailing, direction and the weather. But as the days pass by and their food and water dwindles and they drift further from the wreck, it seems that rescue is less and less likely. And that they may have to make some difficult decisions if they are to survive.

I requested The Lifeboat  from the library because of the cover, which I find spectacular. That moody sea and sky, almost melding into one where you can’t define where one ends and the other begins, and dotted upon it, a tiny boat with figures. A lonely, desolate scene that make me immediately want to read the book and see what happened to the people in the boat.

The book begins in ‘present day’ which is after Grace has been rescued and now faces a jury to determine if she’s a cold-blooded murder and then takes us back to Grace’s time in the lifeboat, a day at a time. Grace herself is an interesting character and whilst my sympathies should’ve been with her and her difficult situation, she was a very cool, remote woman and it was obvious she wore many hats, played many roles and that made it hard to feel for her on a personal level. She was a good observer but she was also skillful at manipulation and deception and at times I did wonder how reliable she was. There’s no doubt that she was clever, the more we learn of her backstory, the more this becomes apparent.

The Lifeboat is essentially, a story of moral dilemma: what would you do in this situation? Are the actions taken justifiable? There are nearly 40 people in the boat, it’s actually built for significantly less. In the first few days when they are closer to the wreck and the weather fine, they are able to negotiate this handicap quite well, but when the weather changes and the wind whips up the swirling sea and sends huge waves into the boat, it becomes apparent that they need to… lighten their load. In some cases, natural selection takes care of things for them, but there are also cases in which it does not.

In the beginning, although gossipy and occasionally argumentative, most of the characters are calm and possess a firm belief that their lifeboat time is just a waiting game and that they will soon be rescued. They have enough food and water for a few days, their crew member is adept at catching fish out of the ocean. A ship will come along and find them. But as the days go by and there’s no sign of any ships on the horizon and no sign of rescue at all, the hopes begin to fade and the hysteria begins to rise. The deconstruction of humanity is fascinating to read as the people in the boat squabble, fight and threaten each other about who should be in charge, who should live and who should sacrifice themselves for the greater good. It’s chilling, the way that tragedy and impending death sends everyone immediately putting their own needs above all others and valuing their own lives a lot more than that of the lives around them, with some people more than willing to back their needs up with the actions to make them come to pass.

It did make me wonder what I’d do in the same situation – would I lose my sanity, as some of the more delicate ladies did? Would I be Grace, a remote observer, staying on the downlow and playing the roles that she thought suited the situation best? Would I be clamouring for the men to sacrifice themselves to the sea so that the remaining women might have a chance to survive? Or would it be better to sacrifice the weaker women and keep the men, who could be of some use? I’m aware that back in 1914, it was the way for women and children into the boats first, followed by elderly men etc and there was a different mindset back then, but it still posed an interesting question. I think that it’s probably impossible to know just how you would react, the situation being too difficult to replicate accurately in your mind. Charlotte Rogan does an amazing job though of slowly whittling away at the peace in the boat, raising suspicions and secrets until no one knows who they can trust to lead, or who might be sabotaging. People are bullied, belittled one moment and soothed and comforted the next as the dynamics in the boat shift and change almost with the tides.

8/10

Book #86 of 2012

Delicacy – David Foenkinos

Delicacy
David Foenkinos (translated from the French by Bruce Benderson)
Bloomsbury Publishing
2012 (originally 2011), 250p
Copy courtesy of the publisher

Natalie is a young woman who perhaps had, the most perfect relationship. François and Natalie met on the street and from there it was an easy segue into a date, a steady relationship, an engagement and then marriage. They both had good jobs and a routine that suited them well. Natalie is aware of the looks that often slide her way, the wonders on how their relationship can be so easy. Natalie doesn’t understand having to ‘work’  at keeping things fresh, exciting and new. Neither of them do.

Then the unthinkable happens and several years into their marriage, François is killed, hit by a car whilst out jogging. Natalie’s whole world is ripped apart and for a while it is all she can do to go through the motions of life, using her work as something to keep her grounded, keep things on an even keel. Years later, still almost living in a fog but questioning whether or not she can go on like this forever, Natalie kisses a work colleague Markus.

For Natalie, it is an impulsive move, a spur of the moment thing that she later wants to ignore. For Markus, it is the moment where he falls helplessly in love with Natalie and he cannot ignore it, or forget it. He has to know why – awkward, shy but funny, Markus and beautiful, intelligent but somewhat remote Natalie seem a very unlikely match. And their whole office environment is watching with avid interest (and jealousy) as their stumbling relationship plays out.

Delicacy is an interestingly written novel, unlike anything I’ve read before. I’m not sure if this is because it’s the first novel I’ve ever read that has been translated from French (I don’t read a lot of translated fiction and what I have read has been translated from Swedish or Afrikaans), or if this is just the unique way in which David Foenkinos writes. There’s a certain charm to it, a bit of a rhythm that takes some getting used to but I did find it quite enjoyable when I settled in to it. The story of Natalie and her loss of François and attempt to grieve and move on is peppered with very short chapters containing information on things ranging from what Natalie had to dinner at a restaurant, the likelihood of an allergy to fish, lyrics from a song heard by a character in a car and excerpts from novels, plays and movies. There’s also footnotes expanding upon points, citing a reference of clarifying a point dotted throughout the text. I actually always really enjoy stuff like this, although I do know that these kind of inserts aren’t always for everyone. The short chapters and often abrupt ‘information’ chapters certainly weren’t a detraction for me.

There’s a certain sort of detachment in the narrative, almost as though someone is relating this to you as a story about a handful of people you are vaguely acquainted with. And because it feels like that, not a lot of time is taken to establish character (either Natalie’s or Markus’s) or to promote character depth. The book is, like it’s title, very delicate where the focus seems to be on giving just the bare bones and allowing the reader to flesh out the rest. This made it quite difficult for me to decide whether or not I liked Natalie, because I didn’t know much about her other than she liked to read, was married to François, in what was pretty much the perfect relationship, gutted by his death and she was very good at her job. The rest I had to guess for myself through the barely constructed narrative and I decided in the end that I did like her, but mostly only when she was conversing with Markus and they were navigating their way through their unusual and awkward relationship. Markus was Swedish and I’m not sure if this is a French thing, but there was much made of how Swedes are so depressed and the high suicide rates and that Markus would basically die than return there when he’s offered a promotion back to Sweden later in the novel. I found Markus quite likable right away, I think because such pains were taken to establish him as an underdog in compared to Natalie, who is beautiful. It is repeatedly stated that Markus is not handsome or attractive, but that he is quite funny (especially for a Swede) and dresses in a very odd way, but a way in which suits him. He’s endearing and his crippling crush on Natalie only serves to make him more so.

If you like subtle novels, full of a certain charm and a lack of sexual harrassment policies at work then Delicacy might be a novel you’d be interested in. I did very much enjoy the story line and the writing, once I got used to the idea that I was going to be given a little information, not a lot. Delicacy was nominated for all five of the major French literary awards – the first novel ever to achieve that. I couldn’t find out a lot of information about the author (most website hits were in French!) but his novels have been translated into fifteen languages. Delicacy has also been adapted for the big screen, starring Audrey Tautou and I have to admit, I’m interested in seeing it, especially as the author himself adapted the screenplay and directed the film.

7/10

Book #85 of 2012

You Are Here – Jennifer E. Smith

You Are Here
Jennifer E. Smith
Simon & Schuster
2012 (originally 2009), 251p
Read from my TBR Pile of Doom

Emma Healy is sixteen and has always felt like she didn’t belong in her overly academic family. Her parents are both professors and her two brothers and one sister are all much older than she is, in their thirties and living in other cities with degrees and high achieving jobs or attaining more post-graduate qualifications. Emma is only average at school and for her, life has just been a long story of not fitting in, of feeling like something is missing.

When her father asks her to find a text for him for a paper he is writing, Emma is stunned to find both her birth certificate and one for that of her twin, Thomas and then a death certificate issued for two days later. All of a sudden so many things make sense to Emma, her loneliness, her sense of being isolated from the family. If her brother had of survived, he’d have been like her, he’d have been someone she could relate to. Someone who would keep her company in the family she felt so removed from. Emma is devastated that her parents didn’t tell her about Thomas and she makes a plan to go and find out more about him, to visit a place where they lived with her and Thomas were born.

Her neighbour Peter loves maps – mostly because they all lead away from this small town he is trapped in. Born on the day of his mother’s death, bookish and quiet Peter doesn’t relate to his sports-loving, beer-drinking, poker-playing town sheriff of a father. He works hard with a goal to apply for a good college, but more importantly, a college far away from where he is so that he and his father don’t have to live their awkward, stilted existence any longer. When Emma calls him requesting help on her road trip, he doesn’t hesitate to join her, if they can visit a few places he wants to see too.

After reading and loving The Statistical Probability of First Sight earlier this year I decided I had to read more of Jennifer E. Smith’s books so recently I ordered this one and also The Comeback Season. I love road trip books – there’s just something about them. I love road trips in general, although it’s been some years since I’ve been on one!

When you really love something, especially the first book you’ve read by an author, it’s hard not to compare their other works to it. When your expectations are exceeded by the first book, all the subsequent books have a lot to live up to and it’s inevitable that some will fall short. Did I enjoy this book? Yes, I did…quite a bit. Did it hit the same chord with me as TSPOLAFS? No. And I’ve been pondering on that for the last day or two and I think the reason why, is Emma herself.

Emma is quite a complex character, she’s struggling to fit in with her eccentric and also over-achieving family. All she wanted was one normal birthday with a cake and maybe a bouncy castle, but she got academics, reciting papers and drinking red wine. Her grades are average, nothing spectacular and the age gap and physical distance between herself and her siblings means they are not especially close. Emma is prickly and very sensitive, she’s demanding and also quite a bit selfish. She wastes no time calling Peter when her roadtrip goes a bit wrong – but not because she really wants him along. She doesn’t really like him all that much, she’s more tolerated him for the past 8 or so years. She calls him because he’s a way for her not to get caught or have to go home. She shows little interest in his life, bored by the stops he wants to take along the way and often derisive of his interest in maps or in the battle grounds (such as Gettysburg) that he wants to see. She also knows that Peter has a bit of a crush on him (she states in the novel she probably knew before he did) which makes her squirm inside. Ultimately she’s not very nice to him for a large part of the book (she does have her moments of humanity) but she’s mostly quite self-absorbed. It did make her turn-around at the end of the book feel very rushed and abrupt!

What I did really enjoy about this book was the road trip itself. They’re driving a classic clunker, they sleep in camping grounds and in the car. They eat from gas stations and convenience stores and Peter counts his pennies at every stop. Plus the dog they picked up along the way does add a nice touch of character to the trip. I felt the road trip was quite realistic in terms of their ages and their capabilities. I also really, really enjoyed the way that Smith writes dysfunctional family relationships. I really did believe in Emma’s isolation and Peter and his father’s fractured relationship and inability to really communicate with each other. I felt that I could understand why Emma never knew about her twin and even though I felt for her, and felt that it was wrong she didn’t know, I could also understand why parents and children old enough to really feel the loss (her brothers and sister were in their mid to late teens at the time of her and Thomas’s birth) could clam up about it and just find it easier to never have to talk about it.

It’s not often I say this, but I actually feel this book was a bit too short. I feel as though the ending was a bit rushed and lacking in depth compared to the rest of the novel, which worked so hard to establish so much. Another 30-40 pages could’ve really made a huge difference in Emma’s change of mind for me, how she realises that she was so wrong. A bit more on Emma’s acceptance of her feelings and Peter’s role in her life would’ve made a big difference for me.

7/10

Book #84 of 2012

To Kill A Mockingbird – Harper Lee

To Kill A Mockingbird
Harper Lee
Vintage Books
2004 (originally 1960) , 307p
Re-read from my personal collection

To Kill A Mockingbird has been standard reading for Year 10 (fifteen year olds) in the state I went to school for as long as I can remember and was my first introduction to this book. Now school had an awesome habit of giving us extremely boring texts to read and then dissecting them until our disinterest turned to utter hatred. Year 10 was the first time we were really split up in English classes and my class was supposedly made up of the students that did very well in the subject. And for the first time, our teacher had our interest with this book. We all liked it – for the first time we had found something set to be interesting. I’ve always remembered that – the one book from school that has stood the test of time and the only one I’ve ever bothered to re-read over the years.

Now it’s been a while – so long in fact that when my online book-club nominated this as its read, I didn’t even bother to look for it until about 2wks out from the deadline because I knew we owned it and didn’t notice until then that our copy had…gone. Loaned out and never returned or perhaps lost in 3 moves in 3 years, packing and unpacking of boxes and boxes of books. So I immediately bought another one (the Vintage version pictured here) and set about reading it. I had intended to take it slowly but that ended up not happening at all. How had I forgotten just how utterly brilliant this novel is?

Unless you live under a rock, then at least the basic story line is familiar – told through the eyes of Scout Finch, To Kill A Mockingbird  revolves around the summers she and her brother Jem and their friend Dill spend trying to make Boo Radley, their reclusive neighbour, come out of his house. Scout and Jem’s father Atticus, a defense lawyer, is handed the impossible case – defense of a black man of a crime against a white woman in 1930s Alabama and Scout and Jem learn some real lessons on racism, class divide, the mob mentality and tolerance in a Deep South small town.

The problem with reviewing a book like To Kill A Mockingbird, which was published 52 years ago, is that what can you find that’s new to say about it? It’s probably been reviewed millions of times over the course of that time, every word studied and analysed, every character dissected, every lesson learned. What I can say is how glad I am that my book club chose this and I read it again as a 30 year old. Whilst I liked it at 15 and understood it, I’d say it didn’t make me think as it does now. Atticus was perhaps my first ‘adult crush’ that I remember – even at 15 I thought he was amazing. But now, I truly appreciate what a character he is, the unique way in which he parents Jem and Scout. He’s a single father in an era that would probably have been very unusual for the men to parent hands on. The society in which they live is traditional and very strict in its views but Atticus, in his own gentle way, preaches acceptance and equality and attempts to pass this onto his children, be it about Boo Radley and their attempts to make him “come out” or about Tom Robinson, the black man charged with attacking a white woman. Even whilst discrediting the young white woman on the stand, Atticus is faultlessly polite and does not seek to humilate her (although he could).  To be honest, I think all my feelings about Atticus can be summed up in one line, which is a direct quote from the book and one that totally stood out to me when I read it this time:

“Miss Jean Louise, stand up. Yer father’s passin’.”

At one stage in the book, both Scout and Jem lament that their father is old and can’t do anything, unlike the fathers of their school friends. He sits inside and reads books, he doesn’t go shooting or fishing or play sports. Scout is perhaps too young to really intimately understand a lot of the ins and outs of what is occurring at the trial but I think at that moment she grasps that her father is truly an admirable man, someone that she should be deeply proud of. His manner and defense of someone that many believe shouldn’t of even had a defense, but also the manner in which he conducts himself, is a beautiful eye opener, but in the right way, for the children when so many other things their eyes are opened to within the community are negative. That line, spoken to Scout by the Reverend Syke’s, the black pastor at the conclusion of the trial, is powerful enough to make tears come to my eyes!

Like Jem and Scout do about their father, as a student I lamented everything we read being so old. I wished we could study just one contemporary text and forego the oodles of Shakespeare, Keats, etc that we were lumped with in later high school. I’m not really connected to the curriculum these days so I’m unaware if they’re blending equal amounts of classic and contemporary, but I do believe that this is a book that should never be removed from the curriculum. It has lessons that never seem to go out of fashion, unfortunately – the acceptance of people who are different, equality for races, social classes, the importance of civility.

I’m so glad that my online book-club gave me the excuse I needed to revisit this one – I have so many new books to read at the moment that re-reads (which I used to do a lot) have fallen by the wayside. Sometimes it’s nice to sit down and just re-immerse yourself in something that still has something to teach you, even after 15 years.

10/10

Book #83 of 2012

To Kill A Mockingbird was on the list of 50 classics I constructed for The Classics Club – #45 on my list and one of only 3 titles that will be re-reads. I’ve now read 2/50 books towards the challenge.

Top 10 Tuesday 15th May

Top 10 Tuesday is a weekly bookish meme created and hosted by The Broke and the Bookish. This week’s topic was about authors and reality TV shows but to be honest – I don’t really watch enough reality TV to do that topic so I’m electing to do the freebie, which was added in as an option. So I’m just highlighting:

Top 10 Books I’m Excited I Just Got In The Mail

I’ve done a lot of book buying recently, I was pretty spoiled for Mothers Day – my husband gave me some $$ to spend at The Book Depository, so I picked up quite a few books, I received some from publishers and a blogger friend and I also got a $50 gift voucher to a local bookstore for Mothers Day (which I haven’t spent yet). So I’m just going to pick 10 to talk about!

1. Obsidian, by Jennifer L. Armentrout. So, I’ve been seeing this everywhere. There are glowing reviews, there are hashtags on twitter. And I’ve been following the author’s blog posts on her reading of Fifty Shades of Grey and they’re pretty fricking hilarious. So I’m super keen to read one of her actual books and it seems like this is an excellent place to start.
2. Revived, by Cat Patrick. I was sent this by another Australian book blogger, the awesome Celine from Forget Me Not. I loved Cat Patrick’s debut novel, Forgotten and I’ve been quite excited for this one ever since. It isn’t a totally new premise for me, so I’m keen to see how it differs from a similar series I started recently. But mostly I’m just looking forward to more from this author.
3. Eleanor & Park, by Rainbow Rowell. There were not enough words to describe how funny and charming I found Rowell’s first book, Attachments. I loved the strong women’s friendship and the witty emails. This is her second novel and I think it was published last month. Have high hopes for it, I hope it’s just as fresh and clever as the first.
4. Sloppy Firsts, by Megan McCafferty. I know Jamie from The Perpetual Page Turner really loved this book and she’s not alone – this series has scores of devoted Marcus Flutie fans out there and I have to admit, I’m pretty curious to see what all the fuss is about! I just bought the first one as a test – the die hard way to ensure I’ll love a series is for me to just buy the first volume and then have to hunt down all the rest. If I buy them all at once it seems I find them relatively average and am then stuck with all these books I’m unlikely to read!
5. Asylum, by Patrick McGrath. I forget where I first saw this, I just know that it was on my wishlist for quite a long time but was not available. It was also bizarrely catalogued at my local library in that it existed in the catalogue but there was no location listed (we have four branches and each volume is always given a location for where it is at the current time, or where it was checked out from). Finally I got an email that it was back in stock so I immediately bought it. It’s set in 1959 at a hospital for the “criminally insane” and the recently-appointed deputy superintendent’s wife begins an obsessive affair with a patient.
6. The Submission, by Amy Waldman. This one caught my eye when it was longlisted for the Orange Prize this year and also featured on The First Tuesday Book Club, a local Aussie book show which airs once a month and the panelists usually discuss two books. A jury in Manhattan select a memorial for 9/11 only to discover that when they open the envelope to discover his name, that he’s a Muslim. Very, very keen to read this one and see how it is played out.
7. Disharmony, by Leah Giarratano. This popped up in my mailbox courtesy of Penguin Australia’s YA line and it sounds awesome. Giarratano has previously written adult crime novels, this is her first foray into YA and it entails three siblings (a psychopath, an empath and a genius) who know nothing of each other but who will apparently save the world…or destroy it. It’s released May 23rd 2012, so expect to see my review for this one in about a week!
8. Preloved, by Shirley Marr. This is another Australian YA book – I am reading quite a lot of local YA this year and I have a lot more on my TBR shelf that needs to be picked up at some stage. This one is a ghost story and I like the fact that it includes a Chinese-Australian main character. There’s a lot of Asians that have made Australia home so it’s very nice to see that represented in literature. This sounds cute and Mandee from VeganYANerds really liked it and we do like (and not like!) quite a few of the same books.
9. Storm, by Brigid Kemmerer. Another one that’s had a big presence on Twitter, this is the first in the Elementals series and I picked it up on a whim in a local department store after reading a few blog posts promoting its release. Plus there’s a boy named Hunter in it…which may have something to do with it. Hunter is the name of my eldest son (he’ll be 4 in August) and I have to admit, I do like seeing the name used!
10. Out Of It, by Selma Dabbagh. I received this from Bloomsbury just yesterday and I’m really intrigued by it. I love reading books set in places that I’m not very familiar with, or that you don’t come across too often and this is right up my alley because it takes place at least partially in the Gaza Strip – and I’ve definitely never read anything set there before! I have written several papers on the Middle Eastern conflict when I was finishing my political degree and it’s still an area I find deeply interesting.

So these are just a few books I’m keen to get into soon – although my TBR is (always) pretty much out of control, so sometimes even though I really want to read something, I don’t always get to it as soon as I would like! Other books keep arriving! If only I could find out what causes that!