This is my mandatory round-up post about the Australian Women Writers’ Challenge 2015. I think I undertook to read 10 books by Australian women writers. I read 21. It was not an ordeal.
• I read poetry, such poetry:
brush, joanne burns 
Drag Down to Unlock or Place an Emergency Call, Melinda Smith 
Inside My Mother,
Ali Cobby Eckermann
The Guardians, Lucy Dougan 
The Fox Petition, Jennifer Maiden
I read two stunning memoirs:
In My Mother’s Hands, Biff Ward
Reckoning, Magda Szubanski, as an audiobook read brilliantly by the author
• I read biography and recent history
Barbara Baynton: Between Two Worlds, Penne Hackforth-Jones
The Streets of Papunya, Vivien Johnson
• I read novels:
The Golden Age, Joan London
When the Night Comes, Favel Parrett
The Strays, Emily Bitto
The Soldier’s Wife, Pamela Hart
The Life of Houses, Lisa Gorton
Chasing Shadows, Leila Yusaf Chang
• I read a brilliant essay:
Quarterly Essay: Dear Life, Karen Hitchcock
• I read short works, including a book of short stories, components of Going Down Swinging‘s Long Box, and children’s books:
Go to Sleep Jessie, Libby Gleeson and Freya Blackwood
The Cleo Stories: The Necklace and the Present, Libby Gleeson and Freya Blackwood
Bush Studies, Barbara Baynton
Thirteen Story Horse, Bridget Lutherburrow
News from a Radiant Future, Katherine Kruimink
Protein, Libbie Chellew
Its not as if I read these books just because they were written by women, but I doubt if I would have read them all if not for the challenge. My life is definitely richer for it.
I intend to sign up for the 2016 challenge. Of course.
Me fail? I fly! 
Interesting that you say you read some of them because of the challenge. How many books did you read by men?
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Good question, Kathy. It sent me into what Penny assures me is not an Asberger’s quest, because there can never be anything odd about an interest in statistics. It looks as if I read 28 books by women altogether, and 45 by men.
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Wow! You record every book you read?
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Sad isn’t it? And I try to write something about every one too
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I’m in awe! I knew you did the films but I didn’t realise about the books. It would certainly solve all those ‘now what was that book I read / film I saw’ thoughts and conversations!
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Hands up here as another sad case! Just wanted you not to feel alone Jonathan in your obsessive tendencies!
And Kathy, solving that very problem is one of the reasons I started blogging!
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Thanks, Sue. That feels less lonely.
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Of course! Love it, Jonathan. And what a great variety of reading you’ve done. My poetry reading has fallen off badly in the last year or so. You add significantly to the variety of works covered by our challenge so I thank you, and look forward to seeing you pop up again next year.
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Thanks, Sue. After chasing statistics in response to Kathy (above), I went looking for my 2014 AWW figures, and see that I only read 11 books for the challenge that year. So clearly I’m getting in deeper.
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The deeper the better I say! Seriously though, it’s important to read what you want to read, and I think you do. If sometimes the challenge encourages us to choose one book we want to read over another we want to read because it fits the challenge, I see no problem with that. (Oh, and Happy New Year.)
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