This month has been HECTIC. Between juggling a new role reviewing for The Big Issue, the heating-up of the Emerging Writers’ Festival and all my regular uni work, I’m really surprised that I’ve found time to read. Granted, three of the six books I’ve read this month were for one of those roles, but still…
This month I discovered that I don’t like Les Murray’s poetry, but he can write really clearly about depression. I learned that Daniel Handler still has it. I learned, again, that I should really follow up book recommendations more quickly (reading The Lover, and Raf, I love it, thanks for the recommendation! And sorry for being so slow about it.)
A few weeks ago was another Kill Your Darlings‘ literary trivia night. Our team came second, and I won second prize in the raffle, so I came home with a pretty great swag of books (and a free high tea at the Windsor!) which are listed here under “gifted” (minus the high tea).
Books Bought:
Brewer’s Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, 18th Edition.
Camera Lucida, by Roland Barthes
Voiceworks: Translate
Kill Your Darlings Issue 9
Reading Copies:
Mary Bennett, by Jennifer Paynter
Gifted:
Love & Hunger, by Charlotte Wood
A Tiger in Eden, by Chris Flynn
What Remains, by Denise Leith
Under Stones, by Bob Franklin
Borrowed:
Bite Your Tongue, by Francesca Rendle-Short
Books Read:
Daughters of Troy, by Euripides
Fire, by Raymond Carver
Why We Broke Up, by Daniel Handler and Maira Kalman
Dora: An Analysis of a Case of Hysteria, by Sigmund Freud
Killing the Black Dog, by Les Murray
Mary Bennett, by Jennifer Paynter
Currently Reading:
The Confidence Gap, by Russ Harris
Wabi Sabi Love, by Arielle Ford
The Lover, Marguerite Duras
What have you been reading this month?
Sam van Zweden 
01/05/2012 at 5:42 am
How can you read so many books at the same time?
01/05/2012 at 3:27 pm
I can’t read more than one of the same kind of book simultaneously, but these books are all different. The Lover is memoir/fiction, and the other two are both self-help that I just dip into when I have time and the inclination… So it’s pretty hard to confuse them. If I were reading three fiction books at the same time though, I’d probably have an awful lot of trouble!
01/05/2012 at 8:52 am
Funnily enough, April was the month I discovered I really liked Les Murray’s poetry! Been savouring several of his poems from a collection I’m slowly working through: Seven Centuries of Poetry in English. They’re all pre-2000 poems though, so maybe they’re different to his newer stuff regarding depression?
And yes, I envy your book-reading. Book acquiring also, somewhat, although I don’t have much bookshelf space left, so am exercising maximum restraint and working through the multitudes I already have.
01/05/2012 at 3:29 pm
That is bizarre… Perhaps I’m reading the wrong Les Murray. What I was reading was a short collection that was half memoir and reflection on his experience with depression, which was absolutely brilliant, but then the other half was poetry that I didn’t like at all… If I get the chance I’ll have a look into some of his earlier stuff and see if I feel differently about it.
As for book-acquiring… I’m well and truly out of room also. There are piles next to my four book shelves.
01/05/2012 at 3:01 pm
I’ve just discovered the wonderful short fiction of Richard Yates and I’m also reading ‘The Master of Ballantrae’ by Robert Louis Stevenson.
01/05/2012 at 3:30 pm
That sounds great, Anthony! Robert Louis Stevenson was quite a prolific writer, wasn’t he? I always think I know all his titles and then more appear.