Miles Franklin Award – Brizzy Mays Books and Bruschetta

I’m not really into Reading Challenges as Quality wins over Numbers each and every time. Just read any of my Performance Management Reviews over the past twenty years. Have never been results driven either as my father kindly reminded me on his deathbed. “Pet”, he said, “you’ve always lacked ambition”. Said like it was a curse. Yep, that’s me. Retired and self funded at 58. Booyah.

Challenges have definitely changed the direction of my reading which is a positive or I’de still be reading Arthur Upfield novels and biographies from the Golden Days of Hollywood.

I continue to work through the Around The World Reading Challenge having completed books written about other countries last year including Somalia, Sweden, Iceland, French Equatorial Africa, Botswana, Cypress and Ethiopia. Titles are not provided : it’s more a learning tool to gain a better understanding of a different country’s culture.

From “The Books That Made Us“, ( as in a Nation, as per ABC TV ) I completed another three or four titles though am still trying to work my way through Carpentaria by Alexis Wright. Interestingly, my daughter has been moaning about a 500 plus page 2013 Miles Franklin Award Winner for months from the same list which she let me borrow over Christmas. Cat Balou, take more holiday leave : Questions of Travel by Michelle de Krestser is NOT even included on that List. Should I bother?

Leah is the Caretaker of a Street Library on the other side of the country, in Bussleton, Western Australia. She created Leah’s Street Library Reading Challenge with more of an Aus-centric feel to it for 2022 of which I powered through completing 42 of the 50 required books. The themes which let me down included :

book published in year of birth
book written by an author of the same name
an audio book. ( Just not happening)

The Gaia Reading Challenge was created by Aussie blogger, Sharon from Gumtreesandgalaxies.com, to encourage more reading about the environment, climate and nature. Last year was my first time participating and I managed ten books including a couple of kiddies titles. Loved it! I’ve always been a bit of a Greenie – who remembers the Save The Whales marches in the 70’s? – but reading books of this ilk has encouraged me to further tweak my behaviours. More on this another time.

Please join in if interested. The more the merrier…..

The Zoom Book Club has petered out with Covid restrictions now eased though the Probus Book Club continues. More on this another time too.

Something I plan to implement in 2023 is to read more books by Australian authors from earlier days. This interest goes back to meeting and hearing a local author, Shirley Chambers, presenting her book “Words From The Past, a Literary Landscape of the Darling Downs“. Shirley’s book mentions author Ronald McKie who wrote the 1974 Miles Franklin winner, The Mango Tree, which became a movie several years later. Yep, I’ll research Miles Franklin Award Winners since its inception in 1958 – before I was even born ! This will also substantiate reading the de Kretser previously mentioned.