don't let the barstools get you down: a farewell

Friends, I've neglected this blog so successfully for a long time. So I'm cutting it free officially at long last. Thank you for reading all my waffle since August 2009.

Since I first posted I've been a bookseller, a nanny, a student, a book reviewer, a publishing assistant, a junior editor, a bookseller, an editor, a bookseller, a production editor and a bookseller some more. And a writer.

I began with my current bests. I shall close with them too.

favourite coffee: Wide Open Road's Bathysphere coffee, but I love it best when served at Heartattack and Vine because it's the most wonderful cafe/bar/my future home.

favourite book: currently this prize goes to Dragonfly Song by Wendy Orr, which is beautiful and lyrical historical fiction set in the bronze age; Doodle Cat is Bored by Kat Patrick and Lauren Marriott, a hilariously funny picture book that espouses the benefits of boredom for children's imaginations; and Jaclyn Moriarty's story 'Competition Entry #349' from Begin, End, Begin: A #LoveOzYA Anthology by Danielle Binks (ed), which is thoroughly original and hysterical and tender.

And I'll add my current favourite news:

My debut YA novel, Untidy Towns, will be published by the University of Queensland Press in October this year. Because apparently, sometimes (if you're lucky) you get everything you ever wanted.

I ran away on a Tuesday afternoon in late March. Six pm and I was headed south-west in a train that smelled stale.

Seventeen-year-old Adelaide is sick of being expected to succeed on other people’s terms. She’s made a new plan: drop out of her fancy boarding school to read and dream. She just needs to stick it out at home for one more year and then she’ll be free.

But before she can work out her next move, Addie’s grandad offers her a job at the local historical society. It’s dusty and messy, like her hometown, like her new life. Then she accidentally kisses Jarrod, the boy who spends his days getting into trouble. But he’s as stuck as she is and Addie starts to wonder that maybe when you really want something in life, you’ve actually got to do something about it.

A heartfelt story about love, friendship and untidy towns.

Please come to the launch party at The Sun Bookshop in Yarraville on Saturday 7 October. (date TBC)

I'll be loitering on the internet at various places...
web: kateodonnell.com.au
twitters: @readingkate
insta: @readingkate

GOODBYE I LOVE YOU KEEP READING

la lecture

I don't know about you, but I believe one of the best things about going to France is THE BOOKS.* And behold my haul.

As you can see I was quite reserved, really. I shopped in Bordeaux at an enormous (absolutely staggeringly big) bookshop (i got lost once) called Mollat, in Les Enfants sur le Toit, a children's bookstore in Montmartre, and at Chantelivre in the 6th arrondissement.
  

• Cupidon Power by Luc Blanvillain, published by l'école des loisirs (MG), in which a young boy has the magical ability to make people fall in love with each other – but he can't benefit from it himself.

• Dysfonctionelle by Axl Cendres, published by Editions Sarbacane (YA). Fidèle has a pretty crappy home life – Dad back and forth from prison, Mum from the psych ward – but she's clever, and so goes to a posh school in a nice suburb. I'll take a torn-between-two-worlds story ANYDAY.

• La pyramide des besions humains by Caroline Solé, published by l'école des loisirs (YA). This one was recommended to me by Coline Ribue, a publicist at l'école des loisirs who was kind enough to meet with me and chat all things book – answering all of my questions about how 'surely france respects books above all else' and hearing back that actually, like here, kids books get pretty overlooked in terms of reviews in mainstream media ...more about this another time – and she walked me around Chantelivre, the indie bookshop right next door to the office. This YA novel is about a reality TV show based on the idea of Marlow's hierarchy of needs. I'm going to have to read it to understand more...

• Quand le diable sortit de la salle de bain by Sophie Divry, published by Notabilia (adult fic) about a young woman, unemployed and bogged down in her novel. I try not to think about this one being too close to home. Sophie, the character, has a personal demon called Lorchus, so we're different that way.

• C'est chic! by Marie Dorléans, published by Seuil Jeunesse (picture book). It's about a merchant who can't shift his wares, until one day he gets a touch of heatstroke and begins pitching very strange goods: coffee shoes and rain carpets?? And the snobbity rich folks, well they think these things are just so unique!

A closer look at all things chic...

Isn't it magnificent?

• Le merveilleux dodu-velu-petit by Beatrice Alemagna, published by Albin Michel Jeunesse (picture book) and which is about a little girl who just wants to get the best present for her mother's birthday – better that anything her sister could get...

 I couldn't not buy the Beatrice Alemagna, even though she's pretty often translated into English – and this title is already, it's called The Wonderful Fluffy Little Squishy – but I had read an article about this one last year, in which Beatrice was asked (I believe) to redraw a scene in which a butcher brandishes a bloody, dripping knife at our little main character Eddie. American sensibilities etc. I don't know if she had to censor it in the end, but I know I wanted the bloody knife version for myself.

I'm excited, though a little overwhelmed, at all the reading-in-a-second-language I'm about to do. I'm trying to improve my French from basic-conversation-fluent to something a little more nuanced and sophisticated. Books is the answer, I think.

Do you read in foreign languages? How do you source your books? Do you feel, like me, that we would all benefit from an increased amount of works translated from other languages in this country? How can we make this an affordable process?


 *croissants, baguettes and rocamadour cheese obviously a close, tied, second-best.

opening lines

I love a great opening line.

You know these classics, but here are the first sentences (sometimes first two) of the books currently on my to-read (or recently read) pile:

I said a silent prayer.
Actually, silent is probably the only type of prayer a guy should attempt when his head's in a toilet.

– Winger, Andrew Smith

Tommy was a talker and didn't much like the other ghosts, so he was forever talking to Kelpie.

– Razorhurst, Justine Larbalestier

 'I think Bill is in love with Mrs Peck,' I confide to an undersized blue swimmer crab that has become all tangled up in my line.

– The Minnow, Diana Sweeney

The ring is small and space is tight, and their circles feel like flying.

– The One and Only Jack Chant, Rosie Borella

The first thing we had to do was catch the Tralfamosaur.

– The Eye of Zoltar, Jasper Fforde

It happened before Jack was born.
When Amrei was six, a spider appeared on her shoulder.

– No Stars to Wish On, Zana Fraillon

The first thing is the smell of blood and coffee.

– Why We Took the Car, Wolfgang Herrndorf

The ground is hard and dry. The dirt yields grudgingly as the gravedigger thrusts his shovel in.

– The Forgotten Rebels of Eureka, Clare Wright

 And how about this breath-taker:

It took slightly under eight hours for Melbourne to die.

– Pandora Jones: Admission, Barry Jonsberg

And this was our day

 Andrew Smith's Grasshopper Jungle is certainly strange. It won't be for everybody. However, it is dangerous, violent, very funny and exceedingly compelling. The narrative voice is engaging, honest and completely unique (well, perhaps a younger brother to a certain Caulfield or Billy Pilgrim), Throughout his winding narrative Austin Szerba explores war, history, lust and human nature. Oh - and the end of the world.

 But no historian could ever put everything that happened in a book.
 The book would be as big as the universe, and it would take multiple countless lifetimes to read.
 History necessarily had to be an abbreviation.
 Even those first men - obsessed with recording their history - who painted on cave walls in Lascaux and Altamira, only put the important details down.
 We killed this big hairy thing and that big hairy thing. And that was our day. You know what I mean. 
...
 It was hard for me, at times, to separate out the connections that crisscrossed like intersecting highways though and around my life in Ealing.
 It was the truth and I had to get it down.
 And that was our day. You know what I mean.
 I took off my boxers and went to bed.
 It was 6:01 a.m.
 The end of the world was about four hours old. Just a baby. 

So it's the story of the end of the world, brought about after Robby and Austin discover a strange strain of a mysterious plague. But various threads intertwine throughout the narrative and you've got to keep up. Amid the the newly-hatched Unstoppable Soldiers, Austin talks about his ancestors, who came to America from Poland and had their consonants taken from them on the way (Szczerba became Szerba), in almost the same breath as he talks about life in (very "middle America") Ealing Iowa, Lutheran Brothers' reading habits (no books about masturbation, please), urinals, diving bells, his mother's addiction to Xanax, his brother deployed in Afghanistan. Then there's his feelings towards his girlfriend Shann and his even more confused feelings towards Robby.

This is smart, weird YA. Like Going Bovine by Libba Bray, How to Say Goodbye in Robot by Natalie Standiford, or King Dork by Frank Portman* – and I’ll admit it’s a massive story to take in. But it is totally worth it.

You know what I mean. 

*Did you hear? There's going to be a sequel soon, King Dork Approximately. Isn't your delight just doublish thanks to the Bob Dylan reference? Yes, yes it is.

wild awake, this time in australian

Here's the Aus & NZ cover for Hilary T Smith's incandescent debut novel Wild Awake, published here by HGE.

Things you earnestly believe will happen while your parents are away: 

1. You will remember to water the azaleas.
2. You will take detailed, accurate messages.
3. You will call your older brother, Denny, if even the slightest thing goes wrong.
4. You and your best friend/bandmate Lukas will win Battle of the Bands.
5. Amid the thrill of victory, Lukas will finally realize you are the girl of his dreams.

Things that actually happen: 

1. A stranger calls who says he knew your sister.
2. He says he has her stuff.
3. What stuff? Her stuff.
4. You tell him your parents won’t be able to –
5. Sukey died five years ago; can’t he –
6. You pick up a pen.
7. You scribble down the address.
8. You get on your bike and go.
9. Things … get a little crazy after that.*
* also, you fall in love, but not with Lukas.

Both exhilarating and wrenching, Hilary T. Smith’s debut novel captures the messy glory of being alive, as seventeen-year-old Kiri Byrd discovers love, loss, chaos, and murder woven into a summer of music, madness, piercing heartbreak, and intoxicating joy.


Click here and here for more.

Wild Awake

It's the first day of summer, and I know three things: One, I am happy. Two, I am stoned. Three, if Lukas Malcywyck's T-shirt was any more red I would lean over and bite it like an apple.

And so opens Wild Awake by Hilary T Smith. This is one I have been waiting for for quite a little while - and it's out now in the US!

You, if you are like me, will adore this. Hilary's words surprise and delight; the prose so careful and deliberate and wondrous. The story pings and zings across the pages, and the voice of protagonist Kiri Byrd (Serious Piano Student) is beguiling. After an unexpected phone call, everything begins to unravel and Kiri pedals through her city and the night, night after night, trying to discover just what did happen to her sister Sukey those years ago and then afterwards she continues on, grasping and gasping at adventure.

Ahead of me, the glittering angles of downtown beckon dangerously, like a drawer full of knives.

Who knew this was out there, waiting for me? Who knew there was an entire midnight world out there while I was lying in bed?

I knew from the first paragraph that this book was for me, but the description of a boy she meets in the fourth chapter just confirmed it:

He's huge. Hagridesque.

Hilary used to be The (anonymous) Intern, you've probably read her blog. It's damn good. Once, we looked at each other's bookshelves. Now she posts not only about books and writing, but also all of her incredible travels and her artistic, nomadic life. She prefers to live for free or for cheap: read about it here at YA Highway, it's truly inspiring. Where can I get me a doom shack?

And the most wonderful thing is that, because I was too impatient to wait to read this book, I casually mentioned it at work and our managing and commissioning editor (also an Intern Spills fan, fortuitously) ran with it. Then everyone in the office read it and loved it and so our m&c ed asked 'please may we buy the rights?' and now we'll be bringing out an Australian/New Zealand edition later this year (not too much later).

I'll post more on Wild Awake in the next little while. It's one of those ones that not only had me reading all in a fluster of page flipping, sharp-intake-of-breath-taking, revelling and reckoning, but also one of those gems that I know will help to grow me as a writer, as well as a reader.

Congratulations, Hilary!

UPDATE: Wild Awake now has a special cover for its ANZ release - see here!

2012 bests

lots of people are making their lists of 2012 best reads and if i made a list it would go on forever, so i've decided to go with just two: a YA best and one grown-up one. as it happens, one is the first book i read this year, the other is the last. this is a kind of symmetry i like. one was first published in australia in 2012, the other is from a couple of years ago, but which i only just got around to reading.

there were many amazing YA titles this year (and A LOT of australian ones), but i'm going with daniel handler's why we broke up, illustrated by maira kalman. i love these guys; loved their collaboration on the picture book 13 words. when i read this i was just about to start work at hardie grant egmont and it made me feel so chuffed that my new workplace had chosen to be the australian home for this book. it made me feel confident that we would get along.

why we broke up

min green and ed slaterton are breaking up, so min is writing ed a letter and giving him a box. inside the box is why they broke up. two bottle caps, a movie ticket, a folded note, a box of matches, a protractor, books, a toy truck, a pair of ugly earrings, a comb from a motel room, and every other item collected over the course of a giddy, intimate, heartbreaking relationship. item after item is illustrated and accounted for, and then the box, like a girlfriend, will be dumped.

beginning to end, all the angst and heartbreak included, this was a delight. all the (made-up) films and movie stars, the references that min made and which baffled ed. the conversations that went around and around, the tangents and segues. why we broke up is a brilliantly written and smart book - plus, so perfectly teenage. min is hyperbolic, feels things so deeply. she's over-dramatic (some might say) and i know there were many adult YA readers who didn't like this one at all. and this, above all, is why i love this book so: a teenager's life should often exclude or baffle an adult and i felt that min and ed and al all had the space to exist as teenagers and as people. they felt real, they spoke their thoughts and got things wrong. they were unlikable, precocious and whimiscal (angsty). and i loved them for it.

***

i don't read a lot of books for grown ups, and even more rarely do i read non-fiction. but i've been coveting patti smith's memoir just kids for a month or so now, drawing it out and savouring it. i finished it this morning; i loved it.

just kids

just kids begins as a love story and ends as an elegy. It serves as a salute to new york city during the late sixties and seventies and to its rich and poor, its hustlers and hellions. a true fable, it is a portrait of two young artists' ascent, a prelude to fame.

smith's prose is dreamy and yet straightforward, it's intimate but not self-exploitative. i knew so little about her life, and littler still about her relationship with robert mapplethorpe. this was such a special book. i loved the way she spoke about all those crazy cats who inhabited manhattan and brooklyn and paris in the 60s and 70s - it was just life, it never felt like she was name-dropping or big-noting. i appreciated the solemn, serious and dedicated way she approached her art. i think this is one i will read again and again.

yet you could feel a vibration in the air, a sense of hastening. it had started with the moon, inaccessible poem that it was. now men had walked upon it, rubber treads on a pearl of the gods. perhaps it was an awereness of time passing, the last summer of the decade. sometimes i just wanted to raise my hands and stop. but stop what? maybe just growing up. (p.104)

happy new year!

the quiet

Writers are told not to write down to young adult readers, but I can’t help but feel that this is constantly happening today—it simply doesn’t take the form that we might imagine it to. By giving readers books that are all about taking down the state or fighting werewolves we’re implying that it’s only these problems that are of any value, that the everyday teenage experience is otherwise something that should be easily navigable. I can’t think of any worse way than putting down a reader than by suggesting that their lives do not merit reading about.

In addition, by excising all of the quiet space that exists in these classic books in order to make room, make room! for more attention-grabbing plot, we’re denying readers the thinking room to be able to truly experience all of the wonders of reading. We’re assuming that they want their reading experience to be as little like a reading experience as possible, and the result is books with narratives that stream by like tickertape. I can’t help but wonder whether they’ll be forgettable, these books that disallow readers the space that we need to reflect on a story, to engage with it, and to draw our own conclusions.

Not all readers read to escape, nor do they necessarily read in order to live vicariously as action heroes. Sometimes readers read to identify, to make a friend who’ll remain with them forever, and to be charmed. Sometimes they want to be able to read a book that gives them the space that they need to think about the questions posed by the book, and to answer them themselves.

Surprisingly often, too, it’s the quiet books that are the ones that change lives.

from Stephanie at Read in a Single Sitting

I love the quiet books, they're my favourite. And Anne, above all. I think Stephanie is so right when she says that there are readers who want this kind of book. It's really important that there are slow reads, tales that meander, language that dips and peaks and swirls, the characters who (like Anne) just grow up, and be.

It's good for our brains to read these kinds of books. Life is so hectic and noisy and barrelling along, surely we don't always need our books to push us through their plots helter-skelter. It makes me exhausted! Even now I'm struggling to think of the quiet stories, to give examples. I constantly feel busy (which is total bollocks, I'm not so busy really). When I sit back and try to think about the quiet things I end up just getting distracted...I don't know when my attention span shrank so.

Here is what I did this evening:

Had dinner with a friend.
Wandered homeward.
Read through twenty pages of the story I'm working on. It's awfully rough. Found many lines that made me cringe, found other that made me happy to keep working on this. Found a nice quiet moment that I had written. Who knows if it will end up even in the first draft, but it's here for now:

Neither of us had eaten olives before, except accidentally on pizza. They were salty and fleshy and when I licked at my lips it felt like I'd been swimming in the ocean and, when I said so, J said he felt the same.
  I said, 'If you ever give me a book as a present you have to write in the front of it.'
  'Ok,' he said.
  We guzzled water from the garden hose because it was closer than the house and we were so warm, there on the slope. The pony grazed by us, huffing when a grass seed went up his nose. We smelled all the smells. At least I did, I couldn't speak for J.
  'I reckon spring's around the corner,' he said. 'Smell that?'
  I read a book once about a girl who jumped into a river just because she wanted to see what it felt like.
  I couldn't help jumping.

Then I read some blogs.
I started writing this post.
I made some sodastream with elderflower cordial.
Pulled Anne of Green Gables, Anne of the Island and The Story Girl out of my bookshelf and just put them on the floor for later.
I put on some washing.
Tried to write some more of this post.
I tried to call my parents - they didn't answer.
I've been writing this post for hours. I just kept getting distracted.

This past weekend I was in Tasmania for the wedding of a great friend. I travelled down with my uni gang. We are a very noisy bunch, loud and sometimes crass, always talking and arguing and gossiping; all of us celebrating almost eleven years of friendship.

On the Sunday night, after the wedding was over and the weekend coming to an end, we walked up the beach at dusk to watch the penguins come in. We sat on a big rock and got colder and colder, but we waited. And when the first lot of penguins rode in on a turquoise wave we became quiet, pointing at first, whispering - over there! and there are some more! - and then watched for an hour in absolute silence as they came out of the water and over the sand and the rocks and up into the scrub to find and feed their babies.

The penguins were spectacular, but the quiet was the best.

May there always be quiet times. May there always be quiet, life-changing books.

there will be books

I heard the term aliterate for the first time this week, over at Madwomen in the attic. It really struck me because I think I'm going through a period of it myself. This quote set some kind of recognition off in me: "I look at the books on my coffee table and they're like bricks to me." (from Love Me, Garrison Keillor)

I look at all the books on my desk, bedside table and bookshelves and they overwhelm me. They beg to be read and I pick them up, flick through their pages and desperately want to read them but I don't feel like I can give them the attention they deserve, and the attention that will allow me to fully appreciate the stories and the writing. I have also been writing madly these last few weeks, which surely impacts on my ability (or non-ability) to concentrate on a book. There are too many voices in my head already.

I'm not worried, I know that it won't be long before I'm one with the books again. It's just frustrating.

In my reading group we're reading Caitlin Moran's How to be a Woman out loud, so at least my life isn't totally book-barren. Tonight's group was particularly nice because we also got takeaway from the Moroccan Soup Bar (oh yum, chickpea bake) and I got to bounce a baby on my knee.

Other bookish things:

The Underground New York City Public Library website, which is a "visual library featuring the Reading-Riders of the NYC subways." I have always loved seeing people reading on trains and trams and I nearly always want to talk to them about their books, whether they're enjoying it, if it's the first time they're reading that particular book or if it's a favourite. I especially loved this image, of two young people looking at The Absolutely True Story of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie.

I was reminded of this video, which is a little old but still makes me happy:



Not only that, but I can't wait for you all to read Melissa Keil's Life in Outer Space, which is the first novel to be published through the Ampersand Project and is the first book that I've watched (and helped!) go the whole way from reading pile to edits, to pages, to printer. Not only even that, but I love it.

I also absolutely love Anna and Gareth's What we have been reading posts over at Able and Game.

yes!

In defence of YA

You might have listened into the Radio National Books and Arts Daily program a couple of weeks ago when Andrew McDonald, Bec Kavanagh and I were there to champion our Kill Your Darlings YA Championship choices. Such a great chance to promote the championship and, though it was a very terrifying experience, it was great and scary and fun to be on the radio. I was very brave the other day and listened back to some of the program. Michael Cathcart asked us a question that I really wish I had heard properly, and responded better to, on the day. So here goes:

"Young adult fiction is sometimes seen as the poor cousin to adult fiction. Some authors I know get really frustrated when their publishers market them as young adult writers. What's it stand for?"

The idea that a YA novel is somehow inherently less worthy than a novel for adults is a really terrible and annoying belief, and one that has always driven me absolutely bananas. Worse, it ends up being a self-fulfilling prophecy. But the question does highlight what is unfortunately a quite common misconception about young adult literature and hopefully the Kill Your Darlings championship will go some way to enlightening the wider literary world. Let's call this open for discussion.

What does a young adult book stand for? As I said on the show, a YA book is about the teenage experience. The best YA books strive for - and achieve - a strong and accurate reflection of the experience of young adults. A common trait of a YA novel is a conclusion that gives the reader a sense of hope about the future, or at least a clue about how to best tackle life after childhood, after the teenage years. An adult book does the same thing, it's just that the protagonists are older.

Literary young adult novels are sophisticated, clever, philosophical. Their prose is complex, Carver-esque simple, florid, fast-paced, slow and sexy. Some YA is delightful and trashy. Some of it is awful. YA is not a genre, so all young adults novels aren't equal or comparable. A YA novel - and here I'm speaking generally - maybe doesn’t spend quite as long navel-gazing as some adult novels. Maybe. But the navel-gazing is definitely still there, picking at the fluff and feeling sorry for itself. A YA novel will probably have a strong focus on characterisation, because if you don’t get the character right a teenager is going to see right through you. Because a YA reader is discerning and intelligent.

Isn't it a remarkable talent to be able to tap into the unknowable, the complicated, the contradictory mind of a teenager? To understand them, and to create stories about them? And for them? Offer some kind of blueprint for life - without being patronising or didactic? All the best YA books do this, and they do it beautifully. I hate to think people feel frustrated by this label, because writing for young adults requires something pretty special.

So let's have some celebrations and cake for the amazing YA writers, whose characters might not have yet turned twenty! Here's to more beautifully written YA books! Let's see more reviews of YA books in our newspapers! Let's have three cheers for the vibrant international YA community!

My ideas and theories and perspectives on young adult fiction are not all my own. I've been taught and inspired by a brilliant bunch of YA enthusiasts over the years. If you're reading this and thinking it sounds familiar, you can be pretty sure I've been listening to you, and I think you are the bees knees. You might be a YA specialist like Agnes Nieuwenhuizen, Lili Wilkinson, or Cordelia Rice, who are never afraid to say what they think, and who think some pretty amazing things. You might be John motherfuckin' Green, who has a win of Nerdfighters from all over the world never forgetting to be awesome, and who writes books about kids smarter than I'll ever be. Or my mama bear: YA lover and specialist herself, who gave me the best things to read when I was a teen.

the colour of trouble

Gerry Bobsien has a creative and useful daughter who has made her an ace booktrailer for her latest novel The Colour of Trouble.

​Maddy can’t stop making things: art, fashion, and most of all, TROUBLE. A new art project could give her the notoriety she desires, but that’s not all she’s dealing with. Her bestie, Darcy, is acting weird and starts dating a girl he’s never mentioned before. Her mum is living and working hundreds of kilometres away, and a new mystery boy keeps popping up at the most inconvenient times ... Will the fallout from her latest project push away all the people she loves? Does Maddy really want to be this NOTORIOUS?

There's art and theft and being a public nuisance, a stylish grandmother and homemade sweets. A best friend, a new friend, a twin brother and two girl friends ready to help you stir up trouble. There's a yellow skirt, a yellow kitchen, a streak of red, and a new blue to inspire you. Almost makes you think being fifteen might just be okay. (Almost).

This book's for lovers of Simmone Howell's Notes from the Teenage Underground, Cath Crowley's Graffiti Moon, Jaclyn Moriarty's books and Brigid Lowry's Guitar Highway Rose.

Visit Gerry's website.

KYD YA Championship

Kill Your Darlings have asked a whole lot of book-reading, YA-loving, story-defending people to passionately put forward the case for a particular Australian young adult book from the past 30 years. The posts will go up between July 30 and August 17 on their blog.

Then, it's over to everyone else. That's you. Once you've calmly and rationally read all the persuasive posts and weighed the choices and considered it properly and seriously, you can vote for my chosen book to win. How fun!

Actually, you can vote for whichever title you would like, and there will be a top three. You'll also be in the running to win a whole bunch of books from Penguin, Allen & Unwin and Hardie Grant Egmont*.

The book I'm championing is one of these ones. It also appears here ... though perhaps not one of the ones pictured *hint hint*.

But what was really hard is that there are so many amazing, brilliant, canonical, damn-tootin' excellent and fab Australian YA books from the past thirty years (which is almost my whole lifetime) that I wished I could have campaigned heartily for more. But I could only stand behind one, so I've gathered my lackies and we're getting behind my title with - err - croquet mallets (?) in hand.

Visit the Killings blog here.

*Disclaimer, or whatever: I work for HGE. 

PM's Literary Awards

The Prime Minister's Literary Awards were announced yesterday. Congratulations to all the shortlisted authors!

The Prime Minister’s Literary Awards celebrate the contribution of Australian literature to the nation’s cultural and intellectual life. The Awards recognise the importance of literature to our national identity, community and economy.

Particularly in light of this description of the awards, but mostly just personally, I am so sad that Kate Constable's Crow Country is not shortlisted, because it was one of the very best titles released last year and one which perfectly captured the essence of our country and weaved it into a fully enthralling story. It's one of those books that is brilliantly written, thought provoking and engaging for its target audience. It does, however, hover around that line between middle grade fiction and young YA, which may have worked against it. But! Let us now dwell on what isn't, because that will get us nowhere.

Let us celebrate what is! Below are the judges' comments on the five shortlisted titles for the Young Adult category. The judging panel was made up of Judith White, Mary-Ruth Mendel and Bob Sessions:

A Straight Line to my Heart, Bill Condon
Condon writes about teenagers with great empathy. His first-person narrator Tiff is at a crossroads, burning to pursue her dream of becoming a journalist but slow to realise that her greatest story lies in her unconventional family. Skilfully drawn characters, ranging from her adopted grandfather to a gruff reporter colleague, help the reader to become aware that words sometimes conceal more than they reveal.

Alaska, Sue Saliba
Saliba creates a haunting picture of an Australian girl’s struggle with loneliness and uncertainty, set on the edge of the remote Alaskan wilderness. Evocative imagery of forest, snow and wildlife strengthen the fabric of a superbly told story, in which the central character finds a way out of self-absorption and illusion to embrace the complexity of human experience and take responsibility for what she has left behind.

Being Here, Barry Jonsberg
This is a profoundly beautiful story, a memoir of youth retold in old age to a schoolgirl, forging a link between generations. A booklover’s tale, it recalls a girl who escaped from the isolation of country life and family tragedy through both the written page and an unusual friendship with a boy stranger. Jonsberg unravels her memories to give us a compelling affirmation of enduring love.

Pan's Whisper, Sue Lawson
Lawson allows us inside the skin of Pan, a damaged, untrusting foster child in an account that reveals how her own courage, and the caring attention of friends, can unlock the memories that plague her. Told with great sensitivity, Pan’s story shows the hurt that hides behind teenage aggression and how that hurt can be transcended to arrive at a measure of fulfilment.

When We Were Two, Robert Newton
Faultlessly constructed and told with brilliantly understated, tragi-comic dialogue, this is the deeply moving story of two brothers journeying from the bush to the coast on the eve of war. Enhanced by a Chaucerian cast of characters encountered along the way, it tells essentially of a love of family that can survive separation and death itself. This is historical fiction of rare accomplishment.

john green is a crazy man in an airport, answering yr questions

and i think he is the bees knees for it.

Genre? Not really.

So mad about this article about The Hunger Games.

The following is one of the three things the author identifies as a theme that may not appeal to adults when reading The Hunger Games.

Clunky Pacing and Writing -- this is not quite a "theme" but I've seen this flaw in some YA books. (The first book was beautifully paced, but the other two books -- not as much.) YA authors don't aspire to be David Foster Wallace, but Hunger Games' prose can be a bit choppy at times.

I don't come in defense of HG, specifically, because I only read the first one and don't remember the quality of the writing. It was a fun read and I really enjoyed it. I'm just so mad about the whole YA authors don't aspire to be... comment. It's probably true that many or most don't aspire to be DFW. And that is probably a good thing. He met a pretty horrible end. But rawr! All the YA authors I know work damn hard to write beautifully, and produce absolutely wonderful works of literature.


The problem here is that most people just don't seem to realise that there are genres within YA. It's not a genre all by itself, even though it is usually shelved all together. Whatever the case, there's going to be a difference in writing styles if you compare a fantasy YA with a literary YA, or a chick-lit YA with dystopian-sci-fi YA. Just the same in the adult book world.

The author saying she's read a lot of clunky writing in YA is like saying she's read a lot of clunky writing in all books. Probably true. There's a lot of crap out there, as well as all the gems. I was going to forgive her, but then clicked through and read on her author profile that she is writing YA.

Quoi le fuck?

And perhaps another day I shall address the fact that this is a totally stupid question to ask in the first place - can an adult enjoy a YA book? The answer* is DERRRRRRRR! Read whatever you enjoy.

*(my friend, that's blowin' in the wind)

what does the future hold?

The Future of Us, Jay Asher and Carolyn Mackler

A mostly entertaining story about what some teenagers might do with the information given to them by a bizarre portal to the future through a strange website called Facebook. It has a familar, funny Back to the Hot Tub Time Machine Future take on the future, borrowing cheap jokes from Almost Famous (which were cringeworthy then), Mick Jagger still rocking as an old man, etc.

FB pops up on Emma's new computer when she first loads up the Internet and she's horrified to discover the picture of an older version of herself alongside a bunch of short inane comments about her life. How vapid it can be? This is what I personally hate about social media. Contemplating highlights, attention-seeking behaviour making pathetic comments about her husband - blurg. But the character of young Emma as she is presented, I was hardly surprised that she would grow up to be that kind of FB user.

Emma isn't nice, but perhaps that's what the book is about, it holds a fifteen-years-later mirror to her face and she has to rethink the way she acts. The message and the outcome are a bit confused though. She was manipulative to the end, selfish and shallow and there was little chemistry between the two leads. I just kept wanting to shout at Josh run! get out of there!

The book's story is a love story, but I would have liked some more about the world as a whole - what has changed since 1996? Death of Princess Diana, September 11, George W, Obama, another war in the Middle East, tsunamis and floods and earthquakes. But not even just political: reality TV, Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman splitting, Madonna's weird arms and hands ... it could have been really fascinating to see the world through a FB feed, links to news articles and photographs of significant events.

I wanted to love this book. A quick read, funny in parts - possibly will entertain the yooths with the outdated technology. I pretty much agree with this NYTimes review.

But speaking of disappointing and vapid ... I saw Young Adult.

I forgave Diablo Cody for Juno because Ellen Page was so damn endearing and because Allison Janney is my queen. And Young Adult had such a brilliant poster, Charlize Theron is pretty amazing and I love a good return-to-your-hometown story. Unfortunately I don't think the film was funny, nor insightful, enough to be successful. Mavis was so sad, so alone, and she needed help. She was narcissistic and mean and desperate. But nobody learned anything, nobody changed at all. So what was the point?

Not only this, but it was generally accepted that Mavis wrote YA (even though I don't know that her Sweet Valley High-type books are really YA) because she had been unable to leave her teen years behind.

Now that's a depressing thought. And so, so wrong. It is such a special gift that YA writers have of being able to remember the wonder and the joy and the angst of being a teenager or young adult. I would never want to tell any of my favourite YA authors to grow up! For it isn't about living in the past, but being able to tap into it and tell a great story. That's what Young Adult lacked. A story.

and then it just grabbed me by my tearducts...

And is it because cancer is such a horrific beast? Because of Esther Earl? Because John is amazing and that his book contains this phrase: "As he read, I fell in love the way you fall asleep: slowly, and then all at once." ? The Fault in our Stars is thoughtful, funny, poignant...all of those rawther empty blurbish words. And then some.

Hazel was the most wonderful narrator - dragging my weeping form through the pages with her sucky lungs and introducing me to Augustus and Isaac and all their spectacular and particular parents. And they were all so eloquent, and so wise. So eloquent and wise and honest.

I finished the book within the last hour and therefore am evangelical and red-eyed about it, with no distance or perspective - but isn't it fantastic when a book actually, literally moves you so much?* I shall celebrate it! I raise my stars to you!

*And I don't mean literally displaced me (har! in joke!), just literally moved my eyeballs to water. Melina Marchetta's On the Jellicoe Road is another, and JD Salinger's story For Esmé - With Love and Squalor.

I'm a small town girl, get me out of here! (part one)

Saving June, Hannah Harrington (Harlequin Teen)

In Saving June (which really ought to be called Saving Harper or Saving Jake, because poor old June is beyond saving) Harper isn't necessarily looking to expand her world view or escape her town - but rather she is trying to escape or assuage her grief after her seemingly perfect older sister kills herself for a reason that nobody can decipher.

Her divorced parents cope with their grief in their own ways – her dad and his new girlfriend don’t call and her mother drinks a lot. Harper's christian aunt is making it really difficult for her to grieve her own way.

Harper is a self-confessed bad/rebellious girl - though if she really were a bad girl the reader potentially wouldn't like her very much, so really we know from the start that she's just a bit sad and angry.

Scruffy rock music lover Jake, who turns up is the potential love interest, though we aren't sure what the relationship between Jake and June had been. An interest in music is a nice touch to any book, like Sarah Dessen's ace Just Listen, and it's just gorgeous (warning, condescension ahead) when young people "discover" old music and think it's revolutionary.*

To prevent her parents from dividing her sister’s ashes into his and hers urns, and to grant June’s wish to move to California, Harper and her friend Laney (of the vintage clothes , straight-talking and slightly odd plot arc**) and the aforementioned Jake (who, of course, has a secret) steal the ashes and roadtrip in Jake’s van to the West Coast, which is where the story really starts. Crazy antics, kooky sights to see, encounters in mosh pits, fights and some sexytimes.

A lot happens. And I think because so much is going on, so many different places and conversations there's a funny pacing and I lost momentum a little towards the end. The scene in which they farewell June somehow felt too short, or anti-climactic, though it was raw, physical, and original.

There were lot of issues crammed in, but Saving June was a very enjoyable read overall. This review on goodreads says all I wanted to say but better. And read the comments too.

Click here to read more reviews of books with dead people in them about grief.

*yes, i am a bitter old lady and i totally listened to that band before you. any band. all bands!

**which (spoiler) goes something along the lines of date rape, unwanted pregnancy, no talk of pressing charges or STDs and with one wholly unsatisfying conclusion.

some books i read

Life: An Exploded Diagram by Mal Peet is a brave and intelligent coming-of-age story in the Cold War Era. Clem is a council flat boy. Frankie is the wild(ish) daughter of a wealthy local landowner. They shouldn't be together but can't keep apart. But meanwhile the shadow of nuclear warfare and the Cold War looms and threatens. Indeed, we spend chapters with JFK as he botches the Bay of Pigs and tries to decide what the heck to do about Russian nukes in Cuba. It might take you time to get into it, you may at times think come on come on, get back to Clem and Frankie, but by the explosive end you'll be left reeling and want to start again immediately. The aftershocks will continue for days.

The Montmaray books by Michelle Cooper, A Brief History of Montmaray and The FitzOsbornes In Exile. Oh joy! What a wonderful discovery, even if I wasn't the first to land upon these rocky, historical fictiony shores. Sophie lives on the island of Montmaray, a tiny sovereign nation not too far from the coast of Spain with her eccentric family - frighteningly intelligent cousin Veronica, uncle King John who has become increasingly loopy, cheeky tomboy sister Henry and a smattering of villagers. Her brother Tom is in England, being educated, and their Aunt Charlotte has summoned Sophie and Veronica to be debuted. But it is 1936 and the world is a-rumbling with changes: Spain is having a civil war and in Germany a man called Hitler is threatening to invade Poland and Czechoslovakia and both of these things will impact on Montmaray. This book is told through Sophie's journal entries, in her engaging, amusing, intelligent voice and with wonderful observation, humour and humanity. It's full of literary, historical and political references, and just a little bit of talk about frocks and froufrou. You must, must read both.

And Jasper Fforde's Song of the Quarkbeast - The magical, adventure-filled and hilarious sequel to The Last Dragonslayer. Kazam is being challenged by iMagic, their magic company competition and whoever wins will be favoured by the King and have the monopoly on magic. They might even be able to get the mobile phone network back up. Our non-magic, foundling heroine Jennifer Strange just knows there is something more devious going on with the Amazing Blix, the king of the unUnited Kingdom...and just where and when will Kazam's missing manager the Great Zambini appear next to give them all some much-needed advice? Plus, should she go on a date with Youthful Perkins? Surges of magic that can send oak trees flying. Trolls out to rid their homes of human vermin ("here person person person"). A sneaky Quarkbeast looking for its other half. Big Magic, small magic, flying carpets, old grudges, new possibilities. It's explosive. Literally. Just read it - your sides will split with laughter and magic.