
I didn’t have a great feeling about last year and I don’t have a much better one about the one ahead, but just quietly, things are looking ever so slightly up. The Plague is running more rampant than ever in my neck of the woods, the chumps in charge seem completely unbothered, and at this point it seems only a matter of time before we all catch it. I’ve never had less faith in our government (and I was not a great fan to begin with) but am also not completely surprised it has shrugged its shoulder and thrown up its hands. (I’ll get to the good bits soon.)
At risk of turning this into a diatribe on the many ineptitudes of the Liberal Party, I think it’s best I change the subject now. The year wasn’t a total waste, after all. I knew it’d be a hard year and didn’t want to look back wondering how I failed to enjoy any of it or achieve a single thing, so I set about accomplishing a couple of things: I went back to uni and am now the holder of a Graduate Certificate of Cultural Heritage & Museum Studies, and they’ve offered me a place in the Masters program which I am now technically halfway through so all being well, this time next year I’ll be insisting you all call me Master. I wasn’t happy at work and hadn’t been for a little while. Stress-baking got me through 2020 but I didn’t think it a strong enough salve to get me through another lap but am incredibly happy to report I am a few weeks into a new job and feeling much better already. I miss my old colleagues but the new lot seems like a pretty great bunch themselves, and I’ve never met a team of librarians I can’t win over with baked offerings. The one cake I’ve presented them with went down a treat. I also expanded my repertoire of savoury bakes; my lockdown hobby became making focaccias that look like public figures (for the full series please feel free to follow @foc_art_ccia) and after the inaugural bake of Gladys Breadejiklian I laughed at myself for a full week. She even won me a $50 voucher in a work competition. A pleasant perk is I have found it immensely satisfying to bake politicians I dislike then spend the rest of the week eating their faces for lunch. Whatever gets you through, right?
Travel options were of course limited and at one point curtailed to a 5km radius of my place of residence. My other new hobby became booking domestic trips I knew there was only the slightest chance I’d be able to take, lining up my annual leave, then cancelling the lot. Still, it could’ve been worse. I did make it to Brisbane twice and finally got to meet the newest little P-H at Christmas. I don’t know her very well yet but she is a very good baby and for sure one of my top two nieces. Wee Miss B (the elder niece, nearly three) had naturally grown and changed considerably since I last saw her in February. She is now at an age we can play together properly, read stories, sing and dance and even bake. She pronounced our focaccia “bad” but everyone else seemed to enjoy it, and I had fun showing her what to do and trying to convince her of the importance of resting time for dough and little girls alike. Young Master C is now a delightful 2.5 year old and likes dinosaurs and storybooks almost as much as I hoped he would. I’m not sure I’ll ever be Aunty of the Year given how infrequently I’ve been able to see my niblings, but I’ll take being Aunty of the Day every now and then.
My reading goal for the year was a vague one: to read more books by women in general, women of colour in particular. I think I’ll stick with it for at least another year because #Sisterhood, and also that same Sisterhood is releasing so much good stuff all the darn time! My total book count was 144, a reduction of 17 from the previous tally. I really didn’t think the number would be that high given how much time I spent with my nose pressed to uni readings and adjacent activities. It was a very long year though, after all.
My top pick is Transcendent Kingdom by Yaa Gyasi, followed by 10 Minutes 38 Seconds in this Strange World by Elif Shafak. Coming in third is Still Life by Sarah Winman (is there anything she can’t do?). If you’ve not read these, I encourage you to do so at your earliest convenience. Honourable mentions go to Love After Love by Ingrid Persaud and The Color Purple by Alice Walker. It took me way too long to get round to reading that one but boy am I glad I finally did. At the bottom of the pile is Going Loco by Lynne Truss, and I was disappointed by Haruki Murakami’s First Person Singular. I enjoyed it for a bit but he lost me completely at several points.
For your perusal, the entire list is below. Please let me know what your top reads have been and what you think I should hurry to read next. I’ve got a few goodies lined up, but you know me: sometimes I just can’t help myself.
- The Yield by Tara June Winch
- Fantastic Beasts: The Wonder of Nature by the Natural History Museum
- The Peppermint Tea Chronicles by Alexander McCall Smith
- The Office of Historical Corrections by Danielle Evans
- Seven Kinds of People You Find in Bookshops by Shaun Bythell
- The Outsiders by S. E. Hinton
- The Story of a Goat by Perumal Murugan
- Public Enemies: Russell ‘Mad Dog’ Cox, Ray Denning and the Golden Age of Armed Robbery by Mark Dapin
- Topics of Conversation by Miranda Popkey
- Tiny Tales by Alexander McCall Smith
- Weather by Jenny Offill
- Sharks in the Time of Saviours by Kawai Strong Washburn
- Motherland: A Memoir of Love, Loathing and Longing by Elissa Altman
- Drugs, Guns and Lies: My Life as an Undercover Cop by Keith Banks with Ben Smith
- Behind the Scenes at the Museum by Kate Atkinson
- Purple Hibiscus by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
- Cadence: Travels with Music – a Memoir by Emma Ayres
- The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett
- The Book of Longings by Sue Monk Kidd
- Behind the Scenes at the Museum: Your All-Access Guide to the World’s Most Amazing Museums by D. K. Publishing
- When the Apricots Bloom by Gina Wilkinson
- Out of the Forest: The True Story of a Recluse by Gregory P. Smith with Craig Henderson
- His Only Wife by Peace Adzo Medie
- The Queen’s Gambit by Walter Tevis
- What Are You Going Through by Sigrid Nunez
- The Silence of the Girls by Pat Barker
- The Death of Francis Bacon by Max Porter
- Transcendent Kingdom by Yaa Gyasi
- Your Inner Hedgehog by Alexander McCall Smith
- No Presents Please: Mumbai Stories by Jayant Kaikini
- Wild Women and their Amazing Adventures over Land, Sea & Air edited by Mariella Frostrup
- Open Water by Caleb Azumah Nelson
- Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban by J. K. Rowling (reread)
- Warlight by Michael Ondaatje (reread)
- The Salt Path by Raynor Winn
- The One Hundred Year Old Man who Climbed out the Window and Disappeared by Jonas Jonasson
- Lioness by Sue Brierley
- The Shepherd’s Life: A Tale of the Lake District by James Rebanks
- The Confession by Jessie Burton
- The Girl with the Louding Voice by Abi Daré
- The Best of Me by David Sedaris
- A Burning by Megha Majumdar
- Queenie by Candice Carty-Williams
- The Archer by Paulo Coelho
- After Australia: After empire, after colony, after white supremacy… twelve diverse writers imagine an alternative Australian edited by Michael Mohammed Ahmad
- Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire by J. K. Rowling (reread)
- Fathoms: The World in the Whale by Rebecca Giggs
- The Hard Crowd: Essays 2000-2020 by Rachel Kushner
- Love After Love by Ingrid Persaud
- Growing Up Disabled in Australia edited by Carly Findlay
- Actress by Anne Enright
- Emotional Female: A Brilliant Young Surgeon’s Journey through Ambition and Dedication to Exploitation and Burnout by Yumiko Kadota
- The Believer: Encounters with Love, Death & Faith by Sarah Krasnostein
- How the One-Armed Sister Sweeps her House by Cherie Jones
- Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi
- Everything I Know About Love by Dolly Alderton
- Still Life by Sarah Winman
- First Person Singular by Haruki Murakami
- Beauty by Bri Lee
- Must I Go by Yiyun Li
- The Anthropocene Reviewed by John Green
- The Last Black Unicorn by Tiffany Haddish
- Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince by J. K. Rowling (reread)
- Diary of a Young Naturalist by Dara McAnulty
- The Etymologicon: A Circular Stroll Through the Hidden Connections of the English Language by Mark Forsyth
- Wow, No Thank You by Samantha Irby
- The Happiest Man on Earth by Eddie Jaku
- Who Gets to be Smart: Privilege, Power and Knowledge by Bri Lee
- The Inland Sea by Madeleine Watts
- A Room with a View by E. M. Forster
- Ghosts by Dolly Alderton
- Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri
- Down and Out in Paris and London by George Orwell
- The Islamic Republic of Australia: Muslims Down Under, from Halal to Hijabs and Everything in Between by Sami Shah
- Look Back in Hunger by Jo Brand
- The Clocks by Agatha Christie
- The Truths We Hold: An American Journey by Kamala Harris
- White Teeth by Zadie Smith
- Would I Lie to You? Presents the 100 Most Popular Lies of All Time by Lee Mack, Peter Holmes and Ben Caudell
- Going Loco by Lynne Truss
- Beloved by Toni Morrison
- Not the End of the World by Kate Atkinson
- The Night Guest by Fiona McFarlane
- The School of Restoration by Alice Achan and Philippa Tyndale
- Iran Awakening: From Prison to Peace Prize: One Woman’s Struggle at the Crossroads of History by Shirin Ebadi with Azadeh Moaveni
- The Red Tent by Anita Diamant
- Lady in Waiting: My Extraordinary Life in the Shadow of the Crown by Anne Glenconner
- Turns Out, I’m Fine: How Not To Fall Apart by Judith Lucy
- Saving Agnes by Rachel Cusk
- Clock Dance by Anne Tyler
- Astrophysics for People in a Hurry by Neil deGrasse Tyson
- The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov
- Love and Longing in Bombay by Vikram Chandra
- The Arabian Nights (Bloomsbury edition)
- Last Shot by Jock Zonfrillo
- Stranger Country by Monica Tan
- All the Birds, Singing by Evie Wyld
- Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe
- Fake: A Startling True Story of Love in a World of Liars, Cheats, Narcissists, Fantasists and Phonies by Stephanie Wood
- The Color Purple by Alice Walker
- Beautiful World, Where Are You by Sally Rooney
- Mother Wound by Amani Haydar
- The Henna Artist by Alka Joshi
- Our Woman in Kabul by Irris Makler
- The Lost Boy: Tales of a Child Soldier by Ayik Chut
- Two Stories by Sally Rooney
- When God was a Rabbit by Sarah Winman (reread)
- The Idiot by Elif Batuman (reread)
- Operation Playboy: The Explosive True Story of the Surfer Playboys turned International Drug Lords, and the Cops who Hunt them Down by Kathryn Bonella
- White Fragility: Why it’s so Hard for White People to Talk about Racism by Robin DiAngelo
- Sorrow and Bliss by Meg Mason
- Salt and Saffron by Kamila Shamsie
- The Snows of Kilimanjaro by Ernest Hemingway
- The Labyrinth by Amanda Lohrey
- The Deep Blue Between by Ayesha Harruna Attah
- From a Mountain in Tibet by Lama Yeshe Losal Rinpoche
- Mrs Dalloway by Virginia Woolf
- Azadi by Arundhati Roy
- The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan
- From Scratch: A Memoir of Love, Sicily, and Finding Home by Tembi Locke
- 10 Minutes 38 Seconds in this Strange World by Elif Shafak
- The Green Road by Anne Enright (reread)
- Animal by Lisa Taddeo
- The Luminous Solution: Creativity, Resilience and the Inner Life by Charlotte Wood
- The White Masai by Corinne Hofmann
- Prison Break: Shantaram to the Bangkok Hilton: The World’s Most Wanted Australians by Mark Dapin
- Second Place by Rachel Cusk
- Sunset by Jessie Cave
- See What You Made Me Do: Power, Control and Domestic Abuse by Jess Hill
- Malibu Rising by Taylor Jenkins Reid
- The Right to Sex by Amia Srinivasan
- Islands of Decolonial Love by Leanne Betasamosake Simpson
- The Wrong End of the Telescope by Rabih Alameddine
- Two Afternoons in the Kabul Stadium: A History of Afghanistan through Clothes, Carpets and the Camera by Tim Bonyhady
- One Italian Summer: Across the World and Back in Search of the Good Life by Pip Williams
- A Promise of Ankles by Alexander McCall Smith
- Fathomless by Greig Beck
- Toksvig’s Almanac 2021: An Eclectic Meander Through the Historical Year by Sandi Toksvig
- 21 Lessons for the 21st Century by Yuval Noah Harari
- The Fran Lebowitz Reader by Fran Lebowitz
- CSI Told You Lies: Giving Victims a Voice through Forensics by Meshel Laurie
- This Much is True by Miriam Margolyes
- The Enchanted Places by Christopher Milne
- Dracula by Bram Stoker