Stories & Shout Outs #55

November was a HUGE blogging month, and in the end, I only just managed to keep up with AusReading Month. Non-fiction November fell by the wayside as I could not keep up with all the posting and reading. In attempt to relieve this blogging bottleneck, I am contemplating a change for AusReading Month in 2023. Please pop over to this post to have your say for a preferred time of the year for AusReading Month 2023 (May, June, August, October or stay with November)?

What’s On My Mind:

• Christmas – my busiest month of the year at work and socially.
• The tree is up, holidays are booked and the menu planning has begun!
• My reading focus for December will be short stories, slim novels and non-fiction.

What I’m Reading:

• Euphoria | Elin Cullhed (was my lunch time read for most of November but it has got to the point where I would like to finish it properly now)
• Different For Boys | Patrick Ness (my lunch time read at work this week – a March 2023 release for Walker Books)
• The Gates of Europe | Serhii Plokhy (Reading Ukraine – my walking backpack book)
• Finn Family Moomintroll | Tove Jansson (my work backpack book)
• Infidelity and Other Affairs | Kate Legge (ARC from Thames & Hudson – my latest lunch time read)
• The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma | Bessel van der Kolk (the new bathroom book)
• Womerah Lane: Lives and Landscapes | Tom Carment (my sitting under the skylight on the stairs book)
• Cressida Campbell (my lounge room coffee table book)
• Lone Wolf: Albanese and the New Politics | Quarterly Essay 88 | Katharine Murphy (my bedtime non-fiction book)

Read But Not Reviewed (Yet):

• Voss | Patrick White (hopefully I will have time this weekend to finish up this book response)
• Salonika Burning | Gail Jones
• This Changes Everything | Niki Bezzant

Abandoned:

• Shrines of Gaiety | Kate Atkinson (was my lunch time read at work. It was okay, fine even, just wasn’t grabbing my attention enough to keep going with it).

New to the Pile: Sorry for the extra large collage this month, but I ran out time to post a Stories and Shout Outs during November, so this is a double batch!

This Blogging Life:

• I’ve been slowly adding my BIG short story collections to the drop down menus, so I can keep track of which stories I’ve read. International short stories are under the This Reading Life tab and the Australian ones can be found under Australiana – Anthology & Guides.

Book Group Reads Coming Up:

• February – The Island of Missing Trees | Elif Shafak
• March – The Salt Path | Raynor Winn

Shout Outs:

• Liz @Adventures in Reading is hosting the first ever Dean Street December. I have three Furrowed Middlebrow titles on my TBR. They will be the perfect antidote to a HUGE month of reading and blogging throughout November.
  • Spam Tomorrow | Verily Anderson
  • The Native Heath | Elizabeth Fair
  • Miss Carter and the Ifrit | Susan Alice Kerby
• A Literary Christmas is running again this year – it’s seventh – with Tarissa @In the Bookcase. I love going through my short story collections to find the Christmas themed stories for this event. So far I’ve only found a William Trevor story, but I haven’t looked very hard yet. Not quite ready to go full-on Christmas yet!
  • Another Christmas | William Trevor (1978)
  • The Adventure of the Christmas Pudding | Agatha Christie (1923)
• 2023 will be A Year With William Trevor thanks to Kim @Reading Matters and Cathy @746 Books. I have his second collection of short stories that I would like to make my way through.
• Nick @One Catholic Life is once again hosting a chapter-a-day readalong throughout 2023. This time it is the works of George Eliot (minus Felix Holt) #EliotReadalong
  • As much as I would like to read all of these books one day, it will not be 2023. I will propbably stick to the two on my unread TBR pile – Adam Bede and Silas Marner – and save a reread of Middlemarch for another time.
    • Adam Bede: January 1 to February 24
    • The Mill on the Floss: February 25 to April 23
    • Silas Marner: April 24 to May 14
    • Romola: May 15 to July 26
    • Middlemarch: July 27 to October 22
    • Daniel Deronda: October 23 to December 31
• Bill is once again hosting another Australian Women Writers Gen Week. This time we’re up to Gen 5 – the generation of women who began writing in the 1990s up until now. It will run from 15-22 January 2023.
• The next club with Simon and Karen will be 1940 – April 10-16 2023.

Until next time, stay safe, and happy reading!

This post was written on the traditional land of the Wangal clan, one of the 29 clans of the Eora Nation within the Sydney basin. This Reading Life acknowledges that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples are our first storytellers.