Category Archives: Australian Authors

Miles Franklin Literary Award 2020 Longlist

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On Tuesday 12 May 2020 the ‘Miles Franklin Literary Award 2020 longlist was announced. This is something I look forward to each year, as one of my passions is to read books written by Australian Authors.

I didn’t realise it was a passion until I looked back over my ‘Books Read’ list and noticed there was a distinct pattern, 97% were written by Australian Authors. At the time my choices were unconscious; I always picked the books I read by the cover, and I still do to this day, although I now actively look for books written by Australian Authors.

Needless to say each year I eagerly await all the title announcements of the different Australian Literary Awards, of which there are so many. I won’t list them all here, rather I will tell you my top three which are: ‘The Miles Franklin‘, ‘The Stella Prize‘ and the ‘Australian Book Industry Awards‘. I will just quickly mention I love checking out the State Literary Awards too.

Anyway, I can see I am about to lose focus again so returning to ‘The Miles Franklin Award’. Each year I try to read as many of the titles on the longlist as I can, pick my favourites then eagerly await the shortlist announcement, then the winner. Most years my colleague Katherine manages to read all the titles, because she is a reading machine, literally I think she might be a robot, no human can read that many books! Oh, then again my other colleagues Kate, Amanda and Sarah seem to read non stop too, hmm makes you wonder doesn’t it! Oh I did it again didn’t I, went off on a tangent. Right back on topic.

Normally, Katherine & Nisa our resident Podcasting Librarians discuss some of the ‘Miles Franklin’ titles on our Parra Pods podcast. This year, to make things a little different I was thinking to ask more of my book loving colleagues to get involved and see if we can manage to get through the whole longlist and vote for our favourites before the shortlist is announced on 17 June 2020.

Sounds like fun to me. Hopefully I get some takers otherwise I will be very busy reading. Contrary to belief Librarian’s do not spend all day reading! Although maybe I can get special permission just this once, you never know!

I will keep you all updated on my progress via our Twitter account. If you feel like reading along and sharing your thoughts with us that would be great. We have most of the longlist available via our online Library platforms, and quite a few are ‘MULTICAP’. Which means we have multiple copies so we can all read along together.

Happy Reading!

I look forward to seeing how many titles everyone manages to read.

Jody

Miles Franklin Longlist 2020

The White Girl by Tony Birch, UQP, 2019. eBook – eAudiobook

Room For A Stranger by Melanie Cheng, Text Publishing, 2019. eBook – eAudiobook

Islands by Peggy Frew, Allend & Unwin, 2019. eBook – eAudiobook

No One by John Hughes, UWA Publishing, 2019.

Act of Grace by Anna Krien, Black Inc. 2019. eBook – eAudiobook

A Season on Earth by Gerald Murnane, Text Publishing, 2019. eBook

The Returns by Philip Salom, Transit Lounge, 2019. eBook

Exploded View by Carrie Tiffany, Text Publishing, 2020. eBook

The Yield by Tara June Winch, Hamish Hamilton, 2019. eBook – eAudiobook

The Weekend by Charlotte Wood, Allen & Unwin, 2019. eBook – eAudiobook

Miles Franklin Longlist 2020

There is no such thing as ‘Too Many Books!’ Or is there?

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I am happy to admit that I ‘love reading and books’ but sometimes, well if I am honest, most of the time I find it extremely hard to read. Does that make sense? What I am trying to say is that while I want to read, I find it hard to concentrate and make a decision on what to read. You can only re-read Harry Potter and Jasper Jones so many times!

You might think working in a library would make this decision easier, well it doesn’t. In fact it makes it one thousand times harder. When your job requires you to be up to date with what new titles are coming out and provide reading suggestions on an almost daily basis, having to then decide what books you want to read can prove almost impossible.

I find my interest is influenced by what I am working on at the time. For example while providing personalised reading suggestions for one of our recent Parra Reads Match requests; which was for thriller recommendations. I thought to myself you know what, I think what I feel like reading is a, thriller!

You might think this story ended there and I picked up the perfect thriller. Well it didn’t. I did choose four wonderful books to read and read the first few pages of each. Then put them all down. Not because they weren’t good, it was because I had already moved on to working on some ‘Chick Lit’ or you might like to call them, ‘Rom Com’ title recommendations for our library readers.

Hopefully you can now understand my dilemma. Or maybe you are thinking how hard is it to pick just one book to read. Or you might be wondering if I finally managed to choose a book to read.

Well unfortunately I haven’t actually managed to read any book yet. I have however managed to pick some amazing titles which, fingers crossed I will eventually read!

Until that time, I hope that you might find a great book to read or listen too among my ‘Wish List’.

Happy Reading, fingers crossed!

Jody

Jody’s Wish List

House of Earth and Blood, Crescent City Book 1 by Sarah J Maas

Jacinda Ardern by Michelle Duff

The Redhead by the Side of the Road by Anne Tyler

Maggie’s Going Nowhere by Rose Hartley

The Dictionary of Lost Words by Pip Williams

The Nowhere Child by Christain White

The Secrets She Keeps by Michael Robotham

The Mother-In-Law by Sally Hepworth, (Parra Reads Online Book Club)

Alice to Prague by Tanya Heaslip, (Parra Reads Online Book Club)

The Switch by Beth O’Leary.

Stella Prize Winner 2020

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Congratulations! 2020 ‘Stella Prize’ Winner Jess Hill for her novel ‘See What You Made Me Do: Power, Control and Domestic Abuse’.

The ‘Stella Prize’ is one of our favourtie awards here at City of Parramatta Libraries. With each year being a celebration of the talent and quality of Australian women’s writing in our every growing community of Australian Writers.

Each year the ‘Parra Reads Group’ of book-crazy Librarian’s get together and read all the books that make it to the ‘Stella’ shortlist and of course discuss each one. For the past two years we have featured that discussion on our podcast, Parra Pods. This year in episode 33 Nisa and Sandra read and discussed ‘See What You Made Me Do’; which stood out among the other titles as a “gripping & essential read”. I can remember Nisa very passionately telling anyone who would listen that they had to read ‘See What You Made Me Do’.

If you missed our special ‘Stella Prize’ episode of Parra Pods you can listen anytime on Podbean, Apple Podcasts and Google Play, or here!

As a special promotion for Book Clubs and our wider reading community, ‘See What You Made Me Do’ is available as an eBook with NO WAITING, NO HOLDS! Available to download from our rbDigital app. Just download the app to start ‘Reading Together’, at home!

Continue reading →

Book Review – The Lost Man by Jane Harper

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Jane Harper’s books continue to be popular among our City of Parramatta Libraries book clubs. With all three titles out each month. In February Cultcha Club book club read ‘The Lost Man’, and thoroughly enjoyed it! Which is great because they have waited very patiently for their turn.

Happy Reading!

A twisted tale that kept us guessing all the way through. Lots of twists and turns with a few red herrings that kept the pages turning. We absolutely loved it! Now the third book of Jane Harper’s that we have read and thoroughly enjoyed.

Harper knows how to sell the scene. A wonderful turns of phrase that makes the reader feel the environment as if they were living it. In ‘Force of Nature’, we could feel the closeness and density of the forest, and in ‘The Lost Man’, we could feel the heat and remoteness of the Queensland outback. The unrelenting heat and neighbours that are three hours way.

We loved the relationships between all the characters, and the way their secrets unfolded. How our opinions of each of them changed as they changed and grew throughout the book. In particular, we loved the story lines and relationship between Nathan and his son, Xander.

We loved this book! Highly recommended!

8.5/10

Cultcha Club

Available as eBook from our BorrowBox Library

Available as eAudiobook from our rbDigital Library

All About Books Autumn 2020

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The new All About Books for Autumn 2020 can be downloaded above. 

The new reading suggestions guide has been revamped after survey results from readers in our last Summer edition, there is more short descriptions of books, more young adult and more pages. There are so many amazing books coming out this March, April and May for adults and young adults in a diverse range of genres and subjects – there is sure to be something for everyone.

There are two books in particular that I want to mention as they were left out of the guide when our author talk program was suspended recently.

The Coconut Children by Vivian Pham (March 3) is a moving debut by a talented new storyteller.

Growing up can feel like a death sentence.
Life in a troubled neighbourhood demands too much too young. But Sonny wouldn’t really know.
Watching the world from her bedroom window, she exists only in second-hand romance novels and falls for any fast-food employee who happens to spare her a glance.
Everything changes with the return of Vince, a boy who became a legend after he was hauled away in handcuffs at fourteen.
Sonny and Vince used to be childhood friends. But with all that happened in-between, childhood seems so long ago. It will take two years of juvie, an inebriated grandmother and a porn stash for them to meet again.

Gathering Dark by Candice Fox (March 31) is her new thriller, set in Los Angeles, introducing a new – and decidedly unconventional – team of ‘detectives’.

A convicted killer. A gifted thief. A vicious crime boss. A disillusioned cop.
Together they’re a missing girl’s only hope.
Blair Harbour, once a wealthy, respected surgeon in Los Angeles, is now an ex-con down on her luck. She’s determined to keep her nose clean to win back custody of her son. But when her former cellmate begs for help to find her missing daughter, Blair is compelled to put her new-found freedom on the line.
Joined by LA’s most feared underworld figure, the crew of criminals bring outlaw tactics to the search. Detective Jessica Sanchez has always had a difficult relationship with the LAPD. 
It’s been ten years since Jessica arrested Blair for the cold-blooded murder of her neighbour. So when Jessica opens the door to the disgraced doctor and her friends early one morning she expects abuse, maybe even violence.
What comes instead is a plea for help.