longlist | Parra Reads

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