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Sally Murphy, Australian author

What I Read in August 2024

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Being Bookmonth, August is always a busy month, so I’m not surprised to report that I read only 7 books last  month. Still, they were an excellent mix of books, and seven is so much better than none.  Here’s what I got through.

Books for Children

  1. The Little Street Library, by Amy Adeney, illustrated by Erin Maclean (Affirm Press, 2024). I love little street libraries, and am delighted there is a picturebook celebrating them and the way they can build communities.
  2. Chronicles of a Lizard Nobody, by Patrick Ness  (Walker Books, 2024). I received an advance copy of this, which meant I read it ahead of its release, which is coming up in September. As quirky as one would expect from Patrick Ness, younger readers will love the animal characters.
  3. BrilliANT, by Rosi Ngwenya ,illustrated by Sandy Flett (RivetedPress,2024). Oh wow! I heard the author of this boo interviewed on Your Kids Next Read podcast and had to go out and buy the book straight away. Such a geniously simple concept – a whole story told using only 14 words, all ending in ANT – and, of course, about an ant. It makes me giggle, but also wonder at the cleverness.
  4. The Apprentice Witnesser, by Bren MacDibble (Allen & Unwin, 2024) . the most perfect dedication I ever read – ‘To all gentle hearts with deep hopes for a kinder world. Stay true.’ – leads into an equally perfect book, following the journey of Bastienne, apprentice Witnesser of Miracles, and her quest to find family and belonging in a post-apocalyptic world where women  are in the majority and must rebuild.
  5.  Sky Country, by Aunty Patsy Cameron & Lisa Kennedy(Magabala Books,2024). A stunning picture book set in Trouwerner (Tasmania) and showing a journey of  children with their grandmother as they visit a mountain and she shares the story of their Ancestral Beings.  The visual imagery is  beautiful, as is the accessible story showing the handing down of knowledge between generations.

Books for Young Adults

  1. Two Can Play That Game, by Leanne Yong (Allen & Unwin, 2023) . Easy to see why this was shortlisted in this year’s CBCA Book of the Year Awards – you don’t have to be a gamer to enjoy the tension between Sam Khoo, who wants nothing more than to be an Indie Game Maker, in spite of her parents’ hope she will go to university, and Jay Chua, who is standing in the way of her dreams.  The fact that their Asian families think their connection could be a courtship, there’s no way either teen is going there.  Or is there?

 

Books for Adults

  1. The Book That Wouldn’t Burn, by Mark Lawrence (Harper Collins, 2023) . I listened to the audio version of this which, at 22 hours play time, was a pretty long read. Fantasy, set in a world which has been severely impacted by war and time, and based in and around a magical, mysterious library which houses a copy of every book ever written. Two parallel narratives – of a girl who becomes a trainee librarian, and a young man who has bene trapped living in the library all of his life – make for lots of interesting twists and turns.

 

That brings my total to the year to 81. I’m thinking I  might manage to get to 100 for the year, considerable lower than last year’s total – but that was something I planned. I was keen this year to worry less about getting through a certain number and more about enjoying the reading journey – and that’s definitely happening.

 

What I Read in May

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In April I was surprised to have read only 12 books. In May I am surprised that I managed to get through 6. What a month May was! My darling Dad passed away, my work was chaotic with deadlines, and I worked through grief and day job stuff to try to meet a writing deadline for my poetry resource which will be published later this year.  So yes, I’m not surprised to tally my reads and find only 6 – but 6 is better than none. And there are some goodies in this list.

Books for Children (an adults too!)

  1. Aster’s Good, Right Things, by Kate Gordon (Riveted Press, 2020). I love everything Kate Gordon writes, and this is no exception. A really touching story about a girl who believes that if she does enough good things then her life will turn around. When she makes friends with a boy who lives next door to her school, but doesn’t got o school himself, things gradually shift. Hard to explain this book – you just need to read it to see how lovely it is.
  2. We Are Wolves, by Katrina Nannestad (ABC Books, 2020). Wow. Sometimes I read a book that is just so perfect I have no words. This is one such book. Set in Germany and East Prussia at the close of World War II, it tells the story of Liesel and her siblings as they flee the advancing Russian Army and struggle for survival and to be reunited with their mother.  heart wrenching but also beautiful.

Books for Young Adult Readers

  1. Displaced, by Cristina Sanders (Walker Books, 2021). I love historical fiction, and this one took me into a slice of history I was unfamiliar with  – new Zealand in the late 19th century. the main character, Eloise, emigrates from Cornwall with her family, but nothing goes to plan and she finds herself increasingly needing to hold her family together in ways she could never have foreseen.

2. Game Changer, by Neal Shusterman (Walker Books, 2021). this one took me a while to get into, but that is perhaps more about my interrupted month than about the book. Ash is a high school football player who gets a knock on the head which knocks him into an alternate universe. Only he knows that things are changing and, as weeks progress, he is catapulted into increasingly shifted versions of reality. He has to try to figure out a way to get everything back to where it was.

3. One of Us is Lying, by Karen M. McManus (Penguin, 2017). I picked this one up on a remainders table and then it sat in my pile for a while. part murder-mystery, part thriller, and an exploration of the ways teens interact with each other and with social media. I really enjoyed this one.

Nonfiction

  1. A Year of Loving Kindness to Myself & Other Essays, by Brigid Lowry. This little gem of a book was a soothing balm in a period when I  was grieving and unsettled. Lowry writes with wisdom, honesty and wonder. A lovely book. Brigid also guest blogged at Aussiereviews last month, which you can read here.

 

This brings my total for the year to 67 books, which isn’t too shabby, and June is looking a little more laid back, so hopefully I can at least crack double digits again.  What have you been reading? I’d love to hear.

sallymurphy.com.au