Cue the clapping and the cheering! In the five years I have been participating in 20 books of summer, this year is the first time I’ve actually reached the magic milestone of 20 books!
Granted, they weren’t the ones I had originally planned to read (which you can see here), but they were all from my physical and digital TBR and included a mix of lit novels, crime novels and memoirs, mainly from Australia but with a handful from other countries, including England, the Netherlands, the US and Japan.
I think it helped that the weather this winter, my third since repatriating, has been rather conducive to staying indoors and reading. There has to be an upside to weeks of endless storm warnings and rain, right?
Anyway, here’s the 20 books I read, arranged in alphabetical order by author’s surname (hyperlinks, as ever, take you to my full review):
- ‘The Rain Heron’ by Robbie Arnott (Australian, literary/magic realism fiction)
- ‘Like Mother’ by Cassandra Austin (Australian, literary/historical fiction)
- ‘The Twin’ by Gerbrand Bakker (Dutch, literary fiction)
- ‘Queenie’ by Candice Carty-Williams (English, general fiction)
- ‘Mermaid Singing’ by Charmian Clift (Australian, memoir)
- ‘Peel me a Lotus’ by Charmian Clift (Australian, memoir)
- ‘The Crime of Julian Wells’ by Thomas H. Cook (American, literary fiction)
- ‘The Night Village’ by Zoe Deleuil (Australian, psychological thriller)
- ‘Consolation’ by Garry Disher (Australian, crime fiction)
- ‘Peace’ by Garry Disher (Australian, crime fiction)
- ‘The Bookshop’ by Penelope Fitzgerald (English, literary fiction)
- ‘Maestro’ by Peter Goldsworthy (Australian, literary fiction)
- ‘Newcomer’ by Keigo Higashino (Japanese, crime fiction)
- ‘The Broken Book’ by Susan Johnson (Australian, literary fiction)
- ‘Heaven’ by Mieko Kawakami (Japanese, literary fiction)
- ‘Hamnet’ by Maggie O’Farrell (English, literary fiction)
- ‘A Theatre for Dreamers’ by Polly Samson (English, general fiction)
- ‘Born into This’ by Adam Thompson (Australian indigenous, short stories)
- ‘Dead Europe’ by Christos Tsiolkas (Australian, literary fiction)
- ‘The Inland Sea’ by Madeleine Watts (Australian, literary fiction)
The highlights included my foray into the Greek islands of the 1950s thanks to a string of books, true and imagined, about Charmian Clift and George Johnston, the Australian ex-pat writers from the 1950s. These included Clift’s two memoirs, a novel by Polly Samson and another novel by Susan Johnson. (My Greek adventure also included Christos Tsiolksas’ bold and daring novel Dead Europe. )
I also loved, loved, loved Peter Goldsworthy’s Maestro, a masterpiece of a novella set in tropical Darwin, was rather mesmerized by Robbie Arnott’s wholly original The Rain Heron, enjoyed a spot of rural policing with Garry Disher’s Peace and Consolation, felt my heart break with the bittersweet loneliness depicted in Gerbrand Bakker’s The Twin, laughed (and cried) at Candice Carty-Williams’ Queenie and nailed my colours to the mast by naming Like Mother my favourite book of the year… so far.
What a great winter of reading it has been!
Thanks again to Cathy for hosting.
Did you take part in #20BooksOfSummer? How did you do? Care to share your favourite read of the summer (or winter)?
Reading Matters 
Oh, I’ve only read one of these – and that’s Hamnet, which was one of the first books I read during lockdown last year – and how I enjoyed it. Still, as you know, I’m now on the case with Garry Disher.
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I was disappointed by Hamnet but I’m in the minority, I think.
Good luck with your Disher hunt!
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Definitely about Hamnet. I loved it! An Disher’s on order.
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I don’t sign up for this because I’m too disorganised, but I seem to have read 18 from the TBR anyway, so that’s not too bad, eh?
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That’s excellent, Lisa! I’m going to try not to buy any new books for awhile and keep reading from my TBR… famous last words. LOL.
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Ah, no, please don’t do that, not unless you really have to… there are authors all over Australia doing it really tough. (on Facebook today when I told her about your review, Susan Johnson among them with her new book From Where I Fell https://anzlitlovers.com/2021/03/06/from-where-i-fell-by-susan-johnson/) They need us to buy their books and read and review them so that other people will read them and spread the word too. If you can, save restraint till things recover for the Lit world.
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Financially, I have to… for various reasons. I’ve done my fair share of supporting the Australian book industry this past year/18 months, buying at least 4 books a month from my local independent, which means I have a giant TBR I need to tackle.
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Well done!! My list is here https://librofulltime.wordpress.com/about/20-books-of-summer/ and I did it, too! I enjoyed all my reads, but I think Johny Pitts’ Afropean and Dorothy Whipple’s Random Commentary were possibly the stand-outs. I don’t always manage it (I didn’t in 2019) so I know how good it is to get it done!
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Thanks, Liz. And thanks for sharing your list.
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Well done Kim! You did better than me 🤣
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Thanks, Cathy.
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Well done on completing the challenge. It’s been my best year ever also though didn’t quite make it to 20. Still I count 18 as a success. This year I gave myself a lot of flexibility and had an initial list of 30 books rather than 20. Even so i did a fair number of substitutions.
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18 is very good, Karen! I did a LOT of substitutions too… otherwise I would have fallen at the first hurdle. I tend to read by mood so it’s important to have some flexibility in what to read as part of this challenge.
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Well done! I didn’t do this formally because I can never stick to a list, but I *did* read 32 books over the summer so I could that as a result!
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Well, I can’t stick to a list either. I only read a handful from the books I originally thought I would read but I just swapped them out with all the other books in my TBR. My only real “rule” was not to read anything I had bought over the three months that this “challenge” ran.
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Oh, and congratulations on reading 32 books! I am impressed.
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I read 20 books over winter, but only read 8 of the books on my original list.
Glad that The Rain Heron was one of your memorable reads and I really must get the Clift book onto my schedule soon – it sounds delightful.
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Well, I only read 8 from my original list too. I reserved the right to swap out books based on mood etc. and it seemed to work well.
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It’s the only way I can do it Kim. But it’s fun to make the list anyway 😊
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Agree!
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Yay! We’re all getting there, or closer than before, this year.
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I’ve read more than usual this winter… terrible weather has helped keep me indoors. On top of this challenge I’ve read an additional three that don’t count.
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My 20th review will only be going up on Monday, but I hope it still counts…
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Oh yes, that will still count, Davida. The “rules” around this challenge are pretty flexible!
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I can honestly say I have never read an Australian crime fiction book before! I will definitely check out “Consolation” and “Peace” – thank you! My summer has consisted mostly of crime thrillers and I am looking for a few more before it starts getting cold here… I tend to be drawn towards family dramas and fantasy sagas in the winter (not sure why!). I am happy I found your blog! I don’t think I can list 20 books that I read and loved but my favorite read of the summer has been “West Texas Dead: A Kailey and Shinto Mystery” by Frances Hight (https://www.franceshight.com/). I. Could. Not. Stop. Reading. This. Book. I loved the back and forth of the dialogue, the gritty scenes, and how likable, relatable, flawed, and inspiring the main characters (female cops/partners) Kailey and Shinto are! This is not your run-of-the-mill cop versus criminal story! I don’t want to give anything away but I hope you will check out the first book of the series. I really look forward to the next Kailey and Shinto mystery!! Thanks again!
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Thanks for your comment, Sarah. You are seriously missing out if you haven’t read any Australian crime fiction (or what we tend to call “Southern Cross Crime”). I’m afraid I abandoned American crime fiction 20+ years ago. It was just peddling the same old tropes – who murdered the woman this time? I like my crime fiction to have a literary bent and to be telling me something about our society. Japanese crime fiction is particularly good at this.
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