As you’ve probably deduced by now, this month has been consumed by my Christmas reading recommendations series. Putting that together takes a lot of work (and reading!) and so this month’s book stack is considerably smaller.
I was lucky enough to secure a hold copy of Ducks, Newburyport by Lucy Ellmann around the time (if my memory serves correctly) the 2019 Booker Prize co-winners were announced. This title was shortlisted for that prize and I’d heard raves about it on social media. But, oh boy. It is an enormous commitment. The opening lines of the review from the Guardian explain why (in a style reminiscent to hers):
“The fact that Ducks, Newburyport is 1,020 pages long, the fact that 95% of the novel is made up of just eight near-endless sentences, without paragraph breaks, some of them spooling over more than 100 pages, the fact that most of the novel is a list of statements, separated by commas, that begin with the phrase “the fact that”, the fact that you soon don’t notice the repetition of “the fact that”, the fact that these statements are also punctuated by the seemingly random emanations of the narrator’s mind, the fact that some of these are songs, earworms (Mad Dogs and Englishmen), the fact that I wouldn’t usually mention that Lucy Ellmann is the daughter of Richard Ellmann, the Joyce scholar, because she’s a serious novelist in her own right, but it feels important here, because in Ducks, Newburyport, she is making a case for a certain type of modernist novel…”
It goes on. I only got a few pages in before I had to return Ducks, Newburyport to the library for the next lucky person ready to take the challenge, so I don’t feel like I can give any real insight into it yet. I feel that it will be the kind of book I’d prefer to own, so I could take my time without worrying and allow myself to remain immersed in the story.
Speaking of awards, Blakwork by Alison Whittaker just won the Judith Wright Calanthe Award for a Poetry Collection at the 2019 Queensland Literary Awards and has been shortlisted for others, including the Prime Minister’s Literary Awards and the Victorian Premier’s Literary Awards. The poetry is terrific and I love how Whittaker experiments with form, as a reader I keep turning the pages (I’m halfway through), curious about how they’ll appear before being moved by their power. Highly recommended.
Challenge Accepted! 253 Steps to becoming an anti-it girl by Celeste Barber was my chance library discovery of the month and such a late entry to this post that it didn’t even make the thumbnail! I’m one of Barber’s 6+ million Instagram followers and was curious to know more about her rise to social media fame, her approach to comedy and, most of her, her story. It’s a light, fun read. I’m not usually the kind to laugh out loud during a book, but I have to say one of her jokes did spark a chuckle. If you’re a fan, you’ll like it.
What are you reading this month?
