Goodbye 2015.

This year I had great hopes of getting a lot of writing done. It just didn’t happen. Instead I spent time researching my family history on Trove and helping my 92-year-old aunt with her memoirs. I’m hoping to use this as the basis of a story in the not-so-distant future. We’ll see. I also had two of my novels released as ebooks through Escape, the digital imprint of Harlequin. All in all, a pretty good year!

At last count , I’d read 25 books for the Australian Women Writers Challenge (two of them children’s picture books). My tally keeping is a bit dodgy – I had to rely on my Twitter feed to jog my memory! – so I may have overlooked some titles.

Of the 25, I reviewed eight on my blog. These were:

• Charlotte Wood, The Natural Way of Things
• Robyn Cadwallader, The Anchoress
• Sonya Hartnett, Golden Boys
• Eds Rosie Scott and Anita Heiss, The Intervention
• Jessica White, Entitlement
• Ann Turner, The Lost Swimmer
• Liane Moriarty, The Husband’s Secret
• Amanda Ortlepp, Claiming Noah

The Natural Way of Things was the absolute stand-out for me, but I also really enjoyed Amanda Curtin’s Elemental which I didn’t get round to reviewing.

Other books I read without reviewing were:

• D B Tait, Cold Deception
• Aoife Clifford, All These Perfect Strangers
• Nicole Trope, Hush, Little Bird
• Sara Foster, All That is Lost Between Us
• Kandy Shepherd, Gift-Wrapped in Her Wedding Dress
• Barbara Hannay, The Secret Years
• Alison Lester, Kissed by the Moon (picture book)
• Judith Rossell, Withering By Sea (picture book)
• Emma Viskic, Resurrection Bay
• Kate Morton, The Shifting Fog
• Rosemary Sayer, More to the Story: conversations by refugees
• Mary Rose MacColl, Swimming Home
• Caroline de Costa, Double Madness
• Kristina Olsson, Boy, Lost
• J M Peace, A Time To Run and
• Belinda Castles, Hannah & Emil

The fact that I didn’t get round to reviewing these books is no reflection on their quality: somehow I just didn’t make the time. I hope to do better in 2016.

One thing I noticed with my reading this year was that it was broader than in 2014. Last year my list was full of psychological suspense novels. This year, there are many more literary, mainstream and historical fiction titles. Some of these, like Belinda Castles’ Hannah & Emil still stay in my memory. A genre I didn’t read or review at all was Speculative Fiction; and I could definitely make more of an effort with Young Adult… and poetry, and nonfiction.

What will 2016 bring? Plenty of good books, I hope; and plenty of writing. Perhaps another publication, if I’m lucky. In the meantime, I’ll keep sorting through my bookshelves and aim to make inroads on my To Be Read pile.

How did your reading go this year?

By the way, the Australian Women Writers Challenge sign-up page for 2016 is now open. Will you join me?