At the end of another year of the AWW challenge, I look down at the list of books I read and reviewed and wonder. How come I found the time to review these books and not those? 

Of the 25 books read, I managed to review only nine. They were (in rough ordering of reading):

• Monica McInerney, House of Memories (contemporary fiction)
• Lucy Clark, A Baby For the Flying Doctor (medical romance)
• Julienne van Loon, Harmless (literary, short novel)
• Kandy Shepherd, Reinventing Rose (contemporary romance, self-published)
• Wendy James, The Steele Diaries (general fiction)
• Honey Brown, Dark Horse (psychological suspense)
• Val Plumwood, The Eye of the Crocodile (nonfiction, philosophical essays, memoir)
• Caroline Overington, No Place Like Home (contemporary fiction/thriller, extended response) and
• Kirsten Krauth, just_a_girl (contemporary fiction, personal response)

The books I read and didn’t review were:

• Kirsten McDermott, Madigan Mine (horror [edited as per coments])
• Rebecca James, Sweet Damage (mild horror, contemporary fiction)
• Dianne Hester, Run to Me (psychological suspense)
• Sara Foster, Shallow Breath (psychological suspense)
• Lucy Tatman, Numinous Subjects: Engendering the Sacred in Western Culture, An Essay (nonfiction)
• In Falling Snow, Mary Rose MacColl (historical/contemporary fiction)
• The Mother’s Group, Fiona Higgins (contemporary fiction)
• Dawn Barker, Fractured (psychological suspense)
• Karen Davis, Sinister Intent (crime)
• Jaye Ford, Blood Secret (crime/psychological suspense)
• Tara June Winch, Swallow the Air (literary)
• The Meaning of Grace, Deborah Foster (literary, general fiction)
• Liane Moriarty, The Hypnotist’s Love Story (contemporary fiction)
• Jessie Cole, Darkness on the Edge of Town (literary)
• Alison Stuart, Secrets in Time (time-slip/historical and contemporary romance)
• Candice Fox, Hades (crime)

The books I reviewed weren’t necessarily my favourites. So why did I choose those to review?

Part of the answer is time, the time I intended to devote to crafting my response. Sometimes the most moving and engaging books are the ones I find it most difficult to respond to quickly. They deserve more considered reflection, I tell myself; they need to marinate in my unconscious for a while in the hope that I’ll come up with a response that does them justice. Then hours, days, weeks, even months go by and the freshness of my response is lost. I end up feeling as if I should reread the book before writing about them. The problem is, there’s usually a new book calling from my growing “To Be Read” pile.

A good example of such a delay is my piece on Kirsten Krauth’s just_a_girl. I first drafted my response in July; I didn’t publish it until November. Those who have read it may guess why. I found the book confronting and disturbing, but very well written and deserving of attention. I have to be honest, though. If it weren’t for the fact that I wanted to publish a Q&A with Krauth for the AWW blog, I might not ever have finished writing my response. That happened to several other books on my “read-but-still-to-be-reviewed” list: I never got back to them.

Books I thought initially I would respond to in depth, but never got around to, include Dawn Barker’s Fractured, Tara June Winch’s Swallow the Air, Jessie Cole’s Darkness on the Edge of Town and Mary Rose MacColl’s In Falling Snow. All these books deserve attention, and some have received it. Winch’s book is well known (it’s even on the HSC list). Barker’s book attracted many reviews for AWW throughout 2013 (and the author was interviewed for the AWW blog). In Falling Snow has attracted a handful of reviews, including Shannon, Belle and Natasha Lester in 2013, and Shelleyrae in 2012. Darkness on the Edge of Town has only attracted two reviews, by Lisa Walker and Shelleyrae, both in 2012. It hasn’t been reviewed at all in 2013, and I feel guilty that the missing review is mine. This book doesn’t deserve to be overlooked or forgotten.

Are there any books you read but didn’t review for the AWW challenge this year that you think deserve greater attention? (By the way, I hope you’ll join #aww2014. The sign-up page is now open.)