October has been a good month. I’ve finished my edits for Power and Majesty, apart from a bit of paper shuffling and the Great Glossary Rewrite which can be done this week. I’ll be able to send them in to the publisher nearly two weeks early, which is awesome. The map is working, actually working – had a much less traumatic meeting with my Mum today, and it’s all on track. My daughter voluntarily put on trackpants and a cowboy hat and sent herself to play outside. My other daughter is asleep at my feet, requiring nothing from me but the occasional foot bounce. While I write this, I’m relaxing with the warm, happy sensation of having read an awesome book (Liar by Justine Larbalestier), and the W-League is, against all odds, actually showing half a live game on the ABC.

Books, completed work, well-behaved children and women’s soccer. Life is good.

(it would be better if Arsenal slaughtered Spurs later tonight, but I don’t want to voice that hope too loudly)

My October reading has been pretty good. I’ve been trying to read 10 books a month, which is really the minimum I should do to justify my ridiculous book purchasing habits (I do also borrow books, from library and friends, plus get given some for review copies though I’ve stopped accepting freebies for the most part because I feel too guilty about them). This month I managed 11, bringing me to a grand total of 99 books for the year.

And yes, a lot of them were Gossip Girl books, shut up, I love them. The It Girl series is one of my major guilty pleasures. I love the fact that the kids are all insanely trashy, tarty and up to no good, and yet are evidently getting a brilliant education at the same time – in between the affairs, secret drinking and drama, they talk about their Latin classes! Also Jenny Humphrey of the books is a much more interesting character than the one in the tv series.

3 of this months’s total were It Girl books and 2 were Gossip Girl – Carlyles books. I don’t know what I will do when I run out of these. Wahh.

I’ve also read some very dark crunchy novels this month. Slights by Kaaron Warren is just brilliant. I read the entire thing with a deep ‘uh oh’ in the pit of my stomach. Very Australian, very creepy, very very disturbing. It took at least 2 Gossip Girl books to make me feel better afterwards.

I also really enjoyed X6, especially “Wives” by Paul Haines which is absolutely one of the best Australian shorts of the year – an impeccably crafted near-future dystopia with a hell of a lot to say about gender and Australia and the slippery slope of sexism and the commodification of women. The Lanagan, Sparks and Jamieson novellas in that book were also excellent.

What Supergirl Did Next by Thalia Kalkipsakis is my latest acquisition from the utterly addictive A&U Girlfriend series. I chose this one because it looked sporty – and it turned out to be brilliant, a very tight bite-sized story which packs a lot of punch. Jade is a teen gymnast, competitive as hell and aiming for the top. But an injury forces her to slow down and look around at what else her teen years have to offer – especially with a cute football player similarly injured out, and both of them turning to swimming as an alternative until they get their ‘real’ sports back. This one trod a dangerous line, in that it could easily have been a story with the message that being supportive of your boyfriend’s sporting career is more important than having one of your own… but the author is careful to make sure it’s not just a story about a girl who has a lesson to learn about being too obsessed with winning, but one in which both she and the boy she likes have to compromise the way they see things. The theme of boys and girls competing in sports and whether they really do have to be segregated in every sport was an interesting one, and ultimately I thought it was a very positive story. The family relationships were complex too, and I particularly liked the tensions between the ‘don’t be a quitter’ mother and the ‘quitting is sometimes the sanest option’ sister.

Finally we come to Liar. I don’t know if I want to say anything about this one at all. Many people have been commenting along the lines of ‘read this book with as few spoilers as you can, I’m not telling you anything’ which is fine except that it means you end up reading it knowing that the rug will be pulled out from you at some point, and you spend the whole time looking for the rug… This is a book with many rugs. It’s very clever, and plays with narrative structure in a way that I really enjoy. The character is just gorgeous, a dark and troubled teen who is different to the kind of protagonist usually served up to YA readers. I loved how strong she was, how brittle, and how un-girly and I sympathised strongly with her despite the fact that she was presented as an anti-hero from the start and her unreliable narration was key to the story. I wanted everything to be okay for her, even as the story got darker and darker, and with every unpleasant revelation. Larbalestier trod a very hard path with Micah and Liar, and I’m glad that the book is equal to the non-specific hype.

Also, there’s an awesome, awesome scene in there in which a visiting writer to their Dangerous Words class (on censorship and the media) patiently explains to them the differing uses of a particular swearword in different countries, without that swearword ever being used in the text. It’s a really masterfully written scene that should in itself be taught in schools.

I have no idea how much reading I’ll get done in Nano month. But I have some really awesome books on my To Read shelf. I think I’ve done well enough this month that I can bear to pull the new Fishpond parcels out of the Car Boot of Shame (for receiving so many new books when I haven’t been reading nearly enough to justify it). In the mean time I have Boneshaker! Rampant! Going Bovine! So spoilt for choice…

Tags: reading