Tuesday, December 31, 2013

What I read in 2013


I started this blog on the 9th of January 2013, with no clear idea of where it would take me. Even though I have taken a few months off recently, maintaining this blog has been a great joy for me throughout 2013. I am so pleased to have met some lovely people through my blogging, and I really hope to meet more next year. And I find that knowing I will be reviewing a book on the blog forces me to read it in a more thoughtful manner. Possibly it has also kept me reading through times this year when it has been quite difficult to sit down and read, even though that is one of my favourite things to do: in the sleepless nights following the birth of baby Eloise, for example.

In no particular order, these are the books I have read this year:

1. Steve Hely - How I Became a Famous Novelist
2.Madeleine Wickham - Sleeping Arrangements
3. Maggie Alderson - Everything Changes But You
4. Dominic Knight - Disco Boy
5. Hermann Koch - The Dinner
6. Chris Cleave - Gold
7. Paul Harding - Tinkers
8. Yoko Ogawa - The Housekeeper and the Professor
9. Jennifer Egan - A Visit from the Goon Squad
10. Ian McEwan - Sweet Tooth
11. Tom Rachman - The Imperfectionists
12. Susannah Calahan - Brain on Fire
13. Marian Keyes - The Mystery of Mercy Close
14. Derek B. Miller - Norwegian by Night
15. Edward St Aubyn - Never Mind
16. Edward St Aubyn - Bad News
17. Edward St Aubyn - Some Hope
18. Edward St Aubyn - Mother's Milk
19. Jennifer Egan - Look at Me
20. P. D. James - Death Comes to Pemberley
21. Gillian Flynn - Gone Girl
22. F. Scott Fitzgerald - The Great Gatsby
23. Lauren Leto - Judging a Book by its Cover
24. Graeme Simsion - The Rosie Project
25. Carrie Tiffany - Mateship with Birds
26. Sheryl Sandberg - Lean In
27. Curtis Sittenfield - American Wife
28. A. M. Homes - May We Be Forgiven
29. Madeleine St John - The Women in Black
30. Sophie Kinsella - Wedding Night
31. Richard Beasley - Me and Rory MacBeath
32. Mohsin Hamid - How to get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia
33. Amor Towles - Eve in Hollywood
34. Piper Kerman - Orange is the New Black
35. Deborah Levy - Swimming Home
36. Maria Semple - Where'd You Go Bernadette?
37. Gretchen Rubin - The Happiness Project
38. Dominic Knight - Man vs Child
39. Mindy Kaling - Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me (And Other Concerns)
40. Maggie O'Farrell - The Hand that First Held Mine

Oh, and there were a few others but I'm not sure they count. The Getaway Car, by Ann Patchett - her treatise on writing, formerly only available online, now published as a chapter of her new book. I have dipped, through the year, in and out of the book of letters exchanged between Paul Auster and J. M Coetzee, entitled Here and Now. I have peeked into a wine book, several cookbooks and I perused some travel books before we took off on our trip. I have read a book about French fashion called Forever Chic.

All in all, given that it has been a year of many happenings, I am quite pleased to have read 40 books. And I'm surprised: 6 of my 40 reads are non-fiction. That's more than I would have expected.

But I am so embarrassed by my failure to achieve my set reading goals for 2013. All I managed to do was read a few chapters of Infinite Jest and to re-read The Great Gatsby. I will write another aspirational post soon, and hope to live up to my goals better in 2014.

I have so much reading lined up to do, and I can't wait to get to it. I'm hoping I can squeeze more books into my life next year.

How many books did you read this year? Any stand-outs? Any regrets? I would love to hear from you.

Bibliofilly x

Filling the shelves

It is a great irony that I should have moved, here, into a house finally large enough to house a proper library, just when I have had to leave all of my books behind in Sydney.

By some quirk of fate, we landed a crazy real estate (rental) deal in Toronto. We scored a gorgeous, enormous apartment in one of Toronto's old mansions for more or less the same rent we were paying in Australia for a small two bedroom place. Admittedly our flat there was near the beach, and art deco, and I loved it to bits, but still. The amount of space we have here is so extraordinary that I initially found it daunting. We have ten foot ceilings, more rooms than we can furnish, and a fully finished basement with a spa bath. The bones of the building are truly beautiful and I am in love with many of the spaces in it. But one room in particular has won my heart. I still don't know what to call it: the sunroom, the reading room, the girls' room, the nursery (this is where we sleep Lulu, for now), the library, the annex. It was an addition to the original house, I believe, likely having formerly been a covered patio. It is filled with light and has a gracious feel to it. When we first moved in, this room like most of the others on the ground floor had lovely wooden floorboards, but it was a bit cold. Our landlord has recently had it carpeted, and installed a heater, and now it is the place I like best for hanging out with the kids. Lulu can roll happily on the floor and I can lie on the daybed I put right by the bay windows. I have always dreamed of having a daybed like this and now I have one in the most perfect spot I could imagine - I have the reading spot of my dreams. Check it out:

Bibliofilly reads here

This room is where I have chosen to put the only bookshelves we bought when furnishing the house. There are built-in bookshelves in my son's room and in the kitchen, but this is where my own books will live.

I started with empty shelves.




But as the months wear on, I find that I am filling those shelves rather quickly. When we first arrived there were just two books on the shelf: Filth by Irvine Welsh (as yet unread, purchased on our travels) and a book called The Happiness Project which I am borrowing from my mother. Now there are a fair few. Bibliohubby thoughtfully bought me some special books for my birthday (the details of which I will save for another post); I got some books for Christmas; and of course, I have purchased the odd volume here or there myself.



This gorgeous box set of newly designed children's classics brings me such joy. I bought it 'for the kids' for Christmas. Of course neither of them will be old enough to enjoy it for some time, but I can enjoy it right away! And the prettiness of it reflects the prettiness of the room.



Next to one of my green elephant bookends I have the original books described above, and some recent Christmas additions: the new Donna Tart and Ann Patchett, and The Twelve Tribes of Hattie by Ayana Mathis, about which I have heard good things.




A small selection of baby books for Lulu, as this is, after all, her room too.


Ah, my precious ones. First editions. Leviathon and The Invention of Solitude signed by Paul Auster. Timbuktu - first ed, but not signed. Salman Rushdie's essays, signed. And my dear brother's Christmas gift to me, a signed first ed of Margaret Atwood's The Blind Assassin.


MaddAddam, the final book in Margaret Atwood's speculative fiction trilogy which started with The Year of the Flood - signed by her, in person, when I met her recently (about that - more later). A signed first ed by Alice Munro, courtesy of Bibliohubby, and another Munro collection, and Swimming Home by Deborah Levy, one of my holiday reads.


My sweet sister-in-law has given me some books she was ridding her shelves of. I never feel at home until I have an edition of Shakespeare's plays in the house. For some, the Bible. For me - Shakespeare. And Pride and Prejudice. Which, incidentally, I need to acquire.


A few more goodies I have collected here and there. Still to read: The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry (Rachel Joyce), The 100-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared (Jonas Jonasson), The Reason I Jump (Naoki Higashida - thanks John Stewart, for alerting me to this), Beautiful Ruins (Jess Walter) and The Pure Gold Baby (Margaret Drabble).


My mum, clearing her shelves (what would we do without family, eh?) (see how Canadian I now am) has given me some of her duplicates. And what great ones they are!



And finally, three Vogue Australia magazines from when I worked there briefly in the early '90s.

There are other bits and pieces scattered about the house - Bibliohubby's wine books, a few cookbooks, design magazines and a growing collection of great children's books in Iggy's room. But this is the core from which my Canadian library will grow (and I can almost hear Bibliohubby's heart falter as I write this - don't worry, honey, not too many books! Not TOO many...).


Bibliofilly x

Monday, December 30, 2013

Mindy Kaling - Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? (And Other Concerns)

I love Mindy Kaling. I loved her before reading this book and now, having read it, I love her even more. I actually feel like she's one of my girlfriends and we hang out all the time. I love her TV show, The Mindy Project, and I loved The Office (before it jumped the shark. But even after that I watched every episode). So it's no surprise that I would also enjoy this book.

I guess I'm new to the comedian-memoir genre. I read Tina Fey's Bossy Pants a couple of years ago and really enjoyed it but haven't read any thing else since that I would classify in this way. I know Chelsea Handler has a book out right now but I don't find her funny (sorry Chelsea).

Anyway, Bibliohubby and I share a love of comedy and so I think I have more of this kind of reading in my future.

But this book - I think one of the reasons I liked it so much and read it so quickly, in spite of everything happening around me right now, is that it feels like a best-friendship unfolding on the page. I really wish MK was my best friend. Not even kidding. She talks a lot about her friendships in this book and I love that she describes her friends as more likely to tell ghost stories in the dark than tell raunchy stories about guys - not just when they were teenagers, now. In a chapter about best friends (it's that kind of book), she writes that 'it is super weird for us not to share a bed' if boyfriends are away or she is on a trip with a friend. 'How else will we talk until we fall asleep?' This made me miss my besties on the other side of the world. I have yet to make that kind of friend here in Canada.

MK loves Will Ferrell and hero-worships Amy Poehler and wishes married people would realize they are the happy ending to the fairy tale and act that way instead of complaining all the time about what hard work it is. She is frenemies with Rainn Wilson. She has an architecturally decorated study but does her writing in bed. And she probably won't lose weight and get all skinny because even though she might fantasize about getting super fit and fighting baddies, there are other things more important to her.

What a great read. I'm worried that it will take me a few days to come down from this and realize MK and I are not besties in real life. Now all I have left is The Mindy Project. If The Mindy Project gets cancelled I will be very, very upset.

Overall rating: I am giving this three stars because I enjoyed it so much, but it's not great literature - it doesn't have to be. Go and read it though. I'm serious.

Note: In case you're interested, these are some other comedians whose books I would read (not an exhaustive list): Arj Barker, Louis C. K., Nick Offerman (I am about to borrow his book from Bibliohubby and will post about it when I do), Amy Poehler, Will Ferrell, Stephen Colbert, Steve Carrell, Megan McCarthy.

Saturday, December 28, 2013

A precious gift

As a parting gift, the girls in my Sydney book club the Bibliofillies (from whence this blog got its name) arranged for this to be made for me:


A book stamp with a filly on it - my very own Bibliofilly Ex Libris book stamp. A most excellent and thoughtful gift indeed.

Merry Christmas!


Ok, I have been HORRIBLE at blogging since we left Australia. Strangely it seems that raising two young kids, traveling the world and moving to a new country are not factors conducive to regular writing (or reading, for that matter). But here we are, in Toronto, and if any of you are still out there, for what it's worth, I am back. I plan to be back, is what I'm saying, for more regular posts.

But before we get to those, I just wanted to wish you all a very happy holiday season. We have had snow, a proper white Christmas, which is just wonderful. The kids have loved it (Iggy has, anyway; Lulu's a bit young still), and it has made us feel like we are really properly living in Canada. I mean look at this, for heaven's sakes!



Coming soon: a few brief reviews of books I've read whilst on hiatus, a list of books I currently have on my (new) shelves, best books of 2013, aspirational reads for 2014, and more. Hope to see you back here with me.


Bibliofilly x