Bunch o' Fives

Over at the impressive Persnickety Snark (reviewer of YA books with a special interest in Aussie authors), Adele has been putting together the FIVE CHALLENGE, featuring lists of 5 bookish things in various categories (great covers, great debuts, best YA bloggers, etc). Inspired by that - and fuelled by a very great need to Get Over Myself (heady combination of vile PMT and homesickness) - I'm putting together some lists of my own. These are really just a Pollyanna-esque attempt to cheer myself up, but if any of my readers happen to find something of interest, all the better. So, here goes with today's list...


5 books I discovered and adored in 2009:


The Slap / Christos Tsiolkas "a forensic examination of the Australian suburban family and contemporary debates about morality and raising children" It's told from the point-of-view of eight people who were present at a bbq when one man smacks another man's child (won the Commonwealth Writers Prize 2009 for best novel in SE Asia and South Pacific): utterly gripping, clever, sad, hard-hitting.

A Kind of Intimacy / Jenn Ashworth - a daring black comedy, compulsive, hilarious and macabre, told by unreliable narrator Annie, who is morbidly obese, lonely and hopeful, and in love with the boy next door.

Everything Beautiful / Simmone Howell - witty, edgy, saccharine-free YA about a girl sent away to a Christian "holiday" camp to reform her character. Fat chance; but the angry, intriguing, wheelchair-bound Dylan provides a reason to stay.

Girl, 15, Charming But Insane / Sue Limb - I don't know where Sue Limb has been all my life, but I'm glad she's in it now. Funny, funny, funny stuff - and then I cried on the last page. Super teen lit, guaranteed to cheer you up.

Butterfly / Sonya Hartnett - grab-you-by-the-throat prose, this is a masterful story with a teen protagonist who thinks she's found love and acceptance with the older woman next door when she stuffs up her friendships with her peers. This is not YA-lit specifically.





Typically, the 5 came to me quickly and then another 5 and then another (this was a great reading year, that makes me happy). But first come first served n all.

Tomorrow: 5 books I can't wait to read in 2010.