ANZ LitLovers LitBlog

Back in November, Emma from Book Around the Corner and Guy from A Swiftly Tilting Planet had a lovely idea: booklovers who blog could match up together as ‘copinautes‘ and choose two books for each other as virtual Christmas gifts, revealing their Humbook Christmas Gift choices on Christmas Day.

Copinaute is a new French word meaning internet friend; it’s formed from the word  copain/copine (friend) and internaute (Internet surfer).   It is the perfect word to explain the connection between friends who have never met, but feel a bond nonetheless.

Participating in Emma and Guy’s Humbook Christmas Gift enables me to swap virtual gifts with fellow Aussie Tony from Tony’s Reading List and so today, I’m giving him two virtual books for him to read and review.  I chose Tony as my copinaute because we often like the same kind of books and I expected him to choose interesting books in translation for me, probably in Japanese or German.

My virtual gifts for Tony are:

• Happy Valley (Text Classics) by Patrick White (Text) (his first novel, re-released after many years, and an ideal introduction to our Nobel Prize winning author, see my review).  I’ve searched his blog and I know Tony likes Patrick White but I don’t think he’s read this one yet because it’s only just been re-released after being unattainable for many years.
• My Blood’s Country: In the Footsteps of Judith Wright by Fiona Capp.  This is a bit sneaky of me because it’s two books for the price of one.  That’s because Tony will almost certainly want to go exploring the poetry of Judith Wright as he reads this, if he hasn’t already discovered it.  Written after the poet’s death, the book is both a memoir and a quest to  explore the places that shaped Wright’s life. I think Tony will like this book because the writing is an homage both to a great poet and to the Aussie landscape that she loved.  (See my review).

I’d like to thank Emma and Guy for organising this  exciting experience with others and although it’s not required by the rules I have chosen Humbook Christmas gifts for them too: no prizes for guessing which book I’ve selected because in 2011 I named it as The Book of the Decade….yes, it’s That Deadman Dance by Kim Scott, which is now available in Europe and the UK.  (Tony would have got this one too, but he’s already read it.  See his review and mine). There’s a paperback edition available now and a hardback which for some reason is marginally cheaper.  I think both Guy and Emma will find this a very interesting book because it imagines a different past, one in which First Contact between a coloniser and an Indigenous People was conducted with respect on both sides.

Happy Christmas everyone, I hope you’ve all received a lovely book this year too.