ANZ LitLovers LitBlog

First Lines woodcut by Kent Ambler

With thanks to  Jane at Beyond Eden Rock, who was the original catalyst for this meme (and the creator of the poster), here is my year in first lines.  The rules are that we should post the first line of the first post from each month.  Sometimes I cheat and add a little bit for context. Plus, I have my own additional rule: if the first post was #6Degrees which always begins the same way, I add the second line as well.

January

An Australian Girl in London (1902) by Louise Mack

Written as a series of letters to friends and family at home, An Australian Girl in London by Louise Mack (1870-1935) is a semi-autobiographical novel tracing a journey of self-discovery as the protagonist makes her way from Australia to London at the beginning of the 20th century

February

The Republic of False Truths (2018), by Alaa Al Aswany, translated by S R Fellowes

The Republic of False Truths is a sprawling novel that comes from a place of deep despair and frustration.

March

Mabu Mabu: An Australian Kitchen Cookbook (2022), by Nornie Bero

This is a cookbook review with a difference, because

• I need to source the ingredients before I can do some of the recipes that I most want to try; and
• the author’s story is more than just the usual yada-yada about learning to love cooking with #InsertCherishedRelative.

April

Six Degrees of Separation: from Born to Run, to ….

This month’s #6Degrees, hosted by Kate from Books are my Favourite and Best starts with a celebrity memoir called Born to Run by Bruce Springsteen.  

It won’t surprise any of you, my amused readers, to learn that I had to Google Bruce Springsteen because, immune to popular culture as I am, I had heard of someone with this name who made the kind of music I can’t abide, but, immune to all forms of sporting culture, I didn’t know of a Bruce Springsteen who was a runner, born to do it or otherwise.

May

2023 Bendigo Writers Festival Saturday 6th May

Day 2 of the Bendigo Writers’ Festival has been excellent!

It began with a tasty breakfast of perfectly poached eggs at Harvest, and just as well we made a booking for lunch because by the time we got back there at lunchtime, the place was buzzing.

June

Hopeless Kingdom (2022), by Kgshak Akec

Winner of the 2021 Dorothy Hewitt Award for an Unpublished Manuscript, Hopeless Kingdom by debut author Kgshak Akec was already on my radar when it was longlisted for the 2023 Miles Franklin Award. Deservedly so.

July

I Had a Father in Karratha (2023), by Annette Trevitt

Imagine you’re trying to pitch a book to a publisher…and  it’s about being an executor for a deceased estate… It doesn’t sound all that enticing, does it? And yet this is a really interesting book, and a cautionary tale as well.

August

2023 NSW Premier’s History Awards shortlists

(This one gets the prize for the most banal beginning).

The NSW Premier’s History Awards shortlists were announced today.

September

Six Degrees of Separation: from Wifedom, to ….

This month’s #6Degrees, hosted by Kate from Books are my Favourite and Best starts with Wifedom by Anna Funder. I haven’t read it and the hype had already put me off even before I read Rebecca Solnit’s incisive review of it.

(Which, BTW led to my purchase of Orwell’s Roses for The Spouse for Christmas.)

October

Beyond Berggasse (2023) by Joe Reich

Beyond Berggasse is the second novel of Joe Reich AM, whose previous books include a memoir called My Sack Full of Memories (2019, as told by Zwi Levin) and his first novel Ein Stein (2021). I reviewed them here and here.

November

2023 Small Press Network’s Book of the Year Award shortlist

The Small Press Book of the Year Award (BOTY) used to be known as the Most Underrated Book of the Year Award, which is good to know because it explains why you may never have heard about the nominated books.

December

Letters to a Critic, Alan McCulloch’s World of Art, by Rodney James

Best known as Australia’s most influential art critic, Alan McLeod McCulloch (1907-1992) was an extraordinary man, and it’s really quite surprising that it has taken 30 years since his death for a biography to appear.

So…

What do these first lines reveal about my blog in 2023?

• Literary excursions were getting back to ‘normal’.  I went to the Bendigo Writers Festival, and later in the year, I went to the Port Fairy Literary Weekend.
• Hmm, this meme is misleading.  Of six Australian posts that are reviews, three are NF (a memoir, a cookbook and a biography) and three are novels (one is a debut about a migrant journey from Sudan to Australia via Egypt; one is from the early 20th century set in London; and one is set in early C20th Vienna).  But I read and reviewed 161 books this year, and 72 were Australian titles: 53 fiction including 5 short story collections, and only 19 NF: 5 bios, (4 were literary bios); 2 x literary criticism; 1 x cookbook, 3 x current affairs, 2 x history, 4 x memoirs and 1 x poetry. I am mildly disconcerted by how many books I abandoned: 22, and too many of them were recent releases. (No, I’m not going to say which ones they were.)
• I am getting slack about keeping up with awards news. Both the posts about awards had not been updated to show who the winners were, and I had to stop writing this and do it now.
• There’s only one translation. I read and reviewed 23 translations this year… mostly from Europe, but mostly from smaller countries that don’t dominate the market.
• I mostly read recent releases, and I make feeble attempts to read from the TBR.
• I know nothing about popular culture.  You already knew that…
• As in previous years you can see #6 Degrees comes up twice because we are supposed to post it on the first Saturday of each month: Thanks to Kate from Books are My Favourite and Best who maintains the meme and to all the other much better organised bloggers whose posts remind me to do it.  (Another meme I have started doing semi-regularly is Spell the Month in books.)
• Plus, pleasingly, I have somehow generated First Lines all of which begin in a different way!

I am toying with doing this for 2022 as well, because I missed it last year…

What do your first lines say about you?