2012 releases(links to reviews/reviewers posted between January and June on second line)
- Ash, Romy - Floundering. Text
Jessica White, Sian Campbell, Jon Page - Bite the Book, - Bobis, Merlinda - Fish-hair Woman Spinifex Press
Whispering Gums - Johnson, Susan - My Hundred Lovers Allen & Unwin
Marg/IntrepidReader, Jessica White - Jones, Gail - Five Bells. Random House/Vintage
Annabel Smith, Book Lover Book Reviews, Sue Driscoll, Shelleyrae @ Book’d Out, Lucy Perkins, Brenda - Mills, Jennifer - The Rest is Weight. UQP
Shelleyrae @ Book'd Out - Robertson, Deborah - Sweet Old World. Random House/Vintage
Angela Meyer @ LiteraryMinded - Tiffany, Carrie - Mateship with Birds. PanMacmillan/Picador
Janine Rozetti. Tony’s Reading List, Angela Meyer @LiteraryMinded, - Tranter, Kirsten - A Common Loss. HarperCollins
Ann-Marie Sjoberg, Jessica White, Annabel Smith, JudiJ, Lisa Walker, Phillip A Ellis
Publishers: Random House: 2 books, 7 reviews; HarperCollins: 1 book, 6 reviews; Pan Macmillan: 1 book, 3 reviews; Allen & Unwin: 1 book, 2 reviews; Text: 1 book, 1 review; UQP: 1 book, 1 review; Spinifex Press: 1 book, 1 review.
The above books were defined as "literary", either by their reviewers or the publishers.
How do you define the term "literary"? Should nonfiction books of literary merit be included, such as Jane Gleeson-White's creative nonfiction history, Double Entry: How the merchants of Venice created modern finance?
Published by Allen & Unwin; reviewed for AWW by historian Yvonne Perkins.
Or True North, by Brenda Niall (Text 2012), the story of Mary and Elizabeth Durack, also reviewed by Yvonne Perkins?
How about Speculative Fiction books like Margo Lanagan's Seahearts and Kate Forsyth's Historical Speculative Fiction novel for adults, Bittergreens - should these be included under the label of "literary"? (If the latter are included, the tally of reviews increases considerably: Lanagan: 9 reviews; Forsyth: 7.)
- Seahearts by Margo Lanagan (Allen & Unwin) reviewed for AWW by Nalini Haynes, Mark Webb, Lizabelle, Astrid, Sue Luus, Jason Nahrung, bookonaut, Angela Meyer @LiteraryMinded, Krissy Keen
- Bittergreens by Kate Forsyth (Random House) reviewed for AWW by speculatef, Jo @ BookloverBookReviews, Angela @ LiteraryMinded, Book'd Out, Bookonaut, Bree @1girl2manybooks, Monique at Write Note Reviews
Added suggestions via comments and Twitter:
- Running Dogs by Ruby J Murray (Scribe 2012) ~ Debut fiction
- Smith, Sydney - The Lost Woman (Text 2012)
- James, Wendy - The Mistake (Penguin 2012)
- Nunn, Malla - Silent Valley (Pan Macmillan 2012)
- Evans, Tess - The Memory Tree (Allen & Unwin 2012)
- The Hum of Concrete by Anna Solding (MidnightSun Publishing: self-published 2012)
What about Past the Shallows by Favel Parrett and Foal's Bread by Gillian Mears or any of the others nominated for the Miles Franklin? I would class them as 'literary'.
ReplyDeleteHi Denise
DeleteThanks for stopping by.
Foal's Bread (Allen & Unwin Nov. 2011) and Past the Shallows (Hachette May 2011) will certainly be included in the tally of "literary" books published in 2011. For the above I examined only 2012 releases.
The Memory Tree by Tess Evans is literary
ReplyDeleteAdded, thanks, Shelleyrae!
DeleteI have just added my review of The Hum of Concrete by Anna Solding (MidnightSun Publishing) to the Challenge page. I would consider it 'literary' also.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the suggestions, Lara. I'll add it here.
Delete