A Book A Week – April 2019 – Serene Conneeley

I’m still doing well with my Book A Week Challenge, and managed five this month too (although I can’t talk about or show you the cover of one just yet – but it shouldn’t be too long…)…

My absolute favourite book of the year so far is Circe by Madeline Miller, which is saying something, because there have already been wonderful books by some of my favourite authors. Once I started Circe, all I wanted to do was read it (which made Camp NaNoWriMo a bit of a challenge that week!), and when I was finished I felt totally bereft. Now I’m kind of paralysed over what to read next, because part of my head is still with this wise witch-goddess, planting herbs and casting spells on her island, living, loving, hating, grieving, learning, growing, hoping, dreaming… It’s a truly beautiful, enchanting story, based in history and legend yet wholly of today in its themes.

All my reading the first week of April was variations of the Vasilisa the Wise/Fair/Beautiful/Terrible faerytale, for the Australian Fairy Tale Society gathering – with a focus on Baba Yaga, who is so badly maligned in so many versions. Not in Vasilisa the Terrible by April A Taylor though, which is brilliantly creepy and thought provoking, with a nod to the Salem Witch Trials. Juliet Marillier’s beautiful short story By Bone-Light is hauntingly wonderful too. Kate Forsyth’s retelling in her book Vasilisa the Wise and Other Tales of Brave Young Women is lovely, and gorgeously illustrated by Lorena Carrington. And the original Russian tales have their own magic too – not to mention a southern America version called Slue–Foot Sue and the Witch in the Woods by Laura Frankos…

And it was awesome when my preorder of Kate Forsyth and Lorena Carrington’s new collaboration, The Buried Moon and Other Tales of Bright Young Women, arrived. Featuring beautiful retellings of The Buried Moon, The Six Swans, A Mother’s Yarn, The Blue Rose, Tam Lin, The Maiden Wiser Than the Tsar and Molly Whuppie, it’s a wonderful collection of old stories with a new spin.

I also did a beta read on a friend’s book, but I can’t talk about it yet!

And I brushed up on The Mabinogion, the Welsh collection of the earliest prose stories of the literature of Britain, compiled in the 12th–13th centuries from earlier oral traditions, and full of tales of brave knights, gods and goddesses, kings and queens, treachery, love and heartache. It was because I was spending an afternoon with some of my Fairy Tale Society friends watching a wonderful performance of the Fourth Branch of the Mabinogion, but it was also magical to revisit Rhiannon’s story, told in the First and Third Branches…

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MARCH BOOKS

One of my plans for 2019 is to make time to read more books. My post-NaNoWriMo December book binge* got me off to a great start – I devoured five books, which was bliss 💕📚🌟 And I did that again in January, and in February, and in March too. Such bliss!

My first read this month was Lamp Black, Wolf Grey by Paula Brackston, one of my favourite authors. (I’d been saving it, cos it was nice knowing I still had one of hers that I hadn’t devoured yet.) It was as magical as her others, set in the wilds of Wales and full of myth and legend, in modern times and old – although a little disturbing too. And now I have to wait til October for Found Things Book Two: Secrets of the Chocolate House.

My favourite this month was Bury The Living by Jodi McIsaac. I’d never heard of this author, or any of her books, but on a rabbit hole adventure involving checking for pirates and wondering if I need Blasty, I stumbled across her (love those unexpected discoveries!), bought it on a whim, and loved it. Set in Ireland against the backdrop of the Troubles, it has real-life politics and history, plus time travel, Celtic myths and a wonderful female friendship. (And now I want to read the sequel, and her other series, and re-read Cal by Bernard MacLaverty, one of my childhood faves…)

I also loved Dancing On Knives by Kate Forsyth, another one of my favourite authors. (If you haven’t read her Witches of Eileanan series, you really should check it out.) I bought this book when it came out a few years ago, then put it “somewhere safe”, doh! But I finally found it 🙂 It’s Kate’s only book set in Australia, and is by no means a light hearted tale, but it is beautifully written, with lines that make you ache with love, loss and yearning.

I read Catherine Greer’s YA debut Love Lie Repeat, in time for its recent book launch. The publisher described it as Liane Moriarty for teens, as it’s rich kids on Sydney’s north shore, and although it’s not my usual thing, I found myself drawn in to the mystery. There’s love and lies, secrets and betrayal, friendship and rivalry, family breakdown and the forging of new bonds – and it’s quite disturbing too…

I also read Witch Way to Mistletoe & Murder by Adelaide author Jane Hinchey, which was a super-fun witchy cosy, with likeable characters, great friendships, a cool mystery and a cute town populated by witches, vampires, shifters and ghosts. I’ll definitely read more of her books.

And I kicked off my research into Vasilisa the Wise/Beautiful for the next Australian Fairy Tale Society meeting by reading Juliet Marillier’s short story By Bone-Light (by candlelight during Earth Hour), from her wonderful short story collection Prickle Moon, which is definitely worth a read.

And it wasn’t planned, but this month was three Aussie authors plus one Aussie/Canadian, and a Canadian and an English writer. We have so many amazing writers in this country…

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FEBRUARY BOOKS

Some of my February books were short reads, but I figure it’s a short month, right? 🙂 💕

This month I had a book club meeting on faery tale retellings, so I started with the novel Enchant: Beauty and the Beast Retold by awesome Perth author Demelza Carlton, which is full of magic and adventure, with a wonderful twist. I loved her Fly: Goose Girl Retold too, and look forward to reading more from her wonderful Romance a Medieval Fairytale series (25 books and counting!)… 💜

I adored re-reading Kate Forsyth’s seven gorgeous retellings in Vasilisa the Wise and Other Tales of Brave Young Women, illustrated by the amazing Lorena Carrington. Here the young women at the centre of the stories are brave, resourceful, clever and kind – and they all save themselves or their sisters, not waiting around for a prince to rescue them. I can’t wait for the next in the series, The Buried Moon and Other Tales of Bright Young Women (you can pre-order here). And right now I’m reading another one of Kate’s novels, Dancing On Knives, for my March reading month… 💚

I also loved Juliet Marillier’s novella Beautiful, from the fantasy anthology Aurum, which is based on the faery tale East of the Sun, West of the Moon. (Beautiful has just been nominated for best fantasy novella at the Aurealis Awards, while the absolutely gorgeous Blackthorn & Grim series is nominated for the Sara Douglass Book Series Award. Winners will be announced May 4…) And I’m so excited that Juliet has expanded the novella into a full-length novel, focusing on one of the other characters, who I can’t wait to follow on her adventures! It will be out at the end of May as an audiobook exclusive, and I can’t wait! 💛

I supported the Kickstarter campaign for The Adventurous Princess and Other Feminist Fairy Tales, which was written and illustrated by Canberra artist Erin-Claire Barrow, a fellow Australian Fairy Tale Society member. And it is wonderful. It includes retellings of nine traditional faery tales with a feminist twist, all beautifully illustrated. It will be officially launched in late March – you can check it out here. ❤️

And I really loved DL Richardson’s magical YA novel One Little Spell. About Ruby, the singer in an all-girl band who is in love with her small town’s misunderstood bad boy, it was sad, touching, funny and wonderful, all at once, with a dose of ghostly magic and a great twist… Not much writing got done over these days, as I had to know what happened. What harm can one little spell do? Plenty if you’re not a witch. 💕

Funnily enough, although this wasn’t planned, all five books are by Aussie authors!

And March is off to a great start too, with Lamp Black, Wolf Grey by Paula Brackston, Bury the Living by Jodi McIsaac, which were both awesome, and now Dancing On Knives by Kate Forsyth (I finally found my copy, after putting it “somewhere safe” when I bought it a while back, doh!)…

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JANUARY BOOKS

First up was one of my Christmas presents from my sweet hubby, the wonderful Blood Communion by Anne Rice. It’s the new Lestat book, and it was like visiting old friends, and meeting a few new ones, and I was totally swept away in the mystery and intrigue – and that heart-stopping, OMG! moment… (No spoilers!) Anne has always been one of my favourite authors. I love the way she writes, and the beauty, magic and history she weaves through her books. (She could also be the reason I favour long and lush sentences in my books too, ha ha!)

Then I read To Nowhere and Back by Margaret J Anderson, the author of one of my favourite childhood books, Searching For Shona. It’s full of mystery and magic, and a different kind of time-slip adventure, and I loved it. Hooray for the publishing revolution that has made so many old books available again! (There are a lot of typos, I guess from scanning in the original books, but they didn’t take me out of the story too much.) I also bought Margaret’s In the Keep of Time and In the Circle of Time, time-slip novels set in magical Scotland, and am looking forward to them.

Gretel and the Case of the Missing Frog Prints by PJ Brackston is the first of a very different series by one of my favourite authors, so I was curious to try it. Admittedly her Paula Brackston witchy historical fantasies are more my thing (I love love love The Winter Witch, The Silver Witch, The Witch’s Daughter and others), but this fun cosy/mystery/hilarious adventure is laugh out loud funny, and clever, and intriguing enough that I stayed up til after 3am (oops!) to find out who, how any why. Lots of fun! (And yes, it’s that Gretel…)

My favourite for the month (I know, a big call given Lestat!) was A Discovery of Witches by Deborah Harkness, which I devoured without pause. Not much work got done that week – and not much sleep was had either – there were a few staying-up-til-3am nights. I absolutely loved it, and can’t wait for the rest of the books to arrive – although it’s probably a good thing that they’re being posted, so I can get some work done in the meantime 🙂

And for our February discussion at the Australia Fairy Tale Society, an early Australian tale was chosen, The Magic Gun, from the early 1900s book Fairy Tales Told In the Bush, a collection by Sister Agnes. It’s long out of print, and out of copyright, so you can read the book here… Just remember that it was a very different time – the portrayal of Aboriginal leader William Barak in The Magic Gun is awful. Yet in reading the story, we all researched him, and learned about this important ngurungaeta (clan leader), activist, artist, liaison and real-life hero, who we may not have heard of otherwise – you can read about him and his achievements here. I much preferred some of the other stories in the book, and also loved going down the rabbit hole of early Australian fairy tales and finding many more, like The Two Fairies in Tales For Young Australia, the sweet but awfully girls-should-be-obedient Mr Bunyip, or, Mary Somerville’s Ramble, and Fairy Tales, Fables and Legends by Mrs Beatrice Wilcken, amongst many others. Want to venture down the rabbit hole too? The National Library of Australia have collected and preserved so many, which you can read online…