Happy New Year, everyone! I want to start out by thanking all of you who read my blog. I know that I only have a small(ish) group of subscribers, and I also have regular commenters and I want to convey to you how important you all are to me. I have tried to do some private writing (in my offline space) but it is only when I start thinking of my now 17 year old blog and its readers that I can find flow for my thoughts. 2025 seems to have flown but it isn’t until I take stock of my reading that I realise that it has been a long and eventful year both personally, as well as in world events. I started with the Nikos Papastergiadis’s memorable John Berger and Me and finished with Maisey Yates’s Cowboy It’s Cold Outside with its delightful cover but forgetable story.
53 books
Fiction: 29 – Romance fiction: 25
Audiobooks: 0
Picture Books and Junior fiction: 0
Non-Fiction: 24 (note: 23 but I reread one book immediately as my Kobo lost all my notes)
Happy New Year to you all! I hope you saw in the new year in the way you had planned. Loud and raucous or quiet and calm.
In 2024, I had a much better reading year than the previous years even though I read fewer books. I was gifted a Kobo for my birthday in September, yet I totally slowed down my reading from October onwards so I haven’t really taken advantage of it yet. But I have a month free from uni teaching so I hope to start my reading year as soon as I finish this blog post. As for 2024, if I had to pick only one book I read it would be Roger Deakin’s Waterlog. But thankfully, I get to choose a lot of books. So here are my stats:
I had 21 five star books. Here is a selection of the one’s which stood out for me:
Best of the Fiction books:
Overnight Inheritance by Rachel Bailey
Canadian Boyfriend by Jenny Holiday (Reading Note 75)
Marry Me, Juliet trilogy (yep – all 3 books were 5 stars) by Jodi McAlister (Reading Note 74 for Here for the Right Reasons)
Ready or Not by Cara Bastone (Reading Note 82)
Some Kind of Wonderful by Sarah Morgan (Reading Note 79)
The Rom-Commers by Katherine Center
Best of the Non-Fiction books:
Courting: An Intimate History of Love and the Law by Alecia Simmonds
Waterlog: A Swimmer’s Journey Through Britain by Roger Deakin
Orwell’s Roses by Rebecca Solnit
Walking with Sam: A Father, A Son and 500 miles across Spain by Andrew McCarthy
All About Love by bell hooks
Best of the Picture Books
Aaron Slater, Illustrator by Andrea Beaty
Duck! Rabbit! by Amy Krouse Rosenthal
I Just Ate My Friend by Heidi McKinnon
The Best of non-book reading
As an advocate for reading being understood beyond the traditional published book, it would be remiss of me to not discuss some of my favourite non-book reading. I have favourite investigative journalists, organisations, academics and other writers who I follow across several platforms.
Rebecca Solnit – on Facebook and Bluesky
Ronni Salt – has moved to Bluesky so I can finally ditch my X
Shannon Mattern – on Bluesky (and various websites)
The Daily Aus – my favourite new service on Instagram
Inner West Plant People – a gardening site on Facebook focused on the Inner West of Sydney. Urban gardening tips with occasional humour. The most wholesome of community FB.
Academic Reading
The AI Atlas by Kate Crawford – an ethnographic examination on the impacts of AI. I am only 3 chapters into this book. It is gripping and interesting. A must read.
I continue to be delighted by TikTok creators. I completely avoid Booktok but I adore so many different subcultures (like chihuahua tok). My current favourites are:
The Happy Urbanist and Strong Towns
Bimbo University
Elena Charalampoudi (who has given me so many laughs – Greek female comedian)
Caleb Simpson (whose book was great but falls short of the beauty of his Tiktoks)
Chef Reactions
Wil Stracke – Australian unionist extraordinaire!
Other great creators:
Alexei Toliopoulos – film reviewer with the Betoota, on Tiktok, on websites and other places
Apartment Therapy – I’d also like to tip my metaphorical cap to Apartment Therapy whose website I followed many decades ago, whose books I bought, whose digital feeds I follow as they continue to delight with their home interiors coverage, crossing over to visual based platforms such as instagram and tiktok and youtube so well. So reflexive which is what all great creator collectives have to be in our current digital broadcast and publishing environment.
Letterboxd – I love the website, I love the tiktoks. The Goodreads equivalent for watching (not reading). I love the Letterboxd tiktok stream where they interview various stars on the red carpet or at interview/promos asking them for their favourite 4 films. I am so taken by responses and how so many people name childhood favourites. We so often dismiss the impact of children’s content, yet the films and TV shows we watch growing up shape us as much as books do. I have been so engaged by Letterboxd content that I finally got my own account (Shallowreader of course). I tried to add as many movies as I could possibly remember watching and it is telling that there are less than 1000 movies for me. I am much more likely to read a book for entertainment.
2025 planning like a fool….
My plan for 2025 is to continue to read whatever comes my way and hopefully I will be motivated enough to blog more than a handful of times a year. I will again attempt to take part in SuperWendy’s TBR Challenge. I will continue to watch all the reruns of shows that give me comfort. Maybe along the way, I will start posting more on BlueSky which at this point is like a re-creation of ye olde Twitter except this time around, I don’t have the energy to write or connect much. Yet. Maybe that will change. If not, I am still happy.
I feel that the second quadrant of the century is starting at a low point so I really hope that we are in the gutter looking up to the stars and that our trajectory is upwards and uplifting. Wishing you all a safe and calm 2025 with lots of love, food and entertainment.
Happy New Year to you all! I hope these first few weeks have brought you all lots of calm, quiet and happiness. And if you love a party, I hope you have also had lots of loud, musical connections.
In what seems to have become my signature style, I stopped blogging in August of 2023. Mostly it was because I only read 2 books from August through to December whereas I read 93 books in the first half of the year, many of which I have already written about. During my August – December months, I was overwhelmed with three contract jobs and I found myself unable to read or write (here or on any social media). Even my viewing was limited to reruns of old favourites and TikTok favourites. Now let me go back to my books for 2023. This is purely a list and it is devoid of extra commentary. I may not have written anything further about my fave books but I have hyperlinked them back to my original posts.
I’m not going to list all 25 books here as quite a few were the set readings for the subjects I teach (yes – I am that special level of nerdy). Instead, I have chosen my best of the best list.
Unlike last year, I do not have a Best What-The-Fuck-Did-I-Just-Read book though I certainly had several worst What-The-Fuck-Did-I-Just-Read books (I am looking at you Jimenez’s The Friend Zone, and you’re not that far behind Bellefleur’s Hang The Moon) . However, I did have a best of What-The-Fuck-Did_I-Just-Watch movie. The Barbie movie captured me so deeply and profoundly that I went and watched it at the movies three times in as many weeks. I have tried crafting a blog post to describe the movie several times but I keep floundering. Perhaps that will be my next post.
Meanwhile, my plan for 2024 is to read whatever comes my way that captures my attention and hopefully I will be motivated enough to blog about. I will again attempt to take part in SuperWendy’s TBR Challenge. I will watch all the reruns of shows that give me comfort, I hope I stay riveted to TikTok creators who give me such joy – dance, cooking, urban design, cute critters and academic TikTok (very little booktok for me!). I have no plans on becoming a creator at this point but I am convinced that it is the most engaging of social media platforms in the current time, and I am there as Shallowreader despite their dodgy data mining.
A belated Happy New Year to you all. My plan had been to post this list early in January, but the weather was lovely and we were on summer holidays and frankly swimming and visiting came ahead of writing. And then, a week ago, after three years of hiding, lockdowns, isolations, vaccinations, masking up and going out, I was finally felled by the plague. Covid hit me early on Tuesday morning and it was painful and sudden, with all the expectant symptoms. Due to having been hospitalised in August of last year with RSV (ambulance dash to the resuscitation unit at my local hospital and an ensuing protracted illness and recovery) meant I was on the high risk list and I received antivirals within a few hours of testing positive and I have been bed bound and isolating ever since. The meds have worked, I am still isolating so I have turned my time into writing for the blog, and gratefully I tested negative just yesterday.
Up until late October of 2022, my reading continued to be fractured and interrupted by life and all its oddities, however, in late October, I felt like my pre-PhD, pre-uni reading mojo was back, having read 70 books from November onwards – over double for the rest of the year. And that reading mojo also had me giving 5 stars to 25 books – a quarter of all I read! I think it is a bit much to go into depth with all 25 books (though 11 of those were picture books), I will have a brief description of my absolute favourites and only list the rest.
This was such a deep, slow burn of a romance. A flirty, confident heroine, with an awkward foot-in-mouth nerdy hero (who doesn’t turn into a swan). I loved who thoughtfully the main protagonists in this story grew and developed throughout this story. The hero John Modesto-Whitford is a serious man not taken to having fun, serious about his public defender job, serious about not allowing his rich father contribute to his life. He presents as boring but still-waters-run-deep and this man… ““John was being active. Inside the walls of this crumbling but noble building, he was never passive. He was doing something about that complicated world. Each hour of concentration he lent to his cases he was making the world a more just, fair place.” ….this man is a fair man. Just swoon.
Love and Other Puzzles by Kimberley Allsopp.
What an absolute delightful book. I loved the way it was written, the protagonist’s cheeky, clear eyed voice, it was just fun. It was more chick-lit than romance, Rory is devoted to her rigid routines, judges life by the rom-com openings they reflect, and how well they reflect them, and doesn’t really cope when things are out of place. Until she decides that she needs to break her routine so she allows the clues in the New York Times crossword puzzles dictate her life decisions. In the space of a week, her life is changed. I loved it.
Non-fiction
Inheritance: A Memoir of Genealogy, Paternity, and Love – Dani Shapiro
Invisible Women: Data Bias in a World Designed for Men by Caroline Criado Pérez
Phosphorescence: On Awe, Wonder and Things That Sustain You When the World Goes Dark by Julia Baird
Fierce Attachments by Vivian Gornick
A City is Not a Computer by Shannon Mattern
The Crane Wife: A Memoir in Essays by C.J. Hauser
Best of the Non-fiction Best:
Phosphorescence: On Awe, Wonder and Things That Sustain You When the World Goes Dark by Julia Baird. An Australian author, journalist exploring the world of phosphorescence and how to find our own internal light. This book worked for me but I think it did this because I was in an unusual headspace even for myself. I read it only a few weeks after my hospitalisation and it spoke to that darkest part of ourselves, especially as I had stopped breathing on two occasions and it was difficult to comprehend the severity of what I was experiencing. This book made me consider how I think about things that give me awe.
Some of quotes that I felt deeply included “Keep in mind that the most important quality in a person is goodness” and “Don’t make the mistake of dismissing decency as dullness” (p. 139) Especially that last one, oh the amount of women I have known who craved the “bad boy” for romance and mistreated the decent man as dull. It always angered me.
“It might take you decades to speak up about things that matter to you, but, being able to speak your truth is a vital part of being human, of walking with certainty and openness on the earth, and refusing to be afraid. Once you have found your voice, you must resist every person who will tell you to bury or bottle it.” (p. 151). This quote stung me. I felt much more outspoken prior to my PhD and somehow, I find that 2 years later, I still haven’t got my voice back. I have stopped trying to get it back too. I hope with time it will come back.
Picture Books
Stacey’s Remearkable books by Stacey Abrams
When Molly Ate the Stars Joyce Hesselberth
The Octopus Escapes by Maile Meloy
Blankie by Ben Clanton
Julián is a Mermaid by Jessica Love
I love you like by Lisa Swerling
Moonlight by Stephen Savage
The Perfect Tree by Corinne Demas
If You Were A City by Kyo Maclear
It Had To Be You by Loryn Brantz
Prince & Knight by Daniel Haack
Best of the Picture book Best:
When Molly Ate The Stars by Joyce Hesselberth was slow, bright, starry, delightful and light. It had an ethereal sense to it that just made me happy.
Blankie by Ben Clanton is a board book with rhythms and humour. It would just be delightful fun to read to a toddler.
Weirdest Book
Upright Women Wanted by Sarah Gailey
Bat-shit-crazy
gunslinging
anti-fascist
lesbian librarians
in a futuristic dystopian American West.
Like, I really don’t think I need to describe it any further.
This is a must read.
Just for the cray-cray.
The Best What-the-fuck-did-I-just-read book of the year
And just because I feel I need to make a comment…I did read a Lynne Graham novel this year and yes it made me happy and made me laugh.But I have comments!
Promoted to the Greek’s Wife: An Uplifting International Romance by Lynne Graham
Let’s start with the novel. It was the usual angsty Graham novel which engages in love, romance, rich entitled men and poor waifish women who get the hots with each other while they jetset around the world while navigating the difficulties of unconventional families. Heroine Cleo, billionaire hero Ari, work romance (though they call it before it gets unethical – Lynne’s gone woke!). Lots of tension. Lots of foster kids, lots of social issues and lots of love. This book was fun and I really enjoyed it.
However, there is a particularly large elephant in the room. That large elephant is the subtitle.
An uplifting International Romance.
AN UPLIFTING INTERNATIONAL ROMANCE!
AN UPLIFTING INTERNATIONAL ROMANCE?????
SERIOUSLY!?
I had to check my book cover. Had I accidently picked up an Inspirational romance? Has Lynne Graham stopped writing Sexy’s?
What is happening?
This is not my Mills & Boon and I really don’t like it.
Inspirational kiss my big fat Greek-Australian arse!
This book was many things but it was not uplifting and it certainly wasn’t inspirational. But it definitely was fun.
Observation note 111:I’m an avid reader. I reached a personal milestone this weekend. I have read 2500 books since I started keeping my own digital reading records. Starting on WeRead from 2008, then migrating my data over to Goodreads in 2012 where I joined many of my other bookish friends (this probably coincides with my ceasing to post my reading choices on FB). This is the only social media platform I use consistently, facilitating nearly a decade and a half of record keeping – the habits of avid readers!
Diligently adding information to my digital reading record grew out of my readers’ advisory practices as a librarian. My access to my library records prior to using these book sites provided only a partial snapshot of my reading as it didn’t include the books I was buying and reading outside of the library. The books I found myself buying also informed me as to the biases in library collections.
Keeping track of my reading has always helped me in my workplace in understanding user behaviours and anticipating reading requirements, especially during my time as a team leader at the City of Sydney where I was coordinating up to 7 storytimes a week for the various childcare centres in Ultimo (separately from the children’s programming) which explains the “library-storytime” tag (143 books) where I was assessing picture books for performance suitability. But even once I stopped working in libraries, I couldn’t stop the record keeping. You can take the librarian out of the library, and all that.
Now for some statistics: My year for the most books read was in 2012 – 365 books. My year for the least books read was 2013 – 26 books. The years I spent studying deeply impacted my book reading outputs, especially as many of those years I was working in two jobs, along with studying, along with general family and home responsibilities. Reading opportunities in those years became treats and luxuries, though the list would be off the scales if I was able to count journal articles on GoodReads!
I have approximately 580 subject tags “shelves”, though my early records don’t have many tags, my later ones are rich with description – this practice emerged as the digital world became more sophisticated. Folksonomic categorisation rather than taxonomic predetermined ordering systems FTW! My highest read genre is romance fiction (814), picture books (599), non-fiction (589). I love that along standard tags such as “graphic novel” (64 books), “historical fiction” (86 books), I get to created my own descriptors and some of the more esoteric ones are “bat shit crazy” (10 books), “fake name trickery” (23 books), “yeeha cowboy” (27 books) and “hatch-back hero” (a pathetic 2 books). I even have a “vassiliki” tag for books with characters who have my name (5 books).
Reading Note 46:Furious fury. For the record, my 2500th book was Caroline Criado Perez’s Invisible Women: Data Bias in a World Designed for Men. Added to my TBR in March 2019. It’s on the obfuscation of women from data collection and its deep life and historic impacts. It made me incredibly angry at the extent that womens’ lives continue to be marginalised from health, education, road safety, employment and every day life opportunities. Men continue to be the default at the expense of women’s lives. I think this book should be a must read for everyone, especially policy and decision makers.
I haven’t been able to get to my blog in a long time. I am in the midst of my ethics application at the moment, I am teaching Information and Media students at my uni as well as going out to my super sekrit public library casual job where I get to work on a public desk for a day a week. And that doesn’t even start on home life! Continue reading →
For many people, reading fiction means escaping into another world, losing yourself in the setting, becoming one of the characters in the book and feeling that you are there too. To do this, as a reader, you need uninterrupted time, seamless moments to relish the language, space and activity taking place but, unfortunately, when your workplace commands much of your waking time or a newborn enters your household, uninterrupted time may be only half an hour whether it is your commute or your rest time between chores and baby napping. And half an hour for most readers is not sufficient to immerse and lose yourself in a novel.
For those of you who need to see the written word at least once a day, who need that tactile sense of paper and no electronic devices and for those of you who miss reading but can’t seem to delve into characters lives like you did in those pre-work committment, pre-baby times, here are a few reading alternatives that I have suggested to library borrowers who come enquiring. You may want to consider:
Short Stories:
Succicint, minimalist with an economy of words, the short story is a great place to start rediscovering reading. Short stories range from 2000 to 20 000 words making it a great entry point for many time strapped readers. Anthologies tend to have a thematic vein with a variety of authors. Some great examples are Girls Night Out, Zombies vs Unicorns, Steampunk. The other short story style is the one author with a variety of their own stories: Margo Lanagan’s Black Juice, Steven King’s Four Past Midnight, Tobsha Learner’s Yearn. Some of these stories stand alone and others are interlinked. Short stories are a great way to explore new genres, new author voices or just delve into a previously loved writing theme.
Literary Magazines:
There are many literary magazines all of which have short fiction, essays, poetry and the like. There is the New Yorker, Granta Magazine (thematic based approaches to compiling reading materials), McSweeney’s amongst others.
Observers:
Essayists, comedians, people who write about the funny, peculiar occurrences that they observe are often great reads for the busy person. Often a collection of their works can be dipped in and out of over a period of time. Some of my favourite observer/essayists are David Sedaris, Laurie Notaro, Adam Gopnik, Gervase Phinn.
Non-Fiction:
Non-fiction is a fabulous antidote to the reader who misses reading but not necessarily fiction. Dipping in and out of most non-fiction is a simpler task than with novels as they are fact driven. Wit the exception of biographies, most non-fiction doesn’t require the reader to emotionally attach themselves to character lives (though, that said, sometimes it is harder to let go of the real life people you read about in some history books). DK Books have great information design that facilitates dipping in and out of books, some arm chair travelling, dreaming of artists, reading about the military, atlases of history, unattainable homes in architecture books or science trivia books can be very rewarding reads.
Children’s Fiction:
In general, children’s novels are much shorter than adult novels and there is a plethora of enjoyable reading. From Dick King Smith’s The Waterhorse, Paul Stewart & Chris Riddell’s Far Flung Adventure Series to the darker Sisters Grimm series many of these stories often surprise adults with their themes and quality writing.
Mythology:
With the prospect of reading tales from around the world, reading mythology is a rediscovery of tales told either at the dinner table or in the classroom. From Aboriginal dreamtime, Homer’s Odyssey or Arthurian tales mythologies may be shorter reads but they have inspired many generations with their epic adventures.
Poetry and Lyrics:
Poetry and lyrics are the delivery of ideas in rhythm and cadence that stays in your mind long after you have re-shelved the book you read it in.
To add to all these, there are newspapers, comics, graphic novels and many other shorter writing options that can be suggested to readers. Websites, blogposts, zines and a number of online options are also available but for the purposes of this post I wanted to focus purely on the print reading options that are available.
For the busy worker, the lack of reading opportunities can sometimes go un-noted for many years as it occurred incrementally but for the first-time parent this transition isn’t a slow one but one which seems like a severance of a body part. And though some of the above suggestions may seem overly obvious, when someone is overtired it is easy to overlook simple ideas until someone mentions them to you.
So whether you are a time-strapped executive who is working 12 hour days, a cleaner who physically is exhausted at the end of a long shift or a new-time parent struggling to find any time to themselves, hopefully the above avenues are helpful and bring lots of reading pleasure.
Shallowreader 