December already, and I have completed my bingo card for the year – BINGO! Over the past twelve months, with Theresa and Amanda, and several others, I have taken part in several challenges, including Book Bingo. This post will focus on my final square – a novel (or book) of over 500 pages, and in my next and final post for the year, I will do my final wrap up of the challenge, to link into an overall 2019 wrap-up in the new year.
My final square was the 500-page book – which I always felt this year would be difficult as not many books had come across my desk that were 500 or more pages. However, on #LoveYourBookshopDay, I bought a book called Rebel Women Who Changed Australia by Susanna de Vries, and then received a review copy of The Book of Dust Volume Two: The Secret Commonwealth by Philip Pullman, and decided that would work too – as it was well over 500 pages. In fact, it was well over 600 pages!
First, The Secret Commonwealth. Fans of His Dark Materials and La Belle Sauvage have been waiting a long time for this one. Taking place ten years after we leave Lyra in Oxford after her adventures, and twenty years after La Belle Sauvage, where Lyra is delivered by Alice and Malcolm to the safety of Jordan College, we are back with Lyra and Pan. But something is different. Readers have known something has changed with Lyra and Pan since The Amber Spyglass, but for a time, we’re not sure what – until a series of events sets Lyra and Pan off on a journey across Europe and Asia, in search of a secret city for daemons! Filled with adventure, thrills and mystery interspersed with the fantasy themes, this is a wonderful addition to the series, and very much deserves the lengthy review I gave it, especially after the way it ended and I hope we get a resolution to it soon. Some books need 500 or more pages – and this is one of them, as there is so much going on with Lyra, Pan, Malcolm, Hannah, Alice and the Magisterium, as well as old friends, Ma Costa and Farder Coram, that no word was wasted, and there was action and intrigue on every page and it slowed down where it needed to, and sped up where it needed to as well.
The second book that I read for this square was Rebel Women Who Changed Australia, a biography that included the stories of women throughout Australian history from a variety of backgrounds who made ground-breaking changes in the industries they went into, even though many would doubt them. Many overlapped as well, and knew each other, which made it more interesting. Many of these stories were ones that I did not know initially, and nor did I know many of the names. I feel knowing these stories of these women, like not knowing our Indigenous history, is a huge oversight in our education system, where many accounts we read and learn about are from white men, even if these other, more diverse accounts were available. Knowing them is the exception, rather than the rule, and I believe there is room for all to be told, starting with books like this, which are really interesting and filled with the stories we should know.
Rows Across:
Row One: BINGO
A book with a red cover: Children of the Dragon: Race for the Red Dragon by Rebecca Lim – #AWW2019
Beloved Classic: Seven Little Australians by Ethel Turner – AWW2018
A novel that has more than 500 pages: Rebel Women who Changed Australia by Susanna de Vries – #AWW2019, The Book of Dust Volume 2: The Secret Commonwealth by Philip Pullman
A novella no more than 150 pages: Deltora Quest: The Forest of Silence by Emily Rodda – #AWW2019
Prize winning book: Somewhere Around the Corner by Jackie French – #AWW2019, Alexander Altmann A10567 by Suzy Zail – #AWW2019
Row three: BINGO
Novel that has 500 pages or more: Rebel Women who Changed Australia by Susanna de Vries
– #AWW2019, The Book of Dust Volume 2: The Secret Commonwealth by Philip Pullman
Fictional biography about a woman from history: Fled by Meg Keneally – #AWW2019
Themes of justice: What Lies Beneath Us by Kirsty Ferguson – AWW2019
Book set on the Australian coast: The House of Second Chances by Esther Campion – AWW2019
Written by an author under the age of 35: Archibald, The Naughtiest Elf in the World Causes Trouble with the Easter Bunny by Skye Davidson – #AWW2019
Historical: The Familiars by Stacey Halls
Well, that’s it for the year! I’ll be writing my final wrap up post for the twenty-first in the next week or so, and all the reviews will be collected there.
My first prize winner book won the Children’s Book Council of Australia Honour Book, and this is
Title: The Unforgiving City
She’s trying to help her sister, Milli, who has debts to pay off, and is about to give birth. In her quest to save the child, the seemingly separate secrets they are trying to protect will inevitably collide – and the fates of these three people will remain unsure until the very last minute.
Title: The Burnt Country
Determined to help her family, and stand up for herself, Kate does what she can to get them through a bushfire that sweeps across the region. I was swept up in this book, because it allowed Kate to be a woman of her time, but at the same time, she stood up for what she believed in, and what was right. She did not let what many people saw as normal and right dictate what she should do, and she showed compassion and strength in the face of accusations that at one point, she feels she cannot defend herself against.