No, not me, much as I wish it were! I'm talking books. Today being the day after International Women's Day, I thought to feature women in this week's Monday Musings. But how? Then I remembered that somewhere last year I'd seen a list of books turning 50, so decided to take inspiration from that and share books by Aussie women which are turning 50 this year, meaning they were published in 1976. Researching this wasn't easy. Wikipedia's 1976 in Australian literature was inadequate, but I have beefed it up somewhat now.

And just like that, it's autumn. I can't believe summer here downunder is already over, but this is what happens. Summer comes and goes, and then I have to wait months and months for it to come again. Oh well, Six Degrees will continue, so let's continue get on with it ... but first, the usual reminder that if you don't know this meme and how it works, please check Kate's blog - booksaremyfavouriteandbest. The first rule is that Kate sets our starting book. This month, she nominated a book I have read ...

Aaron Fa'Aoso and Michelle Scott Tucker's Spirit of the crocodile is a children's/YA book, which makes it atypical reading for me. However, I'm not averse breaking my rules occasionally, and so I made an exception for this book - mainly because of its collaborative authorship and its setting. Aaron Fa'aoso and Michelle Scott Tucker have collaborated before - on Fa'Aoso's memoir, So far so good. It is, apparently, the first memoir by a Torres Strait Islander to be published commercially. Last year I posted on another collaborative memoir, …

Last November, I announced the creation of the new 20/40 Publishing Prize by the wonderful (and local-ish to me), independent, non-profit publisher, Finlay Lloyd. Now, eleven months later, the awardin...

One of my retirement activities is to co-ordinate a little band of volunteer indexers at the National Film and Sound Archive. Not only do we do useful work for the Archive, but we get to socialise a l...

In her prose piece, "Ocean of story" (my post), Christina Stead wrote that It is only when the short story is written to a rigid plan, or done as an imitation, that it dies. It dies when it is pinned ...

I shocked my reading group last week when I announced during our discussion of Pat Barker's novel, The women of Troy, that I was tiring of feminist re-imaginings of historical women. This is not to sa...