Great Aussie Reads Challenge Wrap Up

My Great Aussie Reads challenge incorporates the books I have read for the Australian Women Writer's challenge, plus those written by Australian male writers. As I will summarise my AWW books in a separate post, I will concentrate only on those by male writers in this post.

I am not sure why, but basically all my GAR books by male writers are non-fiction - with a fairly even distribution of biography/memoir and true crime. I didn't deliberately set out to only include those genres, but perhaps that is just my reading preferences playing themselves out.

I enjoyed all the biography/memoir books I read from Ian Thorpe to Jim Stynes and Wally Lewis. I found Wally's story particularly inspiring. Having grown up in the era he was indeed "the King" in Queensland, I had no idea of the private hell he was enduring as he struggled to conceal his battle with epilepsy. Forced to admit that he had a serious health issue after having a seizure on air, Wally eventually decided to undergo invasive brain surgery in an attempt to reduce the debilitating effect epilepsy was having on his life. While it was successful and he has since made an amazing recovery, the time following the surgery was very tough and he is very candid about just how low an ebb he sank to as he convalesced. My favourite biography was that of Saroo Brierley, who, after getting himself lost in the massive city of Calcutta as a small child was placed in an orphanage and then adopted to an Australian family. While he loved his adoptive family and his life in Australia, part of him could not let go of his own family in India. Yet he had no way to find them as all he had to go on was his childhood memory of the small village he came from. In an amazing twist of fate and thanks to Google Earth, Saroo eventually traced the amazing train journey he had made as a child back to his village and his family. It took years of searching and plenty of patience, but the reunion with his family was nothing short of miraculous. It is a truly inspirational book. Ugly by Robert Hoge was also an interesting and inspiring story.

In the field of true crime, I covered police corruption in Three Crooked Kings and a cold case murder mystery in Who Killed Betty Shanks? I found The Satin Man to be a compelling read, detailing a new theory in who was responsible for the abduction and presumed murder of the Beaumont children back in 1966. Almost fifty years on this case still fascinates and frustrates as we as a nation seek a definitive answer once and for all. While fairly circumstantial, journalist Alan Whitacker certainly puts across a plausible theory that convinced me. Another fifty year old mystery also grabbed my attention in JFK: The Smoking Gun. It seems a little odd that a book about an American president has ended up in an Australian author challenge, but Aussie detective Colin McLaren has spent years researching probably the most famous crime of the twentieth century and he too has put across an entirely plausible theory. Basing his work on that of a backyard ballistics expert Howard Donohue, if nothing else this book proves that Oswald did not fire the fatal bullet that shattered John Kennedy's skull. Having also seen the documentary, I am convinced he has solved the case, although like the Beaumont mystery it is something that will probably never have a definitive answer that the general public will wholeheartedly accept.

Once again I have enjoyed participating in the Great Aussie Reads challenge. As an Australian author myself, I have discovered the benefit of supporting my fellow authors but also discovering just what is out there if you dig a bit beyond the international best sellers that get all the prime positioning in our book shops.

My final count was 71 books read and 42 reviewed. A great year of reading!

To see all the titles read for the challenge go to: https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/7584609-helen-mckenna?shelf=great-aussie-reads-2013

You can check out the Great Aussie Reads website at http://www.greataussiereads.com