August AwardsCAT: Stonewall Book Awards and Miles Franklin Award

Stonewall Book Awards

From the website:

The first and most enduring award for GLBT books is the Stonewall Book Awards, sponsored by the American Library Association's Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgender Round Table. Since Isabel Miller's Patience and Sarah received the first award in 1971, many other books have been honored for exceptional merit relating to the gay/lesbian/bisexual/transgender experience.

The awards are announced in January - the winners for this year are:

Barbara Gittings Literature Award: Desert Boys by Chris McCormick
Israel Fishman Nonfiction Award?: How to Survive the Plague: The Inside Story of How Citizens and Science Tamed AIDS by David France
Mike Morgan & Larry Romans Children’s & Young Adult Literature Award: Magnus Chase and the Gods of Asgard: The Hammer of Thor by Rick Riordan and If I Was Your Girl by Meredith Russo

The honored books for 2017 and the nominations and winners for previous years can be found at the website above.

I'm planning on reading Fingersmith by Sarah Waters, a 2003 Stonewall Honor in Literature.

Miles Franklin Literary Award

From the website:

The Miles Franklin Literary Award is Australia’s most prestigious literature prize. Established through the will of My Brilliant Career author, Miles Franklin, the prize is awarded each year to a novel which is of the highest literary merit and presents Australian life in any of its phases.

First presented in 1957, the Award helps to support authors and to foster uniquely Australian literature. Miles Franklin believed that “Without an indigenous literature, people can remain alien in their own soil." She also had first-hand experience of struggling to make a living as a writer and was the beneficiary of two literary prizes herself.

The 2017 finalists were announced in June:
An Isolated Incident by Emily Maguire
The Last Days of Ava Langdon by Mark O'Flynn
Their Brilliant Careers by Ryan O'Neill
Waiting by Philip Salom
Extinctions by Josephine Wilson

The winner is announced in August.

The 2017 longlist and previous years' winners and long lists can be found at the website above.

I've got three books on the shelves to consider for this month:
The Great Fire by Shirley Hazzard
The Night Guest by Fiona McFarlane
The Narrow Road to the Deep North by Richard Flanagan

I also have three books by Miles Franklin and I'm going to try to read one of these as well:
My Brillian Career
My Career Goes Bung
Some Everyday Folk and Dawn

I also have The Great Fire by Shirley Hazzard and The Narrow Road to the Deep North by Richard Flanagan on my shelf so I'll read at least one of those.

I think I'm going to read The Light Between Oceans by M.L. Stedman which was a Miles Franklin finalist in 2013.

I have The narrow road to the deep north by Richard Flanagan, shortlisted for the Miles Franklin award in 2014 and Theft: a love story by Peter Carey, shortlisted in 2007.

I use tags to help me find something on my tbr. But nothing's coming up for either of these. I might have to take some time to look closer, and I may or may not get to something for this, depending...

I've found one I think I'll try (Stonewall Awards):
Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic / Alison Bechdel

There are a few of the Stonewall ones I've already read that I'd recommend:
Will Grayson Will Grayson / John Green (especially in audio!)
Frog Music / Emma Donoghue
Middlesex / Jeffrey Eugenides
Annabel / Kathleen Winter

I am planning on reading Sarah Thornhill by Kate Grenville. This book was on the 2012 Miles Franklin Long List.

I just finished When the Moon was Ours by Anna-Marie McLemore. This won the Stonewall Award so, I readed it in July and will count it in August.

For the Stonewall I've got Fun Home and And the Band Played On on the shelf, and The Narrow Road to the Deep North for the Miles Franklin.

I'll probably read Alison Bechtel. I read Are You My Mother? and quite liked it.

I plan to read Parrot and Olivier in America by Peter Carey. It was longlisted for the Miles Franklin award in 2010. If I have time, I'll also read And the Band Played On by Randy Shilts.

I finished The Song of Achilles. Stonewall Honor Books in Literature for 2013. I was not expecting quite so much "boy on boy" action, but I really enjoyed it. A wonderfully sad tale. This book brought Achilles to life for me--he always came across as wooden and one-dimensional in other reads.

I've got The Natural Way of Things by Charlotte Wood in my tbr. It was part of the 2016 shortlist for the Miles Franklin Award, so this is a great excuse to take it with me on vacation.

Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic / Alison Bechdel
4 stars

Alison Bechdel grew up in the 1970s. Her family lived in a huge home, a home her father was constantly fixing up. Her father was a high school teacher and a funeral home director in a small town, and though Alison didn’t know it, he was gay. Alison herself realized she was a lesbian when she was in college. The book looks at her life while she was growing up, and in particular, her relationship with her often-distant father.

I really enjoyed this. It is a graphic novel and I liked the mostly simple artwork. Many of the literary references were over my head, though (Alison and her father shared a love of reading). The chapters mostly focus on a particular topic, so one would mainly focus on her father’s death, one on growing up around the “fun house” (nickname for the funeral home!), another her father’s restoration projects, etc. So, although it generally went in chronological order, it wasn’t completely. I still thought it flowed well, though.

Shortlisted for the Miles Franklin award in 2014 The narrow road to the deep north by Richard Flanagan was a miss for me. Although many readers loved it, I thought it overdone, over-written, with too much philosophizing - a book that strives too hard to be profound.

>16 VivienneR: I'm about 40% through and keep finding reasons I need to read something else. I've got a couple of other books on my shelf I could read for the Miles Franklin and I'll probably put this one aside.

>16 VivienneR: That was one of the ones I was considering, I think I'll pass on it for now.

>17 clue: & >18 LisaMorr: Yes, there are others that are better. I'm amazed that I finished it because it annoyed me so much. A cataclysm like the Burma Death Railway deserves better.

I finished The Broken Shore, which was on the 2006 longlist for the Franklin Award. This was a great read and I hope to make time for the follow up, Truth, which won the award in 2010.

ETA: I think the touchstone works now.

My husband was reading The Broken Shore recently and recommended it. Another one for the wishlist!

(Touchstone is ok now.)

ETA The touchstone looks ok, but it didn't actually show as a link.

>22 MissWatson: I read a very positive review of Truth recently which encouraged me to find both books, and on the strength of this I'll probably track down the some of the others, too.

I have completed Sarah Thornhill by Kate Grenville. This book was long-listed for the 2012 Miles Franklin Award. It also is the concluding book in the author's Colonial Trilogy of which all three books were excellent.

I finished The Great Fire by Shirley Hazzard, winner of the Miles Franklin award in 2004. A beautifully written novel about a soldier and his experiences after WWII.

I've just started Fingersmith by Sarah Waters - quite interesting novel so far; it's about a 17-yr old orphan, brought up in the pickpocket/thieving community in London, who becomes part of a plan to steal the fortune of another orphaned girl who lives outside of London at a bookish estate with her uncle.

I finished Fingersmith by Sarah Waters, about a young woman who is a 'fingersmith' or thief getting involved in a big con job with another con artist. The first part is written from the point of view of the young woman involved in the con of a second young woman, the second part in the point of view of the second woman and part three goes back to the first young woman's point of view. I thought it was very well done and I must say I was caught off guard by the ending of part one. Following along similar events to part one but with a different point of view was interesting.

Fingersmith was a 2003 Stonewall honored book.

The 2017 Miles Franklin Award winner will be announced on Thursday - I'll report back then!

The Miles Franklin Award goes to Extinctions by Josephine Wilson.

From The Guardian:

Wilson describes Extinctions as a novel “trying to come to understand the emotional complexity of belonging”. The story follows retired engineer Frederick Lothian, an expert on concrete who, at 69, is a relatively young and reclusive resident of a retirement village. His life changes when he strikes up a friendship with his neighbour, Jan, and the secrets of his past confront him anew.

I'm terribly late with my update, but for this challenge, I finished Tomboy Survival Guide, a 2017 Stonewall Honour book. This is the memoirs of transgender performance artist Ivan Coyote and I highly recommend it. Coyote is a superb storyteller and the book is full of humour and warmth.

>29 LisaMorr: Thanks for the update - that sounds like a good one, so I'll add it to my list!