Jane Austen Ruined my Life

Jane Austen Ruined my Life by Beth Pattillo

Way back in January when I thought "Yeah, I can read 100 books in a year!" I read a review of this on Home Girl's blog. You can read her review here. It was the first in my side bar list of Interesting Books from Other Blogs. As this list grew, I decided I had to start on them, so placed this on hold at the library. It took ages to come in, but finally it did!

Emma Grant's life is a mess. Her husband left her for her teaching assistant and together they have ruined her career. Blaming Jane Austen for it all, (she after all is the one who convinced Emma that happy endings were hers for the taking!) she sets of for England, chasing what she is fairly sure a myth, but if it is true, it could save her career.

Not a taxing read. In fact, less than half way through I had worked out several things that would happen before the end of the book. Despite the predictability, I enjoyed it. It travelled along at a great pace and you were never left waiting for something to happen. I, by the way, am not an Austen fan. In fact I will confess to only having read one of her books, Northanger Abbey, and that was because it was set as a course book in English. However, given that every time I read something that has a link to another book (Like Great Expectations in Mr Pip) I now feel the need to read Jane Austen!

Push

Push by Sapphire.

I bought this after the film adaptation Precious won a couple of Oscars. Going on the theory the book is usually better than the movie, I added it to a Book Depository order.

I can't say I enjoyed this book - it's not that kind of book. Precious is 16 and pregnant for the second time. Both children are fathered by Precious' father. Her mother is aware of this. She is illiterate, overweight and wants more from her life.

It took me awhile to get into the flow of the book. It is written the way Precious speaks. This is the opening paragraph.

I was left back when I was twelve because I had a baby for my fahver. That was in 1983. I was out of school for a year. This gonna be my second baby. My daughter got Down Sinder. She's retarded. I had got left back in the second grade too, when I was seven, 'cause I couldn't read (and I still peed on myself). I should be in the eleventh grade, getting ready to go into the twelf' grade so I can gone 'n graduate. But I'm not. I'm in the ninfe grade.

 And it continues like that. While it makes in jarring to read, it gives a real voice to Precious and her situation. Some of what is described in this book may be cry out loud. The abuse she suffers is horrendous, her determination to be a better parent and provide more than her parents is heroic.

I would love to say that I feel Sapphire has greatly exaggerated Precious' plight and no one would really suffer this level of abuse. My wider reading tells me that that isn't true and Precious' plight is that of many children. While it was not a long read, it wasn't an easy one. Avoid it unless you want to be confronted.

Shallows

Shallows by Tim Winton

Shallows is set in the fictional town of Angelus, Western Australia. It's a town built on the whaling industry, and the industry is dying.

At first I though Angelus was a real town. I knew I had read the name somewhere else, but couldn't pin it down. A quick google serach (where would we be without google!) showed the reason it was familiar is because Winton has used it as a setting in more than one book.

The book focuses on a handful of characters, their relationship with the town, the whales and how the arrival of "Greenies" in the town affect them.

I find it really hard to review Winton's books. I love the way he writes. The more I read, the more sure I am that I will end up owning his books rather than just borrowing them from the library. But I think I'm not intellectual enough to truly understand them! There is lots of imagery and bits where I'm sure I'm suppose to be getting some deeper meaning. In the end though, I enjoy reading the books and that's all that really matters - right?

The Forgotten Children

The Forgotten Children by David Hill

Imagine you are poor - really poor. You live in a not so good neighbourhood. You have a couple of children and you worry every day about them being caught in this never ending cycle of poverty. Now imagine someone comes and says "we can provide your child with good food, good shelter and a good education. We will send them somewhere will they will have lots of sunshine and a chance of a better life. Sign this piece of paper and we will send them to Australia and we will educate them and train them to become farmers and farmer's wives. The opportunities are endless." Remember you are poor, you want something better for your kids, and besides, if it doesn't work out, if the kids are miserable, they will be able to come home. You sign the paper. You don't read the fine print. The print that says you have just signed over guardianship of your children and may not be able to get it back.

You stand on the train platform and wave goodbye to your children as they leave to go to the docks to sail to Australia. You are discouraged from going to see the ship off - to distressing you are told, this is what's best. Your heart breaks as you let them go, but you know they are going somewhere better, somewhere they will have a life so much better than the one you can offer them. They will be cared for, educated and given a chance of being something.

This is what many poor parents of English children believed from the late nineteenth century right up until the mid 70's when they signed that piece of paper allowing their children to migrate to Australia without them.

Child migrant schemes were run by Protestant and Catholic churches, as well as child charities such as Barnardo's and Fairbridge. Some of these schemes did deliver what was promised. A better life, education, opportunities. Others tragically didn't.

The Forgotten Children is specifically about Fairbridge Farm School at Molong. The author, David Hill, and his two brothers were sent to Fairbridge in 1959 by their mother under the one parent scheme. They were actually one of the lucky ones. The one parent scheme allowed the children to travel to Australia unaccompanied with their single parent travelling out later, finding a job, establishing a home and then reuniting with their children. Earlier children were sent on the condition that guardianship was signed over to the Australian Government until the child was 21. It was thought by supporters of the scheme that they were saving these children  from failed or irresponsible parents. Signing over guardianship prevented the children from reuniting with their families. Parents who were unlikely to want their kids back were targeted, but many of the parents did not fully understand what they were signing and from it almost impossible to reunite with their children even if they wanted to.

Sadly the reality of life at Fairbridge was nothing like what had been promised. Made to work on the farm from early in the morning and then again in the afternoon, Fairbridge children were sent to local schools, but not encouraged in any way. At Fairbridge they were responsible for keeping the cottages they lived in clean, cooking, cleaning, chopping wood, milking, baking, working in the piggery, gardening, working in the orchard plus anything else you can think of that needs to doing on the farm. Many of the cottage mothers saw the children as their own personal slaves, issuing orders and never showing any affection. Some of these children were as young as 4 and a long way from home. They were separated from siblings and told to toughen up if they cried for their mothers. Aged four. My daughter's age.

This book broke my heart in so many ways. I felt for the parents who tried to get their children back and couldn't. The parents who thought they were sending their children to a better life only to discover through letters it was hell. I cried for the children who were abused, mistreated and destroyed by a system that saw them as labour and things to be used. I despair for those who told their stories to David Hill, whose lives were ruined by a childhood a Fairbridge, who cannot show affection to their own children because they never received it themselves. I mourn the lost years for families, for children who years later found parents they thought had abandoned them only to discover they had tried desperately to get their kids back and were blocked at every turn.

I can't imagine putting my kids on a boat and not knowing when I will see them next. I can't imagine being that desperate. I can't imagine the anger and guilt I would feel when I discovered that the better life I had been promised for my kids was a lie.

Books like The Forgotten Children are hard to read but so necessary. We need to know about this. We need to acknowledge these children, parents, families and the abuse they suffered. It won't make what they suffered any better, but maybe it will show them that someone does care about them.

Dymocks 2010 Booklover's Top 101 Reads.

I grabbed this list from The Random Ramblings of a Drunken Monkey

Bold = want to read
Crossed out = have read
Plain = don't really have any interest in reading

1. The Twilight Saga by Stephenie Meyer
2. The Harry Potter Series by J.K. Rowling
3. Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
4. The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger
5. The Lord of the Rings Trilogy by J.R.R. Tolkien
6. The Book Thief by Marcus Zusak
7. To Kill a Mocking Bird by Harper Lee
8. The Millennium Trilogy by Stieg Larsson
9. My Sister's Keeper by Jodi Picoult
10. The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini
11. The Bronze Horseman by Paullina Simons
12. Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
13. Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte
14. The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold
15. Vampire Academy by Richelle Mead
16. Magician by Raymond E. Feist
17. Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
18. The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown
19. Cloudstreet by Tim Winton
20. The Host by Stephenie Meyer
21. Mao's Last Dancer by Li Cunxin
22. Atonement by Ian McEwan
23. The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien
24. Angels and Demons by Dan Brown
25. A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini
26. Cross Stitch by Diana Gabaldon
27. Shantaram by Gregory David Roberts
28. The Slap by Christos Tsiolkas
29. Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell
30. Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden
31. The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams
32. Tomorrow When the War Began by John Marsden
33. Obernewtyn by Isobelle Carmody
34. The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas by John Boyne
35. The Inheritance Series by Christopher Paolini
36. The Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde
37. Guernsey Literary & Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer
38. The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde
39. The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins
40. Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
41. Ice Station by Matthew Reilly
42. The Power of One by Bryce Courtenay
43. Persuasion by Jane Austen
44. Tully by Paullina Simons
45. Seven Ancient Wonders by Matthew Reilly
46. Breath by Tim Winton
47. The Mortal Instruments Series by Cassandra Clare
48. Life of Pi by Yann Martel
49. A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry
50. The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho
51. Emma by Jane Austen
52. The Other Boleyn Girl by Philippa Gregory
53. The Bible - have read bits, no desire to read it all
54. Six Sacred Stones by Matthew Reilly
55. A Fortunate Life by A.B. Facey
56. We Need To Talk About Kevin by Lionel Shriver
57. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
58. Anne of Green Gables by L.M. Montgomery
59. The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy
60. The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon
61. People of the Book by Geraldine Brooks
62. The Lost Symbol by Dan Brown
63. The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova
64. Interview with the Vampire by Anne Rice
65. Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky
66. The Sookie Stackhouse Series by Charlaine Harris
67. Tuesdays with Morrie by Mitch Albom
68. Five Greatest Warriors by Matthew Reilly
69. On the Jellicoe Road by Melina Marchetta
70. The Princess Bride by William Goldman
71. The Five People You Meet in Heaven by Mitch Albom
72. Wicked by Gregory Maguire
73. Eat Pray Love by Elizabeth Gilbert
74. Audacity of Hope by Barack Obama
75. Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett
76. Dewey by Vicki Myron
77. Dirt Music by Tim Winton
78. Marley and Me by John Grogan
79. Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
80. Dune by Frank Herbert
81. The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
82. The Memory Keeper's Daughter by Kim Edwards
83. Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
84. War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
85. The Road by Cormac McCarthy
86. Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides
87. The Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis
88. The Forgotten Garden by Kate Morton
89. Possession by AS Byatt
90. Finnikin of The Rock by Melina Marchetta
91. No 1 Ladies' Detective Agency by Alexander McCall Smith
92. Graceling by Kristin Cashore
93. The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver
94 .The Secret History by Donna Tartt
95. Silent Country by Di Morrissey
96. Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel
97. Her Fearful Symmetry by Audrey Niffenegger
98. The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd
99. Still Alice by Lisa Genova
100. The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle
101. Gallipoli by Les Carlyon

Twilight inspired song!

The Christmas Quilt

The Christmas Quilt by Jennifer Chaverini

The eighth book in the Elm Creek Quilt Series

While this is the eighth book in the series, I am a little confused as where is in the timeline of the books. It appears to me to be set earlier in the series, several things are resolved, or at least are started to be resolved, in earlier books are back at the beginning. It also touched on many issues that have dealt with in earlier books in regards to Sylvia and the Bergstrom family. Lots of stories we have heard earlier are repeated, but not expanded. It was almost a compact history of what has happened so far.

Despite this, I still enjoyed the story. The stories about various christmas traditions for the Bergstrom's came about were lovely and I now have an almost overwhelming need to learn how to make strudel!