Never Have I Ever...

In which the reluctant Substacker finds that once she gets started, she actually has kind of a lot to say. Welcome to February's wrap up.

1. “Never trust anyone who hasn’t brought a book with them.” - Lemony Snicket

(You should especially never trust non-readers if they are trying to sell you *their* book. Every now and then, I am totally floored when I’m having a conversation with a writer and they tell me they *don’t like to read.*)

You’ve probably seen by now that Australia Reads and Monash University have released their Understanding Australian Readers report earlier this month, looking at the reading habits of Australians from a behavioural science angle.

Their findings are laid out in a 92 page report, which identified that 30% of Australians aged over 16 did not read a book at all in the last 12 months… there’s a whole video including a panel discussion about the reading habits of Australians that you can watch here, or if you’re interested you can read the report on their website. Which audience segment do you fall into? (I’m an avid reader who sometimes falls into the engaged reader category when life gets on top of me.)

Off the back of this, I decided to do some deep thinking about my own reading habits, and to collect some suggestions from people on Instagram about how they fit more reading into their lives. Here’s what people suggested, as well as a few I’ve added myself:

• Re-read something you loved as a child

• Hide your phone

• Take a doona day just to read

• Listen to an audiobook while you drive, clean, exercise, do craft or cook

• Take a book with you whenever you go to appointments

• Read before bed, even if it’s only for ten minutes

• Set yourself up in a favourite spot with a cup of tea and your snacks of choice

• Pair up with a bookish friend for some ‘silent reading’ hang outs

• Read first thing in the morning when you get up, before you check any of your emails or social media accounts

• Choose books you actually enjoy and want to keep picking up

• Read multiple books at a time if you can, so you can pick up the one you’re in the mood for

(Thank you to Georgia, Barbara, Jodie, Fiona, Jess, Karla, Matthew, Elizabeth, Clare, Karen and Louise for your input)

I realised over the course of this month that there have been a few days where I have spent the first hour of my day glued to a phone screen, and then wondered why I felt anxious and unsettled for the rest of the day. My day starts at six most of the time, with the idea being that this gives me half an hour of reading time before I have to start getting ready for work on a weekday, but somehow, this became half an hour of scroll time. So I’m hitting the reset button, and will be putting my phone into my handbag without checking it until I’ve read at least 20 pages in the morning. Repetition is what builds habits, and soon, I hope I won’t even have to think about it.

I’ve also been listening to audiobooks on my commute in to work this week, which has been great for a number of reasons. I’m in two book clubs, and both of them are doing books I have already read in March, so I decided to reread using audiobooks to try this tip out. Not only have I increased my reading, I’ve also found commuting (and getting stuck in traffic) less stressful, so that’s a big win if you ask me.

If you have other tips for reading more, make sure you put those in the comments. I’d also love to hear your thoughts on the Australia Reads report.

2. '“Try, and fail, but never fail to try.” -John Quincy Adams

Every month, I like to try and challenge myself to balance the number of books from my TBR (to be read pile) that I read with the number of new books that I add to the pile, so it doesn’t grow too much. At the beginning of this year, I had about 400 unread books (yes, really. I was a bookseller for a long time, and old habits die hard. I am single-handedly saving the book industry so leave me alone, okay?) and by December 31, I would love to have that number be much, much lower. I haven’t set a number goal for how low I would like that to be, however, because I don’t want to feel like a failure the way I did at the end of last year. So my goal is just for it to be less…

I’m also doing a low buy year this year, and because I knew that I would never be able to cut book buying out of my life entirely, I set some rules around my book buying to help guide me. The main rule is that I am limited to purchasing four book books per month on a rolling ‘budget’ style, whereby if I go overboard one month, that eats into the number of books I can buy another month, with some caveats.

• A book by someone I know does not count towards my four

• If I read something at the library but then decide I want my own copy, that doesn’t count towards my four (as it does not add to my TBR)

• Books bought with vouchers don’t count

• Books bought in op shops or found in Little Free Libraries don’t count

• Books I am sent to review don’t count

Even despite these rules, allowing me to not have to count a massive World of Books order that I did with a Christmas voucher, I still went over my four this month. In fact, considering that February is such a short month, I managed to fit in a fair bit of shopping, and struck out in my low buy challenge altogether. (My low buy in general has its own set of rules too but we can cover that another month.)

I guess this is another area where I am hitting the reset button in March…

I had already used up one book from February’s four in January, and I’ve bought six books this month, leaving me with only one ‘credit’ left to use in March…

As a bookworm, though, I would have to say that it’s worth it. We’re striving for progress, not perfection! Here are the culprits:

• Upon a Starlit Tide by Kell Woods (Australian)

• Emily Wilde’s Compendium of Lost Tales by Heather Fawcett

• The Wedding People by Alison Espach (recommended in Natasha Lester’s Substack)

• I Who Have Never Known Men by Jacqueline Harpman (recommended in Sara Foster’s Substack)

• Orlando by Virginia Woolf

• A Swim in the Pond in the Rain by George Saunders

Starting TBR number for Feb: 395

Goal: 400

Finish: 401 - which means I’ll have to look for something to unhaul this afternoon!

3. “Never learn anything from history” - Kate Beaton*

I tried out a scheduled post on Facebook last week. I wanted to experiment with posting at the times when analytics told me that most of my followers were active, and I worked really hard on a post about the American Submarine Base in Fremantle during WWII.

The post tanked.

But, not one to waste anything, I’ve decided to share the information again with you here, because I thought it was really interesting. Maybe you will too!

[Image: USS Holland subs Fremantle 1942. Image copyright expired - public domain - held at the Australian War Memorial]

Did you know that between 1942 and 1945, Fremantle was home to the second largest submarine base in the world?

(The biggest one was Pearl Harbour...)

The presence of American submariners meant that Fremantle was a hub of activity, as Australian women (single or otherwise) met the visiting American servicemen who may or may not have been as charming and handsome as Hollywood had led them to believe.

The following is a quote from a talk by Madison Lloyd-Jones (one of the authors of When War Came to Fremantle), extracted from a paper presented at Fremantle Studies Day in 2010...

"In 2006, a replica of the instruction manual produced in 1942 by the United States Army for their troops destined for Australia was published. It contains what the US Department of Defence thought their servicemen needed to know in order to understand the history and culture of Australia and get a sense of the people that called it home. Amusingly, Australians are described as having ‘the slangiest of all the brands of English and it is noted that Australians have a genius for using ‘bloody’ nearly every other word. Kindly the Australian people, and ‘the Digger’ in particular, are described as being ‘instantaneously sociable’. Unfortunately, however, the guide lacks a specific impression of Australian women except to say that ‘Australians, especially the girls, are a bit amazed at the politeness of American soldiers which perhaps provides an insight into the typical behaviour and manners of Australian men at the time and also indicates that American servicemen already had a big hint about the best way to charm the local women when they got here."

In my book, The Distance Between Dreams, one of my protagonists, Sarah, is one such young woman who encounters a a dashing American serviceman... but to find out if he's really as charming as she thinks he is, you're going to have to read the book.

(To read Lloyd-Jones' full article you can click here, it's a great read.)

To pre-order The Distance Between Dreams, contact your favourite bookshop.

* Never Learn Anything from History is the title of Kate Beaton’s amazing graphic novel that makes me cry with laughter.

4. Never smile at a crocodile

Random things of interest (or not) from my camera roll. If you say you don’t have a million screenshots on your phone, I don’t believe you.

I’m doing a leadership course at the moment through my day job (where I am a librarian, in case you did not know or could not tell.) Because my phone is clearly spying on me, Facebook keeps showing me inspirational leadership quotes full of buzzwords, but this list of lessons from Ted Lasso struck a chord. It’s not so much lessons in leadership as it is lessons in life.

We have a Ted Lasso quote on the whiteboard on our fridge at home that says “It may not work out how you think it will or hope it does. But believe me, it will all work out.”

Might be time for a re-watch.

5. Reading, watching, making, listening

Reading: The Night Watch by Sarah Waters (physical read) and One Day by David Nicholls (audio)

Watching: Spent the weekend binge watching Motherland and its spin-off Amandaland, and have now moved on to This Way Up, also created by Sharon Horgan

Making: Crocheting a gnome doorstop, but paused temporarily during construction of the hat to make myself a wrist rest…

Listening: Light Hit My Face Like a Straight Right - Mallrat; People Watching - Sam Fender; Forgiving Spree - Slowly Slowly

Thanks for taking the time to read all the way to the end (if in fact you have.) If you’ve made it this far, tell me what you’re recommending this month.