And the winner of best read for the year that's been goes to Yankalilla Newsletter

Necessary Errors" by Caleb Crain was the best read since Jennifer Egan's "A Visit from the Goon Squad".

The past fortnight has been holidaying in the company of friends that humour my book club of one. I liked the Doubly J reading list prepared by musicians. A great deal of care with these brief and eloquent reviews so I'm going to make a list of what I read: 

Women in Clothes,  Sick Notes by Gwendoline Riley; The Love Affairs of Nathaniel P by Adelle Waldman (which I lent to Terence and he took to London); Katie Roiphe’s thoughts on Brooklyn literary figures; A Fortunate Age and My JD Salinger Year, both by Joanna Rakoff; Their Lips talk of Mischief by Alan Warner (which Terence liked, but couldn’t borrow as it was the library copy); music writers called Andrew (Stafford/Mueller/P Street) and Invisible Circus by Jennifer Egan.

My vote for most idiosyncratic writing style would be the Yankallia Regional News. There was an enthusiasm and physical vibrancy in the review of the art club end of year party (“although numbers were down, we had a knees up”). The spider bite columnist was afforded the right of reply to editing mistakes from a previous edition. A call out for the misplaced table tennis competition trophy, reassurance that a replacement was being organised (“if you’ve ever won this competition in past years, please give us your name”…) Compliments and complaints were restricted to the letters to editor page, with the recent council elections being the topic of the day. I love community papers for this reason. 

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