We’re close to Christmas and the prospect of summer holidays. What better way to banish the fears and challenges of the pandemic than to lose ourselves in reading? In this post, I’ll share with you the books I’ve put aside for summer reading.
I was lucky enough to have attended a live writers festival at the beginning of December. The BAD Sydney Crime Writers Festival was held over four days at the NSW State Library in Macquarie Street. The whole experience was thrilling, from walking from Wynyard Station up Martin Place again, passing the giant City of Sydney Christmas tree, to the enjoyment of watching authors talk about their books. Most exciting was the opportunity to chat to writers and book lovers again in those incidental conversations that only live events allow.
And then there was a tempting display of books and the opportunity to have them signed plus a $20 book voucher for signing up to four events in one day, a clever marketing ploy I found impossible to resist.
These are the books I brought home for summer reading:
- Benevolence by Julie Jansen published by Magabala Books in 2020. A work of historical fiction based on the life of Muraging (Mary James), a Darug woman in early 1800s Sydney, who was given as a girl to the Parramatta Native School and went on to have a remarkable life.
- Other People’s Houses by Kelli Hawkins published by HarperCollins in 2021. A thriller built on the idea that came to Kelli Hawkins in the night of someone who attends houses open for inspection and takes home a small momento from each one.
- Treasure and Dirt by Chris Hammer published by Allen & Unwin in 2021. A new work of Australian noir from the author of Scrublands, a book that had me on the edge of my seat. Crime and investigation in an opal-mining town in the outback.
- Leaping into Waterfalls by Bernadette Brennan published by Allen & Unwin in 2021. A biography of novelist Gillian Mears, author of Foal’s Bread. Bernadette Brennan is a gifted biographer who wrote a marvellous book about another of my favourite writers (A Writing Life: Helen Garner and Her Work).
- Too Much Lip by Melissa Lucashenko published by University of Queensland Press in 2018. This novel won the Miles Franklin Award in 2019 and is one I have been keen to read. I was inspired even more by the author’s talk at the BAD Sydney Festival.
- A Few Right Thinking Men by Sulari Gentill published by PanteraPress in 2010. This is the first novel in a detective series set in 1930s Australia. A friend recommended Gentill’s crime fiction, and I was eager to read her work, particularly after the author’s hilarious contribution to a debate at the BAD Sydney festival on whether to kill the dog.
- After Story by Larissa Behrendt published by University of Queensland Press in 2021. This novel combines a story of loss and mystery with the entertainment of a fictional tour of England’s literary sites. At its centre is a complicated mother-daughter relationship. Who could resist?
Wishing you all the pleasures of the festive season and a happy New Year!
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Jenny, I’ll be interested to hear what you think of the Sulari Gentil book. I have always thought she wasn’t a particularly good writer, or perhaps it’s that she has some irritating mannerisms, and yet I’ve read all the books in that series, so there must be something good about them.
Hi Carley
I’ll let you know when I’ve read it, probably next week. Of the list, I’ve read Devotion (great), Other People’s Houses (a good thriller) and Too Much Lip (hard-hitting, confronting yet full of life and humour). At the moment I’m reading Cloud Cuckoo Land, the latest novel from Anthony Doerr (imaginative story telling with multiple times and places, all coming together at the end). It’s a feast of reading.
Sorry for the delayed response, Carley. I have only read the first in the series so you have a greater base than I do for any evaluative comment on Gentil’s writing. What I enjoyed most was the historical setting rather than the mystery element of A Few Right-Thinking Men.I found it an easy book to read with nothing to break the flow of my reading. I’ll have to read some more of Sulari Gentil.