Top 100 Australian Books
The ABC is currently running this event: vote for your favourite Australian books.
I don't know why I like these sorts of things. Of course I've gone and had a look at the titles they suggest, and looked to see which ones I've read, and which ones I might say I like or even consider to be my "favourite". What does it mean to say something is my favourite book? Does it mean I have to have read it many times, and enjoyed it each time? Is it a book that made me think and that stayed with me for a long time after I finished reading it? I can probably come up with a list of books I've read and really liked, so maybe those would count as my "favourite" books...
You can vote for up to ten books; in no particular order I voted for these:
- Cloudstreet by Tim Winton
- The Arrival by Shaun Tan
- The Broken Shore by Peter Temple
- Unreliable Memoirs by Clive James
- The Getting of Wisdom by Henry Handel Richardson
- Don't Take Your Love to Town by Ruby Langford Ginibi
- The Merry-Go-Round in the Sea by Randolph Stow
- I Can Jump Puddles by Alan Marshall
- My Place by Sally Morgan
- Pastures of the Blue Crane by Hesba Brinsmead
I read quite a few Australian novels in the first couple of years after my family immigrated to Perth, back in the 1980s. One of my aunts, who had moved here some years before we did, helped us to get set up by providing us with furniture, kitchen utensils and other things a family might use in a new place. She also thoughtfully provided us with a small box of books which she probably bought from an op shop. From memory it had quite a few titles in it that I found interesting, including I Can Jump Puddles which made a big impression on me at the time, just from the descriptions of rural Australian life in the early twentieth century. There were also some novels by Ivan Southall (Ash Road in particular, which was about three teenaged boys who accidentally start a fire that turns into a destructive bush fire) and Patricia Wrightson. There was also a very interesting collection of quotations called Whole Grains. I remember the 15-year-old me being unfamiliar with many of the people whose sayings were collected in that book, and not understanding much of it, but it was fascinating nonetheless (who were these people?? and what were they talking about??). I started looking up some of these people in the public library and learning a bit more about Western culture, music, history, literature and so on. I really need to dig up Whole Grains, I'm sure I've saved it and it's somewhere in one of my bookshelves.
I read Unreliable Memoirs in high school and I remember being amazed by Clive James' humour and irreverence, and the fact that I was reading this in school. And to actually enjoy the book! I was used to reading rather boring things in school, not "real books".
I really wanted to learn about Australian Aboriginal people (so much so that I decided I wanted to study anthropology at university, but that's another story). One of the books in the box was Because A White Man'll Never Do It by Kevin Gilbert. I remember when I read this book I had no idea about the history of colonisation and its impact on Aboriginal people at all. It led me to read other books like My Place and Don't Take Your Love to Town. (Now I'm thinking I need to keep reading more works by Aboriginal writers.)
When I think back, that box of books from my aunt was eclectic and surprisingly interesting. Of course there were a few Reader's Digest Condensed Books in the box (and I'm sure I would have read those and even enjoyed some of them) but I'm so glad they weren't the only books in that box; I think it was instrumental in helping me start to learn a bit about Australia.