This turns out to be ten of my
favourite books for this year but keeping it down to ten was difficult! By "favourite", I think I mean ones that are most memorable
and ones that please me to have now read.
Some were hard reads while others were entertainment.
I've tried to rank the books in
order of favouritism, which is no easy task.
Bill Gammage's book has a head start because it's a physical book, with
sixty pages of colour plates - when I saw them I had to buy it. Except for Coorinna, which I bought
in a second-hand bookstore, the others are all ebooks, some of which I've
edited (eg from PDF files) to make them ebook readable, a new hobby of mine.
Anyway, here goes:-
1. Bill Gammage: The
Biggest Estate on Earth (2012)
Subtitle: How Aborigines Made
Australia. The result of ten years of
research and field studies, this book explores the concept (and proves!) that
when whites came in 1788 they were confronted by a "managed landscape"
(they saw parks!), mosaics of cleared land maintained over thousands of
years by the locals. In 1788, there was
no such thing as "wilderness"!
This books vastly extends our knowledge of pre-1788 Australia and I love
it.
2. Ken Kesey: Sometimes a
Great Notion (1964)
A worthy successor to One Flew Over the Cuckoo's
Nest. Tells the story of a family
of loggers in Oregon who attempt to defy the union to get their logs downriver
to the mill. Narrated by several of the
characters, sometimes more than one at once!
A good writer!
3. Jared Diamond: Guns, Germs and Steel (1997)
This book won the Pulitzer
prize. Diamond explores the reasons
that human societies developed the way they did and why for example, Spaniards conquered the Aztecs rather than
the other way round. He shows that the
reasons are due to geographical advantages enjoyed by Eurasians, nothing to do
with genes. I was very impressed by his
arguments.
4. Kate Grenville The Secret River (2005)
The theme of villain transported
to the convict colony and his/her subsequent life has been done to death, yet
this book explores in a new way the dispossession of Aborigines as white
settlers attempted to make a go of the new life. I liked the descriptions of life on the water for a seaman, both
in England and Australia. The gamut of
attitudes to the native inhabitants of Australia is also well-explored and
reminds me of Thea Astley.
5. Erle Wilson: Coorinna (1953)
I read this book when I was at
school, but having no memory of the story, it was great to read it again (and
find it in the fantastic bookshop in Fish Creek!).
As in some of Jack London's best-known work, Wilson anthropomorphizes an
animal, in this case a Tasmanian tiger, and dramatises its life from birth to
death. The author is completely
familiar with the Tasmanian bush, describing the flora and fauna in loving
detail, as well as life before cars and tourists.
6. Patrick White: The Hanging Garden (2012)
This is really the start of a
novel that was never completed. It
explores the relationship between two refugees, a girl and boy during World War
Two, temporarily given sanctuary in a Sydney harbour property with a wild
garden. It has familiar White themes
such as the girl's Greek background.
There is no significant plot but the characters are beautifully drawn
and revealed. It is a joy to find the
surprises in White's prose which can take the mind in completely new
directions.
7. Michael Shermer: The Believing Brain (2011)
Shermer is the president of the
American Skeptics and a psychologist
and science historian (as well as an accomplished long-distance cyclist!). He has studied why people believe
"strange" things and has brought some of his previous writing
together in The Believing Brain
as well as introducing the neuro-science involved in how people arrive at
beliefs. He shows how evolution has
shaped the way we seek patterns in all
our dealings and then ascribe meaning to those patterns in order to make sense
of the world. A good read but spoilt a
bit by lots of sidetracking.
8. Marcus Clarke: Australian Tales of the Bush (1896)
After he arrived from England
Clarke became a writer for the Melbourne Argus in 1867, aged 21, but he
tired of the urban life and went to live on a property north of Stawell. He was a failure as a jackeroo but
successful in sending stories of the bush life back to Melbourne for
publication. This is a collection of
those stories, giving great insight into the rural, small-town life, and full
of movement and colour. Stories range
from "Pretty Dick" in which a child is lost and perishes in the bush,
to "How the Circus came to Bullocktown". A great reflection on Clarke's formative years.
9. John Grisham: A Painted
House (2001)
Grisham's novel is set on an
eighty-acre cotton farm during the 1952 season of cotton picking and told by a
narrator who was seven at the time of the novel. The characters are the
family who run the farm, a group of Mexicans hired to pick cotton, and a group
of "hill people" who come down from the Ozarks each year for the
picking. The descriptions are masterly, detailing the oppressive summer
weather, the backbreaking work in the rows of cotton, piling on the old truck
to go into town on the weekend. A good yarn that obviously reflects
Grisham's childhood.
10. Charles Darwin: The Autobiography of Charles Darwin (1887)
This text was written by Darwin for his wife and
children, and was edited and published after his death by Darwin's son. It mainly describes his childhood, education
and early influences. He spent time at
Edinburgh University from the age of sixteen and then Cambridge when it was
determined he would not be a doctor but rather a clergyman, meant to study the
classics. His early influences were the
scientific men and societies at these establishments, and his love of
collecting, in particular, beetles.
Darwin suggests that he was not an innovator or original thinker but
relied on methodical and painstaking hard work in conducting analysis of his
collections.
Now that I've completed this post, I realise there are another dozen books that could have made the list, but ain't that the way?
