The Bookshelf

On this special edition of The Bookshelf, ahead of the Top 100 Australian Books Countdown, Kate Evans speaks with historian Professor Martyn Lyons about the history of reading in Australia and what our reading lives can reveal about the nation. Plus, crime fiction expert Sue Turnbull traces the evolution of Australian crime writing before sharing three books she loves. Singer-songwriter Fanny Lumsden and artist-performer Maeve Marsden also reveal their top three Australian reads. And in the podcast edition, music journalist Stuart Coupe joins us with three Australian books he can't live without.
Guests
Martin Lyons – Emeritus Professor of History and European Studies in the School of Humanities and Languages at UNSW
Sue Turnbull – Honorary Professor of Communication and Media at the University of Wollongong, with expertise in crime fiction, television and popular culture
Maeve Marsden – Theatre maker, performer and Creative Director of Varuna, the National Writers' House in the NSW Blue Mountains
Fanny Lumsden – ARIA Award-winning country singer-songwriter whose fifth studio album, Traditions, is due for release on 30 October
Stuart Coupe – Australian music journalist, author, band manager, promoter, publicist and record label founder
Books mentioned and Guest Recommendations
Literary Foundations
Martyn Lyons, The Uses of Literacy in Colonial Australia
Jane Austen, works
Walter Scott, works
Henry Kendall, poetic works
Adam Lindsay Gordon, poetic works
A B ‘Banjo’ Paterson, works
Henry Lawson, works
Charles Dickens, works
Classic Australian Fiction 
Rolf Boldrewood, Robbery Under Arms
Eleanor Dark, The Timeless Land
Miles Franklin, My Brilliant Career
Crime & Mystery
Arthur Conan Doyle, Sherlock Holmes stories
Fergus Hume, The Mystery of a Hansom Cab
Lucy Sussex, Blockbuster!
Peter Corris, The Empty Beach
Marele Day, The Life and Crimes of Harry Lavender
Sharon Kernot, Night Swimming
Dorothy Porter, The Monkey’s Mask
Peter Temple, The Broken Shore
Garry Disher, Bitter Wash Road
Jane Harper, The Dry
Peter Corris, The Dying Trade
Contemporary Fiction 
Geraldine Brooks, Horse
Pip Williams, The Dictionary of Lost Words, The Bookbinder of Jericho
Helen Garner, Monkey Grip
Eda Gunaydin, Root and Branch
Evelyn Araluen, The Rot
Jane Harrison, The Visitors
Jessie Tu, A Lonely Girl is a Dangerous thing
Children's Literature
Alison Lester, Kissed by the Moon
Music, Culture & Memoir
Colin Talbot’s Greatest Hits
Garrie Hutchinson, From the Outer
Renee Geyer, Confessions of a Difficult Woman
Stuart Coupe and Toby Creswell, Sounds Like Teen Spirit: The Anarchic Unauthorised Story of Triple J & Double J

Kate and Cassie are joined by rockstar Tim Rogers and novelist Madeleine Gray to discuss some big new releases.
Australian crime heavyweight Chris Hammer swaps the outback for the world of high finance in Full Circle, a thriller of money, power and corruption. Then there's Jem Calder's I Want You to Be Happy, a zeitgeisty portrait of young Londoners searching for connection in an increasingly disconnected world; and Pip Williams' The German Wife, her eagerly anticipated follow-up to The Dictionary of Lost Words and The Bookbinder of Jericho, a sweeping World War I story of forbidden love and art.
Plus, as Radio National's Top 100 Australian Books countdown draws closer, novelist, essayist and art critic Fiona Kelly McGregor discusses three Australian books that have had an impact on her life and writing. 
FEATURED BOOKS
Full Circle by Chris Hammer, Summit Books
I Want You to be Happy by Jem Calder, Faber
The German Ward by Pip Williams,  Affirm Press 
FIONA KELLY MCGREGOR'S TOP 3 AUSTRALIAN BOOKS
Working Hot by Mary Fallon
The Other Side of the Frontier: Aboriginal Resistance to the European Invasion of Australia by Henry Reynolds
Voss by Patrick White
OTHER BOOKS MENTIONED
Famesick by Lena Dunham
The Book of George by Kate Greathead
Rejection by Tony Tulathimutte
Lean Cat, Savage Cat by Lauren J. Joseph
Detransition, Baby by Torrey Peters
Happy Hour by Marlowe Granados
Johnno by David Malouf
Night Boat to Tangier, Beatlebone by Kevin Barry
A Suitable Man by Jock Serong

This week, Kate and Cassie are joined by regulars Hannah Kent and Tom Wright to discuss three books that echo one another across themes of art, beauty, family and transformation.
In Barbara Kingsolver's Partita, a young woman longs to escape her small town and difficult mother through music (and there are dogs and an accident); Ayad Akhtar's The Radiance follows a man whose vivid, radiant life is shaped by music and ambition (and there’s a terrible accident); And in Colm Tóibín's The Bridge, a son and father navigate change, possibility and belonging in a new world (accompanied by a whole pack of dogs).
Plus, voting may have closed for The Bookshelf's Top 100 Australian Books, but we're still taking inspiration from readers' recommendations. Actor, writer and trans activist Zoe Terakes joins us to share their three favourite Australian books.
Featured books
Barbara Kingsolver, Partita, Faber
Colm Toíbín, The Bridge, Picador
Ayad Akhtar, The Radiance, Summit
Zoe Terakes' Top 3
Christos Tsiolkas , Loaded
Chelsea Watego, Another Day in the Colony
Timothy Conigrave, Holding the Man 
Other Books mentioned
Stephanie Alexander, The Cook's Companion
Alison Lester, Magic Beach
Shirley Hazzard, The Great Fire
Hannah Moloney, The Good Life: How To Grow A Better World
Christina Stead, Seven Poor Men of Sydney

In American Hagwon, the bestselling author of Pachinko, Min Jin Lee, explores family, education, ambition and the long shadow of economic upheaval, set between Seoul, Sydney and California. Louise Kennedy's Stations offers a tough and deeply felt Irish family story, while Catherine Chidgey's The Starving Bride turns hunger into a strange gothic performance. Kate and Cassie are joined this time by regulars, novelist and academic Professor Tony Birch and critic and literary judge Beejay Silcox. And, as we count down to the Top 100 Australian Books, Frank Moorhouse's biographer Matthew Lamb reveals his top three.
Books featured
Min Jin Lee, American Hagwon, Fourth Estate
Louise Kennedy, Stations, Bloomsbury Circus
Catherine Chidgey, The Starving Bride, Penguin 
Matthew Lamb's Top 100 picks
Forty-Seventeen (1988) by Frank Moorhouse
Tourmaline (1963) by Randolph Stow
Writer Reader Critic (1992) by Dorothy Green 
Other books mentioned
Janet McCalman, Struggletown
Peter Carey, The Fat Man in History
The Women's Weekly Birthday Cake Book
Leonie Norrington, Djawundil Maymuru, Merrkiyawuy Ganambarr-Stubbs and Djawa Burarrwanga, A Piece of Red Cloth
Gretchen Shirm, Out of the Woods
Colleen McCullough, The Thorn Birds

Kate and Cassie take a look at bestselling author Emily St. John Mandel's latest, Exit Party, an epic that follows a doppelgänger and a man who disappears from a Los Angeles party in 2031, leading to a journey across parallel worlds and fractured timelines. Internationally-bestselling crime writer Michael Robotham is in to discuss The Weight of Angels by John Boyne; and Graham Akhurst, novelist, academic and Director of Indigenous Studies at the University of Technology  on Turkish writer Kenan Orhan's Booker Longlisted novel The Renovation; and historian and author Anna Clark is in to share her Top 100 picks.
Books featured
Emily St John Mandel, Exit Party, Picador
John Boyne, The Weight of Angels, Doubleday
Kenan Orhan, The Renovation, Hamish Hamilton
Anna Clark's Top 100 picks
Raimond Gaita, Romulus, My Father
Gay'wu Group of Women, Songspirals: Sharing Women’s Wisdom of Country through Songlines
Billy Griffiths, Deep Time Dreaming: Uncovering Ancient Australia
The Macquarie Dictionary, first edition published 1981
Ken Simpson and Nicolas Day, Field Guide to the Birds of Australia, first edition published in 1984
Other books mentioned
Gabriel Garcia Marquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude
James Joyce, Ulysses
Alexis Wright, PraiseworthyChina Miéville, The City & the City
Claire G. Coleman, works
Curtis Sittenfeld, Rodham
Peter Carey, Illywhacker
Steve Toltz, A Fraction of the Whole
Alexis Wright, Carpentaria
Kim Scott, Benang: From the Heart
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