Guest Post - Girl Booker

This week's guest post for AusReading Month is from my dear friend, Girl Booker. I recently featured Girl Booker for the Classics Club - here.

You can also check out her blog - here.

But for now - here is Girl Booker...


"I have chosen a list of my top 5 contemporary Australian female writers to share with you all on Brona’s blog. I have absolutely adored what I have read by each of these women and actively try to force their work on to others at every given opportunity.

Rosalie Ham

The Dressmaker is a gothic, gloomy, take on life in a small Australian country town. I read it many years ago and don’t remember the details of the book but it made an impression. I remember lapping it up and being excited by it.

Ham’s most recent book, There Should Be More Dancing is very funny, dark, and touching. I recommended it to a customer who loved it so much she volunteered to act as the publisher’s PR and marketing team for free. (This same customer once asked someone to hold her shoe, but that’s another story for another time and should in no way detract from what a great book There Should Be More Dancing is).

Liane Moriarty

I read The Husband’s Secret and was in awe of how many literary balls Moriarty can simultaneously juggle; she does characters, competing plots, sense of place AND pace to perfection. It is so well written but it’s fun and easy to read, and the suspense keeps you hooked.

Lisa Pryor

Pryor has written two books of non-fiction: The Pin Striped Prison and A Small Book About Drugs. They are both easy to read and incredibly insightful. Pryor always manages to find the unexamined angle of a topic and bring it to light in a really fresh and engaging way. She is a former journalist, so her facts are solid and flow thick and fast through the work, yet she balances this with a chatty tone that I find very appealing.

Kirsten Tranter

“Dreamy. Lots of space. Airy. Mysterious. Lush.”

Those were the words I jotted down the other day while planning this post. What I loved and what I remember most vividly from reading both The Legacy and A Common Loss is the sense of falling into a swirly, dreamlike world. Tranter’s work is the reading equivalent of floating quietly in gently bobbing water.

Charlotte Wood

The other day for the classics club I reread Lolita, which I had originally read over 10 years ago and declared to be my favourite book. This time around, I reached the conclusion that it is no longer my favourite, and after a little thought I decided that Charlotte Wood, with her precious and delightful Love and Hunger, has wrested the mantle from poor dear sad old Vladimir Nabokov.

I have given several copies of this book as presents because I want to share it so much. I love the messages of everyday nourishment, helping and healing, and bringing people together through food. A friend of mine once told me that he cooks for people to tell them he loves them. A beautiful sentiment, and Love and Huger is essentially a book length version of this idea. It is inspiring in a quiet way, it makes you feel good about life, it’s a joy to read and  - most remarkable of all – it made my vegetable-shy Love want to eat lentils because Wood makes them sound so delicious!"