Our staff share the best books they’ve read so far this year, including new releases and older titles just discovered.

Alan Vaarwerk, Editorial Assistant of Readings Monthly:

This will come as no surprise to anyone who’s heard me raving about it for the past six months, but I was so excited to get my hands on Kelly Link’s Get In Trouble, the American writer’s first collection for adults in ten years. The collection’s tightly-written and astonishing short stories play with the conventions of magical realism, science fiction and fantasy, inserting ghosts, superheroes and pocket universes into a world of bored teenagers, wedding guests and washed-up actors. Link teases the reader with unanswered questions and thematic red herrings, and writes hell of an ending – Get In Trouble will be tough to beat as my most brain-bendingly rewarding read of 2015.

Keeping with the superheroes theme, Patrick Lenton’s A Man Made Entirely Of Bats was probably the most out-and-out fun I’ve had with a book this year – full of wordplay, riffs on bad puns and the conventions of fan fiction and B-grade horror. In terms of longer works, I found Myfanwy Jones’ Leap a compelling and heartfelt piece of modern Australian fiction that bristled with energy.

Emily Gale, Online Children’s and YA Specialist:

I’ll start with a tip of my hat to Nina Kenwood, whose blog post, Why You Should Keep Track Of Every Book You Read, has made the job of picking my favourites of the year so far a great deal easier. However, I’ve read 36 children’s and adult books, not counting picture books, and I’ve liked most of them, so this is still very tough!

I began 2015 by reading Golden Boys by Sonya Hartnett, and that was an incredibly hard act to follow. How this writer manages to be so intensely powerful and at the same time restrained and honest is a marvel to me. Coming a close second is A Spool Of Blue Thread by Anne Tyler, which is just as perceptive but took a broader, longer look at the concept and workings of a family.

In young adult fiction I’ve got three clear favourites, although it is very difficult not to mention all the many stories that have impressed and moved me. But new releases A Small Madness by Dianne Touchell and The Guy, The Girl, The Artist and His Ex by Gabrielle Williams, and, published a few years earlier, The Dead I Know by Scot Gardner, are stand-outs. Both suit a mid-teen and over audience.

For a slightly younger reader (a real bookworm of 10 and as well as younger teens), Frances Hardinge is my top tip. Her Cuckoo Song took me back to my childhood reading – it’s as if she’s taken the rich prose of a children’s classic and turned it up a notch, creating a dark and haunting fairytale that is highly imaginative as well as perceptive on the theme of identity, which is such a key concept for tweens and early teens.

I’m pushing my luck here by mentioning so many but for 5-9 year olds I highly recommend Dory Fantasmagory by Abby Hanlon, an illustrated early chapter book that absolutely nails sibling rivalry and the beauty and power of the imagination, and The Day No One Was Angry by Toon Tellegen, an illustrated collection of connected short stories that make a wonderful, unusual, funny and philosophical family read.

Kushla Egan, Bookseller:

The best book I’ve read this year, and one that I now definitely count as one of the best books I’ve ever read, is Dorothy Allison’s Bastard Out of Carolina. The experience of reading it left me devastated, and looking back I think I carried the lyrical and yet brutal moments of Bone Boatwrights life with me for quite some time afterwards. At the heart of the story is the Boatwright family, hailing from Greenville Country, South Carolina. The story depicts white-trash, Southern American family life and the horrors of child abuse, poverty and family madness that follow are unforgettable. And yet Allison has somehow managed to craft a completely human story with incredible capacity for forgiveness. A modern classic I am grateful for.

Chris Gordon, Event Manager:

Daydreaming is my absolute favourite solitary pastime, more than reading even, and I also love gardening and cooking, closely followed by savouring wine. So a truly wonderful book for me is one that allows me to dream about all of those diversions. Books that satisfied these quiet yearnings for me this year include Helga Leunig’s photography book Mother Country: Reflections of Australian Rural Life, and Michelle Crawford’s A Table in the Orchard: My Delicious Life – the ultimate tale of running away, and with recipes. When it comes to straight cooking, my unparalleled favourite is Jennifer McLagan’s Bitter: A Taste of the World’s Most Dangerous Flavour, which is inspirational, aspirational and truly fun.

And finally, my top pick for the perfect novel – the type that takes you on a journey and makes you forget everything else – I can’t go past Anne Tyler’s A Spool of Blue Thread.

Bronte Coates, Digital Content Coordinator:

An absolute stand-out for me this year is Richard McGuire’s stunning, heart-stopping graphic novel, Here – an expanded version of his massively influential 6-page comic of the same name that was first published in comics anthology Raw, back in 1989. I love this book so much that my hands flutter inadvertently when I describe it to people. In both the original comic and the graphic novel, McGuire floats frames inside frames to move back and forth in time, all while never leaving the one corner of a room. It’s inventive and gorgeous, and… Now my hands are fluttering again.

Eula Biss is my favourite new author to come across this year. Please, please don’t be put off by the cover of On Immunity (as I initially was). Biss won me over completely within a few pages. I also tracked down her earlier book, Notes from No Man’s Land, which blew me away. As I wrote in my review of On Immunity, Biss’ ability to draw connections between seemingly disparate ideas is utterly thrilling.

In recent months I’ve been delving into Australian young adult fiction (to mentally prepare myself for our YA panel in July) and I’ve flat-out loved two very different series: Ellie Marney’s Every books which are pacy, sexy detective reads and Jaclyn Moriarty’s The Colours of Madeleine books which feature the most marvellous version of ‘Narnia’ that I’ve ever come across.

To close, here are some last-minute mentions…

• My favourite cookbook is A Modern Way to Eat by Anna Jones.
• My favourite picture book is The Honey Hunter by Karthika Nair and Joelle Jolivet.
• My favourite fantasy epic is Nimona by Noelle Stevenson.
• My favourite backlist read is Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout.

Elke Power, Editor of Readings Monthly:

‘Best books of the year so far’ is a scary concept, not just because it indicates that we are far enough into the year for it to be a discussion point, but also because of all the books we haven’t yet found time to read. Even so, I’m confident several of these books will still be in my ‘best list’ at the end of the year.

The Other Side of the World (due in July) by Stephanie Bishop is an exceptionally beautiful and perceptive novel, passages from which will echo in your mind, bumping into questions you are still pondering, long after you finish it. Bad Behaviour by debut author Rebecca Starford is a breathtakingly honest memoir and a compelling Australian coming-of-age story. Likewise, if Relativity by fellow Australian (we’re up to three in this list now!) and debut novelist Antonia Hayes doesn’t spark heated debate at book clubs everywhere I will be very surprised.

And, of course, I can’t leave my inexplicably beloved The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying by Marie Kondo off the list! I probably still won’t have undertaken her tidying regime by the time we revisit this list at the end of the year, but I love this book’s cheerful realism about the foibles of human nature, madcap ideas and suspiciously practical schemes all the same.

Stella Charls, Marketing Coordinator:

I’m a sucker for a new year’s resolution, but in terms of my reading I haven’t been able to settle on a tagline for 2015 – is this the year of reading bravely? Of finishing what I start? Of expanding genre horizons? I’m not sure I’ve been very successful at any of the above (those taglines definitely oversell my efforts), but when I sat down to write a list of what I’ve loved so far I realised that that list was already pretty long.

The book I’ve definitely thought about the most since putting down was Rebecca Starford’s Bad Behaviour. Starford’s memoir primarily focuses on her experience at a prestigious Melbourne school’s outdoor education campus. She bravely paints an unnervingly relatable picture of the power politics within this cohort of fourteen-year-old girls, and raises questions about the realities of female friendship and bullying that have stayed with me even months after reading. I cannot recommend this debut work highly enough.

In terms of reading challenges… I’ve started trying to read comics and graphic novels (favourites so far include Richard McGuire’s genuinely moving Here and Lisa Hanawalt’s laugh-out-loud My Dirty Dumb Eyes). I’ve tried to eat less meat and more vegetables thanks to Anna Jones’ incredibly comprehensive vegetarian bible, A Modern Way to Eat and I’ve wanted to give every child I meet a copy of The Underwater Fancy-Dress Parade, which tackles anxiety in such a sweet and gentle way.

Chris Somerville, Online Team Member:

The best local new release I’ve read this year has been Six Bedrooms by Tegan Bennett Daylight, which comes out in July and is a great collection of stories, some of which overlap. Another highlight has been Citizen by Claudia Rankine. This book is a smart and odd mediation – in tiny vingettes – on race in America. There is a brilliant essay on Serena Williams smack in the middle of the book, which shouldn’t work but does anyway. I also enjoyed Helen MacDonald’s H is for Hawk and Jenny Offill’s Dept. of Speculation.

Finally, my favourite book so far has been Turtleface and Beyond by Arthur Bradford – a bunch of interconnected short stories narrated by an optimistic semi-loser called Georgie. The turns some of Bradford’s stories make are amazing and the book is incredibly fun to read.

Nina Kenwood, Digital Marketing Manager:

This was the year I read Elena Ferrante for the first time, so I would be remiss it I didn’t mention her books among my favourites of the year. I feel like I’ve discussed them to death at this point, so all I will say is that I loved them, a lot, and highly recommend them.

In non-fiction, a stand out for me was Rebecca Starford’s boarding school memoir Bad Behaviour. I tore through the book in a matter of days – it’s a fascinating, addictive portrait of what happens when a bunch of fourteen-year-olds are thrown together in the wilderness. Lord of the Flies, but with teenage girls in the Australian bush.

Looking at fiction, my two favourites of the year so far have been short story collections. I fell completely in love with Single, Carefree, Mellow by Katherine Heiny. It felt like a book that had been written just for me. I laughed, I cried, and I carefully saved the stories up because I didn’t want it to end. I also savoured every beautiful word of Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout. It wrecked me, in the best possible way. Her writing is extraordinary.

Other novels I have enjoyed this year include A Spool of Blue Thread by Anne Tyler (I’m a long-time Tyler fan) and Dietland by Sarai Walker (a smart, ambitious debut). I also read Big Little Lies, my first ever Liane Moriarty novel, and it was so much fun that I now intend to go back and devour her backlist.

Emily Harms, Head of Marketing and Communication:

My stand-out pick without question is Stephanie Bishop’s The Other Side of the World (due in July). Reading this makes you feel as though you are being led in a dream-like state through the full raft of emotions one can feel as a mother, in a marriage and on the constant search for a sense of home. It’s a rare and brilliant novel from a literary genius that goes right to your core and stays there. And the end really pulls a punch! Staying with fiction, I also loved Orient – a riveting suspense by American author Christopher Bollen. Orient is an isolated town on the north fork of Long Island and its future as a historic village has been newly threatened by the arrival of mostly wealthy artists from Manhattan. This is a gripping novel of culture clash and murder.

On a similar tangent, Dept. of Speculation is written from the perspective of an unnamed American woman going about her everyday life, as a wife and parent. There is also the husband, their daughter and a few acquaintances; none of them are named. Written by Jenny Offill with such intensity and originality, the narrative is told in fragments similar to how memories float in to your mind when you’re trying to think about other things.

Moving to non-fiction, local Melburnian Rebecca Starford gives us another knock-out read with her memoir Bad Behaviour. Starford candidly writes about her experience as a 14-year-old scholarship student at a prestigious Melbourne school’s outdoor education campus. At the school she shared a campus house with fourteen other girls, including two, Portia and Ronnie, who she struck an intense ‘friendship’ with. This is a must-read!

Other highlights so far are Mothers & Others and Mothermorphosis. Both of these eclectic anthologies of talented Australian writers are far from your ho-hum standard books about parenting or being a mother. There are real gems hidden in their pages for all readers, and I strongly advise to not be put off by the covers…

And finally, this year’s winner of the Readings Children’s Book Prize, Rivertime by Trace Balla, has been such a joy to read with my 6-year-old daughter. In this illustrated tale, the 10-year-old Clancy is unwillingly dragged away from his hi-tech toys by his keen bird-watching Uncle Egg to discover the joys of nature on a paddling trip on Australia’s Glenelg River. My daughter particularly loved the detailed illustrations and the range of wildlife they see along the way – including a swimming wallaby! It’s a wonderful reminder for us all to take time out to explore the great outdoors.