Our staff share the books they’re planning to read over summer.

‘As I’ll be spending Christmas overseas (and leading on from reading Patrick Leigh Fermor’s A Time Of Gifts in anticipation) I will be packing Patrick Leigh Fermor’s Between The Woods And The Water, among other things, to accompany me. The second volume documenting his incredible journey on foot from Amsterdam to Constantinople, we pick up in Budapest, where we left the young Fermor wondering at what awaited him in this marvellous city. That’s about all I know so far, but I’m looking forward to it as much as the trip itself. No one should ever travel anywhere without a copy of a Fermor book stuffed into a pocket, preferably one that is ruined from overuse, to read when the whim takes you. You can point out the bits that resonate to a tired and/or bored friend or partner or simply read aloud as if you’re Fermor himself, reminded of a poem as he approaches a country town. Sometimes it feels like to do anything else would be to misunderstand the point.’

– Paul Goodman

‘I am very excited to get stuck into some summer reading. Top of my list is Foe by Ian Reid, a Black Mirror-esque novel which was recommended by a trustworthy source at our annual Readings staff roadshow. I also really want to read Crimson, an Icelandic novel about queer youth, and I’d like to read The Emissary by Yoko Tawada. This dystopian novel with an uplifting twist won the National Book Award for Translated Literature this year.

As well as some exciting new things, I want to do lots of comfort reading. I’m finally ready to reread Sally Rooney’s incredible debut novel, Conversations With Friends – the first time I read it, I burnt through it, so this time I’m planning to savour it. I also want to get into a few big crime novels – I’m planning on reading Lethal White by Robert Galbraith, and starting on Tana French’s back catalogue – I recently read her most recent book, The Wych Elm, and loved it.’

– Ellen Cregan

‘I have a terrifying, teetering TBR pile at the moment, but at the top of my list for the summer holidays is David Sedaris’s most recent (and apparently hilarious) book, Calypso; Madeline Miller’s feminist retelling of the Greek Myth, Circe; the most recent instalment in Ben Aaronovitch’s Rivers of London series, Lies Sleeping; and the book that everyone else at Readings seems to have read and absolutely adored, Normal People.’

– Lian Hingee

‘I just bought William Goldman’s The Princess Bride, in order to finally correct the crime of not having read it before, despite adoring the movie (though who doesn’t?). I’ve also procured myself a copy of Melissa Lucashenko’s Too Much Lip, which has been adored by my colleagues, and I’m hoping to get into that by the beach – or on my couch – this summer.’

– Fiona Hardy

‘Over summer I am planning to return to and finish two fantastic reads that have been nudging me through the last part of this year. Being Ecological by Timothy Morton is a wonderful philosophical enquiry into what it means to be a human living through an event that is unfolding over centuries in geological time. It is a book of great hope and compassion for the conundrum of affecting change in our short lifespan. Much more reassuring than it sounds.

I am also planning to learn some orienteering from the wonderful Navigation: Techniques and Skills for Walkers. I can’t wait to take up getting lost in the wilds but being able to find my way home.’

– Marie Matteson

‘This summer, I’m planning to start reading ahead for 2019. I have advance copies of some highly anticipated upcoming Australian books, including Call Me Evie by JP Pomare (January), The Rip by Mark Brandi (March) and Islands by Peggy Frew (March), all of which I can’t wait to read.

In YA, I am dreaming of getting my hands on advance copies of On The Come Up by Angie Thomas (February), Two Can Keep A Secret by Karen McManus (February), Four Dead Queens by Astrid Scholte (March) and What I Like About Me by Jenna Guillaume (March).

I also have a bunch of books from 2018 still sitting in my TBR pile that I am eager to get to: Friday Black by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah, The Recovering by Leslie Jamison, The Incendiaries by RO Kwon and My Year of Rest and Relaxation by Ottessa Moshfegh.’

– Nina Kenwood

‘Over summer I will be finishing Maria Tumarkin’s Axiomatic, which got such an epic show of love at the Readings Roadshow that I had to find a copy. So far it has not disappointed – Tumarkin’s writing is sparse and powerful, her observations unflinching, her presence in the text honest yet never self-absorbed. She delves into trauma and how it can reshape time, remould perception, shatter what is whole and refuses to heal. She writes with feeling and yet remarkably little sentimentality. Highly recommended.

I will also be finishing the second half of Clare Land’s book Decolonizing Solidarity.

Land is an academic at Victoria University and an activist around issues of Indigenous sovereignty and land rights in Melbourne. She is white, and she wrote this book as a kind of ‘guide to solidarity’ for other non-indigenous folk wanting to be allies. The book draws on her own history of involvement and she is open in this book about her own failures and mistakes, which is helpful. The book also includes a lot of important history regarding Indigenous resistance and political movements in this region, as well as interviews with longstanding Indigenous activists such as Robbie and Alma Thorpe, and an introduction by Gary Foley.’

– Britt Munro