BEST AUSTRALIAN BOOKS

23 September 2026

You still have a few days left to vote in the ABC Top 100 Australian Books: https://www.abc.net.au/listen/radionational/countdown/top100books

I confess that deciding on my top 10 books was a particularly difficult task. Firstly, I scoured my bookshelves to see what I’d kept after the big cull in 2025 when we packed up our Melbourne house. That, I hoped, would tell me what I really valued. Then I checked both my old Goodreads account and my newer Libib account to see what books I’d given 5 stars to in the last 10 years or so. Then I perused the list of books that the ABC has listed to provide inspiration. But my list was more like 100 than 10. So how to cull? What got excluded?

Should I choose any of Charmain Clift’s books or the brilliant biography of her life by Nadia Wheately?

Are any of the rural noir books or even the city noir books by authors such as Jane Harper, Garry Disher or Peter Temple great enough to go on the list? Let alone the charming Kerry Greenwood mysteries or the quirky political ones of Shane Maloney.

What of Nobel Prize winner Patrick Whit?  I did struggle through a few but they are certainly not amongst my favourite books.

And what about non-profit books. I suspect that Sister Susan would put The Stephanie Alexander Cookbook on her list but would it make sense for me to list the Golden Wattle Cookbook?

And then there’s history. How many writers who have helped us re-examine our colonial past should I add? Alan Moorhead’s book on Captain Cook? Any of Henry Reynold’s books about the frontier wars? The all-encompassing Fatal Shore by Robert Hughs? Of perhaps, just stick to the witty take on Australian history, Girt by David Hunt. 

Other fascinating historical and biographical stories that I have loved have been about everyone from Louise Lawson to the East German Stasi but which one to choose?

What about books that enthralled me as a child versus those that gripped or entertained me as an adult. I feel guilty that I’ve left off authors such as William McInnes, Geraldine Brooks, Shelly Parker-Chan, Shirly Hazzard, Robert Drewe, Ruth Park, Dymphna Cusack, Helen Garner, Christopher Koch, Trent Dalton, etc etc etc.

But finally I made my choice and curiously five of the ten weren’t on the inspiration list provided by the ABC so I can’t imagine that any of them will end up in the Top 100. Here goes:

  •          An inspirational book from childhood
  •          Four biographical books – including one about an indigenous family
  •         Two books about Australian history
  •          Two novels
  •         And a book with hardly any words but a beautiful collection of woodblock painting.


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