December – Summer Reads at Marrickville Library

The theme for December is Summer Reads.

Summer. Long hot lazy days, the beach, holidays, Xmas, family. The possibilities for the storyteller are endless.

When I think of summer and reading, West Australian authors Tim Winton (An Open Swimmer, Blueback, Breath) and Robert Drewe (The Bodysurfers) spring to mind. For Sydney summers, there’s Kathy Lette and Gabrielle Carey’s Puberty Blues. And Colin Thiele (Sun on the Stubble, Storm Boy, February Dragon) best captures the nature of the hot dry South Australian summer and landscape. Queensland has The Passage by Vance Palmer, a story set on the Gold Coast back when it was just a series of dunes and fishing shacks. And then there’s Helen Garners’s Monkey Grip, which begins randomly one Melbourne summer in 1974 – a great Australian novel.
Overseas I can think of sweltering New York in The Great Gatsby, the languid French Riviera of Bonjour Tristesse and the stifling Norfolk British summer of 1900 in LP Hartley’s The Go-Between.

What books would you nominate for Summer Reads ?

The State Library of NSW Readers Advisory twitter service is also discussing summer reads books in December via the hashtag #summerreads. More information is available at http://readit2011.wordpress.com/december/.