Summer Reading continues! And although you may be tired of hearing me mention it, you still have time to get your entries in. Read a book, and any book, and fill out a review. You can do one by hand, or in the Comments sections of the Summer Reading page or our Goodreads page.
For now, we move on to Australia and the South Pacific. Since there’s fewer places in this section, we’ve had to trim our suggestions. But, there’s still something for every interest…
1. Pick up a copy of the Australia and South Pacific Armchair Traveler booklist and see the Outback or the tropical islands without leaving home.
2. Try a classic set in this region:
- True History of the Kelly Gang by Peter Carey
- My Brilliant Career by Miles Franklin
- The Moon and Sixpence by W. Somerset Maugham
- Typee and Omoo by Herman Melville
- Tales of the South Pacific by James Michener
- The Hurricane by Charles Nordhoff
- A Town Like Alice by Nevil Shute
- In the South Seas by Robert Louis Stevenson
3. Pick up one of these histories:
- Sea of Dangers: Captain Cook and His Rivals in the South Pacific by Geoffrey Blainey
- The Fatal Shore by Robert Hughes
- Commonwealth of Thieves: The Improbable Birth of Australia by Thomas Keneally
- Destiny’s Landfall: A History of Guam by Robert Rogers
- Aphrodite’s Island: The European Discovery of Tahiti by Anne Salmond
- Come on Shore and We Will Kill and Eat You All: A New Zealand Story by Christina Thompson
- Unfamiliar Fishes by Sarah Vowell
- Australia: A New History of the Great Southern Land by Frank Welsh
4. How about a recommendation from yours truly?
- Eucalyptus by Murray Bail – A man who loves his daughter decides that the only man truly worth marrying her will be able to identify every species of eucalyptus he has planted in his extensive garden.
- Jennifer Government by Maxx Barry – Set in a future in which people’s last names reflect their employer, Jennifer is on the trail of a murderer working for Nike.
- Gilgamesh by Joan London – Edith leaves her Australian home to find the father of her son, and after her journey across the Middle east returns home.
- The Forgotten Garden by Kate Morton – The granddaughter of a woman who was left on a dock in Australia without a family works to find out what actually happened.
- The Floating Brothel: The Extraordinary True Story of an Eighteenth-Century Ship and Its Cargo of Female Convicts by Sian Rees – A history of the women who, convicted in Britain, were transported to Australia to serve the men already there.
- The Colour by Rose Tremain – A newly-married couple arrive in colonial New Zealand and become drawn to the gold discovered there.
- Easter Island by Jennifer Vanderbes – On Eastern Island, scientific and emotional mysteries are “solved” between a parallel narrative involving a young woman in 1913 and a widowed doctor in 1970.
The Reference Desk at TFPL 