Holiday reading is full of noble intentions. We pack our bags, look at the stack of books we have deliberately purchased for the time away, and hope for the best. With a brick in carry-on luggage and more in checked luggage, we’re lucky if we make it through half a book by the time we get home. It’s not our unwillingness to read. The real problem is that while we’re on holiday, we are busy.
We are organising the family, going on hikes, eating in restaurants, visiting museums and catching up with friends. Reading is always put on the backburner. So, when are we supposed to chew through the stories we have brought along with us? The only logical time is while in transit, when everyone is focused on entertaining themselves.
This summer’s reading list is a compilation of new releases from 2024. Some are best suited to modes of transport, others to the glorious void when everyone else is away. Lock yourself in with any one of these titles, and we guarantee that your holiday reading will be complete.
What to read on the plane
Flying feels like being lost in time. Between the hours spend in the air and the different time zones, the best books t read in this environment should be equally propulsive and disorientating. Rita Bullwinkel’s Headshot (Faber Factory, $25) reads like a fever-dream. ON the surface, it’s about an 18s and under women’s boxing match, told over the course of a weekend through the perspective of the right competitors. But underneath the muscular, unsentimental prose, it is a story of girlhood, expectations and growing up. Equal parts brutal and tender, it is easy to see how it was longlisted for the Book Prize 2024.
To feel lost in the trip, Jordan Prosser’s Big Time (UQP, $35) opens with a scene on a plane where the book’s main character, Julian, is flying back to Australia to record a second album with his band and is introduced to “F”, a drug that gives you a glimpse into your own future. The book is set in a richly imagined, not-too-distant dystopian, conservative Australia and is a smart satire of politics wrapped in rock ‘n’ roll.
And for the return leg, I’m New Here by Ian Russell-Hsieh (Simon & Schuster, $33) is an impeccably written, fast-paced exploration of a recently dumped Taiiwanese-British photographer, Sean, trying to find himself in his ancestral homeland. The writing style is movie-like and sucks you into Sean’s feelings of alienation, self-annihilation and confusion. Russell-Hsieh touches on themes of identity, masculinity and grief in refreshing ways, while cleverly using the device of the unreliable narrator. it’s a book you’re sure to finish in one sitting.
What to read on the train
Warra Warra Wai (Simon & Schuster, $35) is an important collaboration between Darren Rix, Craig Cormick and the Indigenous people they interviewed spanning the 4000km through Victoria, New South Wales and Queensland. Rix and Cormick weave these oral histories with European accounts, providing a deeper understanding of Country and it forces the reader to understand that places were not discovered by James Cook. Warra Warra Wai honestly addresses the complexity of Australian history and takes us on a poignant journey towards the truth.
To experience writing where space and reflection is required to fully appreciate the storytelling, Jazz Money’s new collection of poetry in Mark the Dawn (UQP, $25) intertwines history, legacy and the importance of community from a queer, Indigenous perspective. While it is tempting to race through Money’s prose, the real test is to sit with each poem and allow it to full affect you. Both gentle and visceral, Mark the Dawn is best enjoyed from a window seat.
If you prefer your landscapes to contain more drama, Hayley Scrivenor’s Girl Falling (MacMillan, $35) is a story of friendship, love and manipulation. Scrivenor expertly grips you with tension throughout the novel by jumping between the past and present to build convincing and layered characters that will leave you hungry for the truth.
What to read on a boat
Shaun Micallef’s Slivers, Shards and Skerricks (Affirm Press, $35) was built for boat travel. Written by one of Australia’s most recognisable comedians, it’s the kind of anthology that will make you laugh out loud, and contains short stories, musings and limericks. You’ll find anything from a story set in the Rocky universe, where he is plagued by an existential crisis, to a list of meandering thoughts on dining across America. Micallef proves that he is still as ridiculous as he is entertaining.
If you prefer a more serious read, the meticulously cited and deeply informed The Men Who Killed the News by former journalist, editor and media proprietor Erin Beecher (Scribner Australia, $37), is a bracing account of how the news stopped being the news. And Beecher would know, her formerly worked for the Murdochs before being sued by them. He outlines all the closed-door mechanics performed by media moguls over the past two centuries, which makes you feel like you’re reading a thrilled before you are reminded that this is out terrifying reality.
For something more inspiring, We Are the Stars (Summit Books, $37) by Gina Chick, the inaugural winner of the survival competition television series Alone Australia, is a surprise. This is more than a celebrity memoir, it’s a heartfelt, heartbreaking and heartwarming collection of life lessons from a woman who has lived both unconventionally and unapologetically. Chick outlines her life in chronological order, from her childhood, her years dancing (literally) through Sydney’s ’90s subculture clubs, love, cancer, grief and the practice of rewilding. It all makes you realise that it was no accident she conquered the Tasmanian winter wilderness over 67 days.
What to read anywhere else
Taffy Brodesser-Akner’s highly anticipated follow-up to Fleishman Is in Trouble, Long Island Compromise (Hachette, $25) is a tale of intergenerational wealth and the issues that come with it. Brodesser-Akner is a master of conjuring the psyche of a neurotic American mind, and here she does it several times over, predominately through the perspectives of the (adult) Fletcher children in the wake of the grandmother’s death. The story is anchored in the kidnapping of the family’s patriarch in the ’80s, and charts the effects of it on the gamily, how they choose to live their lives, the decisions they make, and their reliance on the protections they think wealth affords them.
Butter by Asako Yuzuki (HarperCollins, $33) is a translated work, inspired by the real-life case of the “Konkatsu (marriage-hunting) Killer” in Japan. While it is a story of a journalist on a mission for the inside story from a serial killer, Butter is also a caustic commentary of what it means to be a women in Japan. Food is used as a device to illustrated desire and control and the descriptions of it, especially of cold Echiré butter on tice, will leave you ravenous.
For fans of Sally Rooney, Intermezzo (Faber & Faber, $35) brings a change of gear from her earlier work. Her latest novel focuses on the relationship between two brothers, and by extension, their romantic relationships. While the content is familiar territory (the interconnected lives of a small group of Irish people), the characters Rooney has created are more three-dimensional than ever, the scenarios more complicated and ethically ambiguous. Instead of focusing on the thoughtless decisions of youth, Intermezzo is a study on what it means to age ungracefully.
