First Person: Radio National’s Best Reads
Author: Guest blogger
Justine Sloane-Lees, Program Coordinator, First Person, ABC Radio National
The highlight of my reading year came courtesy of the delightful Rick Gekoski (Outside of a dog), who urged me to read Carl Hiaasen. Since then I’ve devoured most of his books and, despite the fact that both his characters and the situations he puts them in are often wildly implausible, they are never less than LOL fun, with a powerful environmental message to boot.
Staying with crime fiction, there were also welcome new books from two favourite authors, Sophie Hannah (A room swept white) and Kate Atkinson (Started early, took my dog).
The most compelling non-fiction I read was by Craig Jurisevic, an Australian doctor who describes his experience at the Kosovar front line during the Balkan conflict in Blood on my hands.
2010 was the year I officially became a polar obsessive, albeit in good company (Jenny Diski, Skating to Antarctica, and Anne Fadiman, Ex libris: confessions of a common reader). Having recently read Sara Wheeler’s Magnetic north: notes from the Arctic circle, I am now finding it impossible to put down her Terra incognita: travels in Antarctica. I find that the English do this kind of book – travelogue combined with historical, cultural and scientific fact – with an elegance and lightness of touch that isn’t quite so apparent in the rather earnest works of their peers across the Atlantic.
As to books featured during the year in First Person, I particularly loved Michael Chabon’s Manhood for amateurs, and of course Alain de Botton’s A week at the airport.
Tags: First Person
One Response to “First Person: Radio National’s Best Reads”
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November 17th, 2010 at 11:25 am
Ive not read any of those, but I do admire Rick Gekoski very much so I might try Carl Hiaasen.