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Australia’s top 100 books revealed

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Ben
5 yrs ago

Each year, Better Reading asks Australian readers and their families the question ‘What is your favourite book?’ and this time around, over 9000 booklovers happily joined in and had their say. The results reveal an interesting new trend in book publishing with an upsurge of interest and pride in local writing talent. 

Going by the results, Australian readers love Australian authors and Australian stories. As in previous Better Reading polls, Australian icons Tim Winton, Tom Keneally, Judy Nunn and Bryce Courtenay rank in the top 100. Interestingly – and for the first time ever - debut Australian fiction authors made their mark, big time. 

The inclusion of Holly Ringland’s The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart, Trent Dalton’s Boy Swallows Universe, Christian White’s The Nowhere Child, Dervla McTiernan’s The Ruin, Chris Hammer’s Scrublands, and Lauren Chater’s The Lace Weaver reflects a new and growing appetite for debut Australian authors. 

The survey also revealed: 

  • More than half the top 100 are by Australian authors 
  • Australians enjoy a diverse mix of literary and popular fiction 
  • The gender balance of authors was almost equal at 51 per cent female and 49 per cent male 
  • General fiction is the most popular genre followed by crime/thriller and classics 
  • Australians enjoy a mix of international and home-grown authors - The Book Thief by Australian author Marcus Zusak took out the #1 spot and three of the top 10 positions were taken out by Australian authors. However, the top 10 also included classics and modern classics such as To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee and Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen. 
  • Liane Moriarty was revealed as the most popular Australian author, closely followed by Tim Winton, Jane Harper, Matthew Reilly, Di Morrisey, Judy Nunn and Bryce Courtney, with numerous titles of theirs on the list. 

 

Better Reading’s Top 10 reads 

  1. The Book Thief by Markus Zusak 
  2. To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee 
  3. Pride & Prejudice by Jane Austen 
  4. Outlander by Diana Gabaldon 
  5. Cloudstreet by Tim Winton 
  6. The Bronze Horseman by Paulina Simons 
  7. The Trip of a Lifetime by Monica McInerney 
  8. Big Little Lies by Liane Moriarty 
  9. Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman 
  10. The Dry by Jane Harper 

 

See the full list here: https://www.betterreading.com.au/book_list/better-reading-top-100/

6 comments
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Lucca
5 yrs ago

 

No one reads any more? Last book I read was Camino Island by John Grisham. A little different to his usual books but a good read nevertheless. 

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Adrianus
5 yrs ago

Read something of value, such as Ayn Rand or Erich Fromm or Thomas Szasz. 

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Lucca
5 yrs ago

 

Read those when I was 10. Now I read the lighter stuff.

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Sophie
5 yrs ago

Just as well you “read them at age 10” Ray as I believe they won’t fit in with your personality in adulthood. They certainly don’t resonate with me! There’s..

 Ayn Rand..a Russian Jew.. who believed “altruism is evil”

 Erich Fromm.. roots in orthodox Judaism and a neo-marxist.

Thomas Szasz..a Jewish psychiatrist who wrote a book “mental illess is a myth”


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Adrianus
5 yrs ago

Is mental illness a myth? How do we know when a person has a mental illness? We use the benchmark called normal. We take a default position which is based on a belief that we should all have a similar behavioural response to external influences. We make every attempt to move closer to normal.

Szasz, was more concerned with locking up those who appeared to be having thoughts outside normal parameters. I think there would be many people leading happy lives now, who would have been previously incarcerated for simply thinking differently than the majority.

Mental illness is certainly not a myth -Sophie’s testimony to that 

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Sophie
5 yrs ago

Ever heard of Munchausen by Internet? Bet you haven’t..but..your behaviour certainly points to this disorder. The following results from this study is compatible with many other such studies. Read up…

"Research relating to motivation, opportunity, detection, effects, and consequences of Munchausen by Internet is highlighted and it is formally linked to trolling."

Caocci G, Pisu S, La Nasa G. A simulated case of chronic myeloid leukemia: the growing risk of Munchausen's syndrome by internet. Leuk Lymphoma. 2008 Sep;49(9):1826–8. doi: 10.1080/10428190802179889.793969621 [PubMed] [CrossRef]

Feldman MD. Munchausen by Internet: detecting factitious illness and crisis on the Internet. South Med J. 2000 Jul;93(7):669–72. [PubMed]

Swains H. Wired UK. 2009. May 25, [2011-11-15]. webcite Q&A: Munchausen by internet

Cunningham JM, Feldman MD. Munchausen by Internet: current perspectives and three new cases. Psychosomatics. 2011 Apr;52(2):185–9. doi: 10.1016/j.psym.2010.11.005.S0033-3182(10)00006-X [PubMed] [CrossRef]

 

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Sophie
5 yrs ago

@ Adrianus

Szasz 's central view that mental illness is a myth has been dismissed, if not outright rejected, by the American Medical Association, America Psychiatric Association, and National Institute of Mental Health.




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Leonie
5 yrs ago

I love to read, always have.   I used to frequent those book exchange places and always joined the library wherever I lived, and then I discovered the kindle and Amazon's amazing number of free books.

I could count on the fingers on one hand how many 'real' books, I've read since that discovery, and the same for library visits.  I just take a couple of new releases out when I really, really want to read them and am too stingy to pay for them.

Now I have Cloud Library, my life is complete LOL.

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AutumnOz
5 yrs ago

Leonie, go to the gutenberg website (it may be gutenburg), they have thousands of books for free download, they also have audio books as well as e-books.  None of them are very modern but there is something on the site for everyone's taste in books....except porn of course they don't deal with that :-).

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Leonie
5 yrs ago

I've dabbled with that one in the past too AutumnOz, some great books in there.  Incidentally it was interesting to see how many 'old' books made that list, even a few in the top 10.

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pedro the swift
5 yrs ago

No porn? Hardly worth a visit then!

Use google 

Good to see you're making good use of google. Better hide your computer when the garda come alooking.

The Book Thief deserves to be there. A great book and a great movie.

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Twyla
5 yrs ago

 

 

Whilst not a classic in the sense of the word, I believe that "Citizen Scientist: Searching for Heroes and Hope in an Age of Extinction" by Mary Ellen Hannibal is an important book to read.

The book examines the contributions of amateur scientists in the past, and discusses the current use of citizen scientists now ... The way people contribute to learning, not only in the sciences, but also in the humanties and arts; indeed, in any field of endeavour.

Citizen scientists can assist in unravelling the mysteries of cancer; can assist with translations of archaic documents, and in thousands of other fields. 

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