The first time you read a book by a favourite author.

Pia Spreadborough on discovering Haruki Murakmi:

I began The Wind Up Bird Chronicle one summer afternoon, fresh out of high school. I was excruciatingly anxious and in a panic about the rest of my life ahead of me being a ‘blank slate’. Yet, as I savoured each page of this novel, I was comforted by the protagonist Toru Okada’s struggle with existential doubt – just like I, an overly dramatic eighteen-year-old, was experiencing at the time.

The novel begins with the disappearance of Okada’s wife. Then, he loses the cat they both own. On a quest to recover them both he finds that he himself is now lost. His attempt to retrieve the person he was turns into a magical, and at times dangerous, journey of self-discovery. Along the way he encounters an array of weird characters, mysterious occurrences and ominous secrets. What resonated most with me was how Murakami weaves fundamental human experiences such as purpose, suffering, grief and alienation into a complex yet beautifully poetic ode to the potential adventure that life offers.

And thus began my love affair with the rest of his novels.

Bronte Coates on discovering Anne Enright:

A few years ago I fell in love with Irish fiction and one of my favourite new discoveries at the time was Anne Enright. Her Booker prize-winning novel, The Gathering, was on a reading list for one of my university classes: after the death of her wayward brother Liam, Veronica returns to Dublin for the wake along with her eight surviving siblings (I really do have a soft spot for stories about big families). While I was reading the novel I found myself marking pretty much every single page. Enright’s prose is stunning and devastating and Veronica’s narration is sharply funny in the midst of her grief. To lose one of my siblings is something I could not fully imagine as a teenager, yet The Gathering brought me so close to such a realisation that it was painful.

I later went on to read more of Enright’s work including The Forgotten Waltz, which was shortlisted for the Orange Prize and is an equally astonishing novel.

Chris Somerville on discovering Michael Chabon:

Admittedly I’d made the ruinous error of watching the movie Wonder Boys before reading Michael Chabon’s novel of the same name, but after watching the movie, where I’d thoroughly enjoyed protagonist Grady Tripp, the pot-smoking novelist and embodiment of disaster, I’d wanted more. The novel helped with the specific wanting you get sometimes, when you want to continue being in the company of fictional characters.

Since reading Wonder Boys I’ve read most of Chabon’s work. Some has stuck with me and some hasn’t, but Wonder Boys remains a favourite. When I moved interstate recently it was one of the five books I brought along with me on the plane, and it remains one of the few books I re-read.

Nina Kenwood on discovering Anne Tyler:

I hadn’t heard anything about Anne Tyler when I first picked up The Amateur Marriage. I found the cover image striking, and I liked the title. What I found inside the pages was a heartbreaking story of a mismatched married couple who struggle to build a life together. I fell in love with Tyler’s gentle, emphatic style, and immediately bought and read another three books of hers – Ladder of Years, Breathing Lessons and Back When We Were Grown Ups.

Much like Alice Munro, Tyler has an incredible ability to write beautifully about quiet, ordinary lives. Her characters – usually women, often in their forties or older – are fascinating examinations of people who wake up one day determined to change their lives, for one reason or another.

I haven’t read all of Tyler’s work yet, and it makes happy to know I still have a half a dozen of her novels out there waiting for me to read when I’m ready.