Our staff share the best books they’ve read so far this year, including new releases and older titles just discovered.

Mark Rubbo, managing director:

My top picks of the year so far have been…

Insomniac City by Bill Hayes – A moving memoir about the writer’s relationship with New York and his partner, the famous neurologist Oliver Sacks. I defy you not to love this book!

Prussian Blue by Philip Kerr – If you haven’t read any of Philip Kerr’s Bernie Gunther thrillers, then your reading experience is all the poorer for it. This is one of Kerr’s best. Bernie battles with Nazis high on methamphetamine and old foes reincarnated as the dreaded STASI.

A Writing Life by Bernadette Brennan – This literary biography of Helen Garner is probably my favourite book so far. Brennan has done a wonderful job of dissecting Garner’s work and her book is highly readable and accessible. For Garner fans there are lots of ‘Aha!’ moments, and if you haven’t read much Garner before you’ll want to rush out and buy her backlist. A marvellous tribute to one Australia’s great writers.

Utopia for Realists by Rutger Bregman – What are we going to do with the world? Historian Rutger Bregman offers some intriguing and refreshing solutions to the crucial issues facing our society.

Adults in the Room by Yanis Varoufakis – Academic economist Vardoulakis was Greece’s Finance Minister during the Greek debt crisis. This book is a fascinating account of that time and of the insiders who run the financial system. Former Managing Director of Wiley Publishing, Peter Donoughue, aptly described the book as ‘exquisite on every level’.

Alison Huber, head book buyer:

I was more than pleased when I heard that the brilliant George Saunders was writing a novel, and Lincoln in the Bardo lived up to all my expectations: it is a completely bonkers, hilarious, stylish, original piece of literature that I want to reread and hear read aloud. Not since Keith Richards’s Life (read by Johnny Depp) does an audio version of a book seem so necessary and so right!

I also loved Rachel Khong’s Goodbye, Vitamin – a light touch rendered on the subject of Alzheimer’s disease by a lovable narrator with a sharp wit and the right amount of cynicism. I sped through Mark Brandi’s very atmospheric Wimmera (due in July). Brandi skillfully evokes a 1980s Australian childhood and develops genuine tension in this unsettling literary crime debut.

I recently read an advance copy of a forthcoming US literary debut that is still affecting me. Watch out for My Absolute Darling by Gabriel Tallent in September if you like to read your way into some very dark and disturbing places. It’s a total gut-wrencher.

Amy Vuleta, shop manager at St Kilda:

Bill Hayes’s Insomniac City is one of the most beautiful books I’ve ever read. I found it life- and love-affirming, bold and gentle, and overflowing with genuine emotion. I challenge anyone not to love this book.

Deborah Levy’s Hot Milk is as close as a novel comes to being perfect. It is so excruciatingly, hotly, drippingly feminine. The delicate narrative is laden with sticky and complex imagery – Freudian, Grecian, mythological. I felt as though Levy had plunged her hands into this book, all the way up to the elbows, and mixed everything around around to create a piece of almost indescribably untethered wildness. Read it, carry it around, quote it. I plan to return to it, again and again.

Iain Ryan’s forthcoming Australian crime release, The Student, is one of the most satisfyingly accomplished novels of its genre that I think I’ve ever read. Set in a regional Queensland university town in the early 1990s is perhaps best described by comparison: this book is Wake in Fright meets The Secret History. I’m not entirely certain what readers will make of this book. It’s not exactly pretty, and nor does it quite fit into the well-worn boots of its obvious heroes (Elroy, Leonard, Sallis, Woodrell). But I do know that my lasting impression of Ryan’s novel is a great deal more exquisite and affecting than that what is described by the details of the plot.

Nina Kenwood, marketing manager

My book of the year so far is Elizabeth Strout’s Anything Is Possible, which is fitting because her companion novel My Name Is Lucy Barton was my favourite book of last year. Strout’s writing will always move and inspire me.

Staying with contemporary fiction, I also loved Katherine Heiny’s brilliant first novel Standard Deviation and Jami Attenberg’s All Grown Up. Both are wise, witty, and darkly funny. In YA, I laughed out loud at Emma Chastain’s Confessions of a High School Disaster, and couldn’t stop reading Karen M. McManus’s One Of Us Is Lying. And in crime, I was very impressed by Sarah Bailey’s gripping debut The Dark Lake.

Lian Hingee, digital marketing manager:

I’ve spent a good portion of the first half of this year reading for the Readings Young Adult Book Prize, and I was so pleased to see some of my favourite books of the year make it on to the shortlist (even if I can’t talk about them here!). We’re very spoilt to have such a high standard of writers writing books for teens in Australia, and also to have such a dedicated and supportive LoveOzYA community.

On the topic of Australian young adult fiction… Melissa Keil’s The Secret Science of Magic has definitely made it on to my best books of the year list. Keil is one of my favourite YA writers, always managing to toe the line perfectly between sweet and sassy, light-hearted and profound. She packs her books with beautifully rendered characters, and is – in my opinion – the undisputed queen of the teen rom-com.

Speaking of rom-coms, one of my best friends put me on to The Hating Game, a contemporary romance from Canberra-based debut author Sally Thorne. This wicked, sexy, funny, book was the perfect escapist antidote to jolt me out of a reading rut, and I loved it so much that as soon as I finished it, I flipped it back to page one and read it all over again.

Naomi Alderman’s powerful sci-fi novel The Power is about as far away from rom-coms as it’s possible to get, but it’s definitely one of the best books I’ve read this year (this decade, this century). Discomfiting, confronting, rousing, it reads like a gloriously inverse companion piece to The Handmaid’s Tale, with women wresting power from men in a brutal and bloody coup after discovering they have the power to conduct massive arcs of energy from their fingertips. It just won the Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction (the first sci-fi novel to ever do so) and I can’t recommend it highly enough.

Mike Shuttleworth, bookseller at Readings Hawthorn:

Every now and then a book just sparks joy. Idan Ben-Barak and Julian Frost’s picture book about microbes, germs and the human body, Do Not Lick This Book, is a winning combination of microscopic photography and cheeky humour, from the makers of Dumb Ways to Die. It’s ideal for readers of ages four through to 104. (And if you really must lick this book, the authors have helpfully included a spot for you on the back cover.)

Jan Lockwood, human resources manager:

I’ve been catching up on Liane Moriarty novels since discovering her last year and Big Little Lies is my new favourite of hers. This one is set around a local kindergarten community with all kinds of delicious schoolyard politics, complex relationships, friendships, conflicts and one-upmanship. And that, of course, is just the parents. Add the twist of an unnamed dead parent following an incident at the school trivia night and I found I couldn’t put it down. This novel is truly worthy of its acclaimed TV series adaptation.

Jean Harley was Here by Heather Taylor Johnson affected me greatly. The story is told from multiple points of view in the aftermath of a tragic accident that claimed the life of said Jean Harley. Some reviewers have baulked at a couple of chapters (chiefly the one by the family dog) but I loved the whole package. It’s incredibly sad – I think because the author has probably drawn on her true life experience – yet overwhelmingly uplifting. The lasting message for me was how significantly and positively one person’s life can affect others.

A rare foray into young adult books saw me reading Cath Crowley’s Words in Deep Blue. This novel totally impressed me with the sheer depth of emotions it stirred and the beautiful writing. It’s a love story as well as a love letter to bookshops.

And Scott Pape’s The Barefoot Investor was exactly what my family needed – easy to understand and easy to implement strategies to improve our financial position. With the added bonus of the requirement to schedule regular date nights, this is a must read.

Stella Charls, marketing and events coordinator:

This year I keep finishing a book and confidently declaring to anyone around me: ‘What a perfect book! I bet this one is the best one I’ll read all year!’ I’ve definitely said this at least five times by now. While I was pleased to read mostly Australian fiction last year, this year I’ve been drawn to American fiction and mostly set outside of the big cities you usually read about (New York, San Francisco, etc). My five favourite novels have been The Mothers by Brit Bennet, The Animators by Kayla Rae Whittaker, Universal Harvester by John Darnielle, Marlena by Julie Buntin, and (my ‘definitely-will-be-my-favourite-book-of-the-year-because-it-is-utterly-perfect’) Goodbye, Vitamin by Rachel Khong.

I’ve also read some compelling non-fiction (Emily Witt’s Future Sex, Maggie Nelson’s The Red Parts and Brodie Lancaster’s No Way! OK, Fine), inhaled Liane Moriarty’s Big Little Lies when I was in a complete reading slump, and still can’t stopped thinking about Claire Louise Bennett’s startlingly original debut Pond.

My favourite cookbook this year has been Rachel Khong’s All About Eggs. (Yes, the same Rachel Khong who wrote my favourite novel of the year that I mentioned earlier, Goodbye, Vitamin). My favourite picture book has been the gorgeous Under the Love Umbrella. And my favourite graphic novel has been Readings bookseller Alice Chipkin’s Eyes Too Dry (co-written with Jessica Tavassoli).

Bronte Coates, digital content coordinator:

This question is too hard! Here’s a sample of my favourites…

In young adult books… Angie Smith’s gut-punch of a debut, The Hate U Give, has everyone talking. I stayed up past midnight to finish reading Karen M. McManus’s One Of Us Is Lying. Laini Taylor’s Strange the Dreamer is a strange, gorgeous, imaginative beginning to a new fantasy series. Alison Goodman’s paranormal regency, starting with Lady Helen and the Dark Days Club, is exactly my cup of tea.

And Chloe Snow’s diary in Confessions of a High School Disaster reminded me so much of my own high school diaries that I had to check under my bed to make sure they were still hidden from the world.

The new picture book from bestselling duo Mac Barnett and Jon Klassen, Triangle, is a hilarious cautionary tale for kids who love sneaky tricks. The final page of this book is utter perfection; I’m still smiling about it.

I don’t often read art books but Charlotte Jansen and Zing Tsjeng’s Girl on Girl sparked my interest and I’ve been thinking about it a lot since finishing it. It’s a fascinating look at the work being created by a new generation of female artists inspired by the internet.

Plus… Thi Bui’s The Best We Could Do is an absolute stunner, Elif Batuman’s The Idiot is a smart, surreal and absorbing campus novel, and I’ve finally gotten around to reading Kevin Kwan’s very silly, very fun Crazy Rich Asians series (following a glowing endorsement from my colleague Nina).

Speaking of fun books… I bought two romance novels off the back of an episode of the Pop Culture Happy Hour podcast – Vision in White by Nora Roberts and Romancing the Duke by Tessa Dare – and thoroughly enjoyed both. If you’re interested in romance novels but don’t know where to start, I recommend you seek this episode out too.

2017 is also the first year I’ve read George Saunders. I don’t think I’ll ever stop.

Robbie Egan, shop manager at Readings Carlton:

This year, I can’t seem to stop recommending people James S.A. Corey’s The Expanse series. It has been about 20 years since I read any science fiction but as soon as I picked up book one, Leviathan Wakes, I was on board for the series.

The story is set in a future fraught with tensions about interplanetary war. Earth and Mars are on the brink of conflict, and the spanner in the works is the discovery of an unusual entity – a ‘protomolecule’, seemingly from another galaxy, that consumes energy and living matter and remodels it at a molecular level. Needless to say, governments and the military are interested, and the discovery of extra-terrestrial matter frays alliances to break point.

These books present fantastic speculations of where we may be headed as a species. Smart blockbusters aren’t too common, but that’s exactly what The Expanse series is. I implore you to read it, and then tell everyone about it.

Chris Gordon, events manager:

I have read so many great books this year already, and here are my favourites, so far…

Melanie Joosten well understands the power of a tightly paced novel. (Her debut novel is taut thriller, Berlin Syndrome.) Her second novel, Gravity Well, is all about friendships and parenting, and it’s a treat. I also enjoyed Krystal Sutherland’s young adult novel, Our Chemical Hearts, which has a main character that reminds me of my son. It makes it on my list of favourites because I appreciate discovering well-drawn portrayals of young men that are kind, kooky and interesting.

David Marr’s Quarterly Essay on Pauline Hanson, The White Queen, was such a comfort to read. I picked it up at time when I was feeling worried about the shifts in recent politics. Marr made me laugh, and he also helped me to understand that Hanson’s success does not have to mean the beginning of the end for us here in Australia. Another non-fiction work, Bernadette Brennan’s first full-length study of Helen Garner’s work, A Writing Life, has inspired me to pile Garner’s books on my bedside table, and to look at each of them again with fresh eyes.

Finally, Annie Smithers’s Annie’s Farmhouse Kitchen is the kind of cookbook you take to bed to read at night. She describes her recipes in the context of a year, reflecting on her farm, her friends and her life. The very best cooks are able to wear their hearts on their sleeves, but not all can illustrate that love through their writing. Smithers is one who can.

Ellen Cregan, bookseller at Readings Doncaster

2017 has been a huge year for books so far. I’ve been trying to read as widely as possible, especially focusing on non-western and translated works. While I think I’ve been pretty successful in this challenge to myself, I’ve also been keeping up with old preferences – Irish and Australian fiction, and a little bit of crime fiction too. I think that what I’ve been reading so far this year has done my brain a lot of good – I’ve learnt a lot, and been forced to think in new and exciting ways.

In no particular order, here are some of my favourites…

Krissy Kneen’s latest novel, An Uncertain Grace, blew me away. Kneen’s prose is luminescent, and in this book I felt like I was learning so much. This book has elements of speculative fiction and erotica to it. Even though these are two genres in fiction that are generally seen as being acquired tastes, I think this is a book that everybody should read. It is tender, exciting and wildly imaginative.

Arundhati Roy’s second novel, The Ministry of Utmost Happiness, is finally out this month, and it is every bit as fabulous as I’d hoped it would be. This might be my favourite book of the year so far for its impeccably written characters – the skill with which Roy has created these people that feel entirely real is breathtaking. While reading this novel I was pushed beyond every emotional threshold I have. It made me feel very insignificant, but also irreplaceable. Roy really is a magical writer.

I was lucky enough to get an early copy of Charlie Donlea’s crime novel, The Girl Who Was Taken, back in February. When I finished reading it a mere 24 hours after turning the first page, I spent the morning furiously searching for any information about its publication. For some reason I couldn’t find anything at all. I almost began to think that I’d made it up, or dreamt it! Then, a few months later, it magically appeared on the crime fiction shelves. This is a compelling and dark thriller with plenty of twists and turns.

Niccolò Ammaniti’s Anna is one to look forward to. I read the book over three particularly jolty bus trips and felt nauseous the whole time – but it was so good that I couldn’t physically stop reading. This is the book that I’ve recommended most aggressively to my colleagues at Doncaster this year. In this novel, 13-year-old Anna journeys through a post-apocalyptic Italy where, due to a horrible plague, nobody lives past puberty. It felt like a fever dream – surreal but somehow also wholly believable. This book is repulsive and terrifying in all the right ways.

Lisa McInerney’s The Blood Miracles has it all. It’s funny, thrilling, and heartbreaking – often all in the same sentence. It’s a sequel that holds its own weight, and in some ways is more enjoyable than its predecessor (Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction winner, The Glorious Heresies). In Ryan, McInerney has created a protagonist who is frustratingly loveable – he’s a ratbag who makes all the worst possible decisions but for some reason, I have endless sympathy for him. I was also very pleased that Maureen Phelan, the accidentally homicidal granny from the first book, again takes a central role in a story that could easily be judged as highly masculine and Guy Ritchie-esque at first glance. The past few years have been amazing for Irish fiction, and this novel is one of my favourites to come out of this wave.

I studied Moshin Hamid’s The Reluctant Fundamentalist in year twelve English, and it didn’t kill off my appreciation for his writing. (I like to think this is the ultimate test of an author’s ability – if it can survive an English teacher’s meticulous unpacking of themes and metaphors, it can survive anything.) Exit West is a timely novel, and something I’ve recommended a lot, particularly to those who don’t often engage with refugee stories. In some ways the power of this novel lies in its relative anonymity. The country its protagonists come from is never named. Emphasis is instead placed on their experiences, struggles and dreams. This is the sort of book that reminds you to be grateful, and to keep your heart open.