Here they are; the best books to read on the beach while also keeping an eye on your kids and your mother-in-law. Or more achievable: books for reading at home, outside.

There is such romance around reading on the beach, but quite frankly there is simply no practicality about it. It is all too difficult. Give me a pool-side any day and by pool-side, I mean paddle pool in my backyard where my feet are wet, my head is shaded, and my chair is extremely comfortable. Close are all the facilities I could need: the fridge, the toilet, and my books.

This year while basking in my own backyard I will be choosing from my fabulous TBR pile. I enjoy a certain pattern to my reading: a fiction, a nonfiction and a crime read. (This is intermingled by glorious journals, (trashy) magazines and doom scrolling on my phone.)  You will notice my perfect reading pile is all written by Australian women. What a surprise.

 Read review

An atmospheric work of crime fiction:

Clarke by Holly Throsby

You may have fallen in love with the creative side of Holly though her music, or perhaps even through her previous two novels. Clarke, her latest, is another end of the year gift. While touted as a crime novel, there is something more transient about Throsby’s story line; she is a keen observer of life. Clarke is a story about the insidious reach of family violence – how it creeps and crawls into everything.

Read this novel because Holly Throsby has something to say about living with integrity and kindness while keeping the reader on the hop. This is a perfect Australian summer read.

An illuminating work of nonfiction:

Nothing Bad Ever Happen Here by Heather Rose

Heather Rose blew my mind with her Stella Prize-winning novel, The Museum of Modern Love. And of course, when I think about the writing in that book – the empathy shown in every word, then of course it makes perfect sense that Heather rose has felt tragedy, longingness, and loneliness. Heather Rose has always shown that she understands the pitfalls of love. This is her story, and she shares it with us with kindness and generosity. This is the book that will comfort with words and elucidate with compassion.

Read this because we know it is important to mark our journeys and here, we have an example of a powerful map.

A moving work of fiction:

This Devasting Fever by Sophie Cunningham

Sophie Cunningham has done that brilliant meta layering that everyone under a certain age is acutely aware of. She has authored a novel about the past and about the future and about who she is and who her protagonist is. Her novel is within a novel within a situation within our great landscape of crisis and tenacity. It is about Virginia Woolfe and Leonard. It is about an author and her publisher. It is about Sophie Cunningham and all of us that are bound together through anxiety and a love of a relevant story.

I am reading this because it will make me pause. And it will make me laugh at myself. And I‘ll feel part of something larger than my own world and that makes me happy.