Book worms
Critics' Corner • Wednesday, December 18, 2013 Ann Cunningham, commissioning editor of The Federation Press, has assembled a list of this year's best and least loved books, chosen by a hand selected pool of legally inclined people ... Plenty of ideas and inspiration
Cunningham: The Federation Press' commissioning editorLIKE all compulsive readers I love those compilations of the Best Books of the Year as chosen by the great and the good and the infamous.
There is always that honesty and originality inevitably missing from the PR-marketing machines that determine too many consumer choices, and books are definitely not immune from spin.
As a lawyer and publisher, I'd always wanted to know what lawyers had read throughout the year. What do they hope to read over the summer or be given for Christmas.
So I asked commercial and criminal practitioners, lawyers turned politicians, silks, academics, law librarians, commentators, publishers and some working for NGOs.
Many of the contributors are authors I've got to know, others have made themselves known as voracious readers. Others were straight cold calls.
Lawyers are known to be thinkers, talkers, writers and raconteurs and to work rather hard. They are evidently also committed readers with astonishingly eclectic tastes and quite possibly keeping the publishing industry alive.
The great thing about the books selected is that they range from literary to genre fiction and the highly praised to the intriguing if obscure.
The breadth of non-fiction choices is dazzling in erudition (actually it is more frightening), but it is a genuine cornucopia.
Be enticed - you can fall seriously in love with some of the books listed here, or at least have a summer fling.
All up there are more than 150 books for you to choose from.
After 20 years in the book industry, it was exciting, renewing and a sheer pleasure to read each and every contribution and feel the spontaneous enthusiasm for reading widely and well.
It reminds us all how much richness there is in books, how reading unexpectedly links opposites and how great writing transcends political difference.
Note: With minor copyediting, the contributions are as submitted including grammar and syntax. This is important (if inconsistent). Reading is idiosyncratic and personal - it should never be reduced to something merely formulaic and just how each reader describes, explains and emphasises their choices here may be as important as the choices themselves, especially to people seeking their next good book.
Happy Reading!
Ann Cunningham
Commissioning Editor and Reader
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Peter Agardy - Victorian Bar
Best non-fiction: This one was easy, Pope Francis, Untying the Knots by Paul Vallely (Bloomsbury) 2013.
Fiction: I hope it is in order for me to admit this - I have read a few books this year, but the only one I really enjoyed was the set of three I received from my son for Christmas last year The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson (Quercus) along with the two sequels.
A colleague gave me Face to Face (Currency Press), a play written by David Williamson, about restorative justice - now a movie well worth seeing – the critics did not like it but they missed the point because although it might have been a corny plot the point of the story was the mediation process.
Peter Agardy is the author of Risky Business: What happens to personal assets when business fails? (2012)
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Troy Anderson - NSW Bar
Best Non Fiction: It's an oldie now, but David Marr's biography of Patrick White (Random House). If I hadn't read it, I would never have begun reading White's work. I would like to give a dishonourable mention too - Peter Fitzsimon's Eureka (Random House). Its size was inversely proportional to its quality: repetitive and with a folksy tone that was both condescending and predictable.
Best Fiction: J.K. Rowling's The Casual Vacancy (Sphere). It was a book I kept wanting to get back to – unlike some which start with promise then collect dust on the bed side table. I also re-read Catch 22 (Vintage Classics)– age has not wearied it.
What book(s) is top of your summer reading wish list? The Luminaries by Eleanor Catton (Granta), which won the Booker Prize for 2013. It looks enormous and I have been looking forward to getting stuck into over January 2014.
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Michèle Asprey - lawyer and plain language writing specialist
David Byrne: How Music WorksBest Non Fiction: I am a lawyer, but also a closet musician: I play the drums. The most impressive book I read this year was by a musician, about music: David Byrne's How Music Works (Canongate). Byrne was the lead singer/songwriter in the influential 1980s band Talking Heads, and when they disbanded he went solo. He is clearly a deep thinker and his book roams around every aspect of music from its origins to its future, touching on the technical aspects of listening to, playing and recording music, and even giving advice about recording and management contracts, including some of the pitfalls. But the most impressive thing about the book is getting inside Byrne's extraordinary mind. Within only a couple of pages, this book had me gasping with admiration at the author's insight and creative perception. The book is also physically beautiful, with a padded cover and intriguing photographs and illustrations. It's a book to relish, and take your time reading.
Michèle Asprey is the author of Plain Language for Lawyers now in its fourth edition.
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Richard Beasley SC - NSW Bar
Best non-fiction: Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman (Penguin). It's written by a Nobel prize-winning economic scientist, so I had to concentrate reading it as the author is 1000 times smarter than me. Gives some great insights to advertising techniques, and how we think.
Best Fiction: I can't limit it to one. My library is nearly as large as a Federal parliamentarian's for a start (although not taxpayer funded). Here are my top three:
Literary: The Son, by Philipp Meyer (Vintage). A Texan epic. Brilliant.
Thriller: I am Pilgrim, by Terry Hayes (Bantam). A terrorist is about to wipe out humanity with a virus. Only one man can stop him etc. gripping and compelling. Bloody good.
Crime: Say You're Sorry, by Michael Robotham (Hachette). Very fine writer, who writes very scary books.
What book(s) is top of your summer reading wish list: The Goldfinch, by Donna Tartt (Hachette), and The Narrow Road to the Deep North, by Richard Flanagan (Vintage).
Richard Beasley's most recent book is Me and Rory Macbeath (Hachette).
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Laurie Berg - University of Technology, Sydney
Best Non Fiction: Sonia Sotomayor, My Beloved World (Random House US) – Having delighted in Justice Sotomayor's charming guest spot on Sesame Street, I loved the very intimate reflections about the remarkable life of the first Hispanic female justice of the US Supreme Court.
Best Fiction: Jhumpa Lahiri, The Lowland (Bloomsbury) – I get so consumed by the sublime, poetic way that Lahiri depicts families and immigrant lives that straddle old country and new.
On my bedside table: Excited to get a moment to read Michelle de Kretser's Questions of Travel (Allen & Unwin)
Laurie Berg is co-author of Immigration, Refugees and Forced Migration (2010).
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Tom Blackburn SC - Sydney Bar
Best Non Fiction: Iron Curtain by Anne Applebaum (Penguin). A clear-eyed history of the operation of Soviet-style communism in Russia and Eastern Europe. Puts one in mind of Churchill’s remark: Democracy is the worst form of Government ever devised, except for all the others.
Best Fiction: The Sisters Brothers by Patrick de Witt (Granta). The journey of two thuggish brothers from Oregon to California, at the time of the gold rush, to bump off a rival of their boss. More fantastic and comic than grim. A morality tale with a light, surreal touch.
What book(s) is top of your summer reading wish list? Meeting the Devil (William Heinemann) – a collection of personal memoirs from the London Review of Books. Hilary Mantel, AJP Taylor, Julian Barnes, RW Johnson, Tariq Ali, lots more. My favourite so far: My Mad Captains by Frank Kermode, a short, quirky recollection of Kermode's wartime service in the Royal Navy.
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Professor Tim Bonyhady - Australian National University
Best Non Fiction: Not a book but an article: Julian Barnes's Heart-Squasher about Lucien Freud in the London Review of Books for 29 November. I found it all the more illuminating because I had just seen the Freud exhibition in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna.
Best Fiction: Peter Cochrane's Governor Bligh and the Short Man (Penguin Special). It's all the more remarkable because it's Cochrane's first novella, having otherwise written great history, particularly his Simpson and the Donkey (MUP) and Colonial Ambition (MUP), about the origins of democracy in Australia.
What book(s) is top of your summer reading wish list? Philip Roth's The Counterlife (Vintage)
Tim Bonyhady's latest book is Good Living Street: The Fortunes of My Viennese Family (Allen & Unwin).
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Julian Burnside AO QC
Burnside:The God Argument for this summerBest Non Fiction: The Gunpowder Plot by Antonia Fraser (Phoenix) and The Tyrannicide Brief by Geoffrey Robertson (Vintage). Between these two books you get a brilliant and fascinating snapshot of 17th century England, and the development of what we now call the Rule of Law. I read them a few years ago, but the mark they left is still vivid. Recently: Saving Mozart by Raphael Jerusalmy (Text). A moving and compelling book about the Holocaust, from a distinctively new angle.
Best Fiction: Sexing the Cherry by Jeanette Winterson (Vintage). I read it years ago. I still think of it often. Dazzling literary style. The fact that it happens to be set in 17th century London is entirely coincidental.
What book(s) is top of your summer reading wish list? The Last Mughal by William Dalrymple (Random House US), The God Argument by A.C. Grayling (Bloomsbury) and Justice for Hedgehogs by Ronald Dworkin (Harvard University Press)
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David Cross - partner, Norton Rose Fulbright, Sydney
Best Non-Fiction: Robert Oppenheimer: A Life Inside the Center by Ray Monk (Vintage). Revered for his biographies of Ludwig Wittgenstein and Bertrand Russell, Professor Monk maps the complex personality of the American theoretical physicist who became director of the Los Alamos atomic bomb project - whilst not neglecting the science.
Best Fiction: A Death in the Family and A Man in Love by Karl Ove Knausgaard (Vintage). The English translation of the first two volumes from the Norwegian author's 6 novel series called My Struggle. Taking the introspective, semi-autobiographical genre developed by Proust in the 19th Century and Powell in the 20th Century to another level, Knausgaard has created a 21st Century tour de force (and a fierce debate over literary ethics).
Top of Summer Reading List: Music in the Castle of Heaven: A Portrait of Johann Sebastian Bach by John Eliot Gardiner (Allen Lane). A book about Bach by perhaps the greatest living interpreter of his music. Bring on the holidays!
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Andrew Dallas - National Legal Officer, CFMEU, Mining and Energy Division
Best Non Fiction: Johnny Cash - The Life by Robert Hilburn (Hachette). The reason I liked it so - despite, the glowing endorsement from Bono - was because it was an entirely honest exposition of the man, the myth and his music.
Best Fiction: Mo said she was quirky by James Kelman (Hamish Hamilton). Kelman is my favourite author and this book is potentially better than his officially good (as in Booker Prize-winning good) novel, How Late it was, How Late.
This summer I hope to read is The Luminaries by Eleanor Cotton (Granta). I was home in New Zealand when Cotton won the Booker Prize so I guess I ought to see what the racket is about.
Andrew Dallas co-authored Good Faith Bargaining under the Fair Work Act 2009 (2012)
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Professor Robert Deutsch - UNSW, Deputy President AAT
Great read of the year for me was The Spinoza Problem by Irwin Yalon (Scribe).
If you like philosophy this is an interesting semi fiction read juxtaposing Spinoza's struggles with his Jewish faith and the Nazi interpretation and manner of dealing with it. It is a really fascinating blend of fiction and non-fiction.
Over the holidays I would like to read James M Cain's The Postman Always Rings Twice (Random House) and the latest book on the JFK assassination. I love a good thriller and both these books fit into that category.
Bob Deutsch is the author of Accounting for Non Accountants (2012)
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Kanaga Dharmananda SC - WA Bar
Best Non Fiction: Salt Sugar Fat: How the Food Giants Hooked Us, Moss (Random House) about what we eat and how we are manipulated;
Justice for Hedgehogs, Dworkin (Harvard University Press), a vision for law as interpretation and the use of dignity as a value;
Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity, Boo (Scribe) – so well written and powerful about humanity;
Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking (Penguin), title speaks for itself;
And Long Term Contracts (Federation Press).
Best Fiction: The Lowland, Jhumpa Lahiri (Bloomsbury), well written and a portrait of a time;
This Is How You Lose Her, Junot Diaz (Faber), brilliant, and the language moves from the profane to the sublime in a breath;
The Cat's Table, Michael Ondaatje (Vintage), just wondrous.
What book(s) is top of your summer reading wish list: The Last Campaign, about Bobby Kennedy (Henry Holt); The Righteous Mind, Haidt (Penguin).
Kanaga Dharmananda's books include: Declaratory Relief (2009); Schemes of Arrangement (2010) and Long Term Contracts (2013).
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Magistrate Hugh Dillon - Acting State Coroner, NSW
Slim: Defeat into VictoryBest non-fiction: Chris Bellamy's brick-sized Absolute War (Vintage) is brilliant account of the war between the Soviet Union and Nazi German. John Cornwell's Hitler's Pope, (Penguin) the story of the reign of Pope Pius XII and his preference for authoritarian rulers raises interesting questions about the Catholic Church and its influence. Although this may seem to come out of left field, Jim Collins's classic business book Good to Great (Harper Business) is a powerful analysis of what makes organisations great: in short, humble leaders with a strong vision - think Nelson Mandela, Pope Francis ... Lord Slim's wonderful account of the Burma campaign 1942-45 Defeat into Victory (Pan Military Classics) is a great example of that kind of leadership but also of the last days of the Raj. He writes beautifully and humbly. Kevin Rudd should take notes. Damien Fleming's funny but wise Bowlology (Five Mile Press) is my sports book of the year followed by Richie McCaw's The Open Side (Hodder Moa). Keith Mason's Lawyers Then and Now (Federation Press) is an elegant and humorous legal miscellany. Julian Barnes's meditation on death and grieving, Nothing to be Frightened Of (Vintage) is the book that made me think most this year.
Best fiction: While travelling in Burma this year I read Amitav Ghosh's The Glass Palace (Flamingo), a wonderful historical novel which starts with British invasion of Burma in the 1850 and runs through to Aung Sun Suu Kyi. Mario Vargas Llosa's The Dream of the Celt (Faber) tells the story of Sir Roger Casement, a gay Irish diplomat who became famous for his exposure of atrocities being committed in the Congo and Amazonia in the early 20th century. In 1916 he participated in the Irish Easter Uprising and was executed as a traitor by the British who used his diaries to blacken his name. And I went back to John Le Carré's wonderful The spy who came in from the cold (Viking).
Summer reading: I am researching a book on 1942. Germany and the Second World War (Clarendon Press) is the German official history. It is scrupulously honest, incredibly detailed and very well translated. This is the main course. For light relief, I am reading Joseph O'Neill's comic novel This is the Life (Harper Perennial) set in the Inns of Court and at the beach I'm going to dip into PG Wodehouse and Jeeves (Arrow) and David Foster Wallace's opus magnum Infinite Jest (Abacus).
Hugh Dillon is co-author of the forthcoming Australian Coroners Manual.
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Grant Donaldson SC - Solicitor General for Western Australia
Donaldson: underwhelmedBest non-fiction: I have been underwhelmed by my 2013 offerings thus far. The new Doris Kearns Goodwin book, The Bully Pulpit (Viking) on Roosevelt and Taft was so disappointing (her Lincoln book was so good). All of the Kennedy stuff that came out this year was dull - not a new insight amongst it. I have just got Margaret MacMillan's new book The War that ended Peace (Random House). Her book on the Paris Peace conference was fantastic - the best since Keynes, so I am really looking forward to this. The non-fiction book that I have enjoyed most in recent times is (you might think a little oddly) The Cistercian Order in Mediaeval Europe by Jamroziak (Longman/Routledge). I am a bit interested in this sort of stuff and for a relative novice it was so clearly and entertainingly written and dealt with matters that are (to me) intriguing. In a similar light, Haag's book on the Templars (The Tragedy of the Templars, Profile) was okay, but wholly derivative and nothing new. Magnificent Delusions: Pakistan, the United States, and an Epic History of Misunderstanding by Haqqani (Public Affairs US) was interesting. The Brothers, (Henry Holt) Kinzer's book on the Dulles brothers had nothing new. WIlford's America's Great Game: The CIA's Secret Arabists and the Shaping of the Modern Middle East (Basic Civitas) is on its way and has been favourably reviewed. I am hopeful.
On legal stuff – The Great Dissent: How Oliver Wendell Holmes Changed His Mind - and Changed the History of Free Speech in America by Healy (Metropolitan) was okay, but a little tedious. The new Poser biography of Lord Mansfield: Justice in the Age of Reason (McGill Queens University Press) again added nothing new. I was very disappointed in the Hand letters. I am waiting on the new biographies of Lord Esher, Dr Mann and Scrutton LJ. I thought that the 2 best legal things were the essays that Andrew Burrows edited for Lord Rodger – and the best (and most surprisingly so) Posner's Reflections on Judging (Harvard University Press) surprising because his stuff is usually so terrible - but this was fantastic and eye opening.
I dipped into 2 things on "proportionality" so that I could try and understand what Justice Kieifel is talking about - The Constitutional Structure of Proportionality by Klatt (Oxford University Press) and Justice Barak's book Proportionality: Constitutional Rights and their Limitations (Cambridge University Press). Unfortunately, neither helped.
Best Fiction: I can never go past the incomparable Richard Flanagan and have made a bit of a start on his new one The Narrow Road to the Deep North (Vintage).
Over summer: see above. BUT - now that the High Court has started filming its hearings (thanks for that) I will spend much of the break just watching videos of Justin Gleeson.
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The Hon Mark Dreyfus - Shadow Attorney General and Shadow Minister for the Arts, Federal Member for Isaacs
Best Non Fiction: Thinking Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman (Penguin). It is rare that reading a book changes the way you think about thinking, but Kahneman's insightful book does just that.
Best Fiction: Battlelines by Tony Abbott (Melbourne University Press). A truly astonishing work of imagination.
Top of summer reading wish list: Eyrie by Tim Winton (Hamish Hamilton). Tim Winton very rarely disappoints, and after another year in federal politics, including a gruelling election campaign, I look forward to losing myself in Mr Winton's latest offering.
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Dr Michael Grewcock - University of NSW
My 2 favourite books for the year:
Non-fiction: Susan Weissman, The Course is Set in Hope, (Verso). This is an excellent biography of the revolutionary writer and activist, Victor Serge. Weissman traces Serge's political evolution from anarchist through to support for the Bolsheviks in the years immediately following the Russian revolution. Serge was one of the few anti-Stalinist activists to survive the political repression and purges of the 1920 and 1930s, dying of natural causes in Mexico in 1947. He left behind an extraordinary body of literature, political journalism and memoir that expresses the courage and desire for a better world that animated his generation of revolutionaries. NYRB has recently republished his Memoirs of a Revolutionary and some of his novels. All highly recommended.
Fiction: Markus Zusak, The Book Thief, (Pan MacMillan) It took me a while to get around to reading this but I am glad I did. It is a fabulous piece of writing that I fear won't translate so well into film. What does come through is that it takes a lot more humanity and courage to protect refugees than it does to construct a gulag and mobilise the navy in order to "stop the boats".
Michael Grewcock is the author of Border Crimes (2010).
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Cathy Hammer - Legal Information Access Centre, State Library
Best Fiction: Narrow Road to the Deep North - Richard Flanagan (Vintage). Much of the action of this book takes place on the Thai-Burma railway. I loved this book - it feels like every word has been really crafted and refined (which I don't doubt) - there is not a word out of place. I thought the very Australian nature of the relationships between the men in the awful situation of the work camp was really well portrayed and very moving.
Eyrie – Tim Winton (Hamish Hamilton). This novel has characters that are so well brought to life that I found myself thinking about their lives after I had finished the book - I could really imagine them out there living day to day. They are interesting and flawed. The book has a great tensions in it too - you are never completely sure if you do know the characters well enough to trust them and there is a great sense of foreboding; that something dreadful is about to happen. There are strong threads about redemption and disappointment and an ending that does not tie things up neatly - there is a lot to think about. If you've read The Riders you'll know what he can do!
Might have to pass on the non-fiction ... latest issue of Hot Topics (No. 86) on First Australians by Larissa Behrendt would be the closest!
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Lachlan Harris - Media Advisor and Commentator
The best non-fiction book I read this year, and one of the best I have ever read, was Up in the Old Hotel by Joseph Mitchell (Vintage Classics). Mitchell was a legendary chronicler of New York characters for the New Yorker from the 1930s to the 1960s. Up in the Old Hotel is a collection of his best work. The writing is sublime, cheeky, respectful, and deeply honest. Do not go to New York, or dream of New York, without reading this book.
The best fiction I read this year was Deadwood by Pete Dexter (Vintage Contemporaries). Deadwood is a literary tour de force masquerading as an old fashioned shoot'em up Western. I normally run for the hills when the plot features cowboys battling Indians, but this novel is a brilliant read, funny, perfectly paced, and humorously brutal in the way only Americans art can be. I loved it.
Lachlan Harris co-founded One Big Switch.
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David Hirsch - NSW Bar
Best Non Fiction: I'm Your Man - The Life of Leonard Cohen by Sylvie Simmons (Vintage). I had not appreciated what a complex and engaging character Leonard Cohen was. His personal evolution was really inspiring. Although now 79 he has been touring the world to rave reviews (not just for us over 50s) and this book shows how these shows are the culmination of a great life's great work.
Forgotten War by Henry Reynolds (New South) Australia's "frontier wars" with the Aborigines is not something I had understood before reading this account. It was a scholarly investigation based as much as possible on the historical records that shows the attitude of the early settlers and the government to the indigenous inhabitants of this supposedly empty land. It allows the reader to appreciate the perspective of both sides of this "war".
Best Fiction: Far From the Madding Crowd and Tess of the d'Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy I had not read these classics before. The language was rich and evocative. Made me realise how difficult the class society of 19th century England was for "working families". Thankfully Australia has progressed beyond that vicious way of thinking about ordinary people who could be used and abused by the rich and powerful. Then again…
The Wind Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami (Vintage) I still don't know what this book is about or what it means. But it was thoroughly engaging like lifting the lid off Murkami's head and watching in wonder at what was going on in there. It is remarkable what strange things can happen when you lose your cat.
What book(s) is top of your summer reading wish list?
Long Walk to Freedom – the autobiography of Nelson Mandela (Abacus). For obvious reasons.
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Chris Holt - Federation Press
The SmilerNon Fiction: Journey into the Past by Ivan Maisky (Hutchinson/OP) reminisces about his five years in London 1912-17 where he arrived as a 28 year old "with a history of the 1905 revolution, Tsarist prisons, exile, misery and poverty". He provides vignettes of the exile community's leading members - old revolutionaries like Stepnyak who assassinated the brutal St Petersburg chief of police in 1878 and coming people like Litvinov, Chicherin and Kollantay who became the world's first female ambassador. He writes of their debates, the places he visited and the English they met. This is a beautifully written book, charming and clear-eyed, which finishes with the excitement of the news of the February 1917 revolution.
Currently reading the manuscript for The Smiler - Michael Pelly's riveting and highly entertaining autobiography of Murray Gleeson based on a great depth of interviewing which covers all those people important in his life.
Chris Holt co- established The Federation Press in 1988 and has since published more than 600 legal books along with several hundred general and academic titles.
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Jacqueline Horan - Victorian Bar and University of Melbourne
Best Fiction: Tim Winton, The Turning (Picador) – for his effortless writing and wonderful style and Anna Funder's All That I Am (Penguin) – a gripping, beautifully written novel.
What book(s) is top of your summer reading wish list: Rosie Scott, Thomas Kenneally A Country too Far (Penguin) - this is because the best, most beautiful writing I read this year was Geraldine Brooks contribution to that book on asylum seekers The singer and the silence.
Jacqueline Horan is author of Juries in the 21st Century, 2012.
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Phillip Ingham - Thomson Reuters
I have had a year where I intended to read many more books than I actually got around to. So my choices are a bit odd.
For fiction I have chosen a children's book called The fantastic flying books of Mr Morris Lessmore by William Joyce (Athenaeum Books US), it probably published in 2012 but I read it this year. It is a book about life, books and libraries, what more could you want.
For non-fiction my pick would be David Byrne, How Music Works, (Canongate) a really good insight into all aspects of the music industry from performance and composition to royalties and contracts. I suspect it also published in 2012, I seem to be a year behind.
Books I am looking forward to reading: Tim Winton, Eyrie (Hamish Hamilton). Richard Flanagan, The Narrow Road to the Deep North (Vintage). EL Doctorow, Homer and Langley (Abacus)
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Rob Jackson - Principal M& K Lawyers
Best Non Fiction: Gypsy Boy, by Mikey Walsh (Hodder). This auto-biographical account gives a rare insight into one of Britain's older, perhaps most invisible communities seen through the eyes of a young boy born into in a Romany Gypsy travelling community in southern England in the 1980s. You learn of the social structures, the disdain for the police, the inferiority displayed by the mainstream community and the rivalry with Irish travellers. The ability to box, if you are a boy born into a family of prize winning boxers, was everything. And if you couldn't use your fists, the loss of status could rapidly make you an outsider, in a community where belonging to the extended family is absolutely vital. So vital, that speaking out against the systematic sexual abuse, which the protagonist must violently endure, is taboo. This theme is not immediately obvious. Absolute exclusion becomes the only choice when Mikey as an adolescent realises he is gay, something which his community, mostly, cannot tolerate. The book is an articulate and an easy read. The credibility is enhanced by the fact that the author uses a pseudonym to protect his community.
Best Fiction: The Garden of Evening Mists, by Tan Twan Eng (Canongate). The book starts at the end of the protagonists' professional life, after retiring as a Supreme Court judge in Malaysia. There is one wish: to build a Japanese memorial garden to her late sister who perished in a Japanese internment camp during the second world war many decades ago. The protagonist finds an elderly Japanese gardener, who can build the desired garden. The plot is delicately interwoven with diverse themes arising from significant events in Malaysia's twentieth century history, such as the Japanese occupation of Malaysia, the Communist insurrection in the 1950s, and then independence from Britain. It is also a book about reconciliation overcoming hatred, it is a Japanese garden that the protagonist's late sister wanted, and the relationship between the protagonist and the gardener is insightful. The lush prose, set in the humid tropical climes, drips straight on to the pages of the book in your hand. This book demands a careful, studied read, not an endeavour suitable for airport lounges or other distractions. The slightest interruption will unwittingly deprive you of a subtle nuance. The effort is repaid.
Rob Jackson is author of a forthcoming book on Post Employment Restraint of Trade.
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Shauna Jarrett - Office of General Counsel, University of Sydney
Best Non-Fiction: I am part way through and hope to finish over Christmas the following:
Lord Sydney - Andrew Tink (Australian Scholarly Publishing) a very readable biography of the English MP after whom Sydney is named. He had a role in both English opposition and government during the American War of Independence and the settlement of NSW. The issues that consumed political correspondence and the newspapers (there was no media in Georgian England) are about ideology, personalities and power!
Happily Ever After - Suzannah Fullerton (Frances Lincoln Publishers) - this is a delightful, illustrated, discussion about Pride & Prejudice and why the story still lives in modern life. We all have a Mr Darcy and a Mrs Bennett in our lives and I would love to be able to have the time to observe the people who pass through our lives.
Former People - Douglas Smith (Pan Books) - a captivating account of the destruction of the Russian aristocracy in the 20th century. Although many saw the signs of change, their sense of loyalty to family and motherland meant they also witnessed their own destruction.
Best Fiction: The Year of the Flood (Virago) and Oryx and Crake (Virago) - Margaret Atwood - both on my Kindle - the imaginative extrapolation of current science, environment, corporatisation, ones place in society, family, religion and media was a fabulous contrast to the exacting reality of legal practice.
I look forward to reading The Luminaries - Eleanor Catton (Granta) - I know it won the Booker – but I have not had the time to follow the critical response – so will come to it with the anticipation of a good, big read (hopefully).
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Stephen Keim SC - Queensland Bar
I am a member of a Blokes Book Club. It was established by my friend, John Brannock. Each of the three book clubs of which his wife is a member refused to admit him on obvious grounds.
I am a terrible book club member because I fall in love with every novel I read and never have anything critical to say.
The best novel of the year then is a toss-up between Elliot Perlman's The Street Sweeper (Faber) (connects holocaust heroes with civil rights heroes); Catch 22 (Vintage Classics) - much sadder the second time around but no less relevant; Tim Winton's latest, Eyrie (Hamish Hamilton) - read on the long haul flight from Brisbane to Perth; and Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita (Picador, Penguin Classics, Alma Classics – note translators vary) - combining brilliantly satire of the Soviet art bureaucracy, Faustian slapstick and the Jesus story in a grand and masterful conception.
And my non-fiction highlight is AJ Brown's biography of Michael Kirby (Federation Press) which traces the moral development of an interesting and complex man.
Stephen Keim is writing a book on advocacy.
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Professor Patrick Keyzer - Bond University (Latrobe University from 2014)
Best Non Fiction: Battlers and Billionaires by Andrew Leigh (Black Inc) is a simultaneously well-researched and pithy account of a fundamental problem in Australia's revenue take.
Managing Fear by Bernadette McSherry (Routledge) is, pound for pound, the very best book analysing the way that contemporary laws address our fear of 'dangerous people'. While compact, the scope of the research in it is very wide indeed and it is an excellent resource for lawyers, criminologists, forensic psychologists, forensic psychologists and, hopefully lawmakers.
Best Fiction: Well it depends on what you describe as fiction, but Girt, the unauthorised history of Australia written by David Hunt (Black Inc), is absolutely hilarious. It is deliberately controversial in some parts, but laugh out loud funny in others. David is Australia's answer to Bill Bryson, but has his own unique, twisted and irreverent sense of humour.
What book(s) is top of your Summer reading wishlist? Three Crooked Kings by Matthew Condon (UQP). As a temporary Queenslander, I'm embarassed to say that I haven't read it. I also received A Game of Thrones for my birthday and I'm hoping to get through that too.
Patrick Keyzer's books include Open Constitutional Courts (2010).
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Michael Legg - University of NSW, Consultant
Christopher Hodges and Astrid Stadler (eds) Resolving Mass Disputes (Edward Elgar). Discusses how a number of legal systems are responding to the need to resolve mass disputes - ADR, ombudsmen, class actions.
Best Fiction: Norman Mailer, The Naked and the Dead (1948 originally but the 50th anniversary edition 1998 in this case). Great depiction of both courage and betrayal in the Pacific in WWII.
What book(s) is top of your summer reading wish list?
Gilbert King, Devil in the Grove (2012) (Harper Perennial) "A compelling look at the case that forged Thurgood Marshall's perception of himself as a crusader for civil rights." Marshall later argued Brown v Board of Education and then became a justice of the US Supreme Court.
Michael Legg's books include Case Management and Complex Civil Litigation (2011) Federation Press Principles of Civil Procedure in New South Wales (2e), Regulation, Litigation and Enforcement (2011) both Thomson Reuters and The Future of Dispute Resolution (2013) LexisNexis.
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The Hon Paul Lynch - Shadow Attorney General and Shadow Minister for Justice, Member for Liverpool, NSW
As it so happens I'm a voracious reader despite being frantically busy as Shadow AG. It's important that MPs read and keep being exposed to ideas and histories. I do regular book reviews (almost always non-fiction) for the State Opposition Whip's newsletter. During the year I've read heaps, but particularly interesting were:
Anita Heiss: Am I Black Enough for You (Bantam). A powerful and at times hilariously funny memoir on aboriginality and identity from one of Bolt's targets (and adversaries).
William Dalrymple: Return of a King (Bloomsbury). The history of the first Anglo-Afghan war reminding everyone that some things (like imperial arrogance) never change by a writer who has previously written some great works about the Indian sub-continent.
Benoit Peeters: Derrida: A Biography (Polity Blackwell). A surprisingly readable and comprehensible account of the French philosopher's life. Much easier to read than Derrida's work. Derrida emerges as a real individual, not just a philosopher.
Eric Hobsbawm: Fractured Times (Little Brown). This should be read for many reasons - including that it's the last (and posthumous) work by one of the twentieth century's greatest historians.
The two books I'm most looking forward to reading over summer are:
Fiction: Isabelle Allende's latest novel Maya's Notebook (Fourth Estate). Allende is one of the great magical realist novelists now living in California having fled Pinochet's fascist terror.
Non-fiction: Brian Moynahan: Leningrad: Siege and Symphony. (Quercus) That tells the story of Shostakovich's 7th Symphony, first performed in Leningrad during the German siege in WWII, with the history of Stalin's purges and the Nazi invasion as a backdrop.
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McAdam: The People SmugglerProfessor Jane McAdam - University of NSW
Best non-fiction: The People Smuggler (Viking).
Anyone who reads this cannot help but question the dominant political narrative on boats, asylum and people smuggling. Telling the story of Ali Al Jenabi, Robin de Crespigny brings humanity and poignancy to the issue.
Top of summer wish list: The Luminaries (Granta) ... not only because it is an award-winning novel, but because it will finally enable me to participate in a friend's book club next year (well, at least the first meeting).
Jane Macadam is Director, Andrew & Renata Kaldor Centre for International Refugee Law, UNSW and has authored many books including Climate Change, Forced Migration and International Law (Oxford).
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Frank Marks - Mediator and former Judge of the Industrial Relations Court, NSW
Best non fiction: The Righteous Mind by Jonathan Haidt, (Vintage). The author is a well known social psychologist. In this book he explores how we come to acquire our moral values, and why most of our efforts at rationalisation are directed to supporting our intuitively held beliefs rather than testing them. "Morality binds and blinds." This is why when dealing with clients, other lawyers and judges we are often met with an impenetrable view about a matter which it is difficult to shake. Test yourself by analysing your own feelings when you look at a photo of Tony Abbott, and compare your feelings when you look at a photo of Kevin Rudd. Why do your feelings change, and are they entrenched "in stone"? A well written, easily read book and a must-read for anyone interested in persuading others to a different point of view. The book is of special interest for me as I struggle to come to grips with my work-in-progress, Critical Reasoning for Lawyers.
On top of my summer reading list is a second read of The Righteous Mind and the last 5 issues of that most brilliant monthly, Harpers, an eclectic mix of essays, commentary and fiction from some of the best writers in the world.
Frank Marks is co-author of The New Work Health and Safety Legislation, Federation Press.
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Kerri Mellifont QC - Queensland Bar
I am going to have to go for old faves because reading time is very very sparse ...
Fiction - Carl Hiassen, Skinny Dip (Black Swan) - witty, gritty, with a few laugh-out-louds.
Non-fiction: Nickel and Dimed, Barbara Ehrenreich (St Martins Press US) - eye opener on the minimum wage system in the USA and puts my own privileged financial position in stark perspective.
My wish list reading for the summer - back of my eyelids - a lot.
Kerrie Mellifont is author of Fruit of the Poisonous Tree - Evidence derived from illegally or improperly obtained evidence.
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Stephen Odgers SC - NSW Bar
Tried to think of something suitable but failed: I spend my time writing (new editions of) books rather than reading them - my reading tends to be limited to the New York Review of Books and airport lite.
Stephen Odgers has written the following new editions of his books for 2013 Uniform Evidence Law (2nd Victorian edition) Sentence (2nd edition) Australian Criminal Justice (5th ed).
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Michael Pelly - Legal commentator and biographer
I love a bit of crime fiction and the Mickey Haller character (made famous in The Lincoln Lawyer film) in Michael Connelly's books is a favourite. I got round to reading three of them this year, with the latest being Gods of Guilt (Little Brown). They move at a rattling pace and Haller is a charming rogue, without the drinking problems of a Cleaver Greene.
I also read Peter Fitzsimons' Ned Kelly (Random House) and enjoyed the court scenes. Regardless of his poor representation, I still don't think Mickey Haller or Cleaver Greene would have been able to persuade a jury he was acting in self-defence.
A real favourite this year (though released in 2012) was Finn's Running with the Kenyans (Faber) - UK sports journo takes family to Kenya to learn secrets of their distance running.
In the interests of solidarity I should mention Philip Ayres' biography of former Governor General and High Court justice Sir Ninian Stephen (Miegunyah Press/MUP).
Most of my reading time this year has been devoted to The Smiler. I could offer a highlights reel of speeches and judgements, but I would like people to enjoy their break. I will be putting the finishing touches on the book, with publication slated for April-May.
Michael Pelly is the author of the forthcoming biography of Murray Gleeson AC QC – The Smiler (Federation Press).
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Marcus Priest - former Financial Review legal commentator now with Sparke Helmore in Canberra
A tempting nominationBest non fiction: When a Billion Chinese Jump, Jonathan Watts (Simon and Schuster) - a depressing but clear-eyed picture of the environmental disasters in China from rapid industrialization driven by western consumers.
Best fiction: I'm tempted to nominate The Stalking of Julia Gillard by Kerry-Anne Walsh (Allen & Unwin) but I will opt for May We Be Forgiven by A M Homes (Granta) - a wry story of a Nixon tragic in American suburbia in the style of Jonathan Franzen. Another favourite was The Sisters Brothers by Patrick deWitt (Granta).
What book(s) is top of your Summer reading wishlist? Dog Days by Ross Garnaut (Black Inc.) and Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel (Fourth Estate) - a book I'm forever starting but never finishing.
Marcus Priest blogs at The Suppository of All Wisdom - meddlesompriest.blogspot.com
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Professor Simon Rice OAM - Australian National University
In my (regularly failed) resolve to read what is on the shelves before buying another book, I went back to a couple of very different classics: In the Heat of the Night, John Ball (OP) and Come in Spinner, Dymphna Cusack and Florence James (Angus & Robertson). The former is a good yarn and not great literature, but is still - perhaps even more so now - a shocking account of the nature and depth of racism in the USA only 50 years ago. The latter is interesting for how its account of life and love was so shocking at the time that it was published in abridged form. In its full version it is too long, but gives a fascinating insight into the small-minded, misogynist, class-riddled white, aspirational world of 1940s Australia.
Luis Bunuel's memoir, My Last Sigh (Vintage) is as direct as his films are enigmatic, but shares the same whimsy. His anecdotes start with the pre-civil war Spain of his childhood that was still a pre-industrial society, and end by placing him at the centre of the European artistic avante-garde. Along the way he shares honestly his thoughts and reflections on politics, friendships, family, art, film and, essentially, the human condition. As I had hoped from enjoying his films, he comes across as an insightful, funny (pehaps conceited) and artistically brave person.
Simon Rice has co-written several books on human rights and is co-author of the forthcoming second edition of Anti-Discrimination Law.
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David Ritter - CEO Greenpeace, Visiting Fellow, Faculty of Law, University of Western Australia
Best Non Fiction: I think Big Coal: Australia's Dirtiest Habit by Guy Pearse, David McKnight and Bob Burton (New South) is a really gripping read as well as a very important book for the future of Australia, while all lawyers will want to read the fast-paced Greenwash: Big Brands and Carbon Scams by Guy Pearse (Black Inc) for the brand risk to legal firms.
Best Fiction: A life without a novel on the go is a diminished life and this year I've not spent enough time with my nose inside a good book. The last novel I read this year was The Engagement (Jonathan Cape) which is a gripping 2012 psychological thriller by Australian Chloe Hooper, a writer I admire a great deal.
What's currently on your bedside table and/or which book would you most like to see on your beach towel/armchair? I've got some terrific holiday reading planned, including John Lanchester's London epic Capital (Faber)and Michael Sandel's The Moral Limits of Markets, (Penguin) but the truth is that what I am really looking forward to over summer is reading the next of the CS Lewis Narnia books (Harper Collins) to my eldest daughter.
David Ritter authored Contesting Native Title (2009) and The Native Title Market (2009).
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Chris Ronalds SC - NSW Bar
Best Fiction: Two actually - Burial Rites by Hannah Kent (Picador) - a compelling story from a young Australian author and Questions of Travel by Michelle de Kretser (Allen & Unwin) - a wonderful story for anyone who enjoys travelling.
What book(s) is top of your summer reading wish list? The Luminaries by Eleanor Catton (Granta) - which I've started but need the holidays to have the time to immerse myself in it as it is a wonderful story.
Chris Ronalds has authored four editions of Discrimination Law and Practice.
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Professor Ben Saul - University of Sydney
Best Non Fiction: For a riveting expose of how our politicians persist in being blind to science, evidence, and reason, you can't go past Climate Change and Australia: Warming to the Challenge (Federation Press, 2012), by Ben Saul, Tim Stephens, Jane McAdam, Steven Sherwood and James Slezak.
Best Fiction: I've been reading old novels about fear, violence and the disintegration of law, including JM Coetzee's Waiting for the Barbarians (Vintage) and Mario Vargas Llosa's Death in the Andes (Faber).
What book(s) is top of your summer reading wish list: Jhumpa Lahiri's The Lowland (Bloomsbury) a novel about ordinary people caught up in the violence of the anti-poverty Naxalite movement in India, which has been quietly raging for decades. Arundhati Roy's Broken Republic (Penguin) essays about the Naxal/Maoist rebellion in rural and tribal India. Manjushree Thapa's Forget Kathmandu: An Elegy for Democracy (OP) about the social and political upheaval during the Maoist conflict in Nepal and the shift from monarchy to democracy.
Ben Saul has written many books and is author of the forthcoming Research Handbook on International Law and Terrorism, Edward Elgar.
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David Shoebridge - MLC, NSW
Best Non Fiction: The Activists Handbook by Aiden Ricketts (Zed Books) - it is a how to guide for trouble makers who want to drive change through community action. It has inspiring stories from the front line of forestry and CSG campaigns, a treatise on the right to break the law (and be punished by the law) and how to press on 21st century corporate pressure points. It's a great read.
Best Fiction: The Year of the Flood (Virago). It is Margaret Atwood's prequel to Oryx and Crake set in a future dystopia with glowing pets, ChickieNobs and God's Gardeners. It's a little chaotic but Margaret Atwood's imagination, and politics, carries it through.
What book(s) is top of your summer reading wish list? I might wallow in some historical fiction (I wish Patrick O'Brian was still sailing) while I wait for MaddAddam (the last in the Oryx and Crake trilogy) to download on my Kindle.
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Professor George Williams - University of NSW
Best Non Fiction: Undoubtedly the second edition of Human Rights under the Australian Constitution, just published by Oxford University Press. It's a 2am page turner containing twists and turns, villains and heroes (judicial and otherwise), and a compelling plot. Every Christmas stocking deserves a copy.
Best Fiction: I can't go past the The Heroes by Joe Abercrombie (Gollancz). It's an unremittingly relentless and dark take on the futility of war. It may be a fantasy book, but it deserves a much wider readership.
What book(s) is top of your summer reading wish list?
The number one rule is that it must not have anything to do with the law. The further into the future, or into the realms of fantasy, the better. I'm looking forward to finishing the Prince of Thorns trilogy by Mark Lawrence (Ace Books).
George Williams has written and edited more than 28 books.
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Judge Gibson: Untouchables - real life thrillerA final word from Judge Judith Gibson - District Court, NSW
Untouchables, Michael Gillard & Laurie Flynn, 1st ed., 2004, 2nd ed., 2012 (Bloomsbury).
I am hijacking Justinian's Holiday Reading column space to tell you not only the name of the best non-fiction book I have read, but also why I think so.
Untouchables is one of those books where the publishing history is almost as exciting as its contents. First published in 2004, it controversially blew the whistle on decades of UK police incompetence and corruption - but that wasn't its only topic. Gillard and Flynn also devoted 3 chapters to the then-unknown story of how private investigator Jonathan Rees and others paid police and public servants to obtain confidential information, which was onsold to News of the World (NoTW). The result was juicy Fleet Street stories about the Royals, murder victims (e.g. Jill Dando) and celebrities from 1989 onwards.
NoTW reporter Alex Marunchak had met Rees at the murder inquest for Daniel Morgan, Rees' partner in Southern Investigations. Undeterred by Rees being the prime suspect in his partner's murder, or his 5-year gaol sentence for other offences, Marunchak and other NoTW hacks enthusiastically sent Rees work from 1989 until Rees' bail on the Morgan murder charge was revoked in 2008.
By coincidence, police had formally charged Rees with Morgan's murder shortly after the first edition of Untouchables was published, and the book vanished from the shelves. The only booklists featuring Untouchables until 2011 would be if there were lists for "most-stolen library book [or] most expensive second-hand book".
"At £200 for a second hand copy of this book, it's a national disgrace," thundered outraged book buyer S. Clark, on the Amazon book review site (2May 2009).
Gillard and Flynn were not the only ones writing about sale of confidential information. Their colleagues had similar problems. The Guardian's Nick Davies, who wrote very carefully about Rees in Flat Earth News (another great read) in 2008, fought a long and seemingly hopeless battle to attract public (or Press Council) interest. Graeme McLagan (Bent Coppers, 2003) spent years in court: [2007] EWCA 972.
It was only when the charges against Rees and his co-accused were dropped, in farcical circumstances, in March 2011, that the floodgates opened. The phone hacking scandal was born. The Leveson Inquiry was set up. Tom Watson and others wrote books. And a second edition of Untouchables was published in 2012.
Best fiction book: You don't need fiction when non-fiction is this exciting.
Wish list: The 2014 Daniel Morgan Murder Inquiry report.
Judge Gibson is a contributing author to Australian Defamation Law and Practice.
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