_
Is it too early to declare BOOK OF THE YEAR??? Don't look at this book as a young adult fiction title, this is simply a superb book. Having read two previous brilliant books by John Green I was giddy with excitement when I unpacked this book.

Hazel is a 16 year old cancer patient, frustrated that her mother insists she attends a cancer survivors group for teenagers. Hazel rarely communicates within the group but to herself she describes her initial diagnosis with thyroid cancer at 13 (three months after her first period) as like: Congratulations! Your're a woman. Now die. At group she meets Augustus who has lost a leg to cancer, and they forge a strong friendship as he tries to convince her they are destined to be together. Yes, this is a funny book about cancer but it is in very safe hands with this author.

WARNING: somebody may die and you may sob uncontrollably and you may never be able to forget these characters. This is a book you will want to reread and you will insist everyone you know reads it. This is truly a book we will be talking about for a long time.

- Natalie

This amazing memoir is already one of my standouts for 2011.
With every page I couldn't help but think about the author
"You and I should totally be friends and hang out in a cafe
and drink coffee with Phoebe, Ross and Chandler- but not
that annoying Rachel". Emma started her writing career at 13
and its obvious she is a born writer. This book tells the story 
of her relationship with her therapist who she meets after a 
suicide attempt and his impact on her life over the next ten years
and how she learnt of his death months after he died. An honest
vunerable account from a woman not afraid to wear her 
heart on her sleeve.

Follow her at Twitter @GirlInterrupter

NOT FOR THE FAINT HEARTED.

If you read this book in public be prepared to experience lustful thoughts about every person you sit 
next to on public transport. I am relieved I completed this fine, highly erotically charged, three interlinked stories without making an embarrassing pass at a handsome young man in a school uniform. Be prepared to be educated, repulsed or maybe even aroused about the world of internet sex, a young woman's love for her dog (yes, really) and incest. 
Krissy is a fearless writer. I also highly recommend her memoir 'Affection'. 
Follow her on Twitter @krissykneen

To be honest I initially picked this book up because of the arresting cover shot (how I always judge my books) but I was immediately drawn in by the beautiful writing. You don't have to have grown up in Australia in the 1980's or 1990's to appreciate this story, all of us small town gals (or lads) that grew up longing for a more exciting life or falling in love with musicians purely from the beauty of their voice on Triple J (hello Jeff Buckley) will recognise elements of themselves in this memoir. It also touches on how as we mature our relationships with our parents change, sometimes even after they have passed on. Can't wait to read more from this author.


- Natalie

This is one of the stand out novels of the year for me. I devoured it so quickly
I will need to revisit these characters again very soon, and re-reading books is
something I rarely do. This book encompasses many things I am interested in -
cricket, sex, grief (in no particular order)- how could I not love it? 
By about page four I knew I was in for a hell of a ride and by chapter two I was weeping on the train.
This book is a literary roller coaster and though I felt varying degrees of affection
for each character I was so immersed in their lives I was not ready to say goodbye.

- Natalie

Introducing new Australian novelist Favel Parrett, a name you'll be hearing a lot of in the ensuing month. I was given this book by a very astute Hachette rep (he who shall not be named) back in December last year and I was instantly sold on it by his sincere enthusiasm. Favel's beautiful prose swept me away and the story of three brothers and their tangled relationship with their widowed and tormented father had me hooked from the first page. I particularly felt strongly for the youngest boy Harry. If there was a way I could have extracted him from the pages and raised him as my own I would have. I was a little traumatised by the end but I felt richer for having met these characters.
- Natalie

Let's be honest it was a pretty ordinary year for books last year but the three that stood out for me were:

Reading Room reminded me of when I read We Need to Talk about Kevin by Lionel Shriver. That book and its confronting subject matter was something I avoided for months but once commenced I was unable to put it down until I was finished. Similarly many people fear this book due to its uncomfortable themes but I urge you to read it. The fact that the author can produce such a captivating story of the love between mother and child when they are being held captive for years in a tiny space is the mark of a truly fine writer. Worthy of all the accolades it received, I look forward to her next book with great anticipation.

I love quality teen fiction and not just because I am in denial about my age! For me last year this was the stand out, a debut by an Australian author.
It is the story of 14 year old Dan whose parents have just split up, the family business has gone bust, they have lost their home, his private school fees can no longer be afforded and to cap all this drama off his Dad announces he is gay.Dan develops a deep fascination for the girl next door and he is such a rich lovable character you can't help but cheer him on as he struggles with his teenage life. So good I read it twice.

I am a sucker for a book with recommendations from authors I admire so this book with quotes from Gary Shteyngart and Joyce Carol Oates was always going to make its way to my overcrowded bookshelves. It begins with the line Half my life ago, I killed a girl.
This memoir was staggering not only for his honesty and depth of emotion but because of the truly exceptional writing. Sometimes in a book a line or a passage hits you with such ferocity that you think, that is exactly how I feel and you continue reading to the exclusion of all other aspects of your life. This accident that opens this story happens as a teenager and is going to be with him for the rest of his life, I feel grateful that he had the courage to share it with us.

'I can imagine you at forty,' she said, with malice in her voice. 'I can picture it right now.' He smiled without opening his eyes. 'Go on then.' 15th July 1988. Emma and Dexter meet for the first time on the night of their graduation. Tomorrow they must go their separate ways. So where will they be on this one day next year? And the year after that? And every year that follows? Twenty years, two people, ONE DAY.

Absorbed in her own failings, Clara Purdy crashes her life into a sharp left turn, taking the young family in the other car along with her. When bruises on the mother, Lorraine, prove to be late-stage cancer, Clara - against all habit and comfort - moves the three children and their terrible grandmother into her own house.
We know what is good, but we don't do it. In Good to a Fault, Clara decides to give it a try, and then has to cope with the consequences: exhaustion, fury, hilarity, and unexpected love. But she must question her own motives. Is she acting out of true goodness, or out of guilt? Most shamefully, has she taken over simply because she wants the baby for her own?
What do we owe in this life, and what do we deserve? This compassionate, funny, and fiercely intelligent novel looks at life and death through grocery-store reading glasses: being good, being at fault, and finding some balance on the precipice.

Nanny Piggins, the world's most glamorous flying pig, runs away from the circus and goes to live with the Greens as their nanny. The Green children, Derrick, Samantha and Michael, fall in love with her instantly. Who could not fall in love with a Nanny whose only job qualifications are her astonishing ability to be fired out of a cannon and her amazing ability to make chocolate cake, sometimes both at the same time?
They then have some wonderful adventures together. I won't spoil them for you by listing them all but they do include catching a serial doorknob thief, hiding a 10-foot dancing bear in the basement and being lost at sea en route to China.

Sookie Stackhouse is a small-time cocktail waitress in small-town Louisiana. She's quiet, keeps to herself and doesn't get out much - not because she's not pretty - she's a very cute bubbly blonde - or not interested in a social life. She really is...but Sookie's got a bit of a disability. She can read minds. And that doesn't make her too dateable. And then along comes Bill: he's tall, he's dark and he's handsome - and Sookie can't 'hear' a word he's thinking. He's exactly the type of guy she's been waiting all her life for. But Bill has a disability of his own: he's fussy about his food, he doesn't like suntans and he's never around during the day... Yep, Bill's a vampire. Worse than that, he hangs with a seriously creepy crowd, with a reputation for trouble - of the murderous kind. And then one of Sookie's colleagues at the bar is killed and it's beginning to look like Sookie might be the next victim...

Strangers did not, as a rule, find their way to Chez Dom, a small, rundown Tunisian cafe on Paris' distant fringes. Run by the widow Houria and her young niece, Sabiha, the cafe offers a home away from home for the North African immigrant workers working at the great abattoirs of Vaugiraud, who, like them, had grown used to the smell of blood in the air. But when one day a lost Australian tourist, John Patterner, seeks shelter in the cafe from a sudden Parisian rainstorm, the quiet simplicities of their lives are changed forever.
John is like no-one Sabiha has met before - his calm grey eyes promise her a future she was not yet even aware she wanted. Theirs becomes a contented but unlikely marriage - a marriage of two cultures lived in a third - and yet because they are essentially foreigners to each other, their love story sets in train an irrevocable course of tragic events.
Years later, living a small, quiet life in suburban Melbourne, what happened at Vaugiraud seems like a distant, troubling dream to Sabiha and John, who confides the story behind their seemingly ordinary lives to Ken, an ageing, melancholy writer. It is a story about home and family, human frailties and passions, raising questions of morals and purpose - questions have no simple answer.