Summer Reading to Kick-start Your Reading Resolutions

This summer holidays, kick start your year of reading with these recommendations from our team based on your goals and current reading trends. Whether you're looking to build new habits or just want start the year strong with your reading, here's some books our team recommends to get you started.

If your goal is to "read more"…

…try these fun, easy, interesting or whimsical reads:

• The Tarot Reader of Versailles by Anya Berman

A sweeping historical fiction novel set in the early days of the French Revolution and based on the true story of Marie Anne Adelaide Lenormand - a tarot reader loyal to Marie Antoinette who divines the fortunes of the aristocracy - as she struggles to avoid the same fate as her Queen.

• Guts by Melissa Leong

Gold Logie-nominated TV personality and food icon Melissa Leong bites down on her demons in this searing memoir, exploring themes of abuse in the hospitality industry, racism, mental health and, for a light palate cleanser, the thrill of mouth-wateringly memorable food. Most of all, she inspires the courage to create a life you really, really want.

• I Know Where You Buried Your Husband by Marie O'Hare

Five best friends must work together to cover up the murder of one of their husbands in this painfully relatable, darkly witty examination of twenty-first century womanhood.

• Earthquake: The Election that Shook Australia by Niki Savva

The best of Niki Savva's columns from The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald, along with riveting new chapters, about an epoch-making period in Australian politics. With her typically uncompromising, penetrating and prescient examinations, and her trademark access to important players and eyewtinesses, Savva provides a considered analysis of the 2025 election that transformed Australian politics.

• Nevermoor: The Trials of Morrigan Crow by Jessica Townsend

Don't let the middle-grade tag fool you, this delightful and whimsical fantasy is perfect for kids and adults alike. Awaiting her death at midnight on Eventide as a cursed-child, Morrigan Crow is whisked away by a strange and remarkable man named Jupiter North to the safety of the secret and magical city of Nevermoor. Jupiter intends for Morrigan to join the prestigous Wundrous Society, but to do so she'll have to compete in four difficult and dangerous trials against hundreds of other children boasting extraordinary talents. Without a special talent of her own, can Morrigan find a way to pass the tests, or will she have to leave the city and confront her deadly fate?

If your goal is to "read every day"…

… try these books consisting of short chapters, essays, and short stories to help get you into the habit of reading a small amount each day:

• Every Day I Read: 53 Ways to Get Closer to Books by Hwang Bo-Reum

From the internationally bestselling author of Welcome to the Hyunam-dong Bookshop comes a warm and reflective collection of essays about reading, language and life. Why do we read? What is it that we hope to take away from the intimate, personal experience of reading for pleasure? Hwang Bo-reum doesn't just tell us, but shows us what living a life immersed in reading means.

• 101 Essays that will Change the Way You Think by Brianna Weist

Here Brianna Wiest explores pursuing purpose over passion, embracing negative thinking, seeing the wisdom in daily routine, and becoming aware of the cognitive biases that are creating the way you see your life.

• Growing Up in Australia introduced by Alice Pung

A special collection featuring pieces from across the 'Growing Up' series, this book captures the diversity of our nation in moving and revelatory ways. Featuring gems from essential Australian memoirs and including contributors such as Rick Morton, Magda Szubanski, Benjamin Law, Melissa Lucashenko, Anna Goldsworthy, Naydol Nyuon, Tara June Winch and many more. Get to know Australia and Australians in this iconic collection.

• Dead and Alive by Zadie Smith

An illuminatinc collection of essays from the critically acclaimed Zadie Smith, who bring her unique skills to bear on a range of subjects. From exhilratingly close looks at intriguing artists, to considered changes of government on both sides of the Atlantic, and the meaning of 'the commons' in all our lives, this thrilling collection shows us once again Smith's unrivalled ability to think through critically and humanely some of the most urgent preoccupations and tendencies of our troubled times.

• How to Live an Artful Life by Katy Hessel

With this book in hand, pay attention, and see the world anew. Go out and find it, taste it, seize it, and live it - artfully. Dive into the year with the wisdom of artists. Gathered from interviews, personal conversations, books and talks, How to Live an Artful Life moves through the months of the year offering you thoughts, reflections and encouragements from artists. The year is full of the promise of work that has yet to be written, paintings that are yet to be painted, people who have yet to meet, talk, or fall in love with.

If your goal is to "try a different genre"…

… try these books with similar themes, writing styles or tropes to help you expand your reading.

• For those who usually read fantasy, try: Those Who Are About to Die by Harry Sidebottom

If escaping to new worlds with characters engaged in thrilling battles is your jam, then why not travel instead to the world of the past in a thrilling journey through a day in the life of the most iconic figure of the ancient world - the Roman gladiator.

Dressed in armour and clutching a bloody sword, the Roman gladiator in his own time a deeply controversial character, by turns hated and idealized. This book tells the stories of the gladiators and those who observed them - from grand emperors to lowly slaves - illuminating and analysing the all-consuming passion of the Roman Empire for the spectacle of mortal combat. In doing so, it reveals Roman ideas about everything from freedom and servitude to sex and desire, from courage and cowardice to death and the afterlife.

• For those who usually read crime, try: Cold Eternity by S.A. Barnes

If the high tension mysteries of crime thrillers are your usual go-to, this terrifying, dread-filled nightmare follows Halley Zwick who is on the run after exposing an interplanetary conspiracy that should have brought justice, but instead but her a target on her back.

With nowhere left to run, she boards the Elysian Fields, a drifting crypt in deep space that promised the elite a cure to death itself - a future that never came. But when Halley boards, something feels wrong. The silence isn't empty - it's watching. Whispers bleed from the walls. Something is waking. Paranoia blurs into terror. The Elysian dead may not be sleeping - and what woke them is hungry.

• For those who usually read memoir/biography, try: Twice by Mitch Albom

If intimate stories about personal failings and learnings usually catch your interest, why not try this encanting fiction about a man with the power to get a second chance at everything. Alfie Logan can undo any moment and live it again. The one catch: he must accept the consequences of his second try - for better or worse.

He grows up correcting his mistakes and saving himself from adolescent embarrassments. He even takes foolishly dangerous risks, just to see what it's like to come close to death, before tapping back to safety. Eventually, Alfie turns his gift to his love life and discovers a lone caveat to his power: once he undoes a love, that person can never fall in love with him again.

• For those who usually read romance, try: Chosen Family by Madeleine Gray

If romantic reads with loveable characters battling their own insecurities to find love is your usual read, why not try this story about Nell Argall and Eve Bowman, two brilliant, odd and friendless women.

Set in Sydney over eighteen years, Chosen Family follows Nell and Eve as they grow into themselves, as they both love and destroy each other. From school, to university, to careers, to motherhood, Nell's and Eve's is a relationship that is a life-raft that is also a poison apple that is also a Medusan stare, frozen in time.

• For those who usually read general fiction, try: The Women are Not Fine by Hope Reese

If keenly written stories about people and their relationships with one another are your usual read, why not try this true crime story of the women behind the greatest mass poisoning of the 20th century.

The women in Nagyrev are desperate. They are suffering. They are being abused by their husbands. They are feeding their newborns to livestock. Midwife Zsuzsanna Fazekas first arrived at the village of Nagyrev, Hungary in 1911 to assist the impoverished women with abortions. But when they told her of the violence they were suffering at the hands of their husbands, she concluded, "Why put up with them?" She offered them a solution: arsenic, made of kitchen larder flypaper boiled with vinegar.

If you're thinking more broadly "New Year; New You" …

… try these books designed to help you create new habits, break out of unsatisfying situations, and think positively and hopefully about the future.

• Atomic Habits by James Clear

People think when you want to change your life, you need to think big. But world-renowned habits expert James Clear has discovered another way. He knows that real change comes from the compound effect of hundreds of small decisions - doing two push-ups a day, waking up five minutes early, or holding a single short phone call. He calls them atomic habits. These small changes will have a revolutionary effect on your career, your relationships, and your life.

• Unstuck by Dr Emily Musgrove

'Being stuck' can look and feel different to different people- trapped, powerless, hopeless, frozen, frustrated, numb, disconnected, anxious, overwhelmed. Getting stuck is part of being human, but staying stuck for too long robs us of our vitality. It costs us healthy relationships, meaningful pursuits and, most importantly, the life we want to live. Change can seem impossibly hard, but staying stuck is harder. UNSTUCK gives you the tools to cultivate a life without limits, in times of pain, in times of change, in times of joy.

• Strong Ground by Brené Brown

A vital playbook for everyone from senior leaders developing and executing complex strategies to Gen Z-ers entering and navigating turbulent work environments, Strong Ground is an unflinching assessment of what happens when we continue to perpetuate the falsehood that performance and wholeheartedness are mutually exclusive.

• Abundance: How we Build a Better Future by Ezra Kelin and Derek Thompson

To progress on the greatest challenges of our time, from housing to climate change, healthcare to infrastructure, progressives need a vision of abundance, and the ability and willingness to enact transformative strategies. Here, the authors lay out the barriers to consequential action, and how we can overcome them to actively build a better, more abundant future.

• The Book of Hope by Jane Goodall and Douglas Abrams with Gail Hudson

The world-renowned naturalist and conservationist Jane Goodall spent more than a half-century warning of our impact on our planet. Here Jane draws on the wisdom of a lifetime dedicated to nature to teach us how to find strength in the face of the climate crisis, and explains why she still has hope for the natural world and for humanity. The world needs a manifesto of hope now more than ever.