Category: book Nook
Get Reading is Australia's largest annual celebration of books and reading. It encourages every Australian to pick up a book and get reading! thats a list of 50 books, according to the Get Reading organizers book that you can't put down. How many of books from it you might have read, and interested in reading? for those titles that you've read, do you think is fair to say it is somewhat "can't put down"? i would also insert the discription... (bare in mind, some of the books are from Australian authors that you might not heard of)
Life Without Limits by Nick Vujici
Life Without Limits is the story of gutsy Nick Vujicic, an amazing 28-year-old Aussie born without arms or legs who is now an internationally successful inspirational speaker. Packed full of wisdom, testimonials of his faith and laugh-out-loud humour, Nick tells of life in his 'Chesty Bond' body, his visit to Africa at the age of 20 where he gave away $20,000 of his life savings to the poor, and raised another $20,000 for them on the side, and how he learned to surf, skateboard, dive and more. Noting that 'perfection isn't always perfect' and that 'brokenness can be a good thing', Nick shows how he learned to accept what he could not control and focus instead on what he could. He encourages everyone to find their life's purpose and, whatever their obstacles, go for it.
Tamil Tigress by Niromi de Soyza
Two days before Christmas in 1987, at the age of 17, Niromi de Soyza found herself in an ambush as part of a small platoon of militant Tamil Tigers fighting government forces in the bloody civil war that was to engulf Sri Lanka for decades. With her was her lifelong friend, Ajanthi, also aged 17. Leaving behind them their shocked middle-class families, the teenagers had become part of the Tamil Tigers' first female contingent. Equipped with little more than a rifle and a cyanide capsule, Niromi's group managed to survive on their wits in the jungle, facing not only the perils of war but starvation, illness and growing internal tensions among the militant Tigers. And then events erupted in ways that she could no longer bear. How was it that this well-educated, mixed-race, middle-class girl from a respectable family came to be fighting with the Tamil Tigers?
North Star by Karly Lane
Since her divorce a year ago, Kate Thurston feels like she's lurched from one disaster to another. Her teenage daughter, Georgia, seems to have morphed into a monster overnight, and her son Liam breaks her heart with his sad brown eyes. When Kate receives news that her grandfather has bequeathed her North Star, the vast property that has been in her family for generations, it feels like the perfect opportunity to flee the hectic pace of city life for a calmer rural existence. As soon as she arrives at North Star, however, Kate realises she's going to need every ounce of determination to restore the rundown homestead to its former glory and fulfil her dream of turning it into a bush retreat. And as for the farm, well it's in utter disarray. As she starts to make headway with the homestead's restoration, and falls for a local bloke, Kate finally feels like life is going right for her. Then her ex-husband comes to town and triggers a series of events that will change her life forever.
The Siren's Sting by Miranda Darling
Aboard a luxury yacht as the minder of the world's greatest - and most temperamental - opera star, Stevie Duveen manages to thwart a pirate attack off the coast of Somalia, but soon realises the attack is merely one salvo in a ruthless campaign of terror. Other vessels are being hijacked, and ransoms in the multimillions are being demanded as shipping lines and insurance companies run scared. On the orders of her adored boss and mentor David Rice, Stevie flies to Sardinia's idyllic Costa Smeralda to recuperate from her injuries. Soon, however, a favour for Rice sees her plunge back undercover: a threat assessment on the young son of Vaughan and Clemence Krok. At first the job seems simple enough - only Krok happens to run the world's most powerful army of mercenaries...Posing as just another jet-setting party girl on the lookout for a wealthy husband, Stevie cruises aboard the Kroks' mega-yacht, Hercules, surrounded by arms dealers, aristocrats and billionaires. The action swings from the sun-kissed marinas of the Mediterranean to diva season in Venice, through the oilfields of Azerbaijan and on to the billionaires' playgrounds of Spain, but Stevie soon uncovers more questions than answers: is the Kroks' son really in danger? What secret deal is Krok brokering? How is he connected to the pirate scourge? And why is someone trying to kill her? At her discreet and dangerous best, Stevie must fight to save everything she holds dear as she finds herself at the heart of a deadly double game.
Listening to Country by Ros Moriarty
Ros Moriarty is a white woman married to an Aboriginal man. Over the course of many visits to her husband's family, she was fascinated to discover that the older tribal women had a deep sense of happiness and purpose that transcended the abject material poverty, illness and increasing violence of their community - a happiness that she feels is related to an essential 'warmth of heart' that these women say has gone missing in today's world. In May 2006, she had the chance to spend time in the Tanami Desert in northern central Australia with 200 Aboriginal women, performing women's Law ceremonies. Listening to Country is the story of that trip and her friendship with these women, as she tells their stories and passes on their wisdom and understanding. Offering a privileged window into the spiritual and emotional world of Aboriginal women, this book is a moving story of common human experience, the getting and passing on of wisdom, and the deep friendship and bonds between women. It carries a moving and profound sense of optimism in the fundamental humanity we all share.
Prime Cut buy Alan Carter
Meet Cato Kwong - disgraced cop and ex-poster boy for the metropolitan police force. The world is in economic meltdown but a mining town on the edge of nowhere is booming. With the town's population exploding, it's easy to hide a crime - or a dirty past. Banished to the stock squad after the fallout from a police frame-up, Detective Senior Sergeant Cato Kwong is brought in from the cold to solve the case of a torso washed up on the wild shores of the Great Southern Ocean. But Kwong faces powerful opposition when his investigation lifts the lid on the exploitation of migrant workers and disturbs an even darker criminal mind.
Me of the Never Never by Fiona O'Loughlin
Fiona O'Loughlin is certainly the funniest (and possibly one of the busiest) working mothers in Australia today: a stand-up comedian based in Alice Springs and Adelaide, she is on the road for most of the year, doing live performances, plus regular television appearances. Fiona has also had successful shows at the Edinburgh and Adelaide fringe festivals, the Just for Laughs Festival in Montreal and the Melbourne International Comedy Festival. This book contains her stories - funny and sometimes sad stories about her upbringing as part of a large Irish-Catholic family on a wheat farm in South Australia, her chaotic and disorganised family life ever since, living in Alice Springs and making it as a stand-up comedian. She also talks of a darker side of the life of many performers - alcohol.
True Spirit by Jessica Watson
There is something different about adventurers; about the way their minds work. They look at the world as a place of challenges and though they know what fear is, they refuse to be hindered by it.
The Passage by Justin Cronin
An epic and gripping tale of catastrophe and survival, The Passage is the story of Amy - abandoned by her mother at the age of six, pursued and then imprisoned by the shadowy figures behind a government experiment of apocalyptic proportions. But Special Agent Brad Wolgast, the lawman sent to track her down, is disarmed by the curiously quiet girl--and risks everything to save her. As the experiment goes nightmarishly wrong, Wolgast secures her escape--but he can't stop society's collapse. And as Amy walks alone, across miles and decades, into a future dark with violence and despair, she is filled with the mysterious and terrifying knowledge that only she has the power to save the ruined world.
When God was a Rabbit by Sarah Winman
When God Was A Rabbit is an incredibly exciting debut from an extraordinary new voice in fiction. Spanning four decades, from 1968 onwards, this is the story of a fabulous but flawed family and the slew of ordinary and extraordinary incidents that shape their everyday lives. It is a story about childhood and growing up, loss of innocence, eccentricity, familial ties and friendships, love and life. Stripped down to its bare bones, it's about the unbreakable bond between a brother and sister.
One Day by David Nicholls
'I can imagine you at forty,' she said, a hint of 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.
Past the Shallows by Favel Parrett
Harry and Miles live with their father, an abalone fisherman, on the south-east coast of Tasmania. With their mum dead, they are left to look after themselves. When Miles isn't helping out on the boat they explore the coast and Miles and his older brother, Joe, love to surf. Harry is afraid of the water. Everyday their dad battles the unpredictable ocean to make a living. He is a hard man, a bitter drinker who harbours a devastating secret that is destroying him. Unlike Joe, Harry and Miles are too young to leave home and so are forced to live under the dark cloud of their father's mood, trying to stay as invisible as possible whenever he is home. Harry, the youngest, is the most vulnerable and it seems he bears the brunt of his father's anger.
Rescue by Anita Shreve
Is love always worth saving - no matter what the cost? The car crash should have killed her. But rookie paramedic Peter Webster takes the emergency call, and helps the young woman, Sheila Arsenault, to survive. After the accident, she haunts his thoughts, despite his misgivings about getting involved with a patient. Soon he is embroiled in an intense love affair and in Sheila's troubled life. Eighteen years later, Sheila is long gone and Peter is raising their daughter, Rowan, alone. But Rowan is veering dangerously off course and for the first time in their quiet life together Peter fears for her future. He seeks out the only person who may be able to help Rowan, although Sheila's return is sure to unleash all the questions Peter has been carefully keeping at bay: Why would a mother leave her family?
A Little Bird Told Me by Kasey Chambers
From the remote outback to the world stage, the far from ordinary life so far of one of Australia's most talented and beloved singer-songwriters. Raised on the Nullarbor by her Seventh Day Adventist parents - her father hunted foxes for a living - young Kasey Chambers and her brother, Nash, would sometimes go for months without encountering another human being. Then, as part of the Chambers family group the Dead Ringer Band perform in rough-and-tumble outback pubs and sleep under the stars, in swags, by the side of the highway, playing for little more than petrol money. Along the way Kasey was honing the talent that created huge hits like 'Not Pretty Enough', 'The Captain' and 'Rattlin' Bones', and earned the praise of such roots music luminaries as Lucinda Williams and Steve Earle. From her gypsy childhood to trailblazing debut LP, 'The Captain', and runaway smash hit, 'Barricades and Brickwalls', and its personal cost to becoming the mother of two boys and the on- and off-stage partner of fellow singer-songwriter, Shane Nicholson, to her latest success with the multi-award winning 'Little Bird'.
The Painted Man by Peter V Brett
. The Painted Man, book one of the Demon trilogy, is a captivating and thrilling fantasy adventure, pulling the reader into a world of demons, darkness and heroes. Sometimes there is very good reason to be afraid of the dark! Arlen lives with his parents on their small farmstead, half a day's ride from the isolated hamlet of Tibbet's Brook. As dusk falls each evening, a mist rises from the ground promising death to any foolish enough to brave the coming darkness. For hungry demons materialize from the vapours to feed, and as the shadows lengthen, all of humanity is forced to take shelter behind magical wards and pray that their protection holds until the dawn. But when Arlen's world is shattered by the demon plague, he realizes that it is fear, rather than the monsters, which truly cripples humanity. Only by conquering their own terror can they ever hope to defeat the demons. Now Arlen must risk leaving the safety of his wards to discover a different path, and offer humanity a last, fleeting chance of survival.
Caleb's Crossing by Geraldine Brooks
In 1665, a young man from Martha's Vineyard became the first Native American graduate of Harvard College. From the few facts that survive of this extraordinary life, Brooks creates a luminous tale of passion and belief, magic and adventure. The voice of Caleb's Crossing belongs to Bethia Mayfield, growing up in the tiny island settlement of Great Harbor amid a small band of pioneering English Puritans. Possessed of a restless spirit and a curious mind, Bethia slips the bounds of her rigid society to explore the island's glistening beaches and observe its native inhabitants. At twelve, she meets Caleb, the young son of a chieftain, and the two forge a secret bond that draws each into the alien world of the other. Bethia's father is Great Harbor's minister, who feels called to convert the Wampanoag to his own strict Calvinism. He awakens the wrath of the medicine men, against whose magic he must test his faith in a high-stakes battle that may cost his life, and his very soul. Caleb becomes a prize in this contest between old ways and new, eventually taking his place at Harvard, studying Latin and Greek alongside the sons of the colonial elite. Bethia also finds herself in Cambridge at the behest of her imperious elder brother. As she fights for a voice in a society that requires her silence, she also becomes entangled in Caleb's struggle to navigate the intellectual and cultural shoals that divide their two cultures. What becomes of these characters - the triumphs and turmoil they endure in embracing their new destinies - is the subject of this riveting and intensely observed novel. Bethia proves an emotionally irresistible guide to the wilds of Martha's Vineyard and to the intimate spaces of the human heart.
Treasure Yourself by Miranda Kerr
Supermodel Miranda Kerr's debut book is an incredible collection of thoughts, memories and lessons that will put you on the path to self-improvement. Written for young women all over the world, this book presents an incredible life story of one of the most successful international models today with down-to-earth life lessons that anyone can relate to.
Blood on my Hands by Craig Jurisevic
The year is 1999, and for the first time since World War II, Europe is witnessing scenes of mass murder. The forces of Serbian strongman Slobodan Milosevic have swept into Kosovo leaving a trail of death and heartbreak. Scenes of Milosevic's 'ethnic cleansing' play out on television screens all over the world; haunted figures huddled behind barbed wire fences, bodies heaped in ditches. Adelaide surgeon Craig Jurisevic recalls his grandfather's ordeal in a Nazi concentration camp and resolves to honour his memory by offering his skills as a surgeon to the victims of the conflict. Although no stranger to the battlefield, he is appalled at the unparalleled savagery of the Kosovo war. Sickened by scenes of murder and massacre, he sets aside his non-partisan status and joins forces with the Kosovo Liberation Army, operating on the injured at the front and leading night-time missions behind the lines to retrieve injured Kosovar villagers. Struggling to maintain his moral bearings, Jurisevic's journey has become a descent into the heart of darkness.
Last Chance Cafe by Liz Byrski
Margot detests shopping malls. Any distraction is welcome, and the woman who has chained herself to the escalator, shouting about the perils of consumerism, is certainly that. She recognises Dot immediately - from their time campaigning for women's rights, and further back still, to the heyday of the Sydney Push when Margot married Laurence. Dot is in despair at the abandonment of the sisterhood, at the idea of pole dancing as empowerment and the sight of five year-olds with false eyelashes and padded bras. She's still a fierce campaigner, but these days she isn't sure where to direct her rage. Margot's despair is quieter; a haunting resentment that her youthful ambitions have always been shelved to attend to the needs of others. And as the two women turn to the past for solutions for the future, Margot's family is in crisis. Laurence sets off on a journey in a bid to repress his grief, daughter Lexie loses the job that has been her life for twenty years, and her younger sister Emma hides her pain with shopping binges that plunge her into debt.
African Dawn by Tony Park
In the broken country that is Zimbabwe, only the strongest can survive. Three families - the Bryants, the Quilter-Phipps and the Ngwenyas - share a history as complex and bloody as the country itself. Dedicated conservationists Paul and Philippa Bryant face an enormous struggle: to save their farm and small herd of endangered black rhinos from corrupt government minister Emmerson Ngwenya. Twin brothers, ex-soldier Braedan and environmentalist Tate Quilter-Phipps, join the fight. But the brothers' own history is fraught, and when they fall in love with the same woman, Natalie Bryant, their rivalry threatens to not only derail the attempt to save the rhinos, but also puts the lives of all involved at risk. And with Emmerson vowing to stop at nothing until he has control of the farm, a bloody showdown seems inevitable. With blood feuds still to settle, every one of these players will be drawn into the fray, and not one will remain unscathed.
Plantation by Di Morrissey
When Australian Julie Reagan discovers a book written about wild Malaysia in the 1970s, she decides to find out more about the author - her great aunt. Why did her grandmother refuse to speak about her sister who disappeared from the family, 60 years before? What caused such a severe rift? Julie is invited to stay with her cousins who run the plantation founded by her great-grandfather in Malaya a hundred years ago, and she decides to visit in the hope of finding clues to this family mystery. What Julie finds sends her spiralling through generations of loves, deaths, tragedy and the challenges of the present until she discovers her grandmother's shocking secret.
That Deadman Dance by Kim Scott
In playful, musical prose, this book explores the early contact between the Aboriginal Noongar people and the first European settlers. The novel's hero is a young Noongar man named Bobby Wabalanginy. Clever, resourceful and eager to please, Bobby befriends the new arrivals, joining them hunting whales, tilling the land, exploring the hinterland and establishing the fledgling colony. But slowly - by design and by accident - things begin to change. Not everyone is happy with how the colony is developing. As the Europeans impose ever stricter rules and regulations in order to keep the peace, Bobby's Elders decide they must respond in kind. Supple and accessible in style, generous in spirit and outlook, That Deadman Dance is a fascinating, powerful portrait of Australia's earliest days.
How it Feels by Brendan Cowell
An old friend, a best friend, a first love and the dreamer Neil Cronk who connects them all...Four school friends are on the verge of adulthood and the next 12 hours will change the course of their lives. Friendships will be broken, virginity lost, love unleashed and secrets buried. A decade later, one is dead, one is famous, two are getting married, and the truth is about to erupt. Wildly funny, brutal, tender and true, How it Feels is a coming-of-age story set in Sydney's Sutherland Shire with stopovers in Bathurst and London.
The Korean War by Cameron Forbes
The Korean War has never really ended. Although a ceasefire agreement was reached in 1953 after three years of savage warfare, the conflict continues to simmer just below the surface, threatening at any moment to break into full-scale fighting. It makes the Korean peninsula one of the most dangerous flashpoints in the world today. But the war itself has long been called the forgotten war. It was fought at the height of the Cold War, with the forces of the United Nations, led by the US, on the one had against the forces of Communism on the other, led by Mao Tse Tung's China. Australia was a part of the US-led coalition, and took part in some of the conflict's most savage fighting. But coming only five years after the end of World War Two, and before the full empowerment of the media that was to take place during the Vietnam War, what happened in Korea during those three long years has been largely overlooked by the public. Cameron Forbes tells the story of the war and Australia's involvement in it in a riveting narrative. From the letters and diaries of those diggers who fought across Korea's unforgiving hills and mountains to the grand strategies formulated in Washington, Moscow and Beijing, The Korean War reveals the conflict on all its levels - human, military and geopolitical.
Without Warning by John Birmingham
A wave of inexplicable energy has slammed into America. And destroyed it. What will the world do without its last superpower? For the jihadists, Allah has performed a miracle. For the US and its allies, Armageddon has arrived. Australasia, far from the noxious waste darkening Europe's skies, beckons as a possible oasis. Who and what will fill the void?
Thats some of the list. for all the complete 50 books, visit
http://www.getreading.com.au
A lot of these sound great. Thanks!
okay I've never read any of these so I don't know if they are really that good or not. but interesting program I am not sure how it will work and how effective it is, some of these reading programs are not that effective people don't really pay attention and if they do it's only to get the rewards. I think there needs to be a new way to encourage people by explaining how reading helps have them pick a book in there interest field and have them read that and explain the effects of reading, how they can take it home with them, and so forth. I think reading has to sink in rather then just a reward system as a end result.