Summer reading and viewing at ANU Library
Now that exams are over and you have some free time on your hands, what are you going to do? Check out some of our novels and DVDs! The ANU Library has an excellent collection of fiction and films, just waiting for you to explore. Here are some suggestions:
The Museum of Modern Love by Heather Rose won the Christina Stead Prize for Fiction (part of the New South Wales Premier's Literary Awards) this year. Here’s what the judges had to say about it: “Images and storytelling have been intertwined since the first human beings gathered by a painted wall to tell tales in the firelight. Heather Rose’s The Museum of Modern Love works with these ancient ghosts with exquisite care and intelligence. Positing grief and art as deep echoes that corroborate the transitory nature of our lives, Rose brings the reader to a place of acceptance despite the inevitable darkness. With rare subtlety and humanity, this novel relocates the difficult path to wonder in us all.”
Winning a slew of literary awards this year was Leah Purcell’s reimagining of The drover’s wife. The blurb states: “In Leah's new play the old story gets a very fresh rewrite. Once again the Drover's Wife is confronted by a threat in her yard in Australia's high country, but now it's a man. He's bleeding, he's got secrets, and he's black. She knows there's a fugitive wanted for killing whites, and the district is thick with troopers, but something's holding the Drover's Wife back from turning this fella in...”
If you’d prefer a more light-hearted read, check out Animals by Emma Jane Unsworth. It received 3.5 stars on Goodreads and Kerry Hudson of The Guardian says: “Animals beautifully navigates the complexities of intimate relationships. Never cloying or mawkish, it communicates vulnerability, dependence and tenderness, often in a single dazzling line. It is also a book of visceral physicality: these women aren't always likable, but they piss, puke, wank and run riot across the page, with passages about sex and the physical grind of hard partying being particularly well realised.”
This year was the bicentenary of Jane Austen’s death, and ANU holds multiple editions of her novels, as well as film and television adaptations, which make perfect summer reading and viewing. Read Pride and Prejudice as an e-book, a print book, or binge watch Colin Firth as Mr Darcy in the BBC’s television series. You can find out more about Jane Austen and her work in the Library’s news post.
Everyone is loving Taika Waititi’s work on Thor: Ragnarok right now, so why not revisit his earlier work? Hunt for the Wilderpeople is the story of city kid Ricky and his foster uncle Hec who find themselves on the run in the New Zealand wilderness.
ANU Press has a number of scholarly works written by ANU academics and are available to download for free from their website. One such title is Vietnam as if…Tales of youth, love and destiny by Kim Huynh. Vietnam as if… follows five young people who have moved from the countryside to the city. Their dramatic everyday lives illuminate some of the most pressing issues in Vietnam today and reveal the deepest sentiments of Vietnamese youth as they – like youth everywhere – come of age, fall in love and contest their destiny.
