Recommendations for a student?

Hello Australian Librarythingers. :

I'm a second-year university student from the United States studying literature and history. While it's a bit early in my academic career to specialize so precisely, Australian literature (and history!) has long been a fascination of mine. Unfortunately, both seem to be absent from any general world history or English literature courses I've taken - in high school and beyond. So, this is an interest I've had to pursue independently.

Having said that, it's next to impossible for me to enter a book store here and just find well-known Australian authors or even books on Australian history. Generally I have to order them online. I was hoping you guys would be able to help me! Perhaps it would be easiest to ask how you would answer this question:

If you were to teach a course on Australian literature, what books / authors would you use? Similarly, what books would you recommend for someone just getting into studying Australian history?

I would just really like to get into studying harder. It makes me sad that there aren't more people here that seem to appreciate anything beyond British & American lit.

And because I may as well ask -- on an entirely different subject, does anyone know of any good books on Scandinavian history & mythology? Thanks!

You will probably be swamped with suggestions and references to your requests -
There are so many works now available in both disciplines.

I would make Short History of Australia by Manning Clark required reading for history students in my class but at the same time advise them to keep an open mind as not all historians agree with Clark's view of Australia's history.

The Tyranny of Distance is another I would recommend.

A useful reference book is Oxford Companion to Australian History.

If you are looking for any writings on Aboriginal history, Henry Reynolds is one author to put on your list.

Aboriginal Australians by Richard Broome and Broken Circles by Anna Haebich are also very useful.

These books will provide many primary sources for you to follow up.

The Oxford Literary History of Australia, a comprehensive history of Australian literature together with the Oxford Companion to Australian Literature would make useful references.

If you are looking for historical fiction I would add For the Term of his Natural Life by Marcus Clarke.

Miles Franklin, Dymphna Cusack and Katherine Susannah Prichard are two of my favorite Australian authors.

Many of the early Australian writers and artists had to move to Europe to become recognised within their field as Australia was considered too remote and the literary and arts community too small to be successful.

Hope this is useful.

Mrspenny -

Thank you SO much. I'm really excited to check out the authors and books you've listed. I'm glad I seem to have stumbled upon a group that is full of so many well-informed people!

I don't mind being "swamped" at all, by the way! Swamp away, haha!

The Fatal Shore by Robert Hughes - Australia's history as a penal colony.

The First Australians is an excellent 7-part TV documentary series which aired on our SBS TV channel in 2008 giving a glimpse of some of the injustices perpetrated upon our indigenous people since European settlement. It should be required viewing for every student in Australia. Go here to the SBS website to view the 7 episodes: http://www.sbs.com.au/firstaustralians/index/index/epid/1

Note it's also available on DVD from their online shop.

NB: Touchstones brings up a book which isn't tied to this programme although it may also be worth reading as I think Berndt is (was?) an anthropologist and recognised authority on Aboriginal culture - someone else here may like to correct me or add more info on that for you)

By the way, I got a chuckle out of your name, Vombatiformes - it seems you are either a koala/wombat-lover or in fact, 'a wombat-shaped thing'!

Whatever shape you are, thanks for being interested in our history from the other side of the globe! Good luck with your studies.

Anything by Tim Winton, the most appropriate for you being Cloudstreet.

I would agree about reading Miles Franklin, I remember reading My Brilliant Career in High School and it is one of my favourites.
Another one we read in school was Storm Boy by Colin Thiele.

I would also have to agree with For the Term of his Natural Life by Marcus Clarke, this novel tells about life as a convict

Picnic at Hanging Rock by Joan Lindsay is another excellent book

Banjo Patterson wrote a lot of poems and ballads about life in the Australian outback as did Henry Lawson

There are some excellent recommendations here already. Thinking back to some Aus lit that I've read:

Wake in Fright is a good one for the Australian outback.
Gallipoli was important in Australia's consciousness.
True history of the Kelly Gang is a novel about our most infamous bushranger.
Tim is an easy read by an important Australian Author, Colleen McCullough, she also wrote The Thorn Birds.
Anything by Colin Thiele. Storm Boy and Blue Fin both come to mind.
Four Fires is a very good read and shouldn't be too hard to get hold of on Amazon.
Phar lap tells the story of our most recognised race horse from the depression era, when Australians needed hope and a hero.
The list could go on and on :-)

For more Australian literature, The Miles Franklin Literary Award is a good place to start.
Many of the Australian States have Premier's Awards for Fiction and Non-Fiction.

For some light-hearted fun, because of your user name, I'd recommend The Secret World of Wombats by Jackie French, if you cant find it Jackie has a web site that I'm sure you could buy it from. It would really give you a chuckle :-)

A classic autobiography is 'A fortunate life' by Albert Facey. Also recommend David Malouf's 'Remembering Babylon'. Good luck.

Along with everything already mentioned, I would also suggest: Frank Hardy's 'Power Without Glory' set in depression time Melbourne.
Steele Rudd, the nom de plume of Arthur Hoey Davis, wrote wonderful stuff about a pioneering family: 'On Our Selection' and 'Dad and Dave' come to mind.
Anything by Tom Keneally
Find some poetry by Oodgeroo Noonuccal aka Kath Walker
Modern literature by Andrew McGahan and Peter Carey

enjoy!!

> 3 How remiss of me not to mention The Timeless Land trilogy by Eleanor Dark. Add those works to your list.

Poor fellow, my country and Capricornia both by Xavier Herbert. How much reading time have you allocated to this project?

My personal recommendation (and I second everything above) would be Grand Days by Frank Moorhouse. A fascinating view of an Australian working at the old League of Nations between the wars.

Thank you guys so much for everything so far!

I'm reading Tim Winton's "Dirt Music" (it was the only book by him available at my local bookstore) and I like it so much, I'll definitely be ordering "Cloudstreet" next. I'm also reading "Oscar And Lucinda" by Peter Carey and it's fantastic. I think I actually like his style more than Winton's, but they're both so different and so good.

Hm. What else. I ordered a couple collections of Australian short stories and an anthology of Australian literature edited by Phyillis Fabric Edelson. I've worked through most of the short stories already but just got the anthology so that should be fun.

I've read most of The Fatal Shore before and it's excellent. I'm also almost finished with Keneally's A Commonwealth of Thieves, which I picked up very soon after I got through a large chunk of The Fatal Shore because one book on the subject just wasn't enough for me.

Oh, and I can't get enough of Patrick White. Voss was great. I've read some of The Tree of Man but it was checked out of my university library and I had to return it when I left for holidays before I could finish it. Blah. The Vivisector is up next and then hopefully I'll finish Tree of Man.

Yes, I read a lot and no, I don't have a social life, haha!

Oh - and KimB. I have French's Diary of a Wombat and the US edition of The Secret World of Wombats which is called "How To Scratch A Wombat" here in the States (for some reason). I am absolutely crazy about both of them. I wonder if the Australian editions are any different.

14 Sounds like your well on your way!

I preferred Saint Tim's Cloudstreet to Dirt Music so it will be interesting to see if you feel the same.
Calling Winton a saint because of his 4 individual wins of "The Miles Franklin". He is the only one to win that many apart from Thea Astley who had to share one of her four wins with someone else.

You've read more of Patrick White's works then I have or many Australian's have for that matter! I'm still only part way through The Solid Mandala and that was apparently his personal favourite.

Glad to hear that you've been able to enjoy a version of Jackies wombat works. She lives in my local region and does some library readings and book signings in Canberra from time to time. She is quite a character. She also used to do quite a bit of radio and television work.

Quite often I find that there is a different US title to those editions released in the UK and Aus. Makes life interesting especially with online ordering now.

Hope you can keep updating this thread with your reading, very interesting to hear about it. Cheers :-)

Hey guys. I finished Dirt Music the other day and LOVED it. I found a hardcover copy of Cloudstreet at a used bookstore the other day for very cheap (and it's basically brand new, I love when that happens) so I'll be starting that soon.

In the middle of True History of the Kelly Gang right now and it's FANTASTIC.

And I managed to find an anthology of gay Australian writing that I ordered on Amazon.com. I'm really excited about that one.

Oh, and I managed to make contact with an American group that publishes a journal twice a year on Australian lit. I'm really excited about that and I'm joining. They also gave me a lot of great information if I'm interested in pursuing Australian lit professionally one day, haha. I'd say it's a bit early for a decision like that but I'm excited that it's a possibility. I'm loving this so much.

Regarding children's books being changed for different markets: as a child in the States, we had well-read copy of Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day. Throughout his Day From Hell ("there was kissing on TV, and I hate kissing" being my favourite), he keeps on talking about running away to Australia.

As a teenager here in Australia, I found a copy at the bookshop, pounced on it with glee, and opened it up to find out that he's planning on running away to Timbuktu. Not quite the same.

wish I'd seen this three years ago!

The Tree of Man by Patrick White is very good, most of David Malouf's novels I am sure would be suitable Harland's Half Acre and The Great World are very special.A short story by David Malouf is Fly Away Peter it has a WW1 setting and is very Australian.

I'm still here folks. c:

Black Kettle and Full Moon: Daily Life in a Vanished Australia by Geoffrey Blainey - ISBN 0-670-04132-7

mrspenny has given you some useful recommendations. Admitting, however, that not all historians agree is probably an understatement given the current state of our "history wars".

This is particularly the case when it comes to Aboriginal history. Henry Reynolds is one point of view, but is countered by Keith Windschuttle. His book The Killing of History: How Literary Critics and Social Theorists are Murdering our Past is something well worth investigating. If you are interested in exploring the subject in more detail and if you haven't done so already, The Native Tribes of South-East Australia by anthropologist A. W. Howitt is interesting. He recorded the last vestiges of traditional culture he found on missions and Aboriginal welfare stations before 1889. Other notable experts cited by historians include Paul Hasluck, W. E. H. Stanner and T. G. H. Strehlow.

If you haven't observed already, this subject is an ideological battleground. My impression is that people do NOT make up their minds on the evidence, but on their personal political beliefs and their emotional responses to what they read and hear. Objective, independent and dispassionate voices are very hard to come by, even, and some would say especially, in the echelons of academia.

I have recently finished reading the book by your compatriot Jonathon Haidt, entitled The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion. He is a moral psychologist who describes why people believe what they do, and argues that everyone in varying degrees (but primarily) is directed by their emotions when making judgements about things. He says that such judgements tend to gravitate around the human need for group affirmation (what Haidt calls our "groupishness"). I'm suggesting that even professional people are not immune from this groupishness, which may explain why various educational institutions and their faculties tend to subconsciously attract and hire teaching staff whose political beliefs are more or less in line with those of the incumbents.

So, if you haven't already noticed, students are sometimes "directed" toward specific reading lists that may exclude credible and contradictory views. I'm not taking sides in this debate here, but just want to recommend that if you study Australian history it's advisable to read as widely as possible, even if that means going beyond the recommended reading lists given to students. Because if students don't do this, what may result is not a well-rounded education, but simply an exercise in ideological indoctrination, be that of the Left or Right.

As for Australian fiction, I'd recommend Patrick White, Peter Carey, Frank Moorhouse, and Henry Lawson. I note that you've read most of White's Voss. It's touted as a world classic, while Carey's Illywhacker is magnificent. Also, there is Henry Handel Richardson aka Ethel Florence Lindesay Richardson who wrote The Fortunes of Richard Mahony (a trilogy) and The Getting of Wisdom and Maurice Guest.

For a very short non-fiction book (87 pages) on the crisis in education in the 1990's which still largely persists today, pick up The View from the Bridge: Aspects of Culture by Pierre Ryckmans. This was from his 1996 Boyer Lectures and you may still be able to get it through ABC books.

Happy reading!

As an Aussie, not really that interested in (but appreciative of) Australian Literature, may I recommend The Watcher on the Cast-iron balcony by Hal Porter.
I know there is some contention about "Porter" as a man, but I did love the book. Knowing and having walked around the area he describes is a plus.

Guido.

I don't think anyone retells Australian history as well as Peter Fitzsimons. Try Kokoda, Tobruk, Batavia and Eureka.
For interesting angles on modern Australian thought you could do much worse than to read some of Andrew McGahan's work, specifically The White Earth and Last Drinks.

If you are interested in social history, I cannot recommend too highly Bold Palates by Barbara Santich. All you ever wanted to know about Vegemite, the patriotic connotations of roast lamb and the cultural significance of the sausage sizzle. And a whole lot more, with wonderful illustrations.

If you were to teach a course on Australian literature, what books / authors would you use

I recall hearing from one authority there are four works at the center of oz lit.
Hope it helps.

I recall hearing from one authority there are four works at the center of oz lit.
Hope it helps.

No, not really. Did you want to cite a source or otherwise tell us what the 4 works are?

I think it was a joke, Joyce.

Ahhh, thanks.

No. It was not a joke.