Nine writers share the books that changed their lives
“I am a feminist and a writer because of this book, a book which urges women to be brave.”
I’m a firm believer that books often need to find you at the right time in your life. When I’m feeling melancholy, I know I’ll be far too cynical for a beautifully written romance. If I’m craving slowness, I won’t gravitate toward a fast-moving drama.
For that reason, the books that end up meaning the most to us are only partially impactful due to the story itself. Often, it has more to do with where we are in our lives when we discover it. For writers, those books tend to linger a little longer. They can act as source material, inspiration or a guide for how to expand their own craft.
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I first came across Deborah Levy’s non-fiction while studying abroad. I didn’t even know autofiction was a genre when I first discovered The Cost of Living. But reading it took me down a rabbit-hole, helping me discover other authors, like Olivia Laing and Annie Ernaux, and taught me an entirely new way of writing about personal experiences.
If reading more is your goal for the new year and you want books that pack a punch, think of this as your syllabus. Below, 10 local writers share the books that’ve impacted them the most – whether that’s a memoir that inspired their love for writing, a classic novel about desire or a popular fiction that remains timeless.
Dear Diary by Lesley Arfin
Recommended by: Lara Daly
There’s a long list of books that have made an impact on me, but if there’s one that’s literally changed my life, it’s Dear Diary by Lesley Arfin. I first discovered Lesley’s writing in an old Russh magazine column from the 2010s, called ‘Notes from NYC’. I’d to look forward to reading her ramblings every month, unfiltered tales of living in the epicentre of Indie Sleaze in New York.
She was like a cool older sister (who hung out with Chloe Sevingy, no less) who had the exact job I wanted. She taught me the importance of voice in writing, and inspired me to pursue creative non-fiction.
When I learnt she’d published this book, a collection of her diary entries from age 12 to 25, I was in my last year of high school and feeling very lost. As soon as the Amazon package arrived, I wagged school for the day to stay home and read it, cover to cover. While her life is a thousand times more chaotic than mine (she became a heroin addict at 20), I’ve never resonated with a young female writer so much and truthfully, if it wasn’t for her book, I probably wouldn’t be an editor!
Get it here.
The Book of Longing by Leonard Cohen
Recommended by: Constance McDonald
My mum bought me The Book of Longing when I was seventeen. At the time, I was working on the supermarket checkout at Wānaka New World in my school holidays. We listened to Leonard Cohen on the car trips from Dunedin to Central Otago in her silver Peugeot 206.
Since then, I’ve travelled to Leonard Cohen’s doorstep on the Greek island of Hydra. I saw him perform in Christchurch (his second-to-last concert ever). I’ve had a few of the cocktails he made up called ‘The Red Needle’ (tequila over crushed ice, a slice of lemon, topped with cranberry juice). My favourite poem in the book then, and still now, is The Sweetest Little Song: “You go your way / I’ll go your way too”.
The book is illustrated with his drawings which feel both like Microsoft Word clip art and back-of-a-napkin sketches. I always look for his books in op shops, and now my mum and I share a whole shelf of them. The Book of Longing is forever my favourite.
Get it here.
Sexographies by Gabriela Wiener
Recommended by: Laura Roscioli
This book was recommended to me by a second-year tutor at university, just as I was beginning to understand that I wanted to be a writer. It was the first book I read that reflected the kind of writing I wanted to do, and it helped shape my desire to write about sex. Written by Peruvian journalist Gabriela Wiener, the book brings together first-person essays that explore extreme, taboo, and intimate sexual experiences, while tracing her evolving sense of self.
I’d recommend it to anyone who is interested in exploring their sexuality deeper. It’s also just brilliant writing, if you’re interested in other people’s sexual experiences.
Get it here.
The Bronze Horseman by Paullina Simons
Recommended by: Ali Berg
I bought The Bronze Horseman from Borders at Melbourne Central after a shift at Supre in 2009, fully intending it to be a casual train read. Instead, I spent the commute home openly sobbing. It was the first novel that ever made me weep like that, and the first I became completely obsessed with.
It’s also the book I bonded over with my best friend and now co-author, Michelle. We talked about it endlessly: the yearning, the cruelty of history, the way love survives inside impossible circumstances, and, of course, our shared obsession with Alexander (Shura), who was very much our first book boyfriend.
That shared fixation eventually inspired us to write a novel together, and years later, when we started Books on the Rail, it was the very first book we dropped on a train. It felt only right to send our favourite book back out into the world.
Get it here.
The Awakening, Kate Chopin
Recommended by: Bianca O’Neill
Though I went to an all-girls Catholic private school, the English department clearly had their own ideas about influencing us, because we read a lot of subversive feminist texts, and this was the one that changed my whole idea of what it was to be a woman and a writer.
Though many revere Woolf’s work as groundbreaking in its naturalistic feminism, Chopin’s The Awakening (1899) pre-dated both her and many lauded male ‘modernist’ novelists like Hemingway. Chopin’s protagonist wrestles with the social restrictions of the patriarchy and her desires, and the sad ending delivers a realist’s conclusion for women who dare to crave something different.
I am a feminist and a writer because of this book, a book which urges women to be brave. I’ll leave you with Chopin’s own words: “The bird that would soar above the level plain of tradition and prejudice must have strong wings.”
Get it here.
The Lover by Marguerite Duras
Recommended by: Kitty Lloyd
I have one (and only one) google alert set in this life and it’s for the phrase: ‘The Lover first edition’, because I truly believe I was put on this earth to own one. I first encountered it when I was 19, reading it via a fuzzy scan of pdf pages that I downloaded from my uni curriculum’s assigned reading folder. It’s a semi-biographical novel, published just days before Duras’ 70th birthday and details a clandestine affair between a teenage girl and a Chinese business man in 1929 French Indochina.
You can definitely just enjoy this at face value. Sitting at just over 100 pages, it’s a perfectly compelling, juicy read that fizzles into a salacious affair in the second act. Duras herself even dismissed it as an ‘airport novel’, claiming she wrote it drunk.
Beyond the illicit details, it’s one of the most spectacular pieces of confessional narration I have ever read. It’s so restrained but somehow all consuming. Duras weaves this portrait of class, colonialism, and desire, recapturing her experiences through the lens of retrospect and a sort of heady anonymity. Read it. Devour it. Battle me on eBay for an early edition.
Get it here.
The Book Thief
Recommended by: Frankie Anderson-Byrne
I was a voracious reader as a child, as I imagine most now-writers were, and I picked up this book around the age of 11. It was the first novel I’d come across that sparked my wonderment and love for personification in writing. Personification remains my favourite literary tool, plus the use of Death as a narrator, and describing things through colour opened a whole new world for me and my young writing.
Zusak, an Australian author, dives into the importance and magic of friendship, love, books and family in this work – all things I hold dear, and his prose ignited a new interest in me, which has never left my writing and the direction I’ve taken it since.
Get it here.
Cleopatra: A Life by Stacy Schiff
Recommended by: Madeleine Ryan
One winter many moons ago I was sitting outside Mitte in North Fitzroy wearing a fur coat I wish I still had with a dear friend. I’d just moved out of home and I was discovering who I was in the world on my own. Then my friend mentioned Schiff’s Cleopatra. “It’s like a well-written gossip column,” he said. Is it ever. To this day, I have yet to encounter a book so rich in jaw-dropping fact, wit, fluidity and flamboyance.
The audiobook is a fun way to absorb it; Carole Boyd’s voice is unapologetic and fun. And Schiff brings fresh insight and disarming humanity to a whole array of towering, historical figures, alongside Cleopatra, including Mark Antony, Cicero and Julius Caesar. I ended up putting on a reading of Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra inspired by Schiff’s perspective in the book and I dream of being the one to do its screen adaptation.
The way Schiff presents Cleopatra as a woman under pressure, a queen, a lover and a mother, not only gave me faith that I could handle anything thrown my way, I could thrive in the world on my own – and I could be fabulous.
Get it here.
This Ragged Grace by Octavia Bright
Recommended by: Holly Villagra
Written by Octavia Bright, this book dives headfirst into addiction, family dynamics, dating and the complicated relationship we have with ourselves. Bright takes us through years of reckless living untethered and unanchored before the slow realisation of her alcohol addiction. As she begins the journey back to herself her father quietly slips away suffering from Alzheimer’s.
The parallel threads of grief and recovery run side by side explored with a sensitivity that makes their intersection feel both intimate and universal. As she comes back to herself, someone she loves is disappearing.
It isn’t a happy read but it is a beautiful one. My copy is filled with dog-eared pages and underlines, and it’s often the book I return to whenever I need inspiration to write. It’s also the book I gift to friends knowing its universal themes will resonate no matter who you are.
Get it here.
For the top 100 books of the 21st century, head here.
