Not an exhaustive list but a pretty good summary.

Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides (Bloomsbury)

What a smashing first sentence. “I was born twice: First as a baby girl on a remarkably smogless Detroit day in January of 1960; and then again as a teenage boy in an emergency room near Petoskey, Michigan in August of 1974.”

Canada by Richard Ford (Bloomsbury)

Life begins again for teenage twin Dell Berner after his parents bungle a bank robbery and he is smuggled from the US to Canada. The novel’s greatest achievement is the mood it creates through Dell’s voice and how it lingers in the mind like a taste you wish to relish again and again.

Cold Light by Frank Moorhouse (Vintage)

The Edith trilogy (this third instalment takes Edith Campbell Berry to Canberra from 1950 to the Whitlam era) has been compared in scope to Henry Handel Richardson’s The Fortunes of Richard Mahoney — a national classic.

A Widow’s Story: A Memoir by Joyce Carol Oates (HarperCollins)

Widows should find this memoir helpful in its honesty and breadth. Others who mourn might find that Oates can express the despair they can’t — a gift of tongues in dark times.

Blue Nights by Joan Didion (Fourth Estate)

If you’re not interested in negotiating the twin griefs of burying a daughter and growing old then forget it. Blue Nights charts them both in a scarifying way.

Pilgrim at Tinker Creek by Annie Dillard (HarperCollins)

Back in the 1970s Dillard spent a year chronicling what she observed each day in the hills of Virginia. Read it toregain a sense of your humble place in nature in all its grandeur.

A Possible Life by Sebastian Faulks (Random House)

My, what a book! Charting centuries, histories, lovers, scientific theories … these stories linger with their melancholy long after reading.

The Love of a Good Woman by Alice Munro (Random House)

These stories are all strongly rendered, haunting and odd. The sense of place Munro creates is always startling.

Dear Life by Alice Munro (Random House)

Quirky stories and four pieces at the end “autobiographical in feeling”. These give us a glimpse of the landscape and experiences that shaped the childhood and writing life of this extraordinary writer.

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot (Pan Macmillan)

HeLa cells were vital for developing the polio vaccine, gene mapping and more. But the black woman from whom these amazing cells were harvested was virtually unknown … until this book.

Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy (Pan Macmillan)

The end justified the means for me with this book that is meant to rival Moby Dick for ultimate classic status. The writing flowered (still in a grim and violent vein) from page 256 onwards. A Wild West ride that is also a deep reflection on destiny, the dance of life and war.

For the Time Being by Annie Dillard (Random House)

Dillard is smart about theology and won’t let it lie lax when it comes to big questions.

The Flame Alphabet by Ben Marcus (Random House)

A New York Times review said Marcus “is a writer of prodigious talent but The Flame Alphabet doesn’t fulfil its own promise as a hybrid of the traditional and experiment”. An interesting idea, the sound of children’s speech being lethal; but this book seemed more a sermon than a story.

Riding the Trains in Japan by Patrick Holland (Transit Lounge)

Wherever Patrick Holland is — Japan, Vietnam, on the Silk Road — he conveys a steady insight with a poetic style that makes for delightful reading. Rivers and temples and trains and the serendipity of travel all find a place in this absorbing book.

[sic] by Joshua Cody (Allen & Unwin)

This memoir of a cancer sufferer is so much more. Literary and musical discourses weave in and out of the stories of illness, eroticism and mortality, to form a complex and compelling whole.

How Doctors Think by Jerome Groopman, MD (Penguin)

Snap judgments. Stereotypical thinking. Veering away from observing and talking with patients towards ordering more tests. Every doctor should read this and examine their approach!

Everyday Kindness by Stephanie Dowrick (Allen & Unwin)

I was expecting more practical examples of how to be kind and not so much fleshing out of other side issues. I still think Journey into Solitude is Dowrick’s best book.

What we Talk about When we Talk about Anne Frank by Nathan Englander (Hachette)

The title story is funny and clever. In fact most of the stories — often revolving around Jewish characters — are funny and clever. “Peep Show” and “Sister Hills” were two favourites. Intriguing.

Au Revoir by Mary Moody (Pan Macmillan)

Mary packs her bags and heads to France as her 50^th birthday present to herself.  She plans to be away for six months but falls in love with the place and by the end of the book has bought a property.

The Long, Hot Summer by Mary Moody (Pan Macmillan)

This details Mary’s affair and the aftermath of another. This is the third book in the series. Easy reading on my birthday trip to Mornington Peninsular.

The Hum of Concrete by Anna Solding (MidnightSun)

Solding couldn’t get her novel published so she founded a publishing company called Midnight Sun. The book is quirky, Swedish and the story of five people whose lives intersect. A gentle, alluring book.

Three Stages of Amazement by Carol Edgarian (Simon & Schuster)

The family saga of Charlie and Lena is set against the backdrop of the GFC. Secrets, stresses and illnesses tumble over one another and are absorbing in their detail. Even the minor characters are captivating.

Days Like These by Kristian Anderson (HarperCollins)

A You-Tube video made this cancer sufferer famous. Throughout the book there are QR codes — so it’s meant to be a multimedia experience. This man of faith struggled hard against his illness but died. The book is a love letter to his wife and sons.

All That I Am by Anna Funder (Penguin)

I found this book, which won a swathe of awards and great publicity, confusing to follow. It makes some important statements about how hard it was to be courageous and resist Nazism. But I’d choose to read Irene Nemerov to learn about this before reading Funder.

Train Dreams by Dennis Johnson (Granta)

This novella is a pearl; deep and luminous. Grainier is a labourer, loner and frontier man from a bygone era of carthorses, manual logging and man’s first flight. The writing is so perfect it makes you want to weep. Brilliant!

Fire Diary by Mark Tredinnick (Puncher and Wattmann)

Somehow these collected poems don’t have the same powerful force they did when I first saw each of them solo. Nonetheless, Tredinnick deservedly won the Montreal Prize this year. Not jealous. Not jealous. Not jealous.

Reading Like a Writer by Francine Prose (HarperCollins)

Prose’s advice to writers learning the craft: “Forget observations, consciousness, clear-sightedness. Forget about life. Read Chekhov, read the stories straight through. Admit that you understand nothing of life, nothing of what you see. Then go out and look at the world.”

Knuckled by Fiona Wright (Giramondo)

“The windows fidget/as the trains pass …” Bought in a fantastic bookshop in Adelaide, Wright’s poems saw me through some bleak days and nights.

Buy the Book: A Reader’s Guide to Life by Ramona Koval (Text)

“And the books we read introduce us to other books, as if we are at a magnificent party.” Koval presented the ABC Radio National Book Show and she’s a passionate reader. We learn of the books and writers that have influenced her. A warm and lovely book. A great gift.

The Rings of My Tree: A Latvian Woman’s Journey by Jane E Cunningham (Llumina Press)

This book gave me insight into the life of a woman with a very similar story to a Latvian friend of mine. How people draw on their inner resources (and how little to eat a person can live on!) during invasion, escape and living as a refugee during and after war is always quite moving for me.

My Poets by Maureen McLane (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)

Chaucer, Elizabeth Bishop, Wallace Stevens, William Carlos Williams, Marianne Moore, HD, Louise Gluck, Fanny Howe, Emily Dickinson and Shelley. These are McLane’s “My Poets” and this unique and poetic book gives insights into their work and into the kinds of connections poems can inspire when they are loved and thought about deeply. Surely this book was written just for me?

The Dead Sea Poems by Simon Armitage (Allen & Unwin)

These poems have energy, a charge. They’re fairly traditional — but that’s not a criticism. “Five Eleven Ninety Nine” about a fire to end all fires intrigued me across its many pages.

Why Be Happy When You Could be Normal? by Jeanette Winterson (Random House)

“A book is a door. You open it. You step through. Do you come back?” This is the tale of Winterson’s relationship with her ferocious adoptive mother. Mrs Winterson found books hidden under Jeanette’s mattress and took them out into the backyard and burnt them. The title comes from when she told her mother she was gay and that being gay made her happy. “Why be happy when you could be normal?” her mother bellowed.

The 6.5 Practices of Moderately Successful Poets by Jeffrey Skinner (Sarabande)

“Trust the impulse to meander or digress … Just begin, trust and follow” … And so on. All good advice. Reading this book will get you excited about writing and delay you from writing until you finish the book. Don’t we all love a great reason to procrastinate?

New and Selected Poems by Gig Ryan (Giramondo)

Ryan’s use of language and imagery is always arresting. “His voice sits like Gladwrap”. “You look the future in the artery and you look love in the foot.” Enough said.

The Best Australian Stories 2011 edited by Cate Kennedy, The Best Australian Poems 2011 edited by John Tranter, The Best Australian Essays 2011 edited by Ramona Koval (Black Inc.)

These “bests” kept my reading fires burning and gave me hours of intrigue but I’ll cut to the chase here by commenting only on the best of the best. Best story — Louis Nowra’s “The Index Cards” has a clever structure for quite a creepy suburban tale. Best essay — “Fairy Death” by Gillian Mears offers a moving and extremely personal insight into how Multiple Sclerosis can rob a person of physical and sexual vitality. Best poem — “George Perec in Brisbane” by Thomas Shapcott draws a clever comparison between the primacy of humanity in Paris and insects in Brisbane.

Stone Arabia by Dana Spiotta (Penguin)

The pieces I liked best in this unusual sibling tale were ponderings about memory. Forty-something introspective, Denise, says of her father: “Inside, beyond my recall of events and dates and talk, there was this hot-wired memory of his body … Your experiences, the hard felt ones, don’t fade. They are written forever in your flesh, your nerves, your fingertips.”

Daniel Stein, Interpreter by Ludmilla Ulitskaya and translated by Arch Tait (Scribe)

Detractors of the book say: It contains anti-Semitic sentiments; it’s a “black hole of atheism”, it’s too critical of Israel. Are they right? The book’s also been acclaimed as a literary masterpiece. It gives an insight into how complex interfaith interactions can be, why war doesn’t end with armistice and how its effects reverberate down the decades, and therefore how important it is for us to work for peace.

Interferon Psalms by Luke Davies (Allen & Unwin)

I was gobsmacked by Interferon Psalms so I’m glad it has won the inaugural Prime Minister’s Award for Poetry announced in late July 2012. In his review in the Sydney Morning Herald last August Peter Craven said Interferon Psalms was a “book-length poem about the grace of God. It is a brave and bracing book and everyone should read it”. Amen.

The Oldest Song in the World by Sue Woolfe (HarperCollins)

This ambitious (but clunky) book will offer some readers insights into Australia’s remote indigenous communities and the assortment of bureaucrats, do-gooders and cowboys who have roamed them often with questionable agendas and variable results.

How to Read a Novelist by John Freeman (Text)

This is a well-produced compendium of fine pieces about literary luminaries as diverse as Marilynne Robinson, Philip Roth, Siri Hustevdt, Doris Lessing, Kirin Desai, David Foster Wallace, Toni Morrison, Kazuo Ishiguro, Geoff Dyer and Peter Carey — pure gold for a bibliophile like me!

Foal’s Bread by Gillian Mears (Allen & Unwin)

This novel’s an intriguing ride for those who want an intergenerational Australian family story set in a rural setting. Protagonist Lainey Nancarrow’s a gem and the book explores disappearing worlds and the effect of this loss on individuals and families.