Each year I send a book list to friends and contacts with highlights from my previous year’s reading — and they love it. This week The Cove Observer is publishing my list. Here it is for people who haven’t seen it yet and who don’t live in Lane Cove, on the Lower North Shore of Sydney.

An Unnecessary Woman by Rabih Alameddine – Beiruti recluse Aaliya Sohbi’s hair is too blue and her back too knotty (plus she’s a reader, translator and total grump). I loved her! You could create a fabulous reading list (and listening list) from her musings.

Are You Seeing Me? by Darren Groth – Brisbane twins Perry and Justine go on a road trip and it’s gripping, moving and perfectly paced. Perry’s disability is handled with care and humour. You and all your young adult friends should read this.

Bark by Lorrie Moore – In her fourth short story collection Moore wades straight in to the mess of human disappointment, disillusionment and dislocation with characters that are world-weary, beset, lonely and spiky. Yes: Bark has bite … and the sting lingers.

Lost & Found by Brooke Davis – Millie and two oddball octogenarians get up to some hijinks as they live with death’s big questions like, ‘How do you get old without letting sadness become everything?’ Fun.

Silence Once Begun: A Novel by Jesse Ball – Senior citizens vanish from a Japanese fishing town … and contradictory versions of events emerge. Who’s the criminal here? This poetic novel is food to be savoured slowly and shows the power and futility of silence.

Cracking the Spine: Ten Short Australian Stories and How They Were Written edited by Julie Chevalier and Bronwyn Mehan – If you’re interested in Australian writers and going behind the scenes to see how their stories were written, grab this rare gem.

Lost For Words by Edward St Aubyn – This satire skewers literary prizes and the foibles of those who enter and judge them. In a nice twist the book won a prize in 2014 for a novel that best ‘captures the comic spirit’.

A Million Windows by Gerald Murnane – Critical thinkers compare Murnane with Proust and his sentences shimmer like the plains of his obsession and resonate more as you ponder them. A luminous book by one of Australia’s finest authors requiring deep contemplation to yield its good oil.

Australian Love Stories edited by Cate Kennedy – Sensual. Silver-tongued. Seductive. These 29 love stories will set you simmering. Claire Varley’s story puts the troughs of romance nicely, ‘There are tears, there is hubris, there is a damnation and a regret.’ Uh huh.

Australian Love Poems edited by Mark Tredinnick – Two hundred poems quivering with love; its making and unmaking. Here’s a line from Susan Fealy’s poem: ‘Glitter of morning. / I will bury you with champagne / and two glasses.’ Worth a sip …

Writing to the Edge edited by Linda Godfrey and Ali Jane Smith – These 28 stories (each under 800 words) run the gauntlet of funny, elegant, new, tart and raw. My story in the collection is called ‘Pelts’ and it’s pretty weird.

What Days are For: A Memoir by Robert Dessaix – Prompted by a brush with death, this is really a book about life and how to suck the marrow from each day. As always, Dessaix is dazzlingly theatrical and wonderfully immediate. He also grew up in Lane Cove …

Let Me Be Frank With You by Richard Ford – You will laugh and shake your head at the familiarity and strangeness of American life as told through Frank Bascombe’s candid, witty and (sometimes) inappropriate musings.

Penelope Fitzgerald: A Life by Hermione Lee – Fitzgerald’s spare and beautiful prose and her tenderness towards human beings is a powerful combination. Lee’s biography illuminates the essence of a writer who suffered hard times but made profound and enduring art.

Nora Webster by Colm Toibin – The grief of an Irish widow in her forties doesn’t sound like a riveting read, does it? But Colm Toibin, with his ineffable and unostentatious style, lures readers through Nora’s days so gently, accurately and beautifully it is impossible not to be entranced.

PS: I’ve called this list ‘lofty’ because I work at The Writers Loft in Balmain as a freelance journalist, editor and online content creator. It’s also where I write creatively and run this literary blog. Use the contact form to send me your details if you’d like to be added to next year’s mailing list.