The Thirty Books That Spark My Joy
Anyone who doesn’t live under a rock will have heard of Marie Kondo, the tidying expert. She helps people to declutter their homes and their lives and when it comes to books, she lives by the following motto: “I now keep my collection of books to about thirty volumes at any one time.”
As happens frequently on the internet, this statement went through a huge round of Chinese (or perhaps that should be Japanese, in light of her nationality) whispers and suddenly everyone was saying that Marie Kondo was telling people to throw away most, if not all, of their books.
She wasn’t saying that. Her general advice is that the items you do keep should spark your joy. And if books spark your joy, then feel free to have as many of them as you want.
Books spark my joy. I have thousands. I have an entire room just for my books. I could have bought a cheaper house if books didn’t spark my joy so much. Still, I thought it would be an interesting exercise to find the thirty books that really spark my joy.
It was a lot harder than I thought. Mostly because I read a lot of books that are thematically dark, fiction and non-fiction about many different but difficult topics. But I got there in the end. So here, in alphabetical order because it was hard enough choosing them without trying to rank them, are the thirty books from the thousands in my collection that spark my joy.
Bluey Truscott by Ivan Southall
A biography of the famous Keith “Bluey” Truscott. My grandfather and Bluey had the same great-grandfather so there’s a family connection. It’s more like propaganda than a proper biography and given the fact that he was a champion Aussie Rules footballer as well as a fighter pilot and war hero who died during World War II, it’s not surprising.
Cleo by Helen Brown
The tragic story of how Helen Brown and her family coped with the death of one of her children and the key role in that process played by Cleo the kitten.
Eats, Shoots and Leaves by Lynne Truss
You have to love a book that takes its title from a joke about punctuation. What? You don’t have to? Okay, you don’t. But I do. One for the language purists.
English Dictionary
My favourite book. The one book I can’t live without. Read more about it here.
Freedom to Love by Carole Mortimer
The first Mills & Boon I ever read so it holds a special nostalgic place in my heart. Written in the 1970s, it hasn’t aged well but then again not many Mills & Boon books from that time have. There was a copy of this book in my high school library and many years later I found a copy of it in a second-hand book store.
Hornet’s Nest by Patricia Cornwell
My favourite Patricia Cornwell book, perhaps surprisingly not about her most famous creation, Kay Scarpetta. But perhaps not, considering one of the main characters is a cat.
Jennifer Government by Max Barry
A book that ingeniously skewers the path of global consumerism we’re on and it’s written by an Australian. Just one of Max Barry’s brilliant books.
Ninety East Ridge by Stephen Reilly
The one and only published novel from the brother of famous Australian author Matthew Reilly, it contains my most favourite description ever, “star spangled smile”.
No Way Back by Matthew Klein
A deceptively simple book that is brilliantly written, about regretting the life choices we make and how we go about rectifying them. That makes it sound pretentious but it’s actually mainstream fiction. An amazing ending.
Not a Penny More, Not a Penny Less by Jeffrey Archer
I love Jeffrey Archer’s early career novels and this was his first. The back story behind it is as good as the book itself.
Paula and Me by John “JJ” Jeffery
The first published book edited by me that I didn’t write. It wouldn’t generally be the kind of book I am drawn to but I was trusted by JJ to help him honour his wife and I think we achieved something wonderful together.
Postcards from Planet Earth
The book of poetry I studied in Year 12. I hated it at the time but it has grown on me. Some of the poems suffer from their age and societal changes but it is an amazing collection from various poets.
Reverse Dictionary
A book from Reader’s Digest that lists simple words and gives various complex synonyms. And much, much more. Great for word nerds like me.
Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen
Pride and Prejudice gets all the glory but I actually prefer Sense and Sensibility. The Misses Dashwood kick the asses of the Bennet sisters in my opinion.
Sometimes Gladness by Bruce Dawe
The collected poems of my favourite poet.
Texts from Dog by October Jones
Comprised entirely of text messages between October and his dog, it’s hilarious and a lovely escape from the neverending serious books out there.
The Bible
I’m not especially religious but I recognise a good story when I read one. The Bible is full of brilliant tales, regardless of whether you think it’s word for worth truth, completely made up and somewhere in between.
The Blair Witch Project: A Dossier by DA Stern
A side project, I imagine much of it made up from the research that went into creating the movie, that made my jaw drop in an “Oh my God” moment in a way that the movie by itself never did.
The Diary of Jack the Ripper: The Discovery, the Investigation, the Debate by Shirley Harrison
Written and published before the diary was proved to be a hoax, it’s still a fascinating book.
The Ern Malley Affair by Michael Heyward
It’s ironic and appropriate that The Ern Malley Affair comes after The Diary of Jack the Ripper. After all, they’re both books about literary hoaxes. Ern Malley was the creation of James McAuley and Harold Stewart. In the middle of the twentieth century, they wrote what they considered to be bad poetry and submitted it to a literary magazine. Modernists loved it and then the hoax was revealed, embarrassing them. Michael Heyward’s tale of the affair is delicious.
The Great Flood Mystery by Jane Curry
The Great Flood Mystery is the first proper chapter book I can remember reading as a child. This must have been the beginning of my lifelong appreciation of a good mystery being revealed layer by layer.
The Lady and the Chocolate by Edward Monkton
An absolute gem about a bar of chocolate convincing a lady that she must give meaning to its life by eating it.
The Last Victim by Anne E Graham and Carol Emmas
The story of Florence Maybrick. Fascinating on its own, the authors used the claims that her husband, James Maybrick, may have been Jack the Ripper to spice it up even further. She was convicted of murdering him and went to jail. Was she Jack the Ripper’s last victim? Probably not, but still a terrific read.
The Pig of Happiness by Edward Monkton
He is so happy. Another gem, this time about a happy pig. It’s as simple as that.
The Poet by Michael Connolly
The first Michael Connelly book I read and the reason I’ve read every other book of his since.
The Poet’s Manuel and Rhyming Dictionary
As I’m sure you can already tell, I love a good dictionary and for anyone who likes to write rhyming poetry or songs, this takes the hassle out of coming up with rhymes. It gives you rhymes you would never, ever have thought of.
The Watcher’s Guides (Volume 1 by Christopher Golden and Nancy Holder, Volume 2 by Nancy Holder, Jeff Mariotte and Maryelizabeth Hart and Volume 3 by Paul Ruditis and Allie Costa)
Only for the true Buffy fans, these books go into all the details that nobody else cares about.
Thirty-Something and Over It by Kasey Edwards
In the 1960s, Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique coined the term “the problem that has no name”. This was the equivalent book for me. I was desperately unhappy working in the corporate rat race and couldn’t quite put my finger on why until Kasey Edwards helped me realise I was just thirty-something and over it, doing a job and living a life that didn’t “spark my joy,” as Marie Kondo would put it.
Twentieth Century Russian Poetry selected with an introduction by Yevgeny Yevtushenko
Okay, I can’t read Russian but these poems have all been translated into English and they cover a period of huge tumult in Russia. It’s like a history book from the unique perspective of Russia’s poets.
William Shakespeare: The Complete Plays
The tragedies, the comedies, the histories, the romances, Shakespeare’s plays have everything. Much Ado About Nothing is probably my favourite but there’s something for every mood and for every day.
*****
So that’s it. One of the most surprising things to me was how many Australian books I chose. It shouldn’t have been surprising since I’m Australian but I’m more glad about it than I thought I would be. I like that local content is sprinkled amongst the books from the rest of the world. But it probably also shows that I need to expand my horizons a little to read more books from authors of non-English speaking backgrounds. As I write this, I’m doing a year of reading Australian women writers so it’s a longer term goal. But I’ve got plenty of reading years left in me. I hope you do, too.
