Summer reading: 2011's best Aussie books

A SERIES of essays by Colleen McCullough, a remarkable story about defying a dictator and a South-East Asian adventure tale are among the best books released in Australia in 2011.

Colleen McCullough

A SERIES of essays by national treasure Colleen McCullough, a remarkable story about defying a dictator and an adventure tale about traipsing across South-East Asia are among the best books released in Australia in 2011.

LIFE WITHOUT THE BORING BITS, by Colleen McCullough

Colleen McCullough has been described as Australia's most successful female author, a national treasure, a master storyteller and even politically incorrect.

She describes herself as a blue stocking in a jock-strap family and talks about family life in her latest offering Life Without the Boring Bits.

McCullough, who had a nomadic upbringing, is best known for her extremely popular novel The Thorn Birds, published in 1977.

Her first novel, Tim (1974), was also a success and consequently made into a film starring Mel Gibson.

Although Life Without the Boring Bits appears to be an autobiography, 74-year-old McCullough says it is a series of essays, including one on her mother and another on her miserly absentee father.

"If it's an autobiography of anything it's an autobiography of a brain; it grasshoppers. There's essays on everything from time to the crucifixion and wacko subjects that nobody will understand," she says.

That said, readers will also learn about McCullough's writing career and the death of her beloved brother.

(Published by HarperCollins, rrp $39.99)

Norway Nobel Peace

MIGHTY BE OUR POWERS, by Leymah Gbowee with Carol Mithers

Leymah Gbowee's memoir Mighty Be Our Powers is a remarkable story about defying a dictator and uniting Liberian women during a brutal war.

Gbowee writes with honesty and emotion as she takes readers from her childhood in Liberia, Africa, through years of war under the ruthless rebel leader Charles Taylor.

Mighty Be Our Powers is an intense book that does not shy away from the realities of war. Gbowee details women's stories of brutal rapes, group massacres, the brainwashing of children to become child soldiers and the devastation all of this has on a country and its people.

Her descriptions of horrific scenes are vivid and dramatic but never glorified.

Mighty Be Our Powers also tells the unflinching story of Gbowee's own demons and difficulties.

She writes openly about domestic abuse, depression, fear, infidelity and self-hatred but also shows readers the kindness of Liberians.

As the voice of the Liberian Mass Action for Peace, Gbowee, who was jointly awarded the Nobel Peace Prize 2011, helped rehabilitate a nation.

Thought-provoking and tear-inducing, every Australian should read Mighty Be Our Powers.

(Published by HarperCollins, rrp $35)

Christine Manfield

TASTING INDIA, by Christine Manfield

India's culinary tapestry is complex, writes Christine Manfield in her new book, Tasting India.

"India is a visual feast and gastronomic paradise, seducing with its food and contagious hospitality," the Australian chef continues.

Manfield paints a picture of an India that is chaotic and at the same time peaceful; of a culture so complicated yet, in many homes, incredibly simple.

Travelling back and forth between India and Australia, Manfield has studied and immersed herself in Indian culture over many years for her coffee-table book.

Her passion for its cuisine, people and landscape comes across in rich photographs of the Kerala backwaters, the imposing Kanchenjunga and the tea plantations of Darjeeling.

Tasting India is as much a travel book as it is a cookbook.

Manfield, who first went to India in 1996 as a guest chef, has also included tips on where to stay, eat and shop, and more than 250 recipes for traditional and contemporary home-style dishes, including fish-head dal and rose-syrup dumplings.

India pulsates through her veins, she writes, and makes her feel alive.

"It's on the street that food comes to life ... it's vibrant and intoxicating and the flavours resonate; being enveloped by the wafting aromas and full-tilt energy is like shoving your hand into a live socket."

(Published by Penguin, rrp $89.95)

Michael Veitch

THE FORGOTTEN ISLANDS, by Michael Veitch

It's an Australia of shipwrecks and sealers; of places well-trodden and wild weather. It's an Australia explored by author Michael Veitch in The Forgotten Islands.

The radio presenter spent more than a year researching the islands of Bass Strait, meeting bush pilots, exploring ghost towns and battling forests of stinging nettles.

His adventure started with a tale he was told as a child about a lighthouse keeper's son who never returned home from a fishing expedition.

"It's a story that kind of burned away in the back of my mind for a while, so this is a culmination of pursuing that story, pursuing its voracity, but at the same time exploring a very strange and unknown, unexplored and forgotten corner of Australia," he says.

Veitch, who moved to Hobart just weeks after his first expedition to Bass Strait, wanted to write a book about an unusual place.

The islands are fairly inaccessible with no commercial ferry or airline service and it didn't take long for Veitch to learn just how rugged the mass of water between Victoria and Tasmania is.

In The Forgotten Islands, he writes about seasickness, foiled expeditions and white-knuckle flights.

He says the people he met lived by "island time" and ranged from park rangers helping him reach destinations to a retired Englishman he describes as a suave James Bond figure.

(Published by Viking, rrp $32.95)

Brian Thacker

TELL THEM TO GET LOST, by Brian Thacker

For decades, travellers worldwide have been carrying the all-encompassing "yellow Bible" that is a Lonely Planet guidebook in their backpacks.

Brian Thacker follows suit, however the guidebook he recently chose to follow was more than a touch out-of-date.

He borrowed the original 1975 South-East Asia on a Shoestring from Lonely Planet founder Tony Wheeler and used it as his only backpacking reference.

Forget what's trendy along the "banana pancake trail" now, Thacker wanted to find out what was still left and who was still around - minus the bell-bottoms.

Along the way, he broke bread with a gang of ravenous rats, swam with a goat-eating crocodile and got hopelessly lost while traipsing through Portuguese Timor, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, Laos, Burma and Singapore.

Thacker, the author of six other travel books, followed in the footsteps of Tony and Maureen Wheeler for Tell Them to Get Lost.

Over the 12-week adventure Thacker became obsessed with tracking down guesthouses and restaurants that were listed in that first shoestring book.

"There were so many real buzz moments when finding a hotel or a restaurant that was still there; it was great," Thacker says.

(Published by Random House, rrp $27.95)