What books do you want to read?
I’ve got a to-read list that, if I’m honest, looks like I’ve been downloading books the way some people buy grocery items: on the assumption they’ll be useful later. But when I line the titles up, it’s not random. It’s a self-portrait.
There’s a part of me that’s trying to learn how to see people properly. That’s what How to Know a Person (David Brooks) is doing here. Same with The Significant Others (Rhaina Cohen). And Deep Kindness (Houston Kraft). It’s about the habits of mind and speech that make people feel safe in your presence. If these are in my pile, it’s because I don’t want to skim the surface of relationships.
Then there’s a clear thread of concern about the emotional climate we’re living in, especially for the young. The Anxious Generation (Jonathan Haidt) is here because I’m trying to understand what’s happening to people’s minds and bodies, and what social systems are contributing to it. It’s the kind of book you download when you’re trying to make sense of the world you’re responsible for.
A few books are there because I want a mature and honest understanding of suffering. A Quiet Mind to Suffer With (John Andrew Bryant) sits there waiting for me. And Kate Bowler’s Blessed is the reminder that religious language can harm people when it turns pain into a lesson or success story. If those books are on my list, it’s because I want a faith that can sit with reality without flinching or performing.
Then the public-life books show up. Michael Lewis’s Who Is Government? is not a casual download. I’m interested in the machinery of the common good: competence, service, institutions, trust. I want to understand how things actually work when they work well — and what it costs to keep them working. It’s a very “I live in the real world” kind of book.
The Australia books are there too, and they’re not decorative. Unsettled (Kate Grenville) and GAMU — the Dreamtime Stories, Life & Feelings of Big Bill Neidjie (Sarah George) tell me I’m still trying to listen to our heritage. Land, story, history, what we inherited, what we refuse to see. I don’t think those titles are on my list because I want to feel comfortable. They’re there because I don’t want to live superficially in my own country.
And then, quietly, the “welcome” theme is present. Refuge Reimagined (Mark and Luke Glanville) sits in the middle of it all like a test: what do we owe strangers, and what does hospitality cost? It’s one thing to be warm in theory. It’s another thing to make room.
The thing that stops the list from becoming too heavy is that I’ve also stocked up on beauty. A River Runs Through It (Norman MacLean) is pure steadying. Not escapism — more like ballast. And the maths book, Beautiful, Simple, Exact, Crazy, is there because I’m drawn to the kind of beauty that comes from precision and pattern. Sometimes beauty is what keeps you sane.
And then there’s Percival Everett’s James. Fiction always finds its way onto my list, but even here it isn’t “light reading”. It’s another way of telling the truth — sideways, with a sharper edge.
So yes: this is a self-portrait.
Someone trying to pay attention.
Someone trying to understand anxiety without moralising.
Someone trying to speak about suffering without clichés.
Someone trying to live truthfully in Australia.
Someone trying to understand how the common life holds together.
That’s what my reading list says about me. Whether I meant it or not.
The Afterword 
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