Australian writers Bri Lee and Bridie Jabour on the six books that impacted them the most
PHOTOGRAPHY BY Alex Vaughan
WORDS BY IZZY WIGHT
“There are books that find you at the right time, and it doesn’t even feel like you found them.”
Every avid reader has a book (or two, or three) that holds a special place on their shelf. Maybe it’s the first book that really hooked them on reading or a novel they read while at one of life’s pivotal crossroads. For Australian writers Bri Lee and Bridie Jabour, each important book in their lives has served a unique purpose.
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Bri and Bridie are the co-hosts of the news and culture podcast, Cool Story. Every week they chat about their stories, the best stories and the biggest stories of the week. Here they talk about the books that had the most significant impact on them, and what these titles meant for them in their lives and careers.
Bridie Jabour, writer and Cool Story co-host
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There are books that find you at the right time, [and] it doesn’t even feel like you found them. I have read a book pretty much every fortnight, sometimes even every week, since I was a child. So, hundreds of books, across roughly two and a half decades. For 10 years I thought 100 Years of Solitude was my favourite book of all time.
Then when I revisited it in my early thirties, I found a very well-written, captivating book, that left no impression on me whatsoever after I finished. Yet years earlier it had struck me as a work of genius with many life lessons. So it’s never just about the book, but where you are in your life when the book finds you.
I read for pleasure and I read for work, so I come across many mediocre books, but still, at least a couple of times a year, another book finds me. These are the ones that have shaped my thinking and my writing in the past few years.
Light Years by Elizabeth Jane Howard
This is the first in a five-book series, I adore the entire thing. But Light Years gripped me from the first few pages – it follows the Cazalet family, brothers and their wives and their children coming together at their parent’s house in the country as the threat of World War II looms. The character-building is extraordinary and I found it very comforting to read about domestic life against the backdrop of international crisis as we live through another ‘turning point in history’.
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Wow, No Thank You by Samantha Irby
Samantha is my funniest living essayist. She writes in such a blunt, conversational way that has me screaming in laughter and then at times, feeling like I’ve been hit over the head with one of her observations. I was pregnant as the COVID health pandemic swept the world and it was this book that got me laughing again during one of the most stressful times of my life.
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After Story by Larissa Behrendt
The premise is simple – a mother and daughter go on an overseas trip together. I loved how Larissa wove literary greats such as Jane Austen and the Bronte sisters into the lives of these Aboriginal women far from home, who are trying so hard to be good to each other. The book reveals the gaps between who we want to be to our family sometimes and who we actually are. I was enthralled by the novel but I also love the technical aspects of her writing, and how she pulls off characterisation and voice.
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Far From the Tree by Andrew Solomon
… [With] parenting books I think there are a lot of charlatans out there who pretend if you follow a specific set of rules, then you’re going to get a perfect grade at the end of it. This is not a parenting book. It’s about parents raising children differently from them and how they approached it, dealt with it and learned along the way.
The differences [in the book] range from the children being deaf, to being a genius, to being trans and being disabled. The differences aren’t judged as being good or bad – although some are more challenging than others – but the extraordinariness of ordinary people shines on every page. I’ve found it profound not just in my parenting, but in how to be a person in the world.
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Bri Lee, writer and Cool Story co-host
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Because I write across fiction and non-fiction and I also teach and I read for pleasure, I’ve realised I can get wildly different things out of different books. Some teach me about life and the world, some teach me about myself and some teach me about writing. I’ve picked one from each category to share.
Eragon by Christopher Paolini
Here’s the thing; I’d be lying if I didn’t put this book first on the list. I’d long been a Deltora Quest kid growing up and I do feel like Harry Potter was formative for me for over a decade, but the Eragon series just got under my 14-year-old skin. Riding dragons! Older elf-woman unattainable love interest! Inter-species political thriller!
When I read about [the character] Eragon being able to reach out psychically and brush up against the energy/consciousness of animals it turned me vegetarian and I didn’t eat meat again for seven years. Seriously. I can track a lot of my righteousness (for better and worse) back to my coming-of-age with genre fiction.
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Great Circle by Maggie Shipstead
People are probably sick of me talking about this novel, but I didn’t have a ‘favourite book’ until I read Great Circle. It’s an epic, for sure. We get the entire life story of this extraordinary, trailblazing aviatrix Marian Graves. I read it when I was on my honeymoon, which is sort of ironic given it’s all about the tension between freedom and commitment; independence and connection. At least, that’s what I got out of it.
I’m someone constantly thinking about freedom and independence. Graves sacrifices everything for freedom – sometimes devastatingly – because she had to in ways I don’t. It was just so life-affirming to read it as a woman in the 21st century. I think about this book all the time. It’s become almost talismanic and I’m torn between dying to re-read it and wanting to keep it in my mind exactly the way it is now.
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The Secret History by Donna Tartt
Come on! If you know, you know! Lit girlies love a bit of dark academia, and it doesn’t get more smart and naughty than this. An ensemble cast of six classics students, all of them varying degrees of liars… an unreliable narrator and one of them ends up dead. I love that when you Google it, one of the top questions that comes up is ‘What is The Secret History actually about?’
Ha! Fools! It blows my mind that this was Tartt’s first published novel. I admire the way she takes a decade (at least) for each book and boom! They land and they’re huge and perfect. I think she’s the master of making literary fiction totally thrilling and page-turning, yet I never feel like I’m being patronised or talked down to.
Get it here.
You can listen to the Cool Story podcast here.
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