I spent the past weeks convinced that my task for Meanjin was to respond to the subject of holiday reading, instead of writing my own entry to their ‘What I’m Reading’ series, so I am honouring my misunderstanding. Apologies!

Holiday reading exists in a category of its own. Come November, recommendations appear in magazines, lift-outs and special columns, online and offline, the titles largely drawn from a narrow range of publishers and genres—thriller, crime, adventure, historical fiction… The promise of holiday reading is immersion and/or diversion, a suspension of the ordinary, an escape from that other real life we lead for the rest of the year.