2023 Piddington Summer Reading Guide

Summer reading suggestions from the bench and profession.

With summer upon us, we are looking forward to spending more time at the beach, by the pool and away from work. Seeking some escapism, we are pleased to provide you with the 2023 edition of the Piddington Summer Reading Guide.

For the third year, we have asked judicial officers and lawyers from across the profession for book recommendations for the Piddington Summer Reading Guide.

They have provided a wide range of texts for your summer reading that will provoke thought on law, life and everything else.

Please enjoy the Piddington Summer Reading Guide for 2023!

The Hon Justice Darren Jackson, Federal Court of Australia

Doppelganger: A Trip into the Mirror World by Naomi Klein
No, not that Naomi. In this gripping book, Klein, author of No Logo and The Shock Doctrine, traces the growing online confusion between her and the woman she calls ‘other Naomi’ — Naomi Wolf, best known as the author of The Beauty Myth.

In doing so, Naomi K describes the strange journey of Naomi W from liberal darling and friend of the Clintons to anti-vaxxer conspiracy theorist and crony of Steve Bannon.

“And along the way she tells of so much more: the strange intersection of far right paranoia and New Age wellness; the theme of the doppelganger or double in modern culture; personal identity and ‘personal branding’; the topsy-turviness of what she calls ‘the mirror world’ of ‘alternative facts’ — these are just a few of the topics she covers.

“In bringing it all together through a unique personal perspective, Doppelganger is paradoxically, truly one of a kind.

The Hon Justice Larissa Strk, Supreme Court of Western Australia

Lola in the Mirror by Trent Dalton
A young girl and her mother sleep rough in a van in a scrapyard by the Brisbane River. The mother had danced the Tyrannosaurus Waltz. As the author explains, it’s the dance of mothers and their monsters, traditionally performed in the kitchen of any ordinary home in Australia.

Having fled, they are on the run and join the 100,000 Australians sleeping rough. But while they might be houseless, they are not homeless.

The girl has no name because names are dangerous when you are on the run. She dreams of becoming an artist and consults the mirror on the wall.

In his note, Trent Dalton explains that many of the events in the novel were inspired by stories told to him by people he met on the streets of Brisbane across his 17 years of social affairs journalism. He explains that some of these events involve violence, addiction, and self-harm, but the same people he met in the streets also spoke of community, hope and love, and that’s why he wrote the book.

It is a love story on a magic carpet ride. Highly recommended.

Sophie Coffin

The Woman in Me by Britney Spears
As a millennial, it would be remiss of me not to review this book (gift to the world). I’m a lifelong Britney fan and consumed all of the media throughout the years.

Every documentary, magazine article and podcast about her missed one crucial aspect: Britney’s point of view. We waited a long time to hear her side of the story. It’s shocking, intense and heartbreaking.

Each chapter is a revelation of Britney’s resilience as well as a trip down pop-culture memory lane. Britney speaks about significant events throughout her life and rise to superstardom. There are salacious details from the Mickey Mouse Club House days with Justin Timberlake (he is cancelled) to the iconic VMAs performances, the head shaving, the conservatorship and everything in between. She was continually abused and betrayed by those around her in the name of greed, including her family (Jamie Spears is in the running for the worst father of all time), her partners and the media. In this memoir, you can finally see the pain she was in.

Despite being treated as a commodity rather than a human being, Britney’s spirit prevailed. The power of advocating for those who cannot will resonate with all lawyers. You will devour this book.

Neha Dubey

How many more women? Exposing how the law silences women by Jennifer Robinson & Keina Yoshida
“How many women will be silenced before we make the structural changes we need to empower them to speak?”

This is the question posed by international human rights barristers, Jennifer Robinson (of representing Julian Assange fame) and Keina Yoshida (advisor to the Center for Reproductive Rights). It reviews the personal stories we already know, sets out the legislative framework in countries around the world and discusses cases where media and defamation laws have been used as a tool to disadvantage the victims of sexual assault.

It’s not light reading, but it does present complex factual circumstances in a digestible fashion, and will leave you reflecting on whether litigation strategies can overpower free speech.

Most intriguingly, sections of the book on Brittany Higgins were redacted on legal advice as her criminal trial was still listed at the time of publication.

A timely summer read to inspire your inner activist!

Jenny Thornton, Vice President of Women Lawyers of Western Australia

The Colony by Audrey Magee
It’s a beautifully written novel about an isolated Irish island in the 1970s. The islanders are rapidly dwindling in number and their traditional life and language are receding.

One summer they host 2 visitors, a painter from England, who wants to capture the beauty of the island and a linguist academic from France, who is trying to capture and record their dying language. They both resent the other’s intrusion on their stay. They also have the inevitable impact on the locals, particularly one of the island’s few teenagers who is rebelling against his family and their expectation he will continue the family tradition of fishing. (This is unsurprising as his father and grandfather had drowned.)

It’s a delightfully written and moving novel.

Paula Wilkinson, 2024 President of the Law Society of Western Australia

Sea of Tranquillity by Emily St John Mandel
This a novel of speculative fiction involving time travel, a pandemic far in the future, art and an overarching question about the nature of our lives in the universe.

The story takes the reader from a tiny parish on Vancouver island in 1912 to life in the second moon colony in the 22nd and 24th centuries, to an airship terminal on earth and to rural Oklahoma in the 22nd century where armies of robots tend ripening crops on vast plains.

The second moon colony of the 22nd century is a place of white spires, rivers and great artificial beauty but by the 24th century it is a city down on its luck, with darkened skies. It is known by then as “the Night City”: “the place where the sky is always black”.

The story involves a famous 22nd century author trapped on the earth at the start of a ravaging pandemic desperate to return to her family on the moon, and a survivor of the Western Front of WW1 who believes he experiences strange visions.

It involves a 20th century musician and video artist and a 24th century detective who investigates an event which has brought all the main protagonists together and upended their lives.

The event under investigation might be a space/time anomaly which could lead to the conclusion which has some acceptance in the 24th century, that we are all living in a simulation.

I would not characterise this book as science fiction in that the author does not dwell on or confuse us with futuristic technology. She is more interested in humanity and tenderly weaving a beautifully crafted story of the future which resonates with our times.

I particularly liked the cat Marvin who time travelled from 1985 and ended up living on the moon as a house cat of a single man in the 24th century. Will a domestic house cat even exist in the 24th century? And on the moon?

This seems very likely to me.

Belinda Wong, Asian Australian Lawyers Association (WA) President

Cleopatra — A Life by Stacy Schiff
A non-fiction account of Cleopatra’s life that brings colour, depth and motion to the era and the individuals.

Cleopatra emerges as a three-dimensional person beyond the seductress stereotype she has been pigeonholed with — she comes across as a strong, courageous and intelligent leader with some fatal character flaws. The parts of the world she travelled and lived in, including Egypt, Rome, Turkey and Judaea, are rendered in lush detail.

I found this book a page-turner!

Yellowface — RF Kuang
This book has been a book club pick and the centre of some controversy.

The story is told from the perspective of a struggling author consumed with jealousy towards her more successful friend, who is Asian-American. The protagonist is convinced her friend’s success is due to tokenism. When her friend dies, the narrator steals her late friend’s manuscript, a novel about unacknowledged Chinese labourers during WWI, and passes it off as her own.

What follows is a fast paced satire about diversity, discrimination and cultural appropriation. Read it with an open mind and heart.