Looking For Alibrandi
Josephine Alibrandi is a seventeen-year-old girl of Italian descent coping with typical teen angst. She lives with her single mother and attends a wealthy catholic school. She is caught between her strict single mum and her even stricter grandmother, and choosing between wealthy good boy John Barton and working-class bad boy Joseph Coote. Coping with being a fatherless “wog” she does OK and is on a course to improve her life until her status quo is thrown into chaos with the arrival of her estranged father. By the end of the book all three Alibrandi women face up to secrets they have kept from each other.

My all-time fave – ‘cos it is set in Australia and most of us can relate to it as we all go through ups and downs in our life.

One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest
This novel tackles human fear of society. The author, Ken Kesey, exaggerates the point to prove that many people have their hiding place from society. The issue of human insecurity and fear makes this a great read as it relates to so many people. The novel is seen through chief Bromden’s eyes - a patient at a mental asylum escaping from society. However, in the asylum things are not what they seem.

Nurse Ratched, the head nurse, has physical, mental and verbal power over patients, She is able to emasculate them by her control. The patients find it hard to cope until the protagonist Randle McMurphy comes along and changes everyone’s spirit. This novel is a success because of it’s themes around human nature and courage, rebelliousness, inspiration and pride. It showcases the human spirit at its best and worst. A great novel for all ages.

What I love about this book - it illustrates that life is not always perfect but that the human spirit has incredible power.

Animal Farm
This is a satirical allegory of the Russian Revolution, particularly directed against Stalin's Russia. Led by the pigs, the Animals on Mr Jones's farm revolt against their human masters, fighting to make every animal equal.

What I love about this book - it took boring history (Russian revolution) and turned it into a story with wide appeal and easy understanding. This book is a lot better than listening to your history teacher talk :)

Memoirs Of A Geisha
This is a rare and engaging book. This is a tale about a Japanese geisha in 1929 post-war years of Japan’s dramatic history. Memoirs of a Geisha follows young Chiyo-chan from her unglamorous beginnings as the child of a peasant fisherman to her life as a successful geisha. Her parent's ill health and poverty force them to sell their two children to the Geisha houses of Gion. Chiyo is traumatised after being separated from her sister and thrust into a life as a maid in the Nitta okiya. Here she finds an existence unlike any she has known.

What I love about this book- real insight into history and the secret world of the geisha. Now I know most of you are thinking ,“ oh great what a nerd”, but I personally believe that this has more than history. This novel has it all - action, drama, history, culture – it will get you hooked!