When I came to Australia at the age of 7, I started year 3 without knowing the alphabet. For the rest of my school life, I felt that I was trying to play catch up. My lack of confidence in English seeped into self doubt in every other subject and I was years behind other kids my age in grammar, syntax and literary exposure.

At university, stacks of academic texts towered my desk. I didn’t yet know the strategies of skimming or scanning, so I read until I understood every paragraph. I looked up every word and wrote them in my vocabulary book and my reading habits changed little.

It wasn’t until I started to teach English as a second language that I learned to read different texts with different approaches. And it wasn’t until I started writing my own book that I started reading fiction voraciously, and with purpose.

I keep my eyes out for sentencing and grace and depth of character and beauty of place. I listen to the rhythms and voice and beats and poetics of running words. Is it trim and tight like Hemingway or is it flamboyant and elaborate like Angela Carter?

I’ve tried to read as many different styles as I can and I especially love the ones that stand out above their genre like Capote’s In Cold Blood—other books I’ve read in crime are far less original. And there are books that excel in a technique or two but are less successful in others.

I’ve learned to read every book as a gift in something, but the books I have included here are books that seem to pull everything off just the right way to impress me.