Regular readers know that I love a good list. This is certainly a great list which will no doubt spark debate and hopefully encourage many to pick up a book.

ABC Radio National asked listeners to vote for their favourite Australian books, and the countdown of 100 finished over the weekend. As The Guardian’s Stephanie Convery reported, Tim Winton’s Cloudstreet took first place, ahead of Markus Zusak’s The Book Thief and Trent Dalton’s Boy Swallows Universe. It is not a new result for Winton. Cloudstreet also topped the ABC’s public poll back in 2003.

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I just finished Ian Leslie’s “John & Paul: A Love Story in Songs” and one passage stopped me cold.

“No song is more McCartneyesque than ‘Penny Lane’, just as ‘Strawberry Fields Forever’ is indubitably Lennonesque. Paul created songs that felt as if they had always existed; John channelled transmissions from another planet. Paul’s melodies feel like the purpose of music itself; John strains at the limits of chords and keys, trying to get past music into pure feeling or experience.”

That’s the whole book in four sentences. And once you read it, you hear every Beatles song differently.

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