My Love Had a Black Speed Stripe by Henry Williams (1973)

A bloke, his missus and his Holden Monaro. I've not read anything that captures laconic Australian humour and idiom as well as this impossible to find book. The story is serviceable enough but it's the first person voice of Ron, a car factory line worker that steals the show - and it starts right from the opening line: "Love me, love my Holden. I laid that on the line with the missus before we were spliced." From what I can find, this was Williams' only novel and he wrote it after working in a car factory. It's a lovely ocker snapshot of the time and should be brought back into print.

A Winter in the Hills by John Wain (1970)

A pleasant if pedestrian read. Wain is in that Nevile Shute vein of perfectly accomplished writers who never really reach any great heights. A Winter in the Hills tells the story of Roger, an academic, who heads to northern Wales to learn Welsh only to get involved in some local troubles. Wain does evoke the atmosphere of the small villages and the landscape of northern Wales very well but he is probably more notable for his participation in 'The Movement', a 1950s British poetry movement that included Philip Larkin and Kingsley Amis and was a backlash against modernism and experimentation. Says it all really.

The Friends of Eddie Coyle by George V Higgins (1971)

This book should be a showcase for aspiring crime writers. Coyle is a small-time crook who has been painted into a corner by the law and has to make some very careful choices. Pretty standard stuff? Yeah, except the entire story is carried exclusively by fizzing, gritty dialogue that makes the whole grubby world of Boston lowlifes almost lift off the page. This was Higgins' first novel, and although he went on to write quite a few more, he doesn't get the recognition he deserves. Guess Cold War thrillers were the order of the day and he kinda fell through the cracks. Pity.

The Stone Book Quartet by Alan Garner (1979)

Quite why Garner is pigeonholed as a children’s author puzzles me and this work is an example of why. The Stone Book Quartet contains four simple but beautifully crafted episodes tracing Garner’s family in rural Cheshire from the mid 1800s. Deeply felt without ever lapsing into the sentimental, this work shines a rare light on the interconnectedness of a rural village, the subtleties of working with iron and stone, and how the seasons and landscape governed life. You realise how much has changed, how quickly things can fade away.

Labyrinths by Christopher Okigbo (1971)

I don't know anyone who much reads poetry anymore. There's the effort involved and besides, it's a tricky form, more personal than prose. Donne and Dickenson might speak to you, while Baudelaire and Blake beckon me (why, yes as it happens!). Which brings us to Okigbo. Slaughtered in the Nigerian civil war of 1967 at just 35, one legend says Labyrinths includes remnants of his work, prophetically titled “the Path of Thunder”, salvaged from his burning hilltop home. And though I can't say he speaks to me, he ought to get the last word: “tears scatter, take root, burgeon into laughter of leaf...”

This Accursed Land by Lennard Bickel (1977)

I chanced upon this book with its icy cyan cover while cleaning out my brother’s house after he died a few years back. Odd, because he didn’t much read. It is the story of Mawson in Antarctica, and it’s one of the most extraordinary tales of survival you will ever read. The author Bickel, an ABC science reporter, brings journalistic brevity and immediacy to the story with startling effect. The result is utterly engrossing and will stay with you for a long time – or at least it has for me, but perhaps for other reasons.

The Balloonist by Macdonald Harris (1976)

This novel, inspired by an actual attempt to reach the North Pole by balloon in the 1890’s, is a well-wrought tale of adventure that includes a rather odd but memorable love affair. Harris seems very much forgotten, and yet he wrote to some acclaim in his day and is cited by authors such as Philip Pullman as an influence on their work (most obvious perhaps in Northern Lights). He is very adept at describing the science of the day along with the practice of ballooning, but surprisingly he is at his best with his creative rendering of the erotic.

Anarchy in Action by Colin Ward (1973)

Anarchists have always delivered the most withering of social critiques. Their shortcoming has typically been in the alternatives they offer. This book, despite the barricade-evoking title, is an attempt at remedying this. Ward sees examples of voluntary, unregulated cooperation everywhere and builds on these to provide a framework for how an anarchist society might function in a complex, industrialised world. His scope is wide - from family structure to education to housing to play. His argument simple – there is no need to ‘smash the state’, nor is there some utopian endpoint, rather the seeds of change lie all around us. It really is a most beguiling read.

A Melon for Ecstasy by John Fortune & John Wells (1971)

You need to know right up front that this novel is about a man who has a sexual fetish involving trees. Excited? Then you will really like this book. The story, written in the form of journal entries, letters and newspaper articles, follows Humphrey Mackevoy and his nocturnal arboreal passions – often described in rather explicit detail. I shan’t say any more except that after reading this comic gem you will never look at a shady grove the same way again.