Made in Dagenham (Nigel Cole 2010)

1968, what a year! I loved this, including the bits where the script wanted us to be absolutely sure we understood the issues, and I would have been bitterly let down if there hadn't been photos and footage of the actual people at the end.

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (Philip K. Dick 1968)

'The novel which became Blade Runner.'

Selected Poems of Dorothy Hewett (edited by Kate Lilley 2010)

Dorothy lives!

DVD: Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip (Aaron Sorkin 2006)

The totally beguiling love child of 30 Rock and The West Wing, this answers the question, 'What did Aaron Sorkin get up to after his much publicised crack-cocaine habit got him fired from The West Wing?'

DVD: Notorious (Alfred Hitchcock 1946)

I remember loving this in my early 20s. Last night we turned it off just as Cary Grant and Ingrid Bergman discovered the maguffin in the wine cellar, and switched on The IT Crowd without a backward glance. Hitchcock said actors were cattle. He seems to have thought of moviegoers as banks of buttons to be pushed. And it's so odd seeing Rio De Janeiro without a single person of colour.

Arabesques: A tale of double lives (Robert Dessaix 2008)

It was touch and go whether I persevered beyond the first couple of pages, in which predatory sex verging on paedophilia is portrayed as an excellent, life-transforming experience. I flipped forward a couple of chapters and was reassured to see some discussion of different perspectives.

The Golden Gate (Vikram Seth 1986)

From before Vikram Seth was famous, this looks like a delightful comedy of manners told in hundreds of iambic tetrameter sonnets.

Big hART at Belvoir Street: Namatjira (Scott Rankin and Wayne Blair 2010)

A wonderful night in the theatre, of which I think Brecht would have approved. It's fun, critical and, in the end, tragic. Trevor Jamieson is brilliant. Derek Lynch is fabulous. The use of music and two artists is thrilling.

The Souls of Black Folk (W E B Du Bois 1903)

I imagine (hope?) this book is widely studied in the USA. I was led to it by Marilyn Lake and Henry Reynolds' Drawing the Global Colour Line.

The Girl Who Played with Fire (Daniel Alfredson 2010)

Someone says of this film's blond bad guy who feels no pain that he fights 'like he'd taken boxing lessons but not paid attention'. I'm tempted to say something similar about the makers of this film and the craft of filmmaking. Still, the bad guy wins most of his fights, and the film stays engaging in spite of its strikingly poor sense of timing or rhythm.

TV: art + soul (Hetty Perkins, Warwick Thornton 2010)

'Home and Away', the first episode of this three-part series on contemporary Aboriginal art, is wonderfully genial. We get glimpses of some stunning art, and art in the making. My favourite exchange: Hetty Perkins: How do you start a process? How do you arrive at the end?'  Destiny Deacon: 'Darlin, I'm not Miss Perfect like you. I just work in a panic.'

TV: The Big C (Darlene Hunt 2010)

Laura Linney and Oliver Platt may be enough to make this work. She's been diagnosed with cancer and expects to live less than a year. She seems to be friendless, but has a number of committee-developed characters around her: boy-child husband, implausibly revolting adolescent son, weird homeless-by-choice brother, hag neighbour.

Dog Ear Cafe (Andrew Stojanovski 2010)

Having attended the launch and then witnessed my partner's excitement at this book, how could I not read it NOW?

TV: Love, Lust and Lies (Gillian Armstrong 2009)

There's a lot that's really interesting and heartening in this fifth film (and self-described last) about three Adelaide girls/women, 14 in the first one, 47 now. But as a late arrival I found it fragmentary and felt too much like a voyeur. Gillian Armstrong gives herself the last word: 'You said that if you were going to be in these films then you were going to be honest – and then you've lied ever since.' She laughs, and the three other women laugh, but it's an oddly sour note to end on.