Stalin, Churchill, Cicero, Harry Potter, Tintin and Awesome Man are on the reading lists of our federal politicians this summer – if they can find time between bingeing on The Crown, House of Cards and Shameless.
With Parliament finally over for 2016 the nation's leaders plan to crack some spines and fire up their Netflix accounts.
Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull is planning to get through a dozen books, beginning with A. S. Patric's Miles Franklin Award-winning Black Rock White City and Tim Winton's essay collection, Island Home.
Lisa Gorton's The Life of Houses, Jane Harper's The Dry and Harry Potter and the Cursed Child also feature. On the non-fiction side, he'll be tackling histories of Stalin's government and British spy agency MI5, as well as a tome called The Stupidity Paradox: The Power and Pitfalls of Functional Stupidity at Work.
"David Gonski recommended this to me. It explores the dangers of mindless conformity and deference and how a culture which questions established ways of doing things better enables organisations to innovate and succeed," he said.
He'll also be reading The Astonishing Secret of Awesome Man, 10 Little Fingers & 10 Little Toes and Diary of a Wombat to his grandkids.
Opposition Leader Bill Shorten will be introducing his daughter Clementine to Tintin, and reading In Black and White, about his beloved Collingwood Football Club, jockey Michelle Payne's Life as I Know it and Citizen Emperor, the second volume of a biography on Napoleon.
He'll also be tackling Hillbilly Elegy and The Unwinding – two books that reflect on society, class and politics in America.
Former prime minister Tony Abbott has all four volumes of Winston Churchill's A History of the English-Speaking Peoples weighing down his bedside table, as well as Anne Henderson's Menzies at War, Geoffrey Blainey's The Story of Australia's People and the secret journal of former Chinese premier Zhao Ziyang.
But as you'd expect from the avowed monarchist he'll also be bingeing on Netflix's lavish Queen Elizabeth drama, The Crown.
Deputy Labor leader Tanya Plibersek says despite being a staunch republican, she'll be doing the same. She'll also be catching up on Rosehaven, Jane the Virgin and re-watching Please Like Me. She'll be re-reading Robert Harris' Imperium and Lustrum, before reading the third book in the Cicero trilogy, Dictator.
Immigration Minister Peter Dutton will be catching up on the latest seasons of US political thriller House of Cards and Shameless. He'll be reading The Secret Cold War by John Blaxland and also tackling Hillbilly Elegy.
Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce will be getting cerebral, taking on classics by Ernest Hemingway, Albert Camus and George Orwell.
Greens leader Richard Di Natale will dig into Colson Whitehead's critically acclaimed slavery novel The Underground Railroad and One Nation Leader Pauline Hanson will be reading The Forgotten People, a book about Indigenous policy given to her by Cape York leader Noel Pearson.
Derryn Hinch will take on Hitch-22 – Christopher Hitchens' memoir – while Treasurer Scott Morrison plans to read biographies of George Washington and Lachlan Macquarie. His Labor counterpart Chris Bowen will dive into some British political biographies and the new Robert Harris novel.
