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Vol. 22 No. 5
June 2015
NEW THIS
MONTH
Joh For PM
by
Paul Davey
Vale SWF 2015
Another year, another (blockbuster) Writers' Festival. Hope you enjoyed it, in person or by radio or get to hear some replays, because
there is some fabulous listening to be had.
In the meantime, some gorgeous winter reading time awaits. Janice
of the Wilder Aisles has, with obvious cruel intent, sent a postcard
from the Isle of Capri—where the weather, the vista and the entertainment are all far too engrossing to enable her to keep up (writing about) her reading. It's hard when your most prolific reviewer
decamps, and I can't fill the gap, even if I could match her voracious
appetite for books.
Nevertheless, I've been revelling in the latest Anthony
Doerr novel, All the Light We Cannot See, recent winner of the Pulitzer Prize for fiction. It's set in Germany
and France before and during the occupation of the
Second World War, and has a slow build, so you need
be to be patient. And you have to deal with some stylistic clunkiness. But it's worth it, as this is an absorbing
and compelling read, as much a good thriller as it a
very convincing historical novel.
You've probably read plenty about Paula Hawkins' Girl
on the Train, this year's blockbuster crime 'new find'.
I've only recently got to it, and I enjoyed it enormously. It's a terrific page-turner, and makes a marvellous
winter read. Multiple narrators, brilliant plot twists, a
mordant wit and a very assured style for a first-time
novelist, combine to produce a thriller of psychological
complexity, and originality.
I'd also like to strongly recommend Malcolm Knox's
The Wonder Lover. I've admired his work as a journalist and novelist for 20 years, particularly his daring to
challenge himself to boldly strike out in a new direction with each novel, even where the same preoccupation—the inner lives of men—is central. This, his fifth
novel, is uncomfortable, unsettling, and quite brilliant.
The premise is unusual to say the least: one unremarkable man, three wives and three sets of children, spread across what
appears to be three continents. And then he falls disastrously in love
with an unattainable younger woman. It might sound ridiculous,
and it is a provocative fictional construct given that the narration is
through the voice of the children, but it works splendidly.
David Gaunt
Musings from the Inner Duck
by Michael Leunig ($25, PB)
Cartoons, reflections, musings, suggestions, reveries, rhymes, blessings, jokes, lamentations, theories, mysteries, tributes, lapses, and experiments,
this collection of Michael Leunig's cartoons tilts
towards the whimsical, the wise and the sublimely
misaligned. Mr Curly features often. There's the Global Positioning Sausage. The Effect of the Carbon Tax on Your Sausage. Duckwhistle
Politics. A Soliloquy for Strange Times. The Ordinary Oddness of Existence. In
a nutshell: all the questions (and some very funny answers) that can be put about
human existence.
Forever Young by Steven Carroll ($30, PB)
'And is nostalgia not so much a longing for a place or a time, as a
longing for youth itself?' Forever Young is set against the tumultuous period of change and uncertainty that was Australia in 1977.
Whitlam is about to lose the federal election, and things will never
be the same again. the times they are a'changing. Radicals have become conservatives, idealism is giving way to realism, relationships
are falling apart, and Michael is finally coming to accept that he will
never be a rock and roll musician. A subtle and graceful exploration
of the passage
of time and our yearning for the seeming simplicities of the past, Forever Young is a
powerfully moving work. 'Carroll ... transmutes the grey facts of daily life into light and
luminous art.' Geordie Williamson, The Australian.
Almost Sincerely by Zoë Norton Lodge ($25, PB)
Zoë Norton Lodge grew up in Annandale, Sydney in the 80s and
90s. God’s country. Heartland of the Inner West. Because of its location an always fertile mix of working-class, migrant, genteel, intellectual & eccentric residents. As she got older she noticed Annandale was changing, and she started hearing new words like ‘architect’
and ‘labradoodle’, and eventually entire weeks would go by with no
backyard bomb explosions. These stories about neighbourhood warfare, wacky relatives, quashed dreams & facial disfigurement are told
with Norton Lodge’s characteristic comic verve & eye for absurdity & menace, inspired
by her family, friends, acquaintances & nemeses—Greek grandparents who have lived in
mutual resentment for decades & beat each other up with colanders, children who dabble
in amateur porn and are sent to school with cat-food sandwiches, ‘distressed’ furniture,
rampaging eczema, flying babies and other suburban wonders.
The Horses by William Lane ($30, PB)
On the outskirts of Sydney, a boys’ boarding school prides itself on
the horses it keeps. David, a gifted working class student, receives a
scholarship to attend. At the same time Gregory, a new master, is appointed. Both soon learn, from their different perspectives, that what
is said bears little relation to what is done. The school isolates itself
from the outside world and over the course of several months of rain,
the atmosphere inside the school becomes increasingly lawless and
violent. School buildings slip away in floods. Underlying differences
between various parties in the school turn into open conflicts, and the school community
begins breaking up. These tensions are focussed in the conflict between two masters, Val
and Mr C. These two men loathe one another, and both recruit boys in the war of ideas
they are waging. Reminiscent of Patrick White’s writing in its satirical impulse leavened
by compassion for the individual.
The Trivia Man by Deborah O'Brien ($32.99, PB)
Dubbed ‘brainbox' by his peers and ‘weirdo' by his sister, Kevin
Dwyer is a middle-aged forensic accountant who has never had
a real friend, other than his eight-year-old nephew Patrick. When
Kevin joins the Clifton Heights Sports Club trivia competition as
a one-man team, and soundly wins the first round, he is headhunted
by the other contestants. But Kevin would prefer to be on his own.
That is, until he meets Maggie Taylor . . .Maggie is a Latin teacher
and movie buff, who's good at her job but unlucky in love. In fact,
she's still besotted with the man who dumped her years ago. Nagged by her friend Carole
about getting out and meeting people, Maggie reluctantly joins the trivia team founded
by Carole's husband, Edward.
Charlie Anderson's General Theory of Lying
by Richard McHugh ($32.99, PB)
Charlie Anderson is sure of himself. He's sure he's the best consultant in town. He's completely sure his clever wife Anna, in line to be
the first female CEO in the Bank's history, is the love of his life and
his three smart, happy daughters are the centre of his world. And
there's no question in his mind he's a first-class liar and seducer. In
all things, Charlie knows the rules of the game. But what happens
when he meets someone who can outplay him? Or when Anna's rising star threatens to outshine his own? Or when his daughters begin to draw the attention
of men—maybe even men like him? 'A brutal, funny, ridiculous and sometimes sinister
maze of infidelity and moral bankruptcy'— Matthew Condon
The Mothers by Rod Jones ($30, PB)
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2
On D'Hill
Australian Literature
In 1917, while the world is at war, Alma and her children are living in a sleep-out at the back of Mrs Lovett's house in workingclass Footscray. When Alma falls pregnant, her daughter Molly is
born in secret. As Molly grows up, there is a man who sometimes
follows her on her way to school. Anna meets Neil in 1952 at her
parents' shack at Cockatoo. She later enters a Salvation Army home
for unmarried mothers, but is determined to keep her baby. Fitzroy,
1975. Student life. Things are different now, aren't they? Cathy and
David are living together, determined not to get married. Against the
background of the tumultuous events of the sacking of the Whitlam government, a new
chapter is added to the family's story. 'One of the most satisfying Australian novels I've
read in years'—Alex Miller
Annie Barrows, celebrated
co-author of the global bestseller
The Guernsey Literary and
Potato Peel Pie Society, once
again evokes the charm and
eccentricity of small-town life
in The Truth According to Us.
Quirky, loveable and above all human,
this heart-warming novel explores
how little we really know about the
people we know best.
“Barrows is at her best here. Every
page rings like a bell.” Paula McLain,
author of The Paris Wife
randomhouse.com.au
and the 2015 Vogel winner is ...
When There's Nowhere Else to Run
by Murray Middleton ($27.99, PB)
A survivor of Victoria's Black Saturday bushfires takes asylum with
old friends in the Dandenong Ranges. An editor-in-chief drives his
sister halfway around the country to an east-coast rehabilitation
clinic. A single mother flies to Perth with her autistic son for one
last holiday. A father at the end of his tether tries to survive the chaos
of the Sydney Royal Easter Show. A group of young friends hire a
luxury beach house in the final weeks of one of their lives. A postman hits a pedestrian and drives off into the night. When There's Nowhere Else to Run is a collection of stories about people who find their lives unravelling.
They are teachers, lawyers, nurses, firemen, chefs, gamblers, war veterans, hard drinkers,
adulterers, widows and romantics. Seeking refuge all across the country, from the wheat
belt of Western Australia, the limestone desert of South Australia, the sugarcane towns
of Queensland, the hinterland of New South Wales to the coastline of Victoria, they discover that no matter how many thousands of kilometres they put between themselves and
their transgressions, sometimes there's nowhere else to run..
Palace of Tears by Julian Leatherdale ($30, PB)
A sweltering summer's day, January 1914: the charismatic & ruthless Adam Fox throws a lavish birthday party for his son and heir
at his elegant cliff top hotel in the Blue Mountains. Everyone is invited except Angie, the girl from the cottage next door. The day will
end in tragedy, a punishment for a family's secrets and lies. In 2013,
Fox's granddaughter Lisa, seeks the truth about the past. Who is this
Angie her mother speaks of: 'the girl who broke all our hearts'? Why
do locals call Fox's hotel the 'palace of tears'? Behind the grandeur
and glamour of its famous guests and glittering parties, Lisa discovers a hidden history of passion and revenge, loyalty and love.
Leap by Myfanwy Jones ($27, PB)
Joe lives-despite himself. Driven by the need to atone for the neglect of a single tragic summer's night, he works at nothing jobs
and, in his spare time, trains his body & mind to conquer the
hostile environment that took his love & smashed up his future.
So when a breathless girl turns up on the doorstep, why does he
let her in? Isn't he done with love & hope? On the other side of
the city, graphic designer Elise is watching her marriage bleed out.
She retreats to the only place that holds any meaning for her-the tiger enclosure at the zoo-where, for reasons she barely understands,
she starts to sketch the beautiful killers. A beautiful urban fairytale about human and
animal nature, and the transformative power of grief.
Young Tim Gaunt (as I like to annoyingly call him)—he’s that
surfie-looking guy who works on D’Hill Tuesday and Friday—anyway, young Tim said to me the other day that ‘everyone knows’ I
don’t read books by men. Sure enough I struggled to remember the
few books I had read in the last year by the opposite sex. I don’t
know why this is except there are so many good books written by
women and I, of course, engage with a female sensibility. He is
right though and the upshot is I have decided to initiate my very
own affirmative action plan, reading one book by a bloke for every
book I read by a woman. I’m even going to include some non-fiction which I also rarely read.
Luckily I am able to implement said plan immediately. I have an advance copy of Stephen Carroll’s new novel, Forever Young, which
is the 5th novel in his marvellous Glenroy series. I’ve only read a
few chapters as I write, but already, I am entranced by Carroll’s elegant prose and the characters, so familiar from the previous novels
in the series, who are now living through the late 70s. This is a June
new release.
Also landing on my counter today was the long-awaited new book
in Peter Doyle’s fantastic Billy Glashen crime series. The previous
books were Get Rich Quick, Amaze Your Friends and The Devil’s
Jump, all of which have been recently re-published by small American publisher, Verse Chorus Press, who has picked up quite a few
Australian authors. The books go back and forth from the 40s to 50s
as Billy hangs with the grifters, low-lifes, musicians, corrupt cops
and other ne’r-do-wells hanging around inner-city Sydney. Doyle’s
latest, The Big Whatever, is set in the early 70s and sees Billy reading a book which has a plot strangely familiar to him. He realises
the only person who could have written it, is an old mate who is
supposed to be dead. But is he? If you haven’t read these books,
give them a go… Doyle writes hard-core noir Sydney like you have
never known it (well, you might not have been alive then, so that’s
understandable).
Oh, I actually have read another book by a man. I sometimes want
a change from the high-end literary books I tend to read so I picked
up a thriller by English writer Simon Mawer called Tightrope. Marion Sutro has worked as a spy during the war, was betrayed and imprisoned in Ravensbruck, escaped and returned to England. When
the war is over, she is lured into the world of cold-war espionage. I
enjoyed this—well written and the plot has enough twists and turns
to keep you reading to the end. A good winter read, and that’s out
this month as well.
So there you go, Tim—three books by men.
I previously raved about Aaron Blabey’s picture book Pig the Pug
and now there’s a sequel—Pig the Fibber, which is just as hilarious,
if not more so. That’s four books by men!
See you on D’Hill. Morgan Smith
Now in B Format
The Golden Age by Joan London, $19.99
Mothers and Daughters by Kylie Ladd, $20
Cicada by Moira McKinnon, $22.99
3
International Literature
Flood of Fire by Amitav Ghosh ($29.99, PB)
It is 1839 and tension has been rapidly mounting between
China and British India following the crackdown on opium
smuggling by Beijing. With no resolution in sight, the colonial
government declares war. One of the vessels requisitioned for
the attack, the Hind, travels eastwards from Bengal to China,
sailing into the midst of the First Opium War. The turbulent
voyage brings together a diverse group of travellers—among
them is Kesri Singh, a sepoy in the East India Company who
leads a company of Indian sepoys; Zachary Reid, an impoverished young sailor searching for his lost love, and Shireen Modi, a determined
widow en route to China to reclaim her opium-trader husband's wealth and reputation. The thrilling climax to the Ibis trilogy, Flood of Fire travels from India to
China, through the outbreak of the First Opium War and China's devastating defeat,
to Britain's seizure of Hong Kong.
Girl at War by Sara Novic ($29.99, PB)
Growing up in Zagreb in the summer of 1991, 10 year-old Ana
Juric is a carefree tomboy; she runs the streets with her best
friend, Luka, helps take care of her baby sister, Rahela, and
idolises her father. But when civil war breaks out across Yugoslavia, soccer games & school lessons are supplanted by sniper
fire & air raid drills. The brutal ethnic cleansing of Croats and
Bosnians tragically changes Ana's life, and she is lost to a world
of genocide and child soldiers; a daring escape plan to America becomes her only chance for survival. Ten years later she returns to Croatia, a
young woman struggling to belong to either country, forced to confront the trauma
of her past and rediscover the place that was once her home.
Love May Fail by Matthew Quick ($30, PB)
Portia Kane is having a meltdown. After escaping her posh
Florida life and her cheating pornographer husband, she finds
herself transported back to South Jersey where things remain
largely unchanged from her unhappy childhood. In need of saving herself, she sets out to find and resurrect a beloved high
school English teacher who has retired after a horrific event in
the classroom. Will a sassy nun, an ex-heroin addict, a metalhead little boy, and her hoarder mother help or hurt her chances
in this bid for renewed hope in the human race?
Also New
McSweeney's Issue 49 (ed) Dave Eggers, $33
Alena by Rachel Pastan ($25, PB)
In a restaging of Daphne du Maurier's classic Rebecca, an aspiring assistant curator from the Midwest meets Bernard Augustin,
the wealthy, enigmatic founder of the Nauk, a cutting-edge art
museum on Cape Cod. It's been two years since the tragic death
of the Nauk's chief curator, Augustin's childhood friend and muse,
Alena. When Augustin offers the position to our nameless heroine
she dives at the chance—and quickly finds herself well out of her
depth. The Nauk echoes with phantoms of a past obsessively preserved by the museum's
business manager & the rest of the staff. Their devotion to the memory of the charismatic
Alena threatens to stifle the new curator's efforts to realise her own creative vision, and
her every move mires her more deeply in artistic, erotic, & emotional entanglements.
When new evidence calls into question the circumstances of Alena's death, her loyalty,
integrity & courage are put to the test, and shattering secrets surface.
The Harder They Come by T. C. Boyle ($29.99, PB)
Sten Stenson, Vietnam veteran and retired school principle and his
wife Carolee are on a cruise to Costa Rica when their coach excursion is hijacked by local youths and they're robbed at gun point. In
an astonishing act of bravery Sten's military training kicks in and
within moments one of the attackers lays dead, the rest flee and
Sten finds himself hailed a hero by the tour group, the Costa Rican
authorities and everyone back home. Meanwhile, in the woods just
outside San Francisco, Sara—a farrier who refuses to be controlled
by the government—fails to cooperate with police after being pulled
over and winds up with her car impounded, her dog stuck in the pound and her best friend
having to post her bail. A chance meeting with 25 year-old Adam, Sten & Carolee's unstable son, sparks a strange but passionate relationship fuelled by a mutual hatred of the law.
Muse by Jonathan Galassi ($29.99, PB)
Paul Dukach is heir apparent at Purcell & Stern, one of the last
independent publishing houses in New York, whose shabby offices
on Union Square belie the treasures of its list. Thanks to his boss,
the flamboyant Homer Stern, Paul learns the ins and outs of the
book world. But though things are shaky in the age of conglomerates and digital, Paul remains obsessed by one dazzling writer: poet
Ida Perkins, whose outsize life and audacious verse have shaped
America’s contemporary literary landscape, and whose longtime
publisher—also her cousin and erstwhile lover—happens to be
Homer’s biggest rival. And when Paul at last meets Ida at her secluded Venetian palazzo,
she entrusts him with her greatest secret—one that will change their lives forever. Enriched by juicy details from a quintessential insider, Muse is a hilarious and touching love
letter to the people who write, sell—and, above all, read—the books that shape our lives.
Seveneves by Neal Stephenson ($33, PB)
What would happen if the world were ending? When a catastrophic
event renders the earth a ticking time bomb, it triggers a feverish race
against the inevitable. An ambitious plan is devised to ensure the survival of humanity far beyond our atmosphere. But unforeseen dangers
threaten the intrepid pioneers, until only a handful of survivors remain
... Five thousand years later, their progeny—seven distinct races now
three billion strong—embark on yet another audacious journey into
the unknown, to an alien world utterly transformed by cataclysm and
time: Earth. Neal Stephenson combines science, philosophy, technology, psychology & literature in a magnificent work of speculative fiction that offers a portrait of a future that is at once extraordinary and eerily recognisable.
When the Doves Disappeared by Sofi Oksanen
1941: In Communist-ruled, war-ravaged Estonia, two men have deserted the Red Army? Roland, a fiercely principled freedom fighter, and
his slippery cousin Edgar. When the Germans arrive, Roland goes into
hiding; Edgar abandons his unhappy wife, Juudit, and takes on a new
identity as a loyal supporter of the Nazi regime... 1963: Estonia is again
under Communist control, independence even further out of reach behind the Iron Curtain. Edgar is now a Soviet apparatchik, desperate to
hide the secrets of his past life and stay close to those in power. But his
fate remains entangled with Roland's, and with Juudit, who may hold
the key to uncovering the truth. ($27.99, PB)
The Blue Between Sky and Water by Susan Abulhawa
It is 1947, and Beit Daras, a quiet village in rural Palestine, surrounded
by olive groves, is home to the Baraka family. Eldest daughter Nazmiyeh looks after her widowed mother, who is prone to wandering and
strange outbursts, while her brother Mamdouh tends to the village bees.
Their beautiful younger sister, Marian, with her striking mismatched
eyes, spends her days talking to imaginary friends, and writing. When
Israeli forces gather outside the town's borders, nobody suspects the
terror that is about to descend. Soon the village is burning, and amidst
smoke and ash, the family set out on the long road to Gaza, in a walk that will test them to
their limits, with consequences that will echo throughout generations. ($29.99, PB)
Sophie and the Sibyl: A Victorian Romance
by Patricia Duncker ($29.99, PB)
In Berlin, Max Duncker & his brother, Wolfgang, own a thriving publishing business, which owes its success to one woman: 'The Sibyl', or
George Eliot, whose final instalment of the bestselling serial Middlemarch is in the process of being written. Max is as fond of gambling &
brothels as Wolfgang is of making a profit & berating his spendthrift
brother, but Max is given a chance to prove his worth by visiting the
Sibyl & her 'husband' Lewes, to finalise the publishing rights to her
new novel. The Sibyl proves to be as enthralling & intelligent as her
books, bewitching Max & all of those around her. But Wolfgang has an ulterior motive for
Max's visit; he wants his brother to consider the beautiful 18 year-old Sophie von Hahn as
a potential wife. An old acquaintance, she comes from a German family of great wealth.
However, Sophie proves to be nothing like the angelic vision of domesticity Max envisaged; wild & wilful, she gambles recklessly yet always wins, rides horses fiercely & is
happy to disobey authority, especially when it comes to the forbidden act of contacting
her heroine, who happens to be George Eliot. Enchanted by this whirlwind vision, Max
nevertheless fears he will never be able to tame her.
The Spectre Of Alexander Wolf by Gazdanov Gaito
A man comes across a short story which recounts in minute detail his
killing of a soldier, long ago—from the victim's point of view. It's a
story that should not exist, and whose author can only be a dead man.
So begins the strange quest for the elusive writer 'Alexander Wolf'.
A singular classic, The Spectre of Alexander Wolf is a psychological thriller and existential inquiry into guilt and redemption, coincidence and fate, love and death. ($20, PB)
The Versions of Us by Laura Barnett ($29.99, PB)
A man is walking down a country lane. A woman, cycling towards
him, swerves to avoid a dog. On that moment, their future hinges.
There are three possible outcomes, three small decisions that could
determine the rest of their life. Eva and Jim are 19 and students at
Cambridge when their paths first cross in 1958. And then there is David, Eva's then-lover, an ambitious actor who loves Eva deeply. The
Versions of Us follows the three different courses their lives could
take following this first meeting. Lives filled with love, betrayal, ambition but through it all is a deep connection that endures whatever
fate might throw at them.
Please Talk to Me: Selected Stories by Liliana Heker
4
Argentinian author, Liliana Heker, rejected exile during the dangerous Dirty War years & formed part of a cultural resistance that stood
against repression. As a writer, she found in the microcosm of the
family and everyday events subtle entry into political, historical &
social issues. Her stories examine the rituals people invent to relate
to one another, and they reveal how the consequences of tiny acts
may be enormous. Her work has some of the dark humour of Saki or
Roald Dahl—with charm, economy & a close focus on the intimate,
Heker has perfected the art of the glimpse. ($24.95, PB)
A Year of Marvellous Ways by Sarah Winman
Marvellous Ways is eighty-nine years old and has lived alone
in a remote Cornish creek for nearly all her life. Lately she's
taken to spending her days sitting on a mooring stone by the
river with a telescope. She's waiting for something - she's
not sure what, but she'll know it when she sees it. Drake is a
young soldier left reeling by the Second World War. When
his promise to fulfil a dying man's last wish sees him wash
up in Marvellous' creek, broken in body and spirit, the old
woman comes to his aid. ($29.99, PB)
The Underwriting by Michelle Miller
Todd Kent is young, hot, and on his way to the top of Wall
Street when the eccentric founder of Hook, the popular new
dating app, handpicks him to lead its floating on the stock
exchange. Given just two months to pull it off, Todd and his
investment banking team—brainy Neha, party-boy Beau,
and old college flame Tara Taylor—race to close the $14 billion deal of the decade. It's also the chance of a lifetime for
Tara, who sees her opportunity to break through the glass
ceiling and justify six years of sacrifices for her career. But
nothing is what it seems in Silicon Valley, and when tragedy strikes there's no
telling where the sparks will fly. ($29.99, PB)
The Year of the Runaways by Sunjeev Sahota
Thirteen young men live in a house in Sheffield, each in flight
from India and in desperate search of a new life. Tarlochan,
a former rickshaw driver, will say nothing about his past in
Bihar; and Avtar has a secret that binds him to protect the
chaotic Randeep. Randeep, in turn, has a visa-wife in a flat
on the other side of town: a clever, devout woman whose
cupboards are full of her husband's clothes, in case the immigration men surprise her with a call. A Granta 'Best Young
Novelist of 2013, Sunjeev Sahota's 2nd novel sweeps between India and England, and between childhood and the present day in a story
of dignity in the face of adversity. ($29.99, PB)
Now in B Format
The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher
by Hilary Mantel, $20
Emma by Alexander McCall Smith, $20
Frog Music by Emma Donoghue, $20
Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage
by Haruki Murakami, $20
The Zone of Interest by Martin Amis, $19.99
5
Crime Fiction
‘Superb … a bravura
performance’
THE IRISH TIMES
‘Poetic, ambitious’
THE GUARDIAN
‘A haunting page-turner’
WEEKEND WEST
The Drowned Boy by Karin Fossum ($32.99, PB)
‘He'd just learnt to walk,' she said. ‘He was sitting playing on his blanket, then all of a sudden he was gone.' A 16 month-old boy is found
drowned in a pond right by his home. Chief Inspector Sejer is called
to the scene as there is something troubling about the mother's story.
As even her own family turns against her, Sejer is determined to get to
the truth.
Before It Breaks by Dave Warner ($30, PB)
Detective Daniel Clement is back in Broome, licking his wounds from
a busted marriage and struggling to be impressed by his new team of
small-town cops. Here, in the oasis on the edge of the desert, life is as
stagnant as Clement's latest career move. But when a body is discovered a local fishing spot, it is clearly not the result of a crocodile attack.
Somewhere in Broome is a hunter of a different kind. As more bodies
are found, Clement races to solve a decades-old mystery before a monster cyclone hits.
The Killing of Bobbi Lomax by Cal Moriarty ($30, PB)
This is the story of Clark Houseman, a rare books dealer, an expert
in his field, beloved by both collectors and The Faith—the immensely
powerful local church, and one of his biggest clients. Beloved, that is,
until he is blown up by the city's third bomb in less than twenty-four
hours. As Clark hovers on the brink of death first on the scene are Detectives Sinclair and Alvarez who, after the previous deadly blasts, are
under pressure to close the case and stop panic spreading through their
community. Amid a vortex of conspiracy theories and local politics,
their investigation unearths a web of intrigue surrounding The Faith
and its secretive dealings. With time running out, the Detectives start
to wonder if there could be more to the mild-mannered, bookish Clark
Houseman than first thought.
Finders Keepers by Stephen King ($32.99, PB)
John Rothstein is a Salinger-like icon who created a famous character,
Jimmy Gold, but hasn't published a book for decades. Morris Bellamy
is livid, not just because Rothstein has stopped providing books, but
because the nonconformist Jimmy Gold has sold out for a career in advertising. Morris kills Rothstein and empties his safe of cash, and finds
a trove of notebooks containing at least one more Gold novel. When
locked away for another crime he hides the money & the notebooks—
and decades later, a boy named Pete Sauberg finds the treasure, and now
it is Pete and his family that Bill Hodges, Holly Gibney, and Jerome
Robinson must rescue from the ever-more deranged and vengeful Morris when he's released from prison after thirty-five years.
Tightrope by Simon Mawer ($29.99, PB)
Marian Sutro has survived Ravensbruck and is now back in dreary
1950s London trying to pick up the pieces of her pre-war life. Debriefed by the same shadowy branch of the secret service that sent her
to Paris to extract a French atomic scientist, Marian is now plunged into
the cold war.
The Last Bookaneer by Matthew Pearl ($32.99, PB)
On the island of Samoa, in a house perched on a cliff beneath a smouldering volcano, a dying Robert Louis Stevenson labours over a new
novel. It is rumoured that this may be the author of Treasure Island's
greatest masterpiece. On the other side of the world this news fires the
imaginations of the bookaneers, literary pirates who steal the latest
manuscripts by famous writers to smuggle them to a hungry public.
But a changing world means the bookaneers will soon become extinct.
Two adversaries set out for the south Pacific: Pen Davenport, a tortured
criminal genius haunted by his past and Belial, his nemesis. Both dream
of fortune and immortality with this last and most incredible heist.
Silver Bullets by Élmer Mendoza ($29.99, PB)
For Detective Edgar 'Lefty' Mendieta, tormented by past heartbreak
& dismayed by all-pervasive corruption, the murder of lawyer Bruno
Canizales represents just another day at the office in Culiacan, Mexico's
capital of narco-crime. There is no shortage of suspects in a city where
it's hard to tell the gangsters from the politicians. Canizales, son of a
former government minister & lover of a drug lord's daughter, nurtured
a penchant for cross-dressing & edgy sex. But why did the assassin use
a silver bullet? And why, 6 days later, did he apparently strike again?
The Last Confession of Thomas Hawkins
by Antonia Hodgson ($29.99, PB)
6
Now in B Format
Close Call by Stella Rimington, $20
Forensics: The Anatomy of Crime
by Val McDermid, $22.99
Spring, 1728. A young, well-dressed man is dragged through the streets
of London & jeering crowds to the gallows at Tyburn. His name is Tom
Hawkins & he is innocent. Somehow he has to prove it, before the rope
squeezes the life out of him. Life was good. He should never have told
the most dangerous criminal in London that he was 'bored and looking
for adventure'. He should never have offered to help Henrietta Howard,
the king's mistress, in her desperate struggles with a brutal husband.
And most of all, he should never have trusted the witty, calculating
Queen Caroline. She has promised him a royal pardon if he holds his
tongue but then again, there is nothing more silent than a hanged man.
Sidney Chambers and The Forgiveness of Sins
by James Runcie ($35, HB)
Full-time priest & part-time detective, Canon Sidney Chambers, continues his sleuthing adventures in 1960s Cambridge. A stranger seeks
sanctuary, convinced he has murdered his wife. Sidney & his wife
Hildegard go for a shooting weekend in the country & find their hostess has a sinister burn on her neck. Amanda receives poison pen letters when she at last appears to be approaching matrimony. A firm of
removal men accidentally drop a Steinway piano on a musician's head.
During a cricket match, a group of schoolboys blow up their school
Science Block. On a family holiday in Italy, Sidney is accused of the
theft of a priceless painting.
Now in B Format
The G File by Hakan Nesser, $19.99
By Its Cover: (Brunetti 23) by Donna Leon, $19.99
Sidney Chambers and The Problem of Evil
by James Runcie, $19.99
Charlie Anderson is sure of himself.
He’s sure he’s the best consultant in
town. And there’s no question in his
mind he’s a first-class liar and seducer.
In all things, Charlie knows the rules of
the game. But what happens when he
meets someone who can outplay him?
Or when his wife’s rising star threatens
to outshine his own? Or when his
daughters begin to draw the attention
of men – maybe even men like him? You
will recognise somebody you know in
this rollicking debut novel. For better or
worse, you may even recognise yourself.
Jack of Spades by Joyce Carol Oates ($28, PB)
Successful author Andrew J. Rush has 28 mystery novels to his name.
He has a loving wife, three grown children, and is well-known in his
small New Jersey town for his generosity. But Andrew's hiding a dark
secret. Under the pseudonym Jack of Spades, he had penned another
string of novels—dark, violent, masochistic tales of murder, lust and
madness. When a court order arrives accusing him of plagiarism, Rush
fears his secret may be exposed. Unbidden, in the back of his mind, the
Jack of Spades starts plotting his survival.
Black Run by Antonio Manzini ($25, PB)
A corpse is buried six inches under the snow, the dark flanks of the
Alps tower over everything. Deputy Police Chief Rocco Schiavone,is
stuck in this backwards Alpine town after getting on the wrong side of
the wrong people & longs for the fritto misto, cobbled streets & lucky
breaks of his beloved Rome. He hates the provincial locals almost as
much as his superiors for their petty rules and for exiling him here. And
now he has a body to deal with... There is nothing to identify the victim
but a tattoo of Luisa Pec, owner of a bar popular with the locals & a
pair of blue eyes popular with Rocco. Was it a crime of passion? Or of
jealousy? And how are the mafia involved?
Dark Detectives: An Anthology of Supernatural Mysteries (ed) Stephen Jones ($19 PB)
Eighteen stories of supernatural detective fiction, featuring sleuths who
investigate fantastic and horrific cases, protecting the world from the
forces of darkness. Each writer offers a tale of a great fictional detective, including Neil Gaiman’s Lawrence Talbot, Clive Barker’s Harry
D’Amour, and the eight-part Seven Stars adventure by Kim Newman
(Anno Dracula).
Musings From the Inner Duck
is a poignantly hilarious new
collection featuring 138 Michael
Leunig cartoons. Whimsical,
wise and sublimely misaligned,
it’s a collection of reflections,
musings, suggestions,
reveries, rhymes, blessings,
jokes, lamentations, theories,
mysteries, tributes, lapses, and
experiments. In a nutshell: all the
questions (and some very funny
answers) that can be put about
human existence.
The Forsaken by Ace Atkins ($29.99, PB)
36 years ago, a nameless black man wandered into Jericho, Mississippi,
with nothing but the clothes on his back & a pair of paratrooper boots.
Less than two days later, he was accused of rape & murder, hunted
down by a self-appointed posse & lynched. Now evidence has surfaced
of his innocence, and county sheriff Quinn Colson sets out not only to
identify the stranger's remains, but to charge those responsible for the
lynching. Soon Colson will find himself accused of terrible crimes, and
the worst part is, the accusations just might stick. As the two investigations come to a head, it is anybody's guess who will prevail—or even
come out of it alive.
Death is a Welcome Guest by Louise Welsh (29.99, PB)
The second instalment in the thrilling new Plague Times trilogy from
the author of A Lovely Way to Burn. Magnus McFall was a comic on
the brink of his big break when the world came to an end. Now, he is a
man on the run and there is nothing to laugh about. Thrown into unwilling partnership with an escaped convict, Magnus flees the desolation
of London to make the long journey north, clinging to his hope that
the sickness has not reached his family on their remote Scottish island.
Tin Sky by Ben Pastor ($18, PB)
Ukraine, 1943. Having barely escaped the inferno of Stalingrad, Major
Martin Bora is still serving on the Russian front as a German counterintelligence officer. At a time when weariness, disillusionment & battle
fatigue are a soldier’s daily fare, Bora seems to be one of the few whose
sanity is not marred by the horrors of war. As the Wehrmacht prepare
for the Kursk counter-offensive, a Russian general defects aboard a
T-34, the most advanced tank of the war. Soon he and another general,
this one previously captured, are found dead in their cells. Bora begins
an investigation, in a stubborn attempt to solve a mystery that will come
much too close for comfort.
The Marathon Conspiracy by Gary Corby ($25, PB)
The Sanctuary of Artemis is the ancient world's most famous school for
girls. When one of its students is killed, apparently by a bear, and another girl disappears in the night, Nicolaos, Classical Athens's favourite
sleuth, and his partner in investigation, ex-priestess Diotima are asked
to help. A skull the 2 students discovered in a cave not far from the
sanctuary has proven to be the remains of the last tyrant to rule Athens. What does a decades-dead tyrant have to do with two young girls?
Where is the missing child? Is a killer bear really lurking beyond the
walls of Athens? And who is the mysterious stranger who's trying to
kill Nico and Diotima? Can the sleuths solve the interlocked crimes and
save a child before their wedding?
On 16 December 1944, Hitler launched
his ‘last gamble’ in the snow-covered
forests and gorges of the Ardennes.
The Allies, taken by surprise, found
themselves fighting two panzer armies.
Belgian civilians abandoned their home,
justifiably afraid of German revenge.
Panic spread even to Paris. While many
American soldiers fled or surrendered,
others held on heroically to slow the
German advance. With more than a
million men involved, the Ardennes
offensive became the greatest battle of
the war in western Europe.
Why don’t flight attendants get tipped?
If you were a terrorist, how would you
attack? And why does KFC always
run out of fried chicken? Over the past
decade, the blogs of Steven D. Levitt and
Stephen J. Dubner have entertained us
and changed the way we understand the
world. Now the very best of these have
been carefully curated into a book – with
added extras – for the millions of readers
who love all things Freakonomics.
penguin.com.au
7
Biography
The Spy's Son: the true story of the highestranking CIA officer ever convicted of espionage and the son he trained to spy for Russia
Jim Nicholson was the highest-ranking CIA officer ever convicted of espionage. A single father, respected mentor & brilliant case officer, he was also a double agent selling thousands
of state secrets to the Russians. However, it was from behind
the bars of a federal prison that he conducted his greatest betrayal. Just 12 years
after Jim's conviction, his youngest son, Nathan, was arrested for the same crime.
Through interviews, private letters & access to Jim's personal journal, Bryan Denson pieces together a fascinating family portrait of a father so caught up in his life
as a double agent that he manipulated his own son, an army veteran, to betray his
country in order to stay loyal to his family. ($33, PB)
Whipping Boy: The Forty-Year Search For My
Twelve-Year-Old Bully by Allen Kurzweil
Equal parts childhood memoir & literary thriller, Whipping
Boy chronicles Allen Kurzweil's search for his 12 year-old
nemesis, a bully named Cesar Augustus. His obsessive inquiry,
which spans some 40 years, takes Kurzweil all over the world,
from a Swiss boarding school (where he endures horrifying
cruelty) to the slums of Manila, from the Park Avenue boardroom of the world's largest law firm to a federal prison camp in
Southern California. While tracking down his tormentor, Kurzweil encounters a
cast of characters that includes an elocution teacher with ill-fitting dentures, a gang
of faux-royal swindlers, a crime investigator with 'paper in his blood', and a monocled grand master of the Knights of Malta. Yet for all its global exoticism & comic
exuberance, Kurzweil's riveting account is, at its core, a heartfelt and suspenseful
narrative about the 'parallel lives' of a victim & his abuser. ($30, PB)
Don't Trust, Don't Fear, Don't Beg: The Extraordinary Story of the Arctic Thirty
by Ben Stewart ($28, PB)
There is a saying in Russian jails. 'Ne ver ne boysya ne prosi':
don't trust, don't fear, don't beg. Don't trust because life here
will always disappoint you. Don't fear because whatever you're
scared of, you are powerless to prevent it. And don't beg because nobody ever begged their way out of a Russian prison
cell. The plan was to attach a Greenpeace pod to Gazprom's
platform & launch a peaceful protest against oil being pumped
from the icy waters of the Arctic. However, heavily armed commandos flooded the
deck of the Arctic Sunrise & the Arctic Thirty began their ordeal at the hands of
Putin's regime. Told in the activists' own words, this is a dramatic & inspiring story
of incarceration and the ensuing emotional campaign to bring the protestors home.
Stalin's Daughter: The Extraordinary and
Tumultuous Life Of Svetlana Alliluyeva
by Rosemary Sullivan ($29.99, PB)
Born in the early years of the Soviet Union, Svetlana Stalin
spent her youth inside the walls of the Kremlin. Communist
Party privilege protected her from the mass starvation & purges
that haunted Russia, but she did not escape tragedy—the loss of
everyone she loved, including her mother, two brothers, aunts
& uncles, and a lover twice her age, deliberately exiled to Siberia by her father. As she gradually learned about the extent
of her father's brutality after his death, Svetlana could no longer keep quiet & in
1967 shocked the world by defecting to the US—leaving her two children behind.
But although she was never a part of her father's regime, she could not escape his
legacy. Her life in America was fractured; she moved frequently, married disastrously, shunned other Russian exiles, and ultimately died in poverty in Spring
Green, Wisconsin. With access to KGB, CIA & Soviet government archives, as
well as the close cooperation of Svetlana's daughter, Rosemary Sullivan pieces together Svetlana's incredible life in a masterful account of unprecedented intimacy.
Unabrow: Misadventures of a Late Bloomer
by Una LaMarch ($24.99, PB)
The book June Cleaver would have written if she spent
more time drinking and less time vacuuming. As a girl, Una
LaMarche was as smart as she was awkward. She was blessed
with a precocious intellect, a love of all things pop culture,
& eyebrows bushier than Frida Kahlo's. Adversity made her
stronger—and funnier. In Unabrow, Una shares the cringeinducing lessons she's learned from a life as a late bloomer, including the 7 deadly sins of DIY bangs, how not to make your
own jorts, and how to handle pregnancy, plucking, & the rites of passage during
which your own body is your worst frenemy.
8
Now in B Format
There Goes Gravity: A Life in Rock and Roll
by Lisa Robinson, $26.99
Behind the Mask: The Life of Vita Sackville-West
by Matthew Dennison, $23
The Tangier Diaries by John Hopkins ($32.95, PB)
Tangier, the white city poised atop the dark continent which turns
out to be the continent of light. Tangier in the 60s and 70s was a
fabled place. This edge city, the Interzone, became muse and escapist's dream for artists, writers, millionaires & socialites, who wrote,
painted, partied & experienced life with an intensity & freedom that
they never could back home. Into this louche & cosmopolitan world
came John Hopkins, a young writer who instantly became a part of
the bohemian Tangier crowd with its core of Beats that included
William Burroughs, Paul & Jane Bowles & Brion Gysin, as well as Tennessee Williams, Jean Genet, Yves Saint Laurent, Barbara Hutton & Malcolm Forbes.
Those intoxicating decades of Tangier's Golden Years are long gone. Grand old houses
that once sparkled with life are shuttered & dark and most of the eccentrics who once
lived and loved in the city have died. But here, in the pages of Hopkins cult classic, all the
decadence and flamboyance of those days is brought to life once more.
Maverick Mountaineer by Robert Wainwright
George Ingle Finch, mountaineer, soldier, scientist, rebellious spirit,
boy from the bush, was in his day one of the most famous men in the
world. In 1922 he stood at the highest point on Everest, a feat not bettered for 30 years. He invented the predecessor to the puffer jacket
and pioneered the use of oxygen in climbing. A WW1 hero whose
skills also helped save London from burning to the ground during
the Blitz of WW2, he was a renowned scientist who was personally chosen by Nehru, the first Indian prime minister, to help lead
his nation into the modern world. Robert Wainwright surveys this
brilliantly colourful character, who is now best known as the father of Academy awardwinning actor Peter Finch—but who was so much more. ($32.99, PB)
Eleanor Marx: A Life by Rachel Holmes ($19.99, PB)
Unrestrained by convention, lion-hearted & free, Eleanor Marx
(1855–98) was an exceptional woman. Hers was the first English
translation of Flaubert's Mme Bovary. She pioneered the theatre of
Henrik Ibsen. She was the first woman to lead the British dock workers' and gas workers' trades unions. For years she worked tirelessly
for her father, Karl Marx, as personal secretary & researcher. Later
she edited many of his key political works, and laid the foundations
for his biography. But foremost among her achievements was her
pioneering feminism. For her, sexual equality was a necessary precondition for a just society. Rachel Holmes has gone back to original sources to tell the
story of the woman who did more than any other to transform British politics in the 19th
century, who was unafraid to live her contradictions.
Peg Plunkett: Memoirs of a Whore
by Julie Peakman ($29.99, PB)
From a violent domestic background, Peg Plunkett blitzed her way
through balls and masquerades creating scandals and gossip wherever she went, leaving dukes, barristers and lieutenants stranded
in her wake. She was the first madame ever to write her memoirs,
thereby setting the template for the whore's memoir. She wrote not
merely to reveal herself but to expose the shoddy behaviour of others. Julie Peakman brings her subject and the world through which
she moved to glorious, bawdy life.
The Short Long Book by Martin Flanagan
In 1995, Aboriginal footballer Michael Long gave the AFL its ‘Mandela moment'. He quietly revolutionised Australian sport by refusing
to let a racial insult pass during the Anzac Day match between Essendon and Collingwood. When the overwhelmingly white football
public backed a black man against a white institution (the AFL), the
culture of the game flipped and the AFL became a leader in Australian race relations. A decade later, he again impacted on the nation
when he set out to walk from Melbourne to Canberra to confront the
Howard government over Aboriginal issues. This is a portrait of a
shy black kid from Darwin who became one of the most notable figures in the history of
Australian sport, of a footballer who tore apart the 1993 grand final within 7 minutes of
the start, of a man known as a joker who is a serious social and political thinker. It is also
the story of a white sportswriter who is taken to his limits, & a long way beyond, seeking
to understand a man who can only be understood through his Aboriginality. ($17.99, PB)
A Fighting Chance by Elizabeth Warren ($32.99, PB)
As a child in small-town Oklahoma, Elizabeth Warren yearned to go
to college and then become an elementary school teacher—an ambitious goal, given her family's modest means. Early marriage and
motherhood seemed to put even that dream out of reach, but fifteen
years later she was a distinguished law professor with a deep understanding of why people go bankrupt. Then came the phone call that
changed her life: could she come to Washington DC to help advise
Congress on rewriting the bankruptcy laws? Thus began an impolite education into the bare-knuckled, often dysfunctional ways of
Washington. She fought for better bankruptcy laws for ten years and lost. She tried to
hold the federal government accountable during the financial crisis, but became a target
of the big banks. She came up with the idea for a new agency designed to protect consumers from predatory bankers, and was denied the opportunity to run it. Finally, at age 62,
she decided to run for elective office and won the most competitive—and watched —Senate race in the country. In this passionate, funny, rabble-rousing book, Warren shows why
she has become a hero to all those who believe that America's government can and must
do better for working families.
Travel Writing
Twilight in Italy by D. H. Lawrence ($24.95, PB)
In 1912, a young D. H. Lawrence travelled to northern Italy. He spent
nearly a year on the shores of Lake Garda, lodged in elegantly decaying houses set amid lemon groves & surrounded by the fading life of
traditional Italy. It was here that he wrote Sons and Lovers and here too
that we see the early flowering of the prose that would come to define
Lawrence's oeuvre. This is a travel book where landscapes & people
are backdrops to Lawrence's deeper wanderings into philosophy, life,
nature, religion & the fate of man. With sensuous descriptions of late harvests, darkening
days & the fragility of ancient traditions, Twilight in Italy is suffused with nostalgia & premonition. For, looming over the idyll of rural Italy are the arrival of the industrial age & the
brewing storm of World War I.
NEW CRIME READS
Naked at Lunch: Adventures of a Reluctant Nudist
by Mark Haskell Smith ($27.99, PB)
Folk have been naked in public for centuries. But being a nudist is more
complicated than simply stripping off. In Naked at Lunch, Mark Haskell
Smith uncovers nudism's fascinating history—and gets involved, baring all himself. He visits a Spanish town where clothing is optional, and
travels to the largest nudist resort in the world: a hedonist's paradise in
the south of France. From clothes-free hiking in the Austrian Alps to a
Caribbean cruise on the 'Big Nude Boat', Haskell Smith takes us on an
entertaining frolic through the good, the bad, and the just plain naked.
Following Burke and Wills Across Australia:
A Touring Guide by Dave Phoenix ($49.95, PB)
This book guides you on a road trip that follows one of history’s great
transcontinental journeys, sharing the explorers’ experiences on the way.
Maps lay out a route taking you as close as possible to the Expedition’s
track. As you travel the outback roads, you can learn all the details of
the day to day journey of the Expedition from the explorers’ own words,
and compare what you see with their descriptions of the country in
1860–61. Each chapter provides information about the location & descriptions of the markers & memorials placed along the route over the
150 years since the Expedition, and places where you can stand where the explorers stood &
look out over prospects they drew & described. Dave Phoenix provides a perfect companion
for those wanting to see outback Australia, and at the same time understand a journey that has
attained mythic status in the history of Australian exploration.
London: A Travel Guide Through Time
by Matthew Green ($35, PB)
Dr Matthew Green explores the sights & sounds of London through history. This is a fascinating & unique guide to the capital that takes the reader
off the beaten track & into unexplored territory. Whether you are a tourist
looking for an alternative way to see the city, or a Londoner that wants to
learn more about the world around you, this is a must-have guide.
A Woman in Arabia: The Writings of
the Queen of the Desert by Gertrude Bell
In the last century, few people lived more astounding—or influential—
lives than Gertrude Bell. During World War I, she worked her way up
from spy to army major to become one of the most powerful woman
in the British Empire. After the defeat of the Ottoman Empire, she was
instrumental in drawing the borders that define the region today, including creating an independent Iraq. This is the epic story of Bell's life,
told through her letters, military dispatches, diary entries, and other
writings. It offers a unique & intimate look behind the public mask of a
woman who shaped nations. ($27.99, PB)
Ruth Black’s quiet
life is thrown into
disarray when Aunt
Julia arrives with
an urgent, dreadful
message.
‘a cleverly plotted
period piece with …
very funny dialogue.’
Burnie Advocate
Cato Kwong is
back. This time
it’s personal.
When Cato’s old
friend Francis
Tan is murdered,
Cato finds himself
in Shanghai
confronting the
killer – and the
ghosts of his own
family history.
‘Bad Seed is hard to
beat.’ The Australian
The Director is the Commander by Anna Broinowski
Looking for respite from her crumbling marriage and determined to stop
a coal seam gas mine near her Sydney home, filmmaker Anna Broinowski
finds wisdom and inspiration in the strangest of places: North Korea.
Guided by the late Dear Leader Kim Jong Il's manifesto The Cinema and
Directing, Broinowski, in a world first, travels to Pyongyang to collaborate with North Korea's top directors, composers and movie stars to make
a powerful anti-fracking propaganda film. This book centres around the
bizarre 21 day shoot Broinowski did in North Korea to make her documentary, Aim High in Creation! She meets & befriends artists & apparatchiki, defectors &
loyalists, and gains a new insight into the world's most secretive regime. Her adventures are
set against a parallel exploration of propaganda in general: both in its ham-fisted North Korean form & its sophisticated but no less pervasive incarnation in the corporate West. ($33, PB)
Lydia Bradey: Going Up is Easy by Laurence Fearnley
Lydia Bradey is one of Australasia's foremost high-altitude mountaineers. Beginning her alpine career in the 1970s, she made her first ascent
of Aoraki/Mount Cook while still a teenager. Following her dream to
become a climber, she travelled to Alaska, Nepal, Bhutan and Pakistan,
where, in 1987, she became the first Australasian woman to climb an
8000-metre peak, Gasherbrum 2. In 1988, she made a historic ascent of
Mount Everest, becoming the first woman to reach the summit without
supplementary oxygen. Employed as a professional mountain guide,
she has made two further ascents of Everest as well as climbed and
guided extensively throughout Nepal, Pakistan, Antarctica, South America, Africa and Europe. Through her stories, we encounter a woman propelled by curiosity and passion to
become one of the greatest female high-altitude adventurers of recent times. ($35, PB)
When a body is
found in a Broome
waterhole,
Detective Daniel
Clement races to
solve a decades-old
mystery before a
monster cyclone hits.
‘Warner is a class act.’
Graeme Blundell
9
books for kids to young adults
compiled by Lynndy Bennett, our children's correspondent
A wonderful array of picture books has come into the shop in the past few weeks, with beautiful illustrations and equally good stories. I’m rather tired
of too much style over content—I want a picture to look appealing, with great illustrations, design, appropriate font, substantial cover and pages, but I
also need it to have some reason for being, and to have some literary integrity. With that in mind, I’ve found five new books that I like very much. Louise
Colours; Counting by Aina-Maija Metsola
The Finnish illustrator Aina-Maija Metsola has two new books for little
children, Colours, and Counting, both quite large for board books, with
sturdy flaps (several on each page). Excellent, graphic illustrations of
familiar objects, often amusingly represented, with the surprise element
of lifting up the flap making an interactive experience. For example, a
picture of a cupcake—lift up the flap and find just a few crumbs on a
plate, and a picture of a lady in a very tall hat reveals a very tall hairstyle underneath. Great fun. ($15, BD)
Healthy Brain, Happy Life by Wendy Suzuki
Take Away the A by Michael Escoffier
(ill) Kris Di Giacomo
A Doll for Marie by Louise Fatio (ill) Roger Duvoisin
The Day No One Was Angry by Toon Tellegen (ill) Marc Boutavant
Last, but definitely not least, is a very special new book set in a forest—with each of its
twelve short chapters concentrating on a different animal resident of the forest. Written with
a wry, gentle humour, and a fable-like quality, this is essentially a book about anger, and all
the ways of dealing with it. Despite the central theme, this is most definitely more than an
'issues' book. Bound to become a classic, with its exquisite illustrations that hark back to
another time, and a European sensibility that works so well within the bounds of a pastoral
picture book, it’s no surprise that everyone who looks at this book wants to own it! ($30, HB)
Another delight is this reissue of a classic! A beautiful example of the genre of doll books (which was so popular in the mid C20th), this is the story of an exquisite and precious
doll, who seems destined to loneliness, living amongst other precious antiques. A little girl, Marie, sees the doll in the window of an antique shop, and longs to play with her. I won’t
spoil the story by telling what comes next, but the fates of both the doll and Marie are happily changed through the agency of a naughty Dachshund and a suspicious Siamese cat.
Expressively pretty illustrations, that are very typical of the time (1950s), with black and white sketches alternating with coloured double spreads, and with a very evocative limited
palette of pink and yellow. There is also a dear little book for a doll, in a pocket at the end of the book, very sweet! ($29, HB)
audio
books
In response to that voracious customer, Popular Demand, I’ve started increasing our range of books on audio and already
they are being snapped up with alacrity. All are unabridged, with many narrated by renowned actors or the authors
themselves—a real treat. You’ll find audiobooks—classics and contemporary—for most ages. Recent additions include
The Incredible Journey by Sheila Burnford ($26, 3 CDs), Ender’s Game ($51, 9 CDs), Skulduggery Pleasant ($51, 6
CDs), some of The Dork Diaries ($26, 3 CDs) and Pippi Longstocking ($24, 3 CDs), and we’ve plenty of Australian
favourites too. Lynndy
Inimitable author and founder of Guys Read Jon Scieszka vehemently champions audiobooks, not as a substitute to reading but as a way of
boosting vocabulary and comprehension, as well as a guide to pronunciation – something not easily discerned when reading a book alone.
Reading is limited by individual literacy levels but listening to literature can introduce a child to stories and concepts above their reading
ability, empowering them regardless of academic prowess. Complementing his Guys Read initiative is Guys Listen – well worth following
up, especially if you are catering to a boy who doesn’t love reading. “The mission of GUYS LISTEN is to promote literacy by focusing on the art of listening.
Allowing guys to "plug in" to experience great stories will motivate them to enjoy novels and literature they may have been unwilling to try out before.” We
have Scieszka’s autobiographical Knucklehead: Tall Tales & Mostly True Stories about Growing Up Scieszka as a book, and now on audio ($36, MP3 CD).
The Crow Talker: Book 1 in the Ferals series by Jacob Grey ($15, PB)
The World is in danger. It has been for many years. In countries around the world there are people who can speak
to animals, they are known as FERALS. When three very deadly Ferals escape from Blackstone Prison, who is going to stand up to them? Join Caw and his crows, Screech, Glum and Milky, in an amazing adventure to stop the
spinning man. Will he need friends or will he not? I recommend this book for kids who like fantasy and adventure.
Ryan O’Dempsey
Dragon Shield by Charlie Fletcher ($13, PB)
fiction
Sisters by Raina Telgemeier ($15, PB)
Sisters is the companion to Raina Telgemeier's award-winning graphic memoir, Smile. Telgemeier illuminates the issues of
growing up, fitting in, family and family relationships. Sisters is a memoir framed around a family road trip from California
to Colorado. The twelve-year-old heroine Raina uses present day narrative as well as flashbacks to unfold the story of her
relationship with her sister. Raina can’t wait to have a little sister but when Amara is born things soon change. Amara shows
no interest in playing with Raina and they are opposites in every way. When their younger brother is born the sisters are
forced to spend more time together, yet still their love-hate relationship continues. When the sisters arrive at their cousins’
house in Colorado and they are both struggling to fit in they discover that they have each other, and when Raina and Amara
realise that their parents’ relationship is in trouble they need each other now more than ever. Jodie
Nearing forty, neurologist Dr Wendy Suzuki was at the pinnacle of her
career, but despite her professional success, she was overweight, lonely
and tired, and knew that her life had to change. She started simply—
by going to an exercise class—but noticed that not only did she begin
to get fit, she also became sharper, had more energy, and her memory
improved. Being a neuroscientist, she wanted to know why. What she
learned transformed her body and her life. Suzuki makes neuroscience
easy to understand, & offers practical, short exercises—four-minute
Brain Hacks—to engage your mind and improve your memory, your
ability to learn new skills and function more efficiently. ($34.99, PB)
Silence: The Power of Quiet in a World Full of Noise
by Thich Nhat Hanh ($33, PB)
Buddhist monk and Nobel Peace Prize nominee Thich Nhat Hanh explains how mindfulness is the practice that stops the noise inside. With
gentle anecdotes, simple Buddhist wisdom and practical exercises, he
shows us how to live mindfully so that all the internal chatter ceases
and we are left with the eloquent sound of silence. Now, at last, we can
answer the call of the beauty around us. Through silence, Thich Nhat
Hanh reveals, we are free to hear, to see—and just be.
Life From Scratch: A Memoir of Food, Family, and
Forgiveness by Sasha Martin ($34.99, HB)
It was a culinary journey like no other: Over the course of 195 weeks,
food writer and blogger Sasha Martin set out to cook—and eat—a meal
from every country in the world. As cooking unlocked the memories
of her rough-and-tumble childhood and the loss and heartbreak that
came with it, Martin became more determined than ever to find peace
and elevate her life through the prism of food and world cultures. From
the tiny, makeshift kitchen of her eccentric, creative mother to a string
of foster homes to the house from which she launches her own cooking adventure, Martin's heartfelt, brutally honest memoir reveals the power of cooking to bond, to empower,
and to heal—and celebrates the simple truth that happiness is created from within.
New in
Reaktion's
Edible Series,
$24.99, HB
Truffle by Zachary Nowak; Sugar by Andrew F. Smith
Dumplings by Barbara Gallani; Tequila by Ian Williams
The Detox Kitchen Bible
by Lily Simpson & Rob Hobson ($50, HB)
Time is frozen. Everyone except two kids are completely motionless and something dark is swirling around. Statues are coming to life
and causing problems. The darkness seems to have come from the British Museum but now it is spreading. Join Will and Jo to uncover
the secret before time runs out? I recommend this book, the first in the series, for readers who are interested in thrillers and adventure.
Ryan O’Dempsey (age 10)
biography
The House That Sonabai Built: Looking at Art series
by Vishakha Chanchani & Stephen P Huyler (photographer) ($22, PB)
This picture book tells the true story of Sonabai, married at a young age and living in a small village in India. Forbidden by her husband to go to the markets or socialise with neighbours, she was very lonely and started making animals, birds and people from clay for her young son. She used ground spices, leaves and vegetables to colour her creations and
started decorating the walls of the house; her home became her sculpture studio and, over time, an art gallery. She cut bamboo sticks, bent them into circles and tied them together
to create a lattice framework, then coated the bamboo with a thin layer of clay. She installed the lattice (or jaali) between the pillars of her verandah, then painted it and decorated
it with birds and figures. The light filtering through into the house was now soft and dappled and cast mysterious shadows everywhere. Sonabai had transformed her home into
a magical place, with nothing to work with except what she found around her. When four people from the centre for arts in Bhopal stumbled upon this wonderland, shy Sonabai
became famous and travelled all over India exhibiting her work, conducting workshops and inspiring others to experiment and create. Mandy
(This visually gorgeous informative book won the Darsana National Award for Excellence in Children's Book Production 2015. Lynndy)
10
Wheat Belly 30-Minute (or Less!) Cookbook: 200
Quick and Simple Recipes by William Davis
Eliminating wheat from our diets can prevent fat storage, shrink unsightly bulges & reverse myriad health problems. For decades, we
have been consuming nutritionally bankrupt grains that contribute to
diabetes, obesity, heart disease & countless other common ailments
like brain fog & dermatitis. But because wheat is such a ubiquitous
ingredient in today's recipes, preparing healthy, wheat-free meals
may seem like a daunting task. Cardiologist William Davis provides
200 recipes which will help you lose your wheat belly and keep it
off, with every recipe designed to take 30 minutes or less. ($37.99, PB)
picture books
This is a quite brilliantly simple, extremely clever (in the best way) alphabet book.
Take away a letter from a word, and you have something completely different, eg
'Without the N the Moon says Moo', and 'Without the R the Crab hails a Cab'. Of
course, the illustrations are a huge part of the humour of the book, and I won’t even
try to describe the absurd funniness on each page. Because of its linguistic nature,
and the rather sophisticated illustrations, this isn’t a book for the very young, but
on the other hand this would be terrific for a child who has just learned to read, and
for older children. It captures all the joy and playfulness of language, verbally and
visually. ($23, HB)
Food & Health & Garden
✴
Using mouth-watering flavour combinations and an encyclopaedic knowledge of ingredients, Detox Kitchen founder, chef Lily
Simpson, and nutritionist Rob Hobson have created 200 carefully
tailored recipes and a variety of meal plans to bring you this ultimate, comprehensive bible of detox food - all wheat-, dairy- and
sugar-free. Recipes include Beetroot falafel, Avocado smash,
Chicken, cashew and tarragon wraps, Pad Thai with brown rice
noodles, Kale crisps with paprika, Green papaya salad, Tomato pesto with courgette
spaghetti, Sesame seed cookies, Butterbean mash, Keralan fish curry, Pinto bean chilli,
Pineapple carpaccio coconut clouds, and Apricot and ginger jam.
Superlegumes by Chrissy Freer ($29.99, PB)
With over 90 recipes and packed with information on nutrition and
cooking tips, Superlegumes dispels the myth that beans and legumes
make for stodgy, hippy, vegetarian food. These fresh, delicious and
health-bringing recipes are a mix of vegetarian, meat and fish-based
recipes, for every meal and every season. They use legumes and
pulses—cannellini beans, broad beans, lima beans, kidney beans,
adzuki beans, borlotti beans, lentils, chickpeas—not only a highprotein food source and kinder on the earth to produce than meat
protein, but also healthier to eat and cheaper to buy. The recipes
range from breakfast through to after-dinner treats—Pulled pork black bean sliders with
green chilli salsa, Masala beef and red kidney bean curry or Duck breast with pancetta,
braised lentils and balsamic or Piri piri chicken with smashed chickpeas to Peanut carob
button cookies, Double choc bean brownies or Mandarin, pistachio and chickpea cake.
Feasts and Fasts: A History of Food in India
by Colleen Taylor Sen ($59.99, HB)
This is an exploration of Indian cuisine in the context of the
country’s religious, moral, social and philosophical development. It addresses topics such as dietary prescriptions and proscriptions, the origins of vegetarianism, culinary borrowings
and innovations, the use of spices and the inseparable links between diet, health and medicine. This lavishly illustrated book
gives a mouth-watering tour of India’s regional cuisines, containing numerous recipes to interest and excite readers.
Raw: 150 Dairy-free and Gluten-free Vegan
Recipes by Omid Jaffari ($49.99, HB)
Eating organic, nutritionally dense, uncooked plant foods
can really improve your health and well-being because the
less food is processed, the less stress it puts on the digestive
system. The three sections in this book—Raw Materials, Staples and Recipes—take you on a journey through creating
delicious raw vegan cuisine from scratch: from using a dehydrator and stocking your pantry with the best ingredients,
to making raw vegan staples for your fridge and freezer, to
combining these staples to make delicious breakfasts, soups,
salads, pastas, risottos, tarts, desserts and chocolates.
AWW Casseroles and Curries ($39.95, PB)
During the wintery months, there is nothing like a warming
casserole to please the family. This bumper book includes
over 200 recipes with do-ahead tips to make preparation easy,
hints on how to freeze any leftovers and even accompaniment
suggestions, all aimed at making meal-time simple.
Out this month:
Lucky Peach Issue 15, $19.99
Low Carb High Fat Barbecue: 80 Healthy
LCHF Recipes for Summer Grilling, Sauces,
Salads, and Desserts by Birgitta Höglund
It might seem impossible to plan a menu of healthy food for
the backyard cookout or a picnic. But grilled meats & seafood
are perfect for the LCHF diet, which emphasises proteins and
vegetables over sugar and flour. Low Carb High Fat Barbecue
contains over 80 delicious recipes for grilled food and tasty
side dishes. Marinades, sauces & other delicious accompaniments add variety and make grilling fun. ($32.95, HB)
Backyard Beekeeping by Courtenay Smithers
There is room for a hive of bees in many a suburban garden &
this revised 2nd edition of Backyard Beekeeping is a comprehensive reference for all wishing to keep healthy bees & produce delicious honey. It provides essential information on the
bees life cycle, the basic equipment required for beekeeping,
where to position hives & obtain a bee colony, how to care for a
colony & increase its size, the harvesting of honey & wax, how
to move hives, swarm control & the nectar & pollen flowers that
attract bees to Australian & NZ gardens. ($19.95, PB)
The Art of Baking Bread by Matt Pellegrini
The Art Of Baking Bread teaches you what the professionals
know but don’t tell you—and does so in a way that anyone can
understand. In the end, you’ll possess exceptional know-how
and confidence, as well as a precise, easy to understand blueprint for creating baguettes, ciabatta, focaccia, brioche, challah,
sourdough, and virtually any other variety that will make your
bread the envy of every baker around—professional or otherwise. ($30, PB)
Sherry by Talia Baiocchi ($39.99, HB)
Part travelogue, part recipe book, Sherry begins with an overview of the different types of sherry & how they are made.
It tells the story of this complex wine through the people &
places that produce it, as well as the mouth-watering dishes
that best complement it—from seafood Tortillitas to Braised
Chicken and Clams Sofrito. An entire chapter of 43 sherrybased cocktails‚ plus a buyer's guide listing the top producers
and the best wines—launches this traditional wine firmly into
the present day
Maggie Beer's Winter Harvest Recipes
This book brings together all of Maggie Beer's signature recipes from her winter chapter of Maggie's Harvest, including
detailed descriptions of seasonal ingredients and inspiring
accounts of memorable meals with family and friends. The
recipes highlight Beer's philosophy of using the freshest and
best seasonal produce available in the Barossa Valley South
Australia, and treating it simply, allowing the natural flavours
to speak for themselves. ($29.99, PB)
11
events
s
Eve nt
ar
d
n
e
Cal
MONDAY
1
8
TUESDAY
2
Event—6 for 6.30
Ian McAuley & Miriam Lyons
WEDNESDAY
3
Event—6 for 6.30
Ross Gittins
Michael Cooney
9
10
11
16 Event—6 for 6.30
Stuart Macintyre
23 Launch—6 for 6.30
Martin Konings
Event—6 for 6.30
Debra Adelaide
18 Launch—6 for 6.30
17
30 Event—6 for 6.30
Malcolm Knox
Supermarket Monsters: The Price of
Coles & Woolworth's Dominance
In conv. with Rebecca Huntley
Coles and Woolworths jointly rule
Australia’s retail landscape. Malcolm Knox argues that in return for
cheap milk and bread we as consumers are risking much more: quality,
diversity and community.
12
SATURDAY
SUNDAY
5
6
7
12
13
14
19 Launch—6 for 6.30
Jane Turner
20 Launch—3.30 for 4
Gita Bhandari
21 Launch—3.30 for 4
Samuel Kay—The Circus
Peter Beilharz, Trevor Hogan
The Ultimate Menopause Makeover:
For Lalitha With Love
Launcher: Max Cullen
and Sheila Shaver
From Fed up to Fabulous in 42 Days Married at fourteen, a widow at for- A novella about a young man who, in
The Martin Presence:
Jean Martin & the Making of the
Social Sciences in Australia
Launcher: Prof Andrew Jakubowicz
Jean Martin was a pioneer of sociology, inventing a version of the discipline that was uniquely suited to
Australia in the post-war period.
24 Event—6 for 6.30
Frank Brennan
25
Event—6 for 6.30
Richard Hil
The Emotional Logic of Captalism: No Small Change: The Road to RecSelling Students Short:
ognition for Indigenous Australia
What Progressives Have Missed
Why You Won't Get the University
In conv. with Tanya Hosch
Noam Yuran
Education You Deserve
This
vital
contribution to our underWhat Money Wants:
In
conv.
with Prof Raewyn Connell
standing of Indigenous affairs will
An Economy of Desire
generate crucial debate on how we Author of Whackademia Richard Hil
Launcher: Prof Dick Bryan
should acknowledge our country's continues to lift the lid on today's
university experience.
In discussion with: Dr Fiona Allon history, and how this can make a difand Prof Miguel Vatter
ference to Indigenous Australians.
29
FRIDAY
The Simple Act of Reading
Panel of contributors
chaired by Debra Adelaide
This collection of essays and memoir
pieces are on the topic of reading, in
particular what it means for writers to be readers and how that has
shaped their life.
Australia's Boldest Experiment: War
& Reconstruction in the 1940s
In conv. with Prof Stephen Garton
Stuart Macintyre explains how a
country traumatised by World War
I, hammered by the Depression and
overstretched by World War II became a prosperous, successful and
growing society by the 1950s.
22
Event—6 for 6.30
The Gillard Project
In conv. with David Marr
Michael Cooney was Julia Gillard's
speechwriter for most of her time in
office. Passionate. Argumentative.
Funny and honest. The Gillard Project is a fascinating and unique perspective on Australian political culture and its ramifications for us all.
Starring: Bob Ellis, Bill Charlton,
Andrew Sharp, Monroe Reimers
and Mark Connelly,
with Robbie Murphy on keyboard
An evening of immense, influential
utterance that sometimes changed
history, with attendant songs and
underscored music.
90 mins plus 15 min interval
$28/$22 incl. 2 glasses of wine
15
4
Gittins: A life among budgets, bulldust and bastardry
In conv. with Mike Carlton
For 40 years Ross Gittins has had
a ringside seat as the Australian
economy has gone through radical
change—honest, robust and intelligent, Gittins is as insightful and entertaining as the man himself.
Orators
Events are held upstairs at #49 Glebe Point Road unless otherwise noted.
Bookings—Phone: (02) 9660 2333, Email: [email protected], Online: www.gleebooks.com.au/events
THURSDAY
Governomics: Can we Afford
Small Government
Panel: Ian McAuley, Jane Caro,
Miriam Lyons & John Menadue
Governomics shows that an emaciated state is bad for business, and that
standing up for government means
standing up for a public sector that
truly serves the public.
Event—6 for 6.30
All events listed are $12/$9 concession. Book Launches are free.
Gleeclub members free entry to events at 49 Glebe Pt Rd
June
2015
Launcher: Nareen Young
Jane Turner doesn't pull her punches when it comes to talking about her
own history of disordered eating.
Here she uses the impetus of menopause to put herself through a wellness program that she documents for
others who might want to follow suit.
26
Launch—6 for 6.30
Sarah Bourne
Two Lives
Launcher: Khyiah Angel
Sarah Bourne’s second novel, Two
Lives, examines the fracturing impacts of domestic violence and the
loss of a child on two women’s lives.
ty-five, left with six girls and one boy, unusual circumstances, takes over a
not one working, ‘I will look after the
travelling circus.
children,’ a promise she made to her
Nick Whittock—Hows Its
soul mate on his deathbed. Could she
Launcher: Astrid Lorange
keep her promise? Did she? A family memoir, a work of creative non- Potentially a book of cricket poetry
inside is not what would regularly
fiction covering the period
count as poetry.
from 1910 to 2013
Launch—3.30 for 4
Launch—3.30 for 4
Alicia Chodkiewicz and
27
28
Christopher Boyle
Believing You Can is the First Step to
Achievng: A CBT & Attribution Retraining Programme to Improve SelfBelief in Students Aged 8 to 12
An ideal resource for educational
professionals looking to increase
school attainment, support students
who are underachieving, & encourage healthy & happy student
development.
Eric Lyleson
Essential Wholeness
Essential Wholeness is a truly integral psychology that brings together
the most effective modern psychotherapy methods with the deepest
teachings and practices from Buddhism and other spiritual traditions
encoded into the Enneagram.
s out!
Don’t mis mail!
r glee
Sign up fo
ekly
Allen’s we
Elizabeth ts update.
email even ks.com.au
eboo
asims@gle
13
Australia's Boldest Experiment: War and Reconstruction in the 1940s by Stuart Macintyre
Stuart Macintyre explains how a country traumatised by
World War I, hammered by the Depression and overstretched
by World War II became a prosperous, successful and growing society by the 1950s. An extraordinary group of individuals, notably John Curtin, Ben Chifley, Nugget Coombs, John
Dedman and Robert Menzies, re-made the country, planning its
reconstruction against a background of wartime sacrifice and austerity. Macintyre
reminds us that key components of the society we take for granted—work, welfare,
health, education, immigration, housing—are not the result of military endeavour
but policy, planning, politics and popular resolve. ($34.99, PB)
I'm Not Racist But ... 40 Years of the Racial
Discrimination Act by Tim Soutphommasane
Race continues to be a lightning rod of public debate. Australia
may be relaxed and comfortable about many things, but it remains unsettled about matters of race and culture. The Racial
Discrimination Act (RDA) is Australia’s first federal human
rights legislation. A landmark law, the RDA has had a profound
impact on race relations. Published to coincide with the 40th
anniversary of the RDA, this book provides a considered, accessible reflection on Australian racism, the limits of free speech,
the moral and philosophical dimensions of bigotry, and the role of the RDA in our
society’s response to discrimination. ($29.99, PB)
The Martin Presence: Jean Martin and the
Making of the Social Sciences in Australia
by Peter Beilharz, Trevor Hogan, Sheila Shaver
Jean Isobel Martin (1923–79) was a pioneer of sociology, inventing a version of the discipline that was uniquely suited to
Australia in the post-war period. She made herself a sociologist
before the discipline was established in Australia, and is regarded as a founder of Australian sociology. Her writing, teaching
and policy helped shape Australia in the period of economic
growth and social development that followed World War II. This biography examines her life and her work across the concerns of the time—the needs of country
towns, the factory work floor, families and urban structure, poverty and inequality,
education and immigration—and explores her far-reaching influence on the social
sciences in Australia. ($40, PB)
Beyond Surrender: Australian prisoners of
war 1915–53 (eds) Joan Beaumont et al
In the conflicts of the 20th century a total of 35,000 Australians
had the misfortune of being prisoners of war. There exist many
popular myths & stereotypes regarding the prisoner of war experience—fuelled by movies & TV shows that depict captivity
in Germany in both world wars as a ‘boys' own' adventure, with
prisoners cleverly outwitting their captors. The experiences of
prisoners of the Japanese in the WW2, in contrast, are often
viewed through the lens of horror associated with Japanese brutality: notably, the
Burma-Thailand Railway and the Sandakan Death March. This book presents new
research findings on the Australian prisoner of war experience throughout the 20th
century—from the First World War to Korea. ($59.99, PB)
Gittins: A Life Among Budgets, Bulldust and
Bastardry by Ross Gittins ($32.99, PB)
For 40 years Ross Gittins has had a ringside seat as the Australian economy has gone through radical change. He's covered 40
budgets & 16 elections, he's watched 13 treasurers and 8 prime
ministers wrestle with boom and recession, debts and deficits.
This son of a Salvation Army major & one-time accountant is
an old school journo through & through. Thrown into the deep
end as a cadet journalist, Gittins covered his first mini-budget
lockup in 1974, and was soon covering the financial roller coaster ridden by the
Whitlam government. From then on, no government & no treasurer has escaped
analysis. He anoints Keating, Costello, and Swan as his three best, and throughout
the book he critiques without fear or favour the ministers & bureaucrats who have
shaped our economic wellbeing.
Lost Relations: Fortunes of my family in Australia's Golden Age by Graeme Davison
A widow and her eight older children are uprooted from their
Hampshire farm in 1850, and thrown together on an emigrant
ship with 38 distressed needlewomen from London. How they
came to be on the boat, and what happened on the high seas
and afterwards in Australia, is a vivid tale of family ambitions
and fears, successes and catastrophes. In Lost Relations, historian Graeme Davison follows in his family's footsteps, from the
picture-postcard village of Newnham to a prison cell in Maitland, from a London
slum to a miner's tent in Castlemaine. He takes us back into worlds now largely
forgotten, of water-powered mills, free selectors and Methodist evangelists. The
Hewetts were not famous or distinguished, but their story reveals much about the
foundations of Australia. ($32.99, PB)
14
Australian Studies
Joh for PM: The Inside Story of an Extraordinary
Political Drama by Paul Davey ($30, PB)
In 1987 the Queensland Premier, Joh Bjelke-Petersen, launched an
audacious bid to break the federal Opposition Coalition, replace Ian
Sinclair as National Party leader, and become Prime Minister himself—causing something like trench warfare waged between the
Sinclair and Joh forces during one of the most bizarre and divisive
periods in Australian politics. In what reads like a political thriller, insider Paul Davey
reveals what went on behind closed doors in top-level internal meetings and the strategies
aimed at thwarting the Joh campaign and reuniting the party at state and federal levels.
QE 58: Blood Year—Losing the War on Terror
by David Kilcullen ($22.99, PB)
Last year was a 'red year' – massacres and beheadings, fallen cities, collapsed and collapsing states, the unravelling of a decade of
foreign policy and military strategy. We saw the rise of ISIS, the
splintering of what seemed a viable government in Iraq, and foreign fighters—many from Europe, Australia and Africa— flowing
into Syria at a rate ten to twelve times that during the height of
the Second Iraq War. In David Kilcullen's words, 'What the hell
happened?' In this essential essay he calls on twenty-five years'
experience, as a student, researcher and occasional practitioner of guerrilla warfare and
counterterrorism, in an effort to answer that question.
Across the Seas: Australia's Response to Refugees: A
History by Klaus Neumann ($34.99, PB)
Today, Australia's response to asylum-seeking 'boat people' is a hotbutton issue that feeds the political news cycle. But the daily reports
and political promises lack the historical context that would allow
for informed debate. Have we ever taken our fair share of refugees?
Have our past responses been motivated by humanitarian concerns
or economic self-interest? Is the influx of 'boat people' over the last
fifteen years really unprecedented? Klaus Neumann examines both
government policy and public attitudes towards refugees and asylum
seekers since Federation. He places the Australian story in the context of global refugee
movements, and international responses to them—examining many case studies, including the resettlement of displaced persons from European refugee camps in the late 1940s
and early 1950s, and the panic generated by the arrival of Vietnamese asylum seekers
during the 1977 federal election campaign. By exploring the ways in which politicians
have approached asylum-seeker issues in the past, Neumann aims to inspire more creative
thinking about current refugee and asylum-seeker policy.
I Gave A Gonski: Selected Speeches by David Gonski
David Gonski, company chairman and director, patron of the arts and
philanthropist, has become a household name since the release of the
Gonski report into education funding. In this collection of speeches,
he writes about the issues he feels passionately about—everything
from the importance of philanthropy to why we need more women
on boards, from what makes a good company director to why better
education funding is of such critical importance to our nation, He
also provides some deeply personal insights into the man behind the
name, writing for the first time of his family heritage, his parents'
migration from South Africa and his reflections on turning sixty. ($32.99, PB).
Aboriginal Studies
No Small Change: The Road to Recognition for
Indigenous Australia by Frank Brennan
What lessons have been learned from the 1967 referendum? In 1967,
Australians voted overwhelmingly in favour of altering two aspects
of the Constitution that related to Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander
people. Although these seemed like small amendments, they provided an impetus for real change—from terra nullius to land rights, and
from assimilation to self-determination. Nearly 50 years later, there
is a groundswell of support for our indigenous heritage to be formally
recognised in the Constitution. As we await the new referendum,
Frank Brennan considers how far we've come, and how much work lies ahead. With
fresh research, he examines the work of the Council of Aboriginal Affairs, the pivotal
Gove land rights case, and the attitudes of successive governments towards recognising
traditional ownership. He also reminds us of the significance of constitutional change,
assessing how the coming referendum might lead governments & Indigenous Australians
to negotiate better outcomes. ($32.95, PB)
Teaching Indigenous Students: Cultural awareness
& classroom strategies for improving learning outcomes by Thelma Perso and Colleen Hayward
Indigenous children, like all children, deserve a future they choose
for themselves. This book aims to empower teachers to help halt
the cycle of disadvantage for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander
students and make a real difference to their relationships, learning
outcomes and opportunities in the short and long term. ($65, PB)
Politics
It's the Economy, Stupid: Economics for voters
Vicky Pryce, Andy Ross, & Peter Urwin ($33, PB)
While good economic news can send popularity sky-rocketing, bad
performance can blight a party's election chances for years. But, with
policies often working with time lags, it's rarely clear who is responsible for what. Especially when their stances on the biggest issues of
the day—immigration, the EU, the NHS—are clouded in rhetoric
rather than grounded in hard economic fact. This incisive, accessible guide explodes some of the most entrenched myths of British political debate. Does immigration
help or harm our economy? Are austerity measures the best way to tackle a financial
meltdown? Is the NHS in crisis? With answers to all these questions and more, this is
essential reading for anyone who wants to know how their vote will affect their financial
future.
Wages of Rebellion: The moral imperative of revolt
by Chris Hedges ($34.99, HB)
Revolutions come in waves and cycles. We are again riding the crest
of a revolutionary epic, much like 1848 or 1917, from the Arab Spring
to movements against austerity in Greece to the Occupy movement.
Drawing on an ambitious overview of prominent philosophers, historians & literary figures Chris Hedges shows not only the harbingers
of a coming crisis but also the nascent seeds of rebellion—popular
uprisings in the US & around the world are inevitable in the face of
environmental destruction & wealth polarisation. Using the work of Reinhold Niebuhr,
Hedges describes the motivation that guides the actions of rebels as 'sublime madness'—
resistance that is carried out not for its success, but as a moral imperative that affirms life.
From South African activists who dedicated their lives to ending apartheid to whistleblowers in pursuit of transparency, Wages of Rebellion shows the cost of a life committed
to speaking the truth & demanding justice.
Now in B Format
This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate
by Naomi Klein, $25
On Palestine by Noam Chomsky & Ilan Pappé
In a sequel to their acclaimed Gaza in Crisis two leading voices in the
struggle to liberate Palestine, Ilan Pappé and Noam Chomsky, discuss
many critical questions including: What is the future of the Boycott,
Divestment, & Sanctions movement directed at Israel? Which is
more viable, the binational or one state solution? ($14.99, PB)
Supermarket Monsters: The Price of Coles and
Woolworths' Dominance by Malcolm Knox
Down, down . . . In hardware, petrol, general merchandise & liquor,
and above all in groceries, Coles & Woolworths jointly rule Australia's retail landscape. On average, every man, woman & child in this
country spends $100 a week across their many outlets. What does
such dominance mean for suppliers? And is it good for consumers?
Journalist & author Malcolm Knox shines a light on Australia's twin
mega-retailers, exploring how they have built & exploited their market power. Knox reveals the unavoidable & often intimidating tactics both companies use to get their way. In return for cheap milk &
bread, he argues, we as consumers are risking much more: quality,
diversity & community. ($19.99, PB)
Heaven's Bankers: Inside the Hidden World of
Islamic Finance by Harris Irfan ($29.99, PB)
A trillion-dollar industry, Islamic finance is fast becoming the main
way in which large projects like buildings, aircraft, shipping, get
funded globally—and many financial analysts expect Islamic banking assets worldwide to double within 5 years. Drawing on his fisthand relationships with some of the world's leading bankers, scholars & lawyers, Harris Ifran provides an authoritative & entertaining
account of how a system of finance invented in the 7th century
Middle East is fast taking over the world of modern banking. He provides a warts-andall description of the industry; debunks some myths about Islamic finance—such as its
perceived relationship with the financing of terrorist activity or its incompatibility with
Western values; and asks whether today's Islamic industry is true to the fundamental
principles of a faith committed to social justice.
Socialist Imperative: From Gotha to Now
by Michael Lebowitz ($39.95, PB)
Michael Lebowitz explores the obvious but almost universally ignored fact that as human beings work together to produce society’s
goods & services, we also 'produce' something else: namely, ourselves. Human beings are shaped by circumstances, and any vision of
socialism that ignores this fact is bound to fail, or, at best, reproduce
the alienation of labor that is endemic to capitalism. But how can
people transform their circumstances in a way that allows them to
re-organise production and, at the same time, fulfill their human potential? Lebowitz
argues that socialism in the 21st century must be animated by a central vision, in 3 parts:
social ownership of the means of production, social production organised by workers, &
the satisfaction of communal needs & communal purposes. These essays repay careful
reading & reflection, proving Lebowitz to be one of the foremost Marxist thinkers of
this era.
History
Eye of the Beholder: Johannes Vermeer, Antoni van Leeuwenhoek, and the Reinvention of
Seeing by Laura J. Snyder ($49.99, HB)
By the early 17th century the Scientific Revolution was well under way. Philosophers & scientists were throwing off the yoke
of ancient authority to peer at nature & the cosmos through microscopes & telescopes. In October 1632, in the small town of
Delft in the Dutch Republic, two geniuses were born who would bring about a
seismic shift in the idea of what it meant to see the world. One was Johannes Vermeer, whose experiments with lenses & a camera obscura taught him how we see
under different conditions of light & helped him create the most luminous works of
art ever beheld. The other was Antoni van Leeuwenhoek, whose work with microscopes revealed a previously unimagined realm of minuscule creatures. By intertwining the biographies of these two men, Laura Snyder tells the story of a historical moment in both art & science that revolutionised how we see the world today.
The Triumph of Seeds: How Grains, Nuts,
Kernels, Pulses & Pips Conquered the Plant
Kingdom & Shaped Human History
by Thor Hanson ($35, HB)
We live in a world of seeds. From our morning toast to the
cotton in our clothes, they are quite literally the stuff & staff
of life, supporting diets, economies & civilisations around the
globe. Just as the search for nutmeg and the humble peppercorn
drove the Age of Discovery, so did coffee beans help fuel the
Enlightenment, and cottonseed help spark the Industrial Revolution. And from the Fall of Rome to the Arab Spring, the fate of nations continues
to hinge on the seeds of a Middle Eastern grass known as wheat. Spanning the
globe from the Raccoon Shack—Hanson's backyard writing hideout-cum-laboratory—to the coffee shops of Seattle, from gardens & flower patches to the spice
routes of Kerala, this is a book of knowledge, adventure & wonder, spun by an
award-winning writer with both the charm of a fireside story-teller & the hard-won
expertise of a field biologist.
Ardennes 1944: Hitler's Last Gamble
by Antony Beevor ($49.99, HB)
On 16 December 1944, Hitler launched his 'last gamble' in the
snow-covered forests and gorges of the Ardennes. He believed
he could split the Allies by driving all the way to Antwerp, then
force the Canadians and the British out of the war. Although
his generals were doubtful of success, younger officers and
NCOs were desperate to believe that their homes and families
could be saved from the vengeful Red Army approaching from
the east. The Allies, taken by surprise, found themselves fighting two panzer armies. Belgian civilians abandoned their home, justifiably afraid
of German revenge. Panic spread even to Paris. While many American soldiers
fled or surrendered, others held on heroically, creating breakwaters which slowed
the German advance. The harsh winter conditions & the savagery of the battle became comparable to the eastern front. And after massacres by the Waffen-SS, even
American generals approved when their men shot down surrendering Germans.
The Ardennes was the battle which finally broke the back of the Wehrmacht.
The News from Waterloo: How Britain
Learned of Wellington's Triumph
by Brian Cathcart ($35, HB)
The Duke of Wellington's victory over Napoleon in 1815 at
Waterloo ensured British dominance for the rest of the 19th
century. It took 3 days and 2 hours for word to travel from
Belgium in a form that people could rely upon. This is a tragicomic midsummer's tale that begins amidst terrible carnage
& weaves through a world of politics & military convention,
enterprise & roguery, frustration, doubt & jealousy, to end spectacularly in the heart of Regency society at a grand soirée in St James's Square after
feverish journeys by coach & horseback, a Channel crossing delayed by falling
tides & a flat calm, and a final dash by coach & four from Dover to London. Brian
Cathcart has visited the battlefield, travelled the messengers' routes, and traced untapped British, French and Belgian records to give a strikingly original perspective
on a key moment in British history.
Silence Was Salvation: Child Survivors of Stalin's Terror and World War II in the Soviet Union by Cathy Frierson ($83, HB)
Roughly ten million children were victims of political repression in the Soviet Union during the Stalinist era, the sons and
daughters of peasants, workers, scientists, physicians, and political leaders considered by the regime to be dangerous to the
political order. Ten grown victims, who as children suffered
banishment, starvation, disease, anti-Semitism, and trauma resulting from their parents condemnation and arrest, now freely
share their stories. The result is a powerful and moving oral history that will profoundly deepen the readers understanding of life in the USSR under the despotic
reign of Joseph Stalin.
15
Science & Nature
The Shepherd's Life: A Tale of the Lake District
by James Rebanks ($39.99, HB)
The first son of a shepherd, who was the first son of a shepherd himself,
James Rebanks and his family have lived and worked in and around
the Lake District for generations. Their way of life is ordered by the
seasons and the work they demand, and has been for hundreds of years.
A Viking would understand the work they do: sending the sheep to the
fells in the summer and making the hay; the autumn fairs where the
flocks are replenished; the gruelling toil of winter when the sheep must be kept alive, and
the light-headedness that comes with spring, as the lambs are born and the sheep get ready
to return to the fells. These modern dispatches from an ancient landscape tell the story of
a deep-rooted attachment to place, describing a way of life that is little noticed and yet has
profoundly shaped history.
Breakthrough: How One Teen Innovator is Changing
the World by Jack Andraka ($24.99, PB)
I
n an authoritative,
insightful and often
irreverent biography that fully
charts Nolan’s life and work,
Nancy Underhill peels back
the layers from a complicated,
expedient and manipulative
artistic genius. She carries
the story from Nolan’s birth
in 1917 to his death in 1992,
tracing his early life, his
experience as a commercial
artist, his involvement in the
Angry Penguins magazine, his
painting and set design, his difficult marriages and friendships with
some of the twentieth century’s most famous figures: Patrick White,
Albert Tucker, Benjamin Britten, Robert Lowell, Stephen Spender
and Kenneth Clark.
I
n this landmark book,
Stuart Macintyre explains
how a country traumatised
by World War I, hammered
by the Depression and
overstretched by World War
II became a prosperous,
successful and growing
society by the 1950s. An
extraordinary group of
individuals, notably John
Curtin, Ben Chifley, Nugget
Coombs, John Dedman and
Robert Menzies, re-made
the country, planning its reconstruction against a background of
wartime sacrifice and austerity. This book shows the 1940s to be a
pivotal decade in Australia and reminds us that key components of
the society we take for granted – work, welfare, health, education,
immigration, housing – are not the result of military endeavour
but policy, planning, politics and popular resolve.
w w w. n ews o u t h p u b l i s h i n g .co m
16
When Jack Andraka was 13, he had a whole pile of problems. An outsider at school, he knew he didn't fit in—and a close family friend was
dying of cancer. But instead of giving in to the bullying & the despair,
he took another path. Using his passion for science, he decided to try to
create a better method of cancer detection. After conducting two years
of research & asking hundreds of universities & companies for help, to
no avail, Jack was finally able to secure the lab space necessary to test
out his ingenious idea. Jack's early-detection test for pancreatic, ovarian & lung cancers has
the potential to be more than 400 times more effective than the medical standard—and it
costs only three cents per use. Jack was just fifteen at the time he came up with his solution.
The Moth Snowstorm: Nature and Joy
by Michael McCarthy ($45, HB)
Nature has many gifts for us, but perhaps the greatest of them all is joy;
the intense delight we can take in the natural world, in its beauty, in the
wonder it can offer us, in the peace it can provide­—feelings stemming
ultimately from our own unbreakable links to nature, which mean that
we cannot be fully human if we are separate from it. Michael McCarthy, one of Britain's leading writers on the environment, proposes this
joy as a defence of a natural world which is ever more threatened, and
which, he argues, is inadequately served by the two defences put forward hitherto: sustainable development & the recognition of ecosystem services. Drawing
on a wealth of memorable experiences from a lifetime of watching and thinking about wildlife and natural landscapes, he not only presents a new way of looking at the world around
us, but effortlessly blends with it a remarkable and moving memoir of childhood trauma
from which love of the natural world emerged.
Now in B Format
A Rough Ride to the Future by James Lovelock, $22.99
Where Do Camels Belong? The Story and Science of Invasive
Species by Ken Thompson, $21.99
Monkeys, Myths and Molecules: Separating Fact from
Fiction in the Science of Everyday Life
by Joe Schwarcz ($22.99, PB)
The internet is a powerful beast when it comes to science; the answer
to any query you may have is just a few keystrokes away. But when
there are multiple answers from various sources, how do we know what
information is reliable? Dr Joe Schwarcz takes a critical look at how
facts are misconstrued in the media. He debunks the myths surrounding canned food, artificial dyes, SPF, homeopathy, cancer, chemicals—
exposing the sheer nonsense people are led to believe about health, food,
drugs, and our environment, while entertainingly advocating for a scientific approach to everyday life.
Brilliant Green: The Surprising History and Science
of Plant Intelligence
by Stefano Mancuso & Alessandra Viola ($28.99, HB)
Are plants intelligent? Can they solve problems, communicate, and
navigate their surroundings? In this book, a leading scientist argues
that plants process information, sleep, remember, and signal to one another—showing that, far from passive machines, plants are intelligent
and aware. Part botany lesson, part manifesto, Brilliant Green is an engaging and passionate
examination of the inner workings of the plant kingdom.
The Southwest: Australia's Biodiversity Hotspot
by Victoria Laurie ($45, PB)
Victoria Laurie offers in words and pictures the southwest of Australia—a land triangle that encompasses a multitude of natural worlds.
One third of all known Australian plant species is found growing
in the southwest, and the region has been designated ‘Australia’s
Global Biodiversity Hotspot'—one of only thirty-four such hotspots
in the world and the only one on this continent. Driven by her own
passion for this country, Laurie presents the voices of scientists and
those dedicated to protecting a fragile ecology supporting up to 150,000 species. Life forms and landscapes are a feature of this informative and thrilling discovery of a
region that has evolved with abundant biodiversity because of its isolation.
Philosophy & Religion
The Book of the People: How to Read the Bible
by A. N. Wilson ($29.99, PB)
Charting his own relationship with the Bible over a lifetime of writing, A. N. Wilson argues that it remains relevant even in a largely
secular society, as a philosophical work, a work of literature & a
cultural touchstone that the western world has answered to for nearly 2000 years. He challenges the way fundamentalists—believers or
nonbelievers—have misused the Bible, either by neglecting & failing to recognise its cultural significance, or by using it as a weapon
against those with whom they disagree.
Ten Commandments: A Short History of an
Ancient Text by Michael Coogan ($29.95, PB)
Michael Coogan guides readers into the ancient past to examine the
iconic Ten Commandments, also known as the Decalogue. How,
among all the laws reportedly given on Mount Sinai, did the Ten
Commandments become the Ten Commandments? When did that
happen? He discusses the meanings the Ten Commandments had
for audiences in biblical times and observes that the form of the ten
proscriptions and prohibitions was not fixed—as one would expect
since they were purported to have come directly from God—nor
were the Commandments always strictly observed. Today it is plain that some of the values enshrined in the Decalogue are no longer defensible, such as the ownership of slaves
& the labelling of women as men’s property. Yet in line with biblical precedents, the
author concludes that while a literal observance of the Ten Commandments is misguided,
some of their underlying ideals remain valid in a modern context.
Greek Buddha: Pyrrho's Encounter with Early
Buddhism in Central Asia
by Christopher I. Beckwith ($49.95, HB)
Pyrrho of Elis accompanied Alexander the Great to Central Asia &
India during the Graeco-Macedonian invasion & conquest of the
Persian Empire in 334–324 BC, and while there met with teachers of Early Buddhism. Using a range of primary sources, Christopher Beckwith systematically looks at the teachings & practices of
Pyrrho and of Early Buddhism, demonstrating how the teachings
of Pyrrho agree closely with those of the Buddha sakyamuni, 'the
Scythian Sage'. In the process, he identifies 8 distinct attested philosophical schools in
ancient northwestern India & Central Asia, including Early Zoroastrianism, Early Brahmanism, & several forms of Early Buddhism. Beckwith then shows the influence that
Pyrrho’s brand of scepticism had on the evolution of Western thought, first in Antiquity,
and later, during the Enlightenment, on the great philosopher & self-proclaimed 'Pyrrhonian', David Hume.
On Sacrifice by Moshe Halbertal ($29.95, PB)
The idea and practice of sacrifice play a profound role in religion,
ethics, and politics. In the religious domain, Halbertal argues, sacrifice is an offering, a gift given in the context of a hierarchical relationship. As such it is vulnerable to rejection, a trauma at the root of
both ritual & violence. In the moral & political domains, sacrifice is
tied to the idea of self-transcendence, in which an individual sacrifices his or her self-interest for the sake of higher values & commitments. While self-sacrifice has great potential moral value, it can
also be used to justify the most brutal acts. Moshe Halbertal attempts to unravel the
relationship between self-sacrifice & violence, arguing that misguided self-sacrifice is far
more problematic than exaggerated self-love. In his exploration of the positive & negative
dimensions of self-sacrifice, Halbertal also addresses the role of past sacrifice in obligating future generations and in creating a bond for political associations, and considers the
function of the modern state as a sacrificial community.
Waking, Dreaming, Being: Self and Consciousness
in Neuroscience, Meditation, and Philosophy
by Evan Thompson ($69, HB)
A renowned philosopher of the mind, also known for his groundbreaking work on Buddhism and cognitive science, Evan Thompson
combines the latest neuroscience research on sleep, dreaming, and
meditation with Indian and Western philosophy of the mind, casting
new light on the self and its relation to the brain. Thompson shows
how the self is a changing process, not a static thing. Thompson
weaves together neuroscience, philosophy, and personal narrative to depict these transformations, adding uncommon depth to life's profound questions.
Christo-Fiction: The Ruins of Athens and Jerusalem by François Laruelle ($63, HB)
In Christo-Fiction, François Laruelle targets the rigid, self-sustaining
arguments of metaphysics, rooted in Judaic and Greek thought, and
the radical potential of Christ, whose 'crossing' disrupts their circular
discourse. Laruelle's Christ is not the authoritative figure conjured
by academic theology, the Apostles, or the Catholic Church. He is
the embodiment of generic man, founder of a science of humans,
and the herald of a gnostic messianism that calls forth an imminent
faith. Explicitly inserting quantum science into religion, Laruelle recasts the temporality
of the cross, the entombment, and the resurrection, arguing that it is God who is sacrificed
on the cross so that equals in faith may be born.
Psychology
Head Case by Cole Cohen ($29.99, PB)
The summer before she was set to pursue her MFA, 26 year-old
Cole Cohen submitted herself to a battery of tests. For as long
as she could remember, she'd struggled with a series of learning disabilities that made it nearly impossible to judge time &
space—standing at a cross walk, she couldn't tell you if an oncoming car would arrive in 10 seconds or 30; if you asked her to
let you know when 10 minutes had passed, she might notify you in a minute or an
hour. These symptoms had always kept her from getting a driver's license, which she
wanted to have for grad school. Instead of leaving the doctor's office with permission to drive, she left with a shocking diagnosis—doctors had found a large hole in
her brain responsible for her life-long struggles. Because there aren't established
tools to rely on in the wake of this unprecedented & mysterious diagnosis, Cole &
her doctors & family create them, and discover firsthand how best to navigate the
unique world that Cole lives in.
Coping with the Psychological Effects of Illness
by Fran Smith, Carina Eriksen & Rob Bor
Whether it concerns cancer, heart disease, diabetes, or a mental health condition, sudden severe illness comes as a shock
& challenges confidence & self-image. This book explores the
common psychological issues that arise when someone's usual
health and routine are disrupted, and discusses the impact of illness on relationships & family. Drawing on CBT techniques, it
offers practical self-help strategies to help deal with changed expectations and lifestyles. Topics include—Anxiety & depression;
Insomnia, discomfort and pain; Working with health professionals; Dealing with the
side effects of medication; Relaxation; Getting support. ($20, PB)
Hearing Voices: A Common Human Experience
by John Watkins ($27.95, PB)
Although hearing voices is often considered a hallmark of madness it is actually a rather common experience. While voices are
a prominent symptom of psychotic disorders like schizophrenia
they can, also, occur in many other contexts. Many well-adjusted individuals have had at least one memorable voice experience
& some people have them regularly. While some experiences
are disturbing, others provide comfort, reassurance & guidance.
Benign inner voices often occur in association with non-ordinary
states of consciousness, mystical & paranormal phenomena, near-death experiences
& shamanic practices & may serve as a vehicle for creative inspiration, extrasensory
communication, the call of vocation & spiritual revelation. John Watkins ventures
beyond conventional psychiatric therapies whose sole aim is symptom eradication
to explore ways of working creatively with voices & other inner experiences to
foster personal growth, healing and recovery.
Alpha God: The Psychology of Religious Violence and Oppression by Hector A. Garcia
This book uses evolutionary psychology as a lens to explain
religious violence & oppression. The author, a clinical psychologist, examines religious scriptures, rituals & canon law,
highlighting the many ways in which our evolutionary legacy
has shaped the development of religion & continues to profoundly influence its expression. The book focuses on the
image of God as the dominant male in Judaism, Christianity
& Islam. This traditional God concept is seen as a reflection of the 'dominant ape'
paradigm so evident in the hierarchical social structures of primates, with whom we
have a strong genetic connection. The author describes the main features of maledominated primate social hierarchies using them to draw parallels between these
features of primate society and human religious rituals and concepts to suggest that
religion, especially its oppressive and violent tendencies, is rooted in the deep evolutionary past. ($32.99, PB)
Art Therapy & Mindfulness Colouring Books
Extraordinary Gardens: 100 Designs, $24.99
Celtic: 100 Designs, $24.99
Walking the Night Road: Coming of Age in
Grief by Alexandra Butler ($43.95, PB)
Alexandra Butler, daughter of the Pulitzer Prize-winning
gerontologist Robert N. Butler & respected social worker &
psychotherapist Myrna Lewis, composes a lyrical yet unsparing portrait of caring for her mother during her sudden, quick
decline from brain cancer. More than a memoir of dying &
grief, Butler's account also tests many of the theories her parents pioneered in their work on healthy aging. Authors of such
seminal works as Love and Sex Over Sixty, Butler's parents
were forced to rethink many of the tenets they lived by while Myrna was incapacitated, and Butler's father found himself relying heavily on his daughter to provide
his wife's care. Butler's poignant & unflinching story is therefore a rare examination
of the intimate aspects of aging & death experienced by practitioners who suddenly
find themselves in the difficult position of the clients they once treated.
17
Tove and JD
2014 saw the centenary of the birth of Finnish artist and author, Tove Jansson, and many celebratory
publications followed—several tomes of biography,
and a wonderful collection of autobiographical short
stories crossed my path. But now I am reading Tuula
Karjalainen’s marvellous Tove Jansson, Work and
Love, and it’s fabulous. The Finnish illustrator, so
beloved for her black and white illustrations of the
Moomintrolls and their world, was also a most expressive painter of joyous, colourful pictures. So it’s
very fitting that this book is full of colour, from its lavender endpapers,
colourful cover, and rich array of colour reproductions of paintings, illustrations and cartoons, as well as black and white photos of Tove, her
friends and family. Her life was reflected in all her work, and it’s fascinating to meet the real people whom many of her creations were based
on, particularly when she includes herself. She took her work very seriously, and as the daughter of a successful illustrator mother, she thought
it normal for a girl to make a living from art. In fact she literally learned
to draw at her mother’s knee, and could draw before she could walk.
The Moomintroll books brought her success, and financial security, and
she always acknowledged the importance of her readers, meticulously
answering every fan letter.
The late, great JD Salinger had an entirely different
approach to his fans, finding himself unable to take
on the burden of the many emotions that his books
elicited from generations of readers. My Salinger
Year, by Joanna Rakoff is a very literary memoir—the
author is employed by a literary agency in New York,
and her sole task seems to be to answer the enormous
amount of fan mail that Salinger receives. The reply is
always to be a form letter, and the original mail is to
never be sent to the author. Despite it being 1996, there
are no computers in this agency (which remains un-named, as does her
rather singular boss), and she describes herself as being taken hostage by
the incredibly cantankerous and unwieldy electric typewriter she is given
for the job. As we learn more of her private life, especially her relationship with a deeply unsuitable striving writer, Joanna Rakoff really becomes a character in her own right, although she never puts herself centre
stage. She becomes fully acculturated to the agency, and realises she is
becoming part of something far bigger than herself. Unlike most literary
types, she has never read Salinger, and the description of the weekend
when she goes to ground, and reads each of Salinger’s books, is particularly endearing. She points out that 'people say you outgrow Salinger',
but in fact she grows into him, and one is reminded of the greatness of
those books, even though the legend of the man is constantly threatening
to override the brilliance of his work. This is an extremely entertaining
book, which resonates long after being read.
Louise Pfanner
The Simple Act of Reading (ed) Debra Adelaide
A collection of essays and memoir pieces on the topic of reading, in particular what it means for writers to be readers and
how that has shaped their life. The Simple Act of Reading will
support Sydney Story Factory by emphasising the importance of reading in shaping an individual's future. Contributors include; Debra Adelaide, Joan London, Delia Falconer,
Sunil Badami, Gabrielle Carey, Luke Davies, Tegan Bennett
Daylight, Kate Forsyth, Giulia Giuffre, Andy Griffiths, Anita
Heiss, Gail Jones, Jill Jones, Catherine Keenan, Malcolm
Knox, Wayne Macauley, Fiona McFarlane, David Malouf, Rosie Scott, Carrie Tiffany and Geordie Williamson. ($29.99, PB)
Drawn & Quarterly: 25 Years of Contemporary Cartooning, Comics & Graphic Novels
by Tom Devlin ($64.99, HB)
In 1989, a prescient Chris Oliveros created D+Q with a
simple mandate to publish the worlds best cartoonists, and
it has grown from an annual stapled anthology into one of
the world's leading graphic novel publishers. This book features new work by Kate Beaton, Chester Brown, Michael
DeForge, Tom Gauld, Miriam Katin, Rutu Modan, James
Sturm, Jillian Tamaki, Yoshihiro Tatsumi alongside rare and never-before-seen
work from Guy Delisle, Debbie Drechsler, Julie Doucet, John Porcellino, Art
Spiegelman, and Adrian Tomine, and a cover by Tom Gauld. Editor Tom Devlin
digs into the company archives for rare photographs, correspondence, and comics,
biographies & interviews with key D+Q staff. With essays by Margaret Atwood,
Sheila Heti, Jonathan Lethem, Lemony Snicket & Chris Ware among others.
18
Cultural Studies & Criticism
Silent Shock: The Men Behind the Thalidomide
Scandal and an Australian Family's Long Road to
Justice by Michael Magazanik ($32.99, PB)
Lyn Rowe was born in Melbourne in 1962, 7 months after her mother
Wendy was given a new 'wonder drug' for morning sickness called
thalidomide. For 50 years the Rowe family cared for Lyn. Decades
of exhausting, round-the-clock work. But then in 2011 Lyn Rowe
launched a legal claim against the thalidomide companies. Against
the odds, she won a multimillion-dollar settlement. Former journalist
Michael Magazanik is one of the lawyers who ran Lyn's case. In Silent
Shock he exposes a fifty-year cover up concerning history's most notorious drug, and details
not only the damning case against manufacturers Grünenthal—whose ruthless promotion of
their lucrative drug in the face of mounting evidence beggars belief—but also the moving
story of the Rowe family.
My Dining Hell: Twenty Ways To Have a Lousy
Night Out by Jay Rayner ($9.99, PB)
'I have been a restaurant critic for over a decade, written reviews of
well over 700 establishments, and if there is one thing I have learnt it
is that people like reviews of bad restaurants. No, scratch that. They
adore them, feast upon them like starving vultures who have spotted
fly-blown carrion out in the bush. They claim otherwise, of course.
Readers like to present themselves as private arbiters of taste; as people interested in the good stuff. I'm sure they are. I'm sure they really
do care whether the steak was served au point as requested or whether the soufflé had
achieved a certain ineffable lightness. And yet, when I compare dinner to bodily fluids, the
room to an S&M chamber in Neasden (only without the glamour or class), and the bill to an
act of grand larceny, why, then the baying crowd is truly happy'.
There Is Simply Too Much to Think About:
Collected Nonfiction by Saul Bellow ($49.99, HB)
Arranged chronologically, this literary time capsule displays the full
extent of Nobel laureate & Pulitzer Prize & 3 time National Book
Award winner Saul Bellow's nonfiction, including criticism, interviews, speeches, and other reflections, tracing his career from his initial success as a novelist until the end of his life. Bringing together six
classic pieces with an abundance of previously uncollected material,
There Is Simply Too Much to Think About is a powerful reminder not
only of Bellow's genius but also of his enduring place in the western canon and is sure to be
widely reviewed and talked about for years to come.
On Happiness: New Ideas for the 21st Century
(eds) Nelson, Pike & Ledvinka ($29.95, PB)
What is happiness, and how does the pursuit of happiness shape
our lives? Happiness appears to be a simple emotion, individual and
pleasurable, yet the problems associated with happiness in politics,
economics & philosophy suggest that it is perhaps more complex &
paradoxical than we first thought. This eclectic collection of essays interrogates the ‘common sense’ understanding of happiness in the West
& examines the strategies devised to obtain it. Without disposing of
the concept altogether, On Happiness rediscovers the latent aspects of this pervasive (and
elusive) phenomenon. Offering readers a spectrum of critical reflections & ‘rethinks’ of
this ubiquitous cultural obsession, the book ultimately concludes that our current notions of
happiness may in fact be the very cause of our discontent.
Tactical Urbanism: Short-term Action for Longterm Change by Mike Lydon & Anthony Garcia
Short-term, community-based projects—from pop-up parks to open
streets initiatives—have become a powerful and adaptable new tool of
urban activists, planners & policy-makers seeking to drive lasting improvements in their cities & beyond. These quick, often low-cost, and
creative projects are the essence of the Tactical Urbanism movement.
Mike Lydon & Anthony Garcia provide background on the movement
they helped found and offer five case studies and a toolkit for conceiving, planning & carrying out projects. ($34.99, PB)
Down with the Royals by Joan Smith ($20, HB)
Joan Smith argues that it has become nearly impossible to question
the existence of the monarchy. Articulate republicans are drowned out
while the supercharged PR & media machines ask only who designed
Kate's dresses. The royals don't provide a boost for tourism, & their
deliberately opaque accounting conceals the truth about the huge burden they place on the public purse. Are these people really fit to be
the public face of a modern country? Ultimately, Smith declares that
the monarchy—undemocratic, unaccountable and shockingly expensive—has no place in modern Britain.
Why Women Need Quotas by Vicky Pryce ($20, HB)
The Brits have an abysmal record on gender parity. Rwanda and Laos
have more women in Parliament than Britain does. Businesses still
are mostly run by men (though men created the financial disaster we
are still trying to sort out). The USA has quotas for women in top jobs,
so too do the Scandinavian nations. Britons hate the idea of positive
discrimination - though that is what men have enjoyed for centuries.
It’s time to get tough, argues top economist Vicky Pryce.
Who Gets What—And Why: The Hidden World
of Matchmaking and MarketDesign
by Alvin Roth ($29.99, PB)
In many parts of life—jobs, housing, medical care, education, even
a date on the internet—price is not the only determinant of who
gets what. So how do the other processes that influence who gets
which goods, jobs, university places and partners really work? In
this book, Nobel Prize winning economist Alvin Roth uncovers
the global rules of how markets allocate, how matchmaking shapes
lives, where markets exist that we may not even realise, and how
everything about our biggest experiences—from getting accepted at university or living
where we want—can be better understood and negotiated when one understands the design of those matching markets. The distribution of rewards is often unfair, but it's seldom
as random as it seems, and Roth reveals just how much of our life takes place in marketplaces, and leads us to a new understanding of who gets what and why.
The Mafia: A Cultural History
by Roberto M. Dainotto ($49.99, HB)
Roberto Dainotto traces the complex and fascinating development
of the mafia: its rural beginnings in Western Sicily; its growth into
what has been aptly described as a global multinational of crime;
& its parallel evolution in music, print & on the big screen. The
book probes the tension between the real mafia—its brutal & often
violent reality—and how we imagine it to be: a mythical assembly
of codes of honour, family values & chivalric masochism. Rather
than dismissing such mafia stereotypes as untrue, Dainotto sets out to
understand what needs & desires, material & psychic longings, are satisfied by our mafia
fantasies. Exploring the rich array of films, books, television, music & video games portraying & inspired by the mafia, this book offers not only a social, economic & political
history of the mafia but a new way of understanding our enduring fascination with what
lurks behind the sinister omerta of the family business.
The Road to Character by David Brooks ($45, HB)
In The Social Animal, David Brooks explored the neuroscience of
human connection and how we can flourish together. His new book
focuses on the deeper values that should inform our lives. Responding to what he calls the culture of the Big Me, which emphasises
external success, Brooks challenges us, and himself, to rebalance
the scales between our 'resume virtues'—achieving wealth, fame,
and status—and our 'eulogy' virtues— kindness, bravery, honesty,
or faithfulness. Blending psychology, politics, spirituality, and confessional, The Road to Character provides an opportunity for us to
rethink our priorities, and strive to build rich inner lives marked by humility and moral
depth. 'Joy,' David Brooks writes, 'is a byproduct experienced by people who are aiming
for something else. But it comes'.
Language & Writing
The Disappearing Dictionary: A Treasury of Lost
English Dialect Words by David Crystal ($30, HB)
Wherever you go in the English-speaking world, there are linguistic
riches from times past awaiting rediscovery. All you have to do is
choose a location, find some old documents, and dig a little. Linguist David Crystal collects together delightful dialect words that
either provide an insight into an older way of life, or simply have
an irresistible phonetic appeal. Like a mirror image of The Meaning of Liff that just happens to be true, The Disappearing Dictionary unearths some lovely
old gems of the English language, dusts them down and makes them live again for a new
generation. dabberlick [noun, Scotland] A mildly insulting way of talking about someone
who is tall and skinny. 'Where's that dabberlick of a child?' fubsy [adjective, Lancashire]
Plump, in a nice sort of way. squinch [noun, Devon] A narrow crack in a wall or a space
between floorboards. 'I lost sixpence through a squinch in the floor'.
Why Does the Screenwriter Cross the Road: +Other Screenwriting Secrets by Joe Gilford ($29.99, PB)
Why Does the Screenwriter Cross the Road? will help any screenwriter understand why thy haven’t finished that 4-year-old script.
Here finally, is a no-nonsense method, complete with exercises and
documents that will push a writer to the deadline and beyond. This
book’s sharp, clear, and authoritative approach helps writers see
how a successful screenplay works. Here’s how to write from the
heart of the story and the heart of the writer.
How To Write Your Blockbuster by Fiona McIntosh
Almost everybody thinks they have a book in them or dreams of
seeing their name on a front cover, but not everyone knows how to
go about it. Sharing all she's learned so far, Fiona McIntosh, one
of Australia's most successful commercial authors, shows you how
to get started and, even more importantly, how to finish. In this
practical and lively handbook she guides you through the stages of
writing a novel, from establishing good working habits to submitting your draft to a suitable publisher. Chock-full of insider's advice
on what makes a bestselling general fiction author, this invaluable
resource will equip the newcomer to novel writing with the tools to finish your first draft
within a year. If you have a tough hide and a philosophical attitude—as well as a damn
strong work ethic—you can make writing fiction your career. ($19.99, PB)
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As eclectic a duo as I could find are presented this month:
My Undercover Years with the Ku Klux Klan
by Gary Thomas Rowe, Jr 1976 Paperback. $10.00.
This is the short, vividly written, self-serving and boastful
autobiography of Gary Thomas Rowe Jr (1933–1998)—controversial FBI informant. Between 1960 and 1965, Rowe infiltrated the white supremacist organisation the Ku Klux Klan
in Birmingham, Alabama. Receiving payment—personally
approved by FBI director J. Edgar Hoover—of up to $300 a
month, he provided the FBI with information about the group's members and
activities. Despite constant suspicions of some Klan members that he was an informant, Rowe's vocal enthusiasm for advocating violence against blacks gained
the trust of Klan 'Grand Dragon' (Supreme Leader) Robert 'Bobby' Sheldon.
Within months he was head of the Birmingham Klan chapter. Rowe claimed
he received much of his information of future Klan activities by sleeping with
the wives of his fellow Klan members—'Honey, if you're as goddamn good an
undercover agent as you are under the covers, they'll never catch you!'—is a
typically recalled testimonial from 'Barbara', one such source.
One dramatic chapter Missionary Work, describes a Klan raid in Marlin County
to 'convert' an elderly white couple, Jane and Lewis Starr, who were raising a
five year old African-American boy. Expecting an easy night of terrorising, the
Klan are suddenly full of 'gutless fright' when the two intended victims meet
them head on with shotguns blazing! Rowe, however, ignored numerous FBI
instructions to avoid violent situations and participated in several high-profile
attacks upon civil rights activists. In May 1961, he led Klansman in an attack
on Freedom Riders at a Birmingham bus station. Rowe was probably involved
in the May 1963, bombing of Martin Luther King's room at the Gaston Motel in
Birmingham and of King's brother's home and parsonage. On 25 March 1965, he
was an accessory to the shooting murder of civil rights volunteer, Viola Liuzzo.
The next day, President Lyndon Johnson, in a nationwide address declared war
on the Ku Klux Klan—'a hooded society of bigots'—and named Rowe as one
of four Klansmen who had been arrested by the FBI. The arrest of the four suspects within a day of the crime suggested that the Bureau had an inside source.
When Rowe was the only one of the four not indicted, he was revealed as the
informant.
After 1965, under the assumed name Thomas Moore, Rowe vanished into the
Federal Witness Protection Program. In 1975, he briefly re-appeared before
a congressional hearing, wearing a Klan-like hood to hide his identity. Rowe
claimed that the FBI had condoned his violent acts against black people and
could have prevented numerous assaults upon civil rights activists during the
1960s but had failed to act.
The White Company by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
1975 edition. Paperback. $10.00.
I sat down and read this Conan Doyle historical novel shortly
after re-reading (yet again) Walter Scott's Ivanhoe. This may
have been a mistake because my head was already swimming
with knightly characters with names such as Waldemar Fitzurse, Reginald Front-de-Boeuf and Le Noir Faineant (the
Black Sluggard). To these had to be added, among others,
Black Simon of Norwich, Sir Oliver Buttesthorn, and Simon
Edricson, Socman of Minstead. (phew)
Originally published in 1891, this novel is set in England, France and Spain in
the mid-14th Century, during The Hundred Years War. It features The White
Company, a band of English mercenaries—Saxon archers, no less—led by the
renowned Sir Nigel Loring who is campaigning with Edward, the Black Prince,
against Spanish and French foes.
As you might expect from the creator of Sherlock Holmes, this tale moves
briskly along, featuring as it does a pious young recruit to the Company, family feuds, jousts, courtly romance, battles and bloodshed—heads are hacked off
and limbs are lopped with regularity—all served up with 'authentic' medieval
dialogue such as: 'We have seen good work together, old war-dog and, by my
hilt, we may see more ere we die', and, Sir Nigel Loring to his wife: 'I pray you
my fair dove, that you may vouchsafe me one of those gloves, that I may wear it
as a badge of her whose servant I shall ever be'. etc, etc.
I enjoyed this rollicking novel. It probably falls into the category of what George
Orwell in a famous essay called Good Bad Books. These were 'an unintentionally ludicrous book, full of preposterous melodramatic incidents; it is also deeply
moving and essentially true; it is hard to say which quality outweighs the other'.
He listed King Solomon's Mines, Dracula, the Raffles stories and the Sherlock
Holmes stories among others. All favourites of mine. C'est la vie.
Enjoy this one in front of a log fire on a rainy winter afternoon.
Stephen Reid
19
XENA'S FOREBEARS
The Amazons: Lives and Legends of Warrior
Women Across the Ancient World
by Adrienne Mayor ($61, HB)
D'you know what they call themselves?.. Amadozo.
Doesn't that bring back an echo of your school days—
think, man! Amazons!... Every voyage I've made I've
vowed I'd bring back half a dozen of them, but I've
never been able to make this black Satan part with
even one. He'll part this time though... Walter Raleigh
was wrong about what mattered—so was Herodotus.
Not South America, not Scythia—Here! Africa!... we'll
study em, their history, their customs. The real Amazons! By the holy, I'll make those smug, half-educated Balliol sons-of-b
- - - - -s sit up! I shall make a name—a great name, with my work on these
women! Despise John Charity Spring, will they? —The semi-deranged
slave trader (and expelled Fellow of Balliol College, Oxford) Captain
John Charity Spring, describing the warrior women escort in the Court of
King Gezo of Dahomey, Africa in 1848, to a cowardly Harry Flashman,
in George Macdonald Fraser's Flash for Freedom! (1973)—the purported
historical 'memoirs' of the infamous bully from the famed Victorian classic
Tom Brown's Schooldays.
Unfortunately Captain Spring failed in his unusual attempt at scholarly
research—he and his crew were pursued through the jungle by the royal
'Amazon' bodyguards and not a few were captured and slaughtered. Equally
in error was his guess as to their origins. As Adrienne Mayor conclusively
demonstrates in her superb, informative and entertainingly written Encyclopedia Amazonia, the original Amazons were semi nomadic (horse) women
from the immense region now covered by parts of the Ukraine, Russia,
Siberia and Northern China—ancient Scythia.
The myth of the 'Amazons' derives from their impact and reputation upon
classical Greek and Roman societies. Both Herodotus and Plutarch had
plenty to say about these 'unnatural' female warriors—the latter relating an
'historical' account of the Athenians fighting a life and death struggle and,
only just, defeating an army of ferocious female warriors from the Black
Sea. In a Chapter entitled Breasts: One or Two? Ms Mayor demolishes the
single 'fact' that everybody 'knows' about the Amazons—that they cut off
or cauterized one breast, to make it easier to use a bow and arrow. There is
no evidence that any of these nomadic peoples did any such thing. Breasts
do not interfere with archery—as the colour photos in the book, of modern
archers on horseback, demonstrate. The origin of this peculiar myth she
suggests, is found in the ancient Greek fondness for creating false etymologies for words they borrowed of non-Greek origin. Thus, A -mazon sounded
like a-mastos, 'a' meaning 'without' and 'mastos' meaning 'breast', which
would account for the legend.
Mayor marshals an astounding variety of evidence—archaeological, linguistic, literary and recent DNA analysis of skeletal remains—to present
an intriguing historical recreation of these women warriors. This includes
archaeological excavations of burial mounds in Russia, Kazakhstan, Mongolia and the Altai Republic of south western Siberia, which reveal that at
least a quarter of the female burials—both women and teenage girls—are
classified as warriors. Weapons, horses, jewellery—all have been found in
these graves, even trousers, which according to the ancient Greeks, were
the invention of barbarian women.
Most fascinating of all, mummified, tattooed, female bodies have been uncovered from the frozen steppes. In 1993 one was discovered by Russian
archaeologists. She had been laid to rest about 500 BC. They named her the
'Ice Princess':
She was a tall (167.5 cm) horsewomen, about 25 years old. Her six horses
with gold bridles had been sacrificed and buried around her. She was decorated on her arm and shoulders with a brilliant blue tattoo of a griffin-like
creature. She wore elaborate earrings, a yellow silk tunic, made of wild
silk from India—the dyes came from the Eastern Mediterranean or Iran, an
elaborate headdress was bedecked with deer and swans, thigh high boots
embroidered with felt and fur, and a red woollen skirt that could be hiked
up for riding by a red braided belt... For her journey to the afterlife she was
accompanied by a bowl of fermented mare's milk (koumiss), a wooden platter of meat with a bronze knife, and her everyday possessions, including a
small mirror with a dear engraved on the back.
The second third of this book is a detailed investigation of the Greek and
Roman literary, mythic, and artistic obsession with the topic of the Amazons. A final section —Beyond the Greek World—looks past Greece and
Scythia, surveying traditions of female warriors from the Caucasus to
20
China, Persia, Egypt and Arabia. It concludes with an investigation of the
legendary Chinese female warrior, Hua Mulan. The earliest mention of her
dates to 386 AD.
Thus with Mulan, an Amazon heroine of Chinese legend, we come full circle....Between Greece and China stretched the vast homeland of nomadic
horsewomen archers, the equals of men, whose heroic lives inspired awe in
all who knew them.
Lastly, lest anyone think that the cultural influence of Amazons has waned,
recall the 'Ice Princess' of 500 BC and compare her appearance to this enthusiastic description of Xena: Warrior Princess—a female Amazon heroine who gained worldwide popularity more than 1,900 years later.
'We don't need another hero, except for Xena!... Xena is full-tilt, strap-on,
Greco-medieval realness... a superhero in her leather mini dress and breastplates, her thigh-high lace-up leather boots, her coal black hair, her piercing
blue eyes, her fetching way with a spear'. —Stacey D'Erasmo, Xenaphilia.
The Village Voice, 26 Dec., 1995.
Stephen Reid
Poetry
E W
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Now $16.95
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Was $49.99
Now $14.95
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The Broken Road: From the
Iron Gates to Mount Athos
Patrick Leigh Fermor, HB
The Testament of Mary
Colm Tóibín, HB
The Signature of All Things
Elizabeth Gilbert, HB
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Was $19.95
Now $10.95
One Hundred & One Dalmatians
Dodie Smith, HB
Reading Chaucer's Poems: A Guided Selection
(ed) Bernard O'Donoghue ($33, PB)
Geoffrey Chaucer's observant wit, his narrative skill & characterisation, his linguistic invention, have been a well from
which the language's greatest writers have drawn: Shakespeare, Pope, Austen, Dickens among them. A courtier, a trade
emissary and diplomat, he fought in the Hundred Years War
and was captured and ransomed; his marriage into the family of John of Gaunt ensured
his influence in political society. For more than a decade, he was engaged on his most
famous work of all, The Canterbury Tales, until his death around 1400; there is no record of the precise date or the circumstances of his demise, despite vivid and colourful
speculation. Bernard O'Donoghue is one of the country's leading poets and medievalists. His accessible new selection includes a linking commentary on the chosen texts,
together with a comprehensive line-for-line glossary.
The Hazards by Sarah Holland-Batt ($24.95, PB)
Malice swarms through me in a surge. I know that flare, that
bitter reason. And I will float and flower in my season. Charged
with fierce imagination and swift lyricism, Holland-Batt's cosmopolitan poems reflect a predatory world rife with hazards
both real and imagined. Engaging everywhere with questions of
violence and loss, erasure and extinction, The Hazards inhabits
unsettling terrain, unafraid to veer straight into turbulence.
Was $49.99
Was $70
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Music at Midnight: The Life
& Poetry of George Herbert
John Drury, HB
Now $24.95
The Sorcerer of Bayreuth: Richard
Wagner, His Work and His World
Barry Millington, HB
Was $49.95
Was $39.95
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Now $16.95
Was $50
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The Natural History of Selborne
Gilbert White, HB
Was $56
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Was 48
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Animal Madness
Laurel Braitman, HB
Was $35.95
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Jam Sticky Vision by Luke Beesley ($24, PB)
The poems in Luke Beesley's new collection blend observation, memory & anecdote—with particular interest in American film, rock music, visual arts & poetry, and the way they
inhabit the poet’s everyday life in contemporary Melbourne.
They create ‘an uncanny universe’, which hovers somewhere
between the real world & that of the poet’s imagination, characterised by surprising encounters & fleeting details rendered
with the utmost clarity, full of intimate disclosures & yet
somehow public in its openness, where everything is animated
by liveliness – objects, sensations, colours, even words as they
appear on the page. As one critic has noted, 'Beesley’s books make for very healthy
reading. Lots of fresh fruit and vegetables, the menu not overly processed—no greasy
late-night noir'.
Inside My Mother by Ali Cobby Eckermann
Ali Cobby Eckermann, a Yankunytjatjara/Kokatha poet, is
at the forefront of Australian Indigenous poetry. Tributes to
country, to her elders, and to the animals & spirits that inhabit
the landscape, coupled with the rhythms of mourning & celebration that pulse through the poems, make this a moving and
personal collection. Grief is deeply felt and vividly portrayed
in poems such as Inside My Mother and Lament. There is defiance and protest in Clapsticks & I Tell You True. In the final
section there is a marked generational shift as the elders begin to pass away and the
poet as grandmother comes to accept her rightful place as matriarch. ($24, PB)
Shakespeare's London on
Five Groats a Day
Richard Tames, HB
The Histories of Nations: How
Their Identities Were Forged
(ed) Peter Furtado, HB
Was $150
Was $24.99
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Anatomica: The Complete
Home Medical Reference, HB
Now $12.95
A Short Guide to a Long Life
David B. Agus, HB
The Pursuit of the Nazi Mind:
Hitler, Hess, and the Analysts
Daniel Pick, HB
Blood of Kings:
The Stuarts, the Ruthvens
and the 'Gowrie Conspiracy'
J. D. Davies, HB
Was $50
Now $17.95
Was $36.95
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The Brain Supremacy: Notes
from
the Frontiers of Neuroscience
Elephants on the Edge: What
Animals Teach Us About Humanity
Kathleen Taylor, HB
G. A. Bradshaw, HB
Ideas of Order: A Close Reading of Shakespeare's Sonnets by Neil Rudenstine ($44, HB)
Shakespeare's sonnets are the greatest single work of lyric
poetry in English. Revealing an underlying structure within
the 154 poems that illuminates the entire work, Elizabethan
scholar Neil L. Rudenstine makes a compelling case for the
existence of a dramatic arc within the work through an expert
interpretation of distinct groups of sonnets in relationship to
one another. The sonnets show us a poet in turmoil whose love
for a young man—who returns his affections—is utterly transformative, binding him in such an irresistible way that it survives a number of infidelities. This critical analysis is accompanied by the text of all of Shakespeare's sonnets.
Was 60
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Christian Art
Rowena Loverance, HB
Was $39.99
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Reclaiming the Bible for a
Non-religious World
John Shelby Spong, HB
Was $77
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Drawing the Curtain:
The Cold War in Cartoons, HB
Was 53
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The French Kitchen Cookbook:
Recipes and Lessons from
Paris and Provence, HB 21
The Arts
Sidney Nolan: A Life by Nancy Underhill
In an authoritative, insightful & often irreverent biography
that fully charts Nolan’s life & work, Nancy Underhill peels
back the layers from a complicated, expedient & manipulative artistic genius. She carries the story from Nolan’s birth
in 1917 to his death in 1992, tracing his early life, his experience as a commercial artist, his involvement in the Angry Penguins magazine, his
painting & set design, his difficult marriages & friendships with some of the 20th
century’s most famous figures: Patrick White, Albert Tucker, Benjamin Britten,
Robert Lowell, Stephen Spender & Kenneth Clark. ($49.99, HB)
The Arts of Living: Europe 1600–1815
by Elizabeth Miller & Hilary Young
This book provides an overview of over two centuries of
cultural development and artistic endeavour. The unparalleled range of the V&A's collection means that masterpieces such as the Serilly Cabinet and Bernini's terracotta
for the Blessed Ludovica Albertoni can be contextualised
alongside discussions of Louis XIV's patronage and the
17th century Dutch interior. Many works are be shown for
the first time, including Count Bruhl's Meissen fountain
and actor David Garrick's tea service. ($50, HB)
The Street of Wonderful Possibilities:
Whistler, Wilde & Sargent in Tite Street
by Devon Cox ($45, HB)
This book focuses on one of the most influential artistic
quarters in the late 19th and early 20th centuries; London's
Tite Street, where a staggering amount of talent thrived
between the 1870s and 1930s, including James Abbott McNeill Whistler, Oscar Wilde & John Singer Sargent. In this
thriving artistic quarter, artists and writers created a bohemian enclave that would challenge Victorian values in art
and literature. Throughout its turbulent existence, Tite Street mirrored the world
around it. From the Aesthetic Movement to the Edwardian suffragettes, through the
bombs of the Blitz in the 1940s to the bombs of the IRA in the 1970s, Tite Street
remained a home to innumerable artists and writers, socialites and suffragettes,
musicians and madmen. Devon Cox unfolds this complex history, tying together
the private and professional lives of Tite Street's artists, writers and bohemians to
form a colourful tapestry of art and intrigue.
Paintings of Moholy-Nagy: The Shape of
Things to Come by Joyce Tsai ($43.95, HB)
László Moholy-Nagy (1895–1946) became notorious for the
declarations he made about the end of painting, encouraging
artists to exchange brush, pigment, and canvas for camera,
film, and searchlight. Even as he made these radical claims,
he painted throughout his career. Joyce Tsai illuminates the
evolution of painting’s role for Moholy-Nagy through key
periods in his career: at the German Bauhaus in the 1920s,
in the Netherlands and the United Kingdom in the early 1930s, and as director of
the New Bauhaus in Chicago in the last decade of his life.
The Notebooks by Jean-Michel Basquiat
From 1980 to 1987, Jean-Michel Basquiat filled numerous
working notebooks with drawings and handwritten texts. This
facsimile edition reproduces the pages of seven of these fascinating and rarely seen notebooks for the first time. The notebooks are filled with images & words that recur in Basquiat's
paintings and other works. Iconic drawings and pictograms
of crowns, teepees, and hatch-marked hearts share space with
handwritten texts, including notes, observations & poems that
often touch on culture, race, class & life in New York. ($59.95, HB)
The Colorful Apocalypse: Journeys in Outsider
Art by Greg Bottoms ($29.95, PB)
The Reverend Howard Finster was 20 feet tall, suspended in darkness. Or so be appeared in the documentary film that introduced a
teenaged Greg Bottoms to the renowned outsider artist whose death
would inspire him, 14 years later, to travel the US. Beginning in
Georgia with a trip to Finster's famous Paradise Gardens, his journey is an unparalleled look at the lives & works of some of Finster's
contemporaries: the self-taught evangelical artists whose beliefs and oeuvres occupy the
grey area between madness & Christian ecstasy. Bottoms draws us into the worlds of
such figures as William Thomas Thompson, a handicapped ex-millionaire who painted a
300-foot version of the book of Revelation, Norbert Kox, an ex-member of the Outlaws
biker gang who now paints apocalyptic visual parables; and Myrtice West, who began
painting to express the revelatory visions she had after her daughter's brutal murder. The
book is at once an enthralling travelogue, a series of revealing biographical portraits, and
a profound meditation on the chaos of despair and the ways in which creativity can help
order our lives.
Gustave Caillebotte: The Painter's Eye ($109, HB)
Gustave Caillebotte (1848–94) has come to be recognised as
one of the most dynamic and original artists of the impressionist movement in Paris. This lush book features 50 of Caillebotte’s strongest paintings, including post-conservation images
of Paris Street; Rainy Day, along with The Floorscrapers and
Pont de l’Europe, all of which date from a particularly fertile
period between 1875 and 1882. The artist was criticised at the
time for being too realistic and not impressionistic enough, but
he was a pioneer in adopting the angled perspective of a modern camera to compose his
scenes. Caillebotte’s skill and originality are evident even in the book’s reproductions,
and the essays offer critical insights into his inspiration and subjects.
Mark Rothko: Toward the Light in the Chapel
by Annie Cohen-Solal ($44.95, HB)
Mark Rothko was not only one of the most influential American
painters of the 20th century; he was a scholar, an educator & a deeply
spiritual human being. Few artists have achieved success as quickly,
and by the mid-20th century, Rothko's artwork was being displayed
in major museums throughout the world. In May 2012 his painting
Orange, Red, Yellow was auctioned for nearly $87 million, setting a
new Christie's record. Annie Cohen-Solal gained access to archival
materials no previous biographer had seen. As a result, her book is an extraordinarily
detailed portrait of Rothko the man and the artist, an uncommonly successful painter who
was never comfortable with the idea of his art as a commodity.
Now in B format
Ways of Curating by Hans-Ulrich Obrist, $20
Germaine Krull by Michel Frizot ($64, PB)
Germaine Krull (1897–1985) made a name for herself in
avant-garde photography in the period between the two
World Wars. After attending photography school in Munich,
she launched her career in Berlin, and later worked in Paris
& Monte Carlo. During WW II, her leftist political beliefs
led her to spend time in Brazil and French Equatorial Africa,
and afterward she traveled to Southeast Asia and later settled
in Northern India. This exhibition catalogue reveals how
Krull balanced her avant-garde, artistic vision and her active
role in the media, highlighting more than 150 images produced between 1924 and
1945, some of which appeared in her monographic books and others of which were
produced for commercial publication.
Otl Aicher by Markus Rathgeb ($65, PB)
Otl Aicher (1922–1991) was an internationally acclaimed graphic designer & educator, renowned for his
corporate identity work, visual communication systems,
& typography. Born in post-WW I Germany & coming
of age during WW II, Aicher was marked by the intellectual resistance movement, postwar reconstruction, and a
conviction that designers had a moral responsibility to
work in the service of a better society. He emerged as an
influential innovator in the field of visual communication, keenly informed by a strong
sense of politics, theology, and social responsibility. By distilling ideology, language,
and aesthetics to its bare essentials, Aicher promoted forthright communication through
simple, elegant, elemental presentation.
22
DVDs with Scott Donovan
Force Majeure, $32.95
Winner of the Un Certain Regard Jury Prize at Cannes in 2014 this Swedish
comedy is an intriguing and thought-provoking look at gender roles within
a 'traditional' nuclear family. When near disaster strikes handsome and successful businessman Tomas, his attractive wife Ebba and their two young
children during an expensive skiing holiday in the French Alps, patriarchal
authority is threatened with hilarious results. A subtle and darkly funny look
at marriage, parenthood, human frailty and the delicate emotional world of
a 'typical' family.
Ida: Region 2, $21.95
Pawel Pawlikowski's haunting film Ida, about a young novitiate nun in
1950s Poland, has deservedly won a string of awards including an Oscar for
Best Foreign Language Film earlier this year. It is nothing short of extraordinary. Brilliantly directed, acted, edited and shot it is the moving story of
Ida's journey of self discovery through Poland's bleak communist present
and violent war-time past. A mesmerizing tour de force reminiscent of Robert Bresson or Carl Dreyer—not to be missed!
The Missing: 1st Series Region 2, $39.95
James Nesbitt and Frances O'Conner star in this gripping 8 part mini-series
about a couple holidaying in France whose 5 year old son Oliver disappears seemingly without trace. Incompetent police, corrupt officials, meddling relatives and
a hysterical British media all play their part in this sprawling tale of murder and
deception. With echoes of the Madeleine McCann case, including suspicion falling
at one point on the distraught parents, this clever thriller has enough twists and
turns to keep you guessing to the very last. A second series is apparently in the
wind. Can't wait!
Winton's Paw Prints
'The circumstances absolutely demand we've got
to go beyond the two party policy with new ideas
and concepts, new policies, with candidates in every
seat ... I want to free this country from the policies
of the last three governments.' Taken out of context,
I would have said hoorah, an admirable sentiment
considering the last three Australian government's
pandering to mining interests and the baser elements
of xenophobic Australia to name but two hot issues—the Greens standing tall perhaps, or
some new party forming to 'keep the bastards honest'. However, it is in fact Joh BjelkePetersen, high on his 1986 National Party majority win in Queensland, taking aim at
Canberra and the Prime Ministership. An equal opportunity spoiler, Joh was not just
lobbing mortars at the 'Hawke socialists', but also at the Howard/Sinclair coalition in
opposition who had continued to disappoint him in the way that the Fraser/Anthony
government had in failing to wash away the stain of Whitlam socialism by 'supporting
'trendy' ideas like human rights, equal opportunity, industrial democracy, freedom of
information and bringing in retrospective tax laws'.
Paul Davey's new book about Joh Bjelke-Petersen's campaign for PM is, above all
else, a fascinating window into party politics. Davey took over as director of the National
Party's federal secretariat in 1984 a few years before Joh's 1987 bid for the top job. He is
not a Joh hater and I think the ride is better for it, because his dispassionate reporting of
the National Party's internecine battles when Joh throws his hat into the ring doesn't have
an outsider's sneer to it—after all Joh was the most successful National Party politician
in the party's history. See—I can't help but want to qualify with a bracketed (however
he may have come by that success). But Davey doesn't go into all that—you can make
up your own mind when reading his transcripts of, as he quite affectionately terms it,
'Joh-speak'. My favourite so far is an interview Joh gave ABC Radio after Ian Sinclair
had warned Joh (in a round-about but pointed and public fashion) to work within the
National Party system and not undermine the federal Coalition:
Q: How do you expect to stay part of the Nationals? J: I am not interested in staying part
of the National Party and I am only interested in doing what the people of Australia are
interested in. Q: Are you going to resign from the National Party? J: I am not going to
resign. Q: You just said you were not interested in staying. J: I can't stay. What I am saying I am interested in is doing something for the people of Australia. Q: If the National
Party in Canberra won't do what you want will you leave it? J: Lead it, I will lead it.
Q: I said leave it. J: Don't be stupid. Don't be so stupid otherwise I will not talk to you.
You know I'm not one of those that run away. I am Sir Joh Bjelke-Petersen, a National
Party Member of Parliament for 40 years and Premier. What I am doing in Queensland
I am now going to do for Australia. Q: When are we going to meet your candidates? J:
They grow up like mushrooms. Q: You said you have met four or five during your trip to
Melbourne. A lot of people are interested in meeting them. J: Don't you worry. You write
your little story.
Davey calls this Joh 'happy to let the confusion build', and I'm prepared to believe him as
the story unfolds. Davey initially draws a comparison between Clive Palmer's PUP and
Joh's bid for PM, I'm intrigued to see how he concludes. Winton
Tamarra: Longbourn by Jo Bak- what we're reading
er—An Upstairs/Downstairs in the
Bennet Household, this is a re-telling of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice as told by the family servants.
The writing is descriptive, gentle
and thought provoking.. I loved that
the original story kept peeking through with the girls preparing
themselves for their lavish balls and in turn the maids going about
their business of washing the Bennetts undergarments the next
day. I'm Also eyeing off Louise Pfanner's recommendation in last
month's Gleaner, What Matters in Austen, which sounds fascinating—asking such questions as 'Why is the weather important?' It
was certainly important for those working downstairs.
Andrew: The Reluctant Fundamentalist by Mohsin Hamid and
The First Bad Man by Miranda July—Sometimes when I'm not
sure what type of book I am in the mood for reading, I start a
couple and read a chapter of each in turn, until attrition dictates
which book has engaged me. It didn't work this time around, as
I am now about half way through both of these, and they are all
still holding my interest. The Hamid book is a political thriller,
narrated by a Pakistani/Manhattan big corporate business analyst
turned…. well, we're not quite sure what he has turned into yet.
But it doesn't sound like it is going to be good. There is a queasy
unsettling momentum to the book—not unlike A. D. Miller's Moscow fraudster thriller Snowdrop. Hamid will have delivered the
SWF opening address by the time you are reading this, and I am
curious as to whether the last half of the book will pack a political
punch. Miranda July is an illustrious artist and film-maker and has
written an acclaimed short-story collection. She has won prizes
at Cannes and Sundance; and created a sculpture garden for the
Venice Biennale. She is lauded by the likes of Lena Dunham, A
M Homes, and George Saunders, and Lorrie Moore has written a
lovely appreciation of her work in the New York Review of Books.
It is Moore's recommendation that made me want to pick up this,
her first novel. The writing is sharp, and arch, and self-conscious
and funny. I am still waiting to figure out what I 'feel' about her
work, but Moore says it is ultimately moving 'like an avalanche is
moving', and her lines 'sing', and it certainly has me hooked.
Performing Arts
Making Make-Believe Real: Politics as Theater in
Shakespeare's Time by Garry Wills ($35.95, PB)
Shakespeare’s plays abound with kings and leaders who crave a
public stage and seize every opportunity to make their lives a performance: Antony, Cleopatra, Richard III, Othello, and many others. Such self-dramatizing characters appear in the work of other
playwrights of the era as well, Marlowe’s Edward II and Tamburlaine among them. But Elizabethan playwrights were not alone in
realizing that a sense of theatre was essential to the exercise of power. Real rulers knew it,
too, and none better than Queen Elizabeth. In this fascinating study of political stagecraft
in the Elizabethan era, Garry Wills explores a period of vast cultural and political change
during which the power of make-believe to make power real was not just a theory but an
essential truth.
Rock Stars Stole My Life!: A Big Bad Love Affair
with Music by Mark Ellen ($20, PB)
In a sodden tent at a 70s festival, the teenage Mark Ellen had a
dream. He dreamt that music was a rich meadow of possibility, a
liberating leap to a sparkling future, an industry of human happiness—and he wanted to be part of it. Thus began his 50-year love
affair with rock and roll. From his time at the NME, Radio One,
The Old Grey Whistle Test and Live aid, he has been at the molten
core of pop's evolution, and watched its key figures from a unique
perspective. This funny and touching personal memoir maps out his eventful journey in
rock and roll. It tells stories and settles scores. It charts the peaks and disappointments. It
flags up surprising heroes and barbecues the dull and self-deluded. It puts a chaotic world
to rights and pours petrol on the embers of a glorious industry now in spiralling decline.
Mo' Meta Blues: The World According to
Questlove by Ahmir Thompson ($27.99, PB)
Ahmir 'Questlove' Thompson is many things: virtuoso drummer, producer, arranger, Late Night with Jimmy Fallon
bandleader, DJ, composer, and tireless Tweeter. From growing
up in 1970s West Philly as the son of a 1950s doo-wop singer,
to finding his own way through the music world and ultimately co-founding and rising up with the Roots, a.k.a., the last hip hop band on Earth, he tells his own story
while tackling some of the lates, the greats, the fakes, the philosophers, the heavyweights, and the true originals of the music world. But Mo' Meta Blues isn't just a
memoir. It's a dialogue about the nature of memory and the idea of a post-modern
black man saddled with some post-modern blues. It's the side wind of a one-of-akind mind. It's a rare gift that gives as well as takes. It's a record that keeps going
around and around.
The Cinema of the Coen Brothers: Hard-Boiled
Entertainments by Jeffrey Adams ($44.95, PB)
Shunning fame and celebrity, Ethan and Joel Coen remain maverick filmmakers, producing and directing independent films
outside the Hollywood mainstream in a unique style combining classic genres like film noir with black comedy to tell offbeat stories about America and the American Dream. Beginning with the 1984 debut Blood Simple, this volume examines
the development of the Coens' body of work, identifying and
analysing major themes and generic constructs and offering diverse interpretative approaches to their enigmatic films.
New Australian Plays
Caress/Ache by Suzie Miller, $19.95
Kill the Messenger by Nakkiah Lui, $19.95
A Town Named War Boy by Ross Mueller, $19.95
The House on the Lake by Aidan Fennessy, $19.95
I Call My Brothers by Jonas Hassen Khemiri, $23.95
The Voices Project 2015: Australian Theatre for Young People, $26.95
23
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Bestsellers Non-fiction
1. Forged From a Silver Dollar Li Feng
2. Windsor's Way
Tony Windsor
3. What Do We Want? A Political History of
Aboriginal Land Rights in NSW
Heidi Norman
4. Short History of Stupid, A: All the Things
About Modern Life That Make You Want to Scream Helen Razer & Bernard Keane
5. Unholy Fury:The US Alliance & the
Whitlam-Nixon Crisis
James Curran
6. Between You & Me: Confessions of a Comma
Queen
7. H is For Hawk Mary Norris
Helen Macdonald
8. The End of Representative Politics Simon Tormey
9. Plenty More
10. Landmarks
Yotam Ottolenghi
Robert MacFarlane
Bestsellers Fiction
1. Sentenced to Life
Clive James
2. The Life of Houses
Lisa Gorton
3. The Strays
Emily Bitto
4. Close to Home Robin Barker
5. The Girl on the Train
Paula Hawkins
6. The Green Road
7.
AWinton’s
God in Ruins Paw Prints
Anne Enright
Kate Atkinson
8. The Narrow Road to the Deep North
9. The Wonder Lover
10. Quicksand
Richard Flanagan
Malcolm Knox
....... and another thing
I've been reading a new collection of essays by Renata Adler, After the Tall
Timber, and am a complete convert. Her opening essay, the introduction
to her collection 1970 Toward a Radical Middle—an ode to centrism and
her generation with no name, the one that, unnoticed spread clear across
what people call the generation gap—is a gobsmacker. I recommend it
highly. This month, fiction-wise, I'm thinking of trying Patricia Duncker's
Sophie & the Sibyl: A Victorian Romance (p.5)—a tale featuring George
Eliot could surely not go wrong. I too am missing Janice's offerings in
her Wilder Aisles column, so might seek solace in one of her previous
recommendations—a new offering from James Runcie's priest detective
Sidney Chambers on page 7. On the nature front, James Rebanks' book
on page 16 about the lives of shepherds over many generations in the
Lake District looks relaxing (for the armchair naturalist, obviously). On
page 17 Alexandra Butler's book, Walking the Night Road, about the
death of her mother, both of whom were pioneers of healthy ageing—'a
rare examination of the intimate aspects of ageing and death experienced
by practioners who suddenly find themselves in the difficult position of the
clients they once treated'—looks fascinating. Louise, on page 18, has me
wanting to read both of her recommendations, and My Undercover Years
with Ku Klux Klan from the 2nd Hand Rows is a must. Then onto the Arts
page, and The Street of Wonderful Possibilities: Whistler, Wilder and
Sargent in Tite Street by Devon Cox should round my month's reading. If
you don't make it to the festival, I'll see you in the shop. Viki
For more June new releases go to:
Steve Toltz
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