March 2015 Reading Guide

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BIOGRAPHY SCI-FI & FANTASY MUSIC LIFESTYLE HISTORY

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Fiction Book of the Month

Scott and Gin’s Pick A Short History of Richard Kline | Amanda Lohrey | $29.99 A novel about a cynical man’s journey into spiritualism didn’t strike me as a page turner. But one of the many joys of Lohrey’s new novel is its tangling of the mundane and the sublime. Between Sydney’s 1990s tech boom to a guru workshop on the North Shore: from a spartan villa in the Italian coast to the ramshackle yoga studio in St James, The Short History is a beguiling whole crafted from very unlikely parts. I would never expect a novel like this to grab me, but for reasons I still can’t quite discern, I found myself drawn back to it time and time again.

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“For reasons I still can’t quite discern, I found myself drawn back to it time and time again.”

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Non-fiction Book of the Month Bad Behaviour | Rebecca Starford | $29.99 A compelling memoir of boarding school and bullying. Everyone remembers those stomach churning years of angst and isolation, when one’s identity is formed. This examination for the trials and tribulations of 16 teenage girls is an exploration of joy, fear, and how crucial experiences in those teenage years can shape your behaviours as an adult.

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“...an exploration of joy, fear, and how crucial experiences in those teenage years can shape your behaviour as an adult.”

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Fiction “...writing so good I was constantly stopping to quote passages.”

Nobody is Ever Missing | Catherine Lacey | $27.99 Debut author Catherine Lacey manages to make the unravelling of twenty-something New Yorker Elyria— along the highways of New Zealand no less—a darkly hilarious experience. The writing is so good I was constantly stopping to quote passages. A stunning debut.

The Buried Giant | Kazuo Ishiguro | $29.99

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Ishiguro’s first novel in a decade is a sometimes savage and uncompromising exploration of love, war, and revenge.

It describes the journey of a couple as they journey of a land of mist and rain in the hope of finding the son that they haven’t seen in years.

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Fiction Aquarium | David Vann | $29.99 Twelve year old Caitlin visits the aquarium to lose herself in the beautiful shimmering world of the fish. While there she befriends a kindly old man and troubling family secrets begin to emerge. David Vann is the acclaimed author of Goat Mountain and this tender but heart-wrenching tale is a must-read.

“..Caitlin visits the aquarium to lose herself in the beautiful shimmering world of fish”

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Zone | Mathias Enard | $35.00

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A spy handcuffed to a rail on a train from Milan to Rome recounts his involvement in national and international unrest and war. Told in a single sentence, this novel is a daring experiement. It is also a nuanced exploration of the twentieth century.

“Told using a single sentence, this novel is a daring experiment.”

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Fiction Adult Onset | Anne-Marie MacDonald | $29.99 MacDonald capably captures the darkness as well the comedy involved in raising children.

Adult Onset is the story of Mary Rose and Hilary.

And it chronicles their fears and difficulties in raising their two children. These fears are rooted in unremembered events of Mary Rose’s past and in Mary Rose’s troubled relationship with her mother. This book is heartbreaking and hilarious, but above all deeply satisfying.

You may find some of her actions difficult to understand, you may find her difficult – even maddening. But if you indulge Melody Black for just a little while you won’t regret it. This dark but witty novel from the author of The Universe vs. Alex Woods is a wild ride that you won’t be able to put down.

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The Mirror World of Melody Black| Gavin Extance | $32.99

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Crime-Fiction Second Life | SJ Watson| $29.99

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Watson follows the tremendous commercial and critical success of Before I Go To Sleep with another tight thriller focussed on women with secrets.After a wild life, Julia Plummer is finally settling down into a respectable middle-class existence. When the mother of her adopted son is brutally murdered on a Paris street, Julia is compelled to find the culprit. Doing so requires her to enter the slippery world of online sex.

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Crime-Fiction “The Exit offers an intriguing twist on the mystery genre.�

The Exit | Helen Fitzgerald | $24.99

Something sinister is happening in Room 7.

Having reluctantly taken on work at a local retirement village, 23-year-old Catherine is gradually drawn into a trouble world of secrets and lies. Rose, an 82 yearold resident of the village leads Catherine into the underbelly of a seemingly hum-drum community. The Exit offers an intriguing twist on the mystery genre.

Gun Control | Peter Corris | $29.99

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The fortieth installment in the Cliff Hardy series is a timely one. Guns, bikies, and dirty cops fill the streets of Sydney as the body count climbs.

Called into investigate the violent death of a onetime pistol shooting champion, Hardy soon finds himself tangled up in plots and chasing from the Blue Mountains to a park in the inner-west.

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Cooking The Happy Cookbook | Lola Berry | $34.99 Lola Berry, nutritionist and author of the popular 20/20 Diet Cookbook, has created a book that’s less about weight-loss and more about everyday wellbeing. With recipes ranging from pulled pork tacos with fried apples to chocolate pancakes, Berry has made a cookbook for those looking for approachable alternatives to sometimes complicated and expensive health regimes.

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Amina’s Home Cooking | Amina Elshafei | $35.00

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MasterChef finalist Elshafei has put together a collection of recipes in keeping with her rich family heritage. Combining both Korean and Egyptian cuisine makes for a singular cookbook, with recipes ranging from kimchi to harissa chicken. This is a festive and welcoming cookbook .

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Cooking The Gourmet Farmer Goes Fishing | Matthew Evans, Nick Haddow and Ross O’meara | $49.99

The Gourmet Farmer offers tips and info on everything related to seafood: from catching your own dinner to cooking it. Sea creatures from urchins to trouts are demystified. With an emphasis on ethical meat, The Gourmet Farmer is filled with recipes both classic and new.

Going Paleo | Pete Evans | $39.99

“Evans offers easy and afforable alternatives.”

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Finally! All of paleo guru and television personility Pete Evans’ advice, recipes, and information have been consolidated into a guide book . This book focusses on achievable goals, whether it’s reducing your intake of sugar, caffeine, or processed food, Evans offers easy and affordable alternatives.

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Biography

Alexander McQueen: Blood Beneath the Skin | Andrew Wilson | $45.00 There’s a slew of McQueen books coming out this year, but we feel this is one of the strongest. Wilson offers an incisive biography of the famed designer, a story filled with allusions to myths and nightmares—much like the work of the man. From a rugged childhood in East London to the glamourous but spiriually barren heights of the fashion industry, Alexander McQueen: Blood Beneath the Skin is a gutsy biography worthy of its subject.

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Being There | David Malouf | $29.99

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After exploring the idea of home in A First Place, and creativity in The Writing Life, Malouf’s latest book offers a variety of work, ranging from essays on the Sydney Opera House–then and now–as well as his previously unpublished libretto for Patrick White’s Voss. This is an intimate offering from of Australia’s most esteemed artists.

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Biography The Boatman| John Burbidge | $29.99 While volunteering in India, Burbudge discovered he was gay. This memoir tells that story, from Burbidges early flirtations to mature relationships. In doing so, it explores the difficulties and rewards of cross-culture exploration. It as much a memoir as it is a travel narrative, crafting a strikingly original portrait of contemporray India.

“A strikingly original portrait of India.”

After suffering a miscarriage, Katherine Norbury and her young daughter begin walking the British countryside. Inspired by the Neil M Gunn novel The Well at the World’s End, she attempts to follow streams and rivers to their source. Along the way she meditates on the illness and death of several family members, and her own adoption, perhaps signaling a searching for home paralleled in her bucolic peregrinations. Fish Ladder is a delicate novel about nature’s effects on the human psyche, in the vein of H is for Hawk.

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The Fish Ladder: A Journey Upstream | Katharine Norbury | $29.99

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Sci-Fi Fantasy “Expect outrageous action sequences and cracking dialogue.”

Resistence | John Birmingham | $23.99 PB The second book in John Birmingham’s Dave Hooper series continues the whirling dervish of thrilling action and otherworldly beasts. Dragons take down the Vice President’s plane, a monster army camps outside Omaha, and a demonic empath terrorises New York. Expect outrageous action sequences and cracking dialogue from this playful writer.

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Those Above| Daniel Polansky | $29.99

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Touted as being epic fantasy crossed with revenge thriller, Those Above signals a bold new fantasy series. “Those Above”, the seemingly perfect overlords of the Earth, have doomed mankind to servitude. But not for long. A widow bent on revenge, a general with the skills to challenge their overlords, and a plucky urchin with nothing lose are about to join forces and take the battle to the Eternal City itself. What follows is sure to be a saga filled with blistering warfare.

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Music Girl in a Band | Kim Gordon | $29.99 Gordon talks! Finally this iconic but reserved superstar speaks about her life. A fascinating journey through Kim Gordon’s life, spanning from her childhood in Southern California, fraught as it was with the challenges of having a mentally-ill sibling, to the heady 80s and 90s where the Riot Grrl movement took the New York music scene by storm.

Bjork: Archives | Klaus Biesenbach| $85.00 Beautifully presented in a slip case, this is the quintessential guide to an icon of modern art, music, film, and fashion. This collection has been released to coincide with the Björk Exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art and contains four booklets, a paperback, and a poster.

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“A fascinating journy through Kim Gordon’s life...”

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Motherless Child | Paul Scott | $29.99 This is the definitive biography of Eric Clapton, one of the most influential musicians alive today.

This volume charts the songwriter’s life from his difficult and complicated childhood relationship with his mother, to the complex and fraught relationships with many women in his life, and also his struggles with and eventual confrontation with the demons of drugs and alcohol.

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Cowboys and Indies | Barrett Murphy | $29.99

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Filled with fascinating behind the scenes anecdotes about some of the most famous musicians of the 20th century, this volume charts the ebb and wane of the music industry from the invention of the phonograph until the present day. Murphy allows the producers, execs and talent scouts use their own words which gives this chronicle a personal feel and considerable insight.

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Better Than Before | Gretchen Rubin | $29.99 Habits are the basis of so much of our behaviour, and yet they are notoriously difficult to make or break. In this personal and entertaining book, Rubin takes us with her on her own journey to form healthy habits and aims to arm us with the self-knowledge to employ the powerful of helpful habit formation in our own lives.

Going to the gym can be as automatic as putting on a seatbelt!

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Eat Real Food | David Gillespie | $29.99 Gillespie responds to critics questioning his demonisation of sugar (Sweet Poison: Why Sugar Makes us Fat) and oils ( Toxic Oil: Why Vegetable Oil Will Kill You & How to Save Yourself ) by offering alternatives to processed foods. Admittedly it’s an obvious one–fresh food–but it’s message that needs to be shwcased time and time again. In his persuasive style, Gillespie offers achievable and inexpensive ways to maintain a healthy diet

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Swallow This | Joanna Blythman | $29.99

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An Ideal accompaniment to Gillespie’s Eat Real Food, this book details both the obvious “natural” food products—food coloring, modified starch—but also some unexpected ones. In particular, it covers the chemicals used in lightly processed foods like salad and pita bread. Noted food industry journalist Joanna Blythman fires off another volley in the battle against unscrupulous food manufacturers.

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History The Story of the Australian People | Geoffrey Blainey | $49.99 This is book one of Geoffrey Blainey’s fascinating new account of Australia’s history. Beginning in pre-history and working through to the gold rush, this book offers a lively history of this country’s original inhabitants.

The Story of Australian English | Anne Carson | $29.99

Emporium: Selling the Dream in Colonial Australia | Edwin Barnard | $49.99 Electric underpants, quinine wine­–the history of Australian advertising is littered with treasures. This book collects them all together. It only makes for an interesting angle on the history of advertising, but also an amusing look at the peculiarly public underbelly of Australian life: condoms, sexual paraphernalia, stimulants were all advertised, you just had to know where to look.

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Another Australian story, this is time about the rise and proliferation of our particular takes on the English language. Kel Richards offers an accessible account of the ‘strine, from the 19th century up to today.

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James’ Pick The Grand Budapest Hotel Collection | Matt Zoller Seitz | $45.00 A behind-the-scenes look at the creation and filming of Wes Anderson’s 2014 movie and also a charming addendum to The Wes Anderson Collection (also in store) this beautiful standalone volume compiles interviews, artwork, essays, and photography.

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So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed| Jon Ronson | $29.99 An early front runner for most topical book of the year, journalist Ron Jonson (Psychopath Test, The Men Who Stare at Goats) takes on the rising tide of Internet bullies, hysterics and trolls. Ronson interviews the aftermath for those momentary celebrities of the Internet rage-cycle: careers are ruined, relationships tested, and lives altered forever. Ronson explores the history of shame, its uses and many abuses. An immensely readable and timely book.

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Non Fiction In Manchuria | Michael Meyer | $32.99 Living for three years in the Manchurian countryside left writer Michael Meyer with wealth of stories, alternately personal, communal, and historical. He has used them to craft a book both about his experience and that of his wife’s family, who have lived there for generations. Covering both Russian and Japanese contestation of the area, as well as modern developments, this is a fascinating book about an under-explored part of the world.

A New History of Life | Peter Ward & Joe Kirschvink | $29.99

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This book offers a host of new ideas to challenge how we perceive the natural world and our place within it. Rather than a gradual evolution, this book posits that life evolved haphazardly and frequently by disaster. It also re-asserts that we consider the planet as an entire ecosystem, rather than individual species.

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The Age of Cryptocurrency | Paul Vigna & Michael J Casey | $29.99 Bitcoin has received a large deal of press, mostly bad, and almost all of it misleading. This book hopes to demystify Bitcoin and other digital monies, exploring the benefits and challenges to conventional monetary systems. Vigna and Casey, both journalists at the Wall Street Journal, present a well-rounded account of this fascinating trend

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Querkles | Thomas Pavitte | $24.99 PB Upping the ante on his immensely popular 1,000 Dot-to-Dot books, Thomas Pavitte has created a combination join-the-dots AND colouring in book. Start colouring the overlapping shapes and soon you’ll find all manner of whimsical images starting to appear.

Paints, pastels, pencils—the choice of materials is yours!

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