May 2015 Reading Guide

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Welcome to our Better Read Than Dead May Reading Guide!

“Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,” said Shakespeare. Although the recent storms in Sydney have certainly dampened us physically, we’ve been fortunate enough to have escaped serious damage and our enthusiasm for May’s new and darling books has not been shaken!

Which is just as well, because we have a big month planned for May. We will be launching Krissy Kneen’s new novel in-store this month, as well as hosting a High Tea with Posie Graeme-Evans and a Talking Heads evening with Malcolm Knox.

And don’t forget Mother’s Day, which is just around the corner! We recommend that you keep an eye out for our Mother’s Day supplement, hitting email inboxes later this week, as we’ll be running two competitions that will make the day extra special for a couple of families...

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We hope you enjoy our May Reading Guide!

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Fiction Book of the Month

Adams’ Pick

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A God in Ruins | Kate Atkinson | $32.99

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Kate Atkinson has gone and broken my heart again. Those who fell hard for the many incarnations of Ursula in 2013’s Life After Life will be pleased to see how much of her wry pragmatism little brother Teddy recalls throughout this companion novel, and won’t be surprised to learn that she’s living out an entirely different path to those we’ve followed her on previously. Some readers may however be surprised to learn that Teddy lives only one life. Unlike his older sister, he doesn’t get a do-over.

Teddy’s experiences of war as an RAF bomber pilot, and his life pre- and post-war, are told with Atkinson’s trademark brutal honesty and unnerving delicacy. This is not your standard WWII novel; this has an emotional power and sweeping time-line similar to Richard Flanagan’s Narrow Road to the Deep North, and its ending left me sitting on the edge of my bed, crying and winded with grief. Read it and weep.

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Fiction The Green Road | Anne Enright | $32.99 Anne Enright’s new novel set on Ireland’s Atlantic Coast is a story about the gaps in the human heart and how we learn to fill them. In Rosaleen’s old age, after her four children leave for greater things, she decides to sell their family home in Ardeevin. Feeling that their childhood and personal history is being erased, the adult children return for a final Christmas together, each confronting the terrible weight of family ties and the journey that brought them home. The Green Road is poignant and enriching, heightened by Enright’s signature dark, witty and gleaming prose.

A new novel from a writer who has won both the Nobel and the Pulitzer Prize is a rare treat. Experiencing a Toni Morrison novel is not something you will forget.

This work is no less exceptional than her previous novels, though this is the first set in the present day.

The story of an African-American mother and daughter that investigates the wounds parents can, intentionally or unwittingly, inflict on their children that leave lifelong scars.

“Experiencing a Toni Morrison novel is not something you will forget.”

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God Help the Child | Toni Morrison | $29.99

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Fiction After Birth | Elisa Albert | $35.00 A succinct, fierce novel about childbirth and new motherhood, and the sleep deprivation, loneliness and disjointed rhythms our protagonist Ari struggles with as a result. With cathartic rage and outrageous humour, Elisa Albert unleashes on a culture that turns its new mothers into exiles while expecting them to act like natives. And as she defines the raw experience of motherhood, Albert offers a hilarious and devastatingly honest examination of how we become women and mothers.

“A succinct, fierce novel about childbirth and new motherhood...”

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Quicksand | Steve Toltz | $32.99

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Liam is a policeman and writer. The adventures and personal misfortunes of his best friend— disaster-prone criminal operator Aldo—is a rich source of material for Liam. The story of this faithful but conflicted friendship is moving, funny and darkly satiric. As things get worse for Aldo, Toltz’s telling becomes a searching exploration of fate, suffering and resilience. Readers new to Toltz are in for a treat. Fans of his acclaimed first novel, A Fraction of the Whole, will thrill again to the author’s inventive powers.

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Crime fiction

The Whites | Harry Brandt | $29.99 The Whites is an electrifying tale of a New York City police detective under siege by an unsolved murder. In the mid-1990s, a young Billy Graves is part of an aggressive anti-crime unit known as the Wild Geese which made headlines by accidentally shooting a ten-year-old boy on a crowded street. Now in his early forties, he has become a sergeant in Manhattan Night Watch, responding to postmidnight felonies. Razor-sharp and fast-paced, The Whites introduces Harry Brandt (aka Richard Price) as a new master of American crime fiction.

This is a truly frightening thriller sure to satisfy fans of the TV series Criminal Minds. When two strangers show up to Rowena Cooper’s remote Colorado farmhouse, she knows that it’s all over. Meanwhile, Valerie Hart is being almost driven to a breakdown as she investigates a series of grisly murders; all women, all abducted, and all with a mysterious and seemingly random object left within their bodies. But the killers did not count on the survival of Rowena’s ten-year-old daughter Nell who, terrified, injured, and half-frozen has only one place to go–and that place that could be even more terrifying than what she’s running from.

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The Killing Lessons | Saul Black | $29.99

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Sci-Fi/Fantasy The Death House | Sarah Pinborough | $29.99 A heart-breaking dystopian novel from prolific horror writer Pinborough, The Death House will chill you to the bone and leave you questioning the very nature of this fictional society. In this world a blood test can determine your susceptibility to terminal illness, and if positive, you are sent to the Death House to die. Toby, a healthy young boy with the terminal gene, spends his days in the house fighting fear and withdrawing from those around him, until a new arrival shatters the peace and changes everything.

Day Shift | Charlaine Harris | $29.99

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The second in the Midnight, Texas series is full of murder, mystery and Harris’ usual quirky Southern charm. Psychic Manfred Bernardo’s working weekend in Dallas is disrupted by the murder of a wealthy client. Returning to the eerie and quiet town of Midnight, embroiled in scandal and hounded by the press, he enlists the help of the enigmatic Olivia. With fun guest appearances from characters of the Sookie Stackhouse series, this is a fast-paced, gruesome must-read for anyone suffering from True Blood withdrawals.

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The Book of Phoenix | Nnedi Okorafor | $29.99 Phoenix is an accelerated human. She is only two years old, but she has already matured and has physical and mental abilities that far exceed those of a normal adult. Phoenix spends her days in Tower 7 in complete innocence and completely in love with Saeed until one day, Saeed witnesses something so terrible that he takes his own life and Phoenix comes to some dark realisations. This is the prequel to Who Fears Death and is yet another enthralling work of magical futurism told by one of Okorafor’s typically memorable, superhuman heroines.

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Cooking Let’s Eat | Margaret Pomeranz & Philippa Whitfield Pomeranz | $39.99 Navigating busy lives in film and TV, Margaret and her daughter-in-law Philippa enjoy spending their weekends with family and friends to share stories, eat simple, slightly indulgent but mainly healthy food, and relax with the people they love.

With gorgeous photography, family snapshots, stories of movie stars, misadventures and fun times - as well as eighty of Margaret and Pip’s favourite recipes - Let’s Eat is a celebration of food, film, family and friends brought to you by Australia’s much-loved co-host of At The Movies.

Kate Gibbs was taught everything she needed to know about cooking by her grandmother, who just happens to be Margaret Fulton! With a successful career in food journalism, Gibbs is aiming to talk to a new generation about the joys of cooking and the importance of good, real food. Margaret and Me brings us fifty modern recipes based on her grandmother’s classics; these are the recipes that both women grew up with, and which endure as family favourites.

“Gibbs is aiming to talk to a new generation...”

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Margaret & Me | Kate Gibbs | $39.99

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Join us for High Tea with Li Fen g in June!

Forged from Silver Dollar | Li Feng | $32.99 Li Feng grew up in Mao’s communist China and fled with her family to Sydney as a child, but she has always struggled to make sense of this aspect of her life. When she delves into the past, she dusts off a heartbreaking history of love and loss that echoes across four generations of women in her family; from Silver Dollar, who fought to change her fate after being sold into a marriage at thirteen, to Ming Xiu who was forced to make a choice no mother should ever have to make following the execution of her husband. Forged from Silver Dollar is an inspiring true story about modern China and the iron will of mothers.

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Bloodhound: Searching for my Father | Ramona Koval | $32.99

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Bloodhound centres on writer and journalist Ramona Koval’s moving story about family secrets and the terrible cost of war. Prior to writing this memoir, she only knew that her parents were Holocaust survivors who fled their homeland and settled in Melbourne, and their story was only ever told in traumatising snippets. Koval decided she wanted to learn the truth of her family history and uncover the identity of her biological father, leading her on a quest for identity that is recounted here with her customary humour. Bloodhound takes hold of the reader and doesn’t let go.

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Biography On the Move: A Life | Oliver Sacks | $34.99 In this new memoir, popular and incredibly beloved neurologist Oliver Sacks shares his life story along with some of his passions besides the brain, including fast motorbikes and travel. He writes about his early years as a neurologist, moving to America, his family and his intellectual and romantic love affairs. On the Move is a fascinating read by a brilliant man and writer who has produced the most readable books on neurology.

Liz’s Pick Amelia’s Pick Smoke Gets in Your Eyes | Caitlin Doughty | $27.99

Good Muslim Boy | Osamah Sami | $32.95 Sami is already recognised as a talented and creative actor (The Trial of Saddam, Baghdad Wedding, Saved, Kick), screenwriter, satirist, poet and blogger (Halal Aussie Daily). This memoir, his first book, takes readers through his childhood years in Iran (his parents are Iraqi) under Islamic rule and the years of adolescence and young adulthood living, learning and working in Australia. His life, marked variously by cultural contrast and creative adventure, frustration and success, is in a way exemplary of our time. He recounts his experiences in a winningly entertaining and insightful style.

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23-year-old Doughty (now 30) already had a scholarly fascination with the history and culture of mortality when she took a job at Westwind Cremation & Burial in San Francisco. As a professional mortician-inthe-making she came face-to-face with the physical and emotional realities of our contemporary ways of death. She got acquainted with an unusual workplace and team of co-workers, and learned to handle not only corpses but also the various (often strangely indifferent) attitudes of the newly bereaved. This is a fascinating memoir and wide-ranging exploration of what it means, for us all, to live with the fact of death.

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Non-Fiction Landmarks | Robert MacFarlane | $45.00 MacFarlane explores the linguistic and literary terrain of Britain’s archipelago, from the Shetlands to Cornwall, from Cumbria to Suffolk, in a beautifully unique way. Landmarks is a book about the power language has in shaping our sense of place and celebrates the literature MacFarlane loves. It is both a field guide and a ‘word-hoard’, gathering an astonishing archive of place-terms from Old Norse to Anglo-Romani, all contained within a stunning hardcover.

“It is both a field guide and a ‘word-hoard’...”

Fergus’ Pick

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The Soul of the Marionette | John Gray | $35.00

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In this philosophically well-versed, historically literate, accessible, entertaining and thoughtprovoking book Gray (Straw Dogs etc.) addresses a prevailing notion of ‘freedom,’ which he claims is too often derived from old (Gnostic) and new (technological) dreams of a dematerialised or virtualised existence ‘freed’ from the physicality and mortality of our animal bodies. The promise of freedom is usually an ideological deception, an apology for repressive measures of one kind or another. Gray argues for a sense of freedom closely allied with our dark materiality and with an insistent doubt about the often overhyped rewards of progress and knowledge.

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Non-Fiction Governomics | Miriam Lyons & Ian McAuley | $32.99 Governomics is a topical exploration of public health and education systems, arguing that a smaller gap between the rich and the poor can be achieved through sound economic planning. In a society which has grown used to public debates that pit people and the planet against an abstract, distorted image of ‘the economy’, Lyons and McAuley refreshingly demonstrate 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.

The Nearest Thing to Life | James Wood | $35.00

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One of our finest living critics blends memoir and criticism in this masterly exploration of the inescapable connection between fiction and true life. Wood’s account begins with his upbringing in a stringently Christian household in rural England, where reading was a secret and blasphemous undertaking. He then examines the links between literature and music, exile, homelessness, and creates a concise, clear-eyed look at the conspiracy between the author and the reader.

Selling Students Short | Richard Hil | $29.99 Author of Whackademia Richard Hil has long been convinced that there is little to like about many parts of university education for students or teachers. This book draws conclusions from studies around higher education and concludes that students today emerge without critical skills and basic requisites for professional working lives. He discusses how technology has changed universities and asks questions around what this education creates.

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Gabori: The Sally Gabori Collection of Patrick Corrigan | Djon Mundine & Candida Baker | $99.99 As some of you may know, Better Read Than Dead’s co-owner Patrick Corrigan also happens to possess an extensive collection of stunning Indigenous Australian art. He has previously published two books on his collections, and he is the reason why we’re lucky enough to have such magnificent artworks lining the walls of our shop (next time you’re in, look above the bookshelves and you’ll feel like you’ve stepped into a gallery.) We are now celebrating the release of his latest offering, Gabori: The Corrigan collection of paintings by Sally Gabori. With contributions from Djon Mundine and Candida Baker, this gorgeously produced book provides rare insights into the life of Mrs Gabori and offers readers the opportunity to revel in the vibrancy and spontaneity of her art.

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Graphic artist Cecelia Ruiz has created a marvel from the missing. Both tragic and comic, this book refuses to be categorised. Ruiz has collated a strange cast of characters to embody specific memory related disorders such as Simon who ‘remembers every act of sin ever confessed to him.’ The mysterious places where memory may reside is playfully guessed at by the text and drawings. A most curious and interesting book.

“Both tragic and comic, this book refuses to be categorised.”

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The Book of Memory Gaps | Cecelia Ruiz | $19.99

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Lifestyle The Art of Creative Thinking | Rod Judkins | $19.99 Rod Judkins teaches at London Art University’s Central St Martin’s. His previous book suggested creativity could be learned through self-belief and this book claims to transform thought processes. He teaches at a school whose alumni include Alexander McQueen, Stella McCartney and Lucien Freud and one of his ideas is Contradict yourself more often. You can try that. No you can’t.

“One of his ideas is ‘You can contradict yourself more often.’

You can try that. No you can’t.”

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Brain Maker | Dr David Perlmutter | $29.99

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In Brain Maker, Perlmutter–bestselling author of Grain Brain–explains the important relationship between the brain and intestinal microbes, uncovering the powerful role gut bacteria has in determining your brain’s function and wellbeing. With simple dietary recommendations and a practical program of six steps to improving gut ecology, Brain Maker opens the door to unprecedented brain health potential.

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Lifestyle All the Buildings in Sydney | James Gulliver-Hancock | $29.95 James Gulliver-Hancock has penned a love letter to his hometown of Sydney with this collection of unique and thoroughly charming illustrations.

The buildings he has drawn demonstrate the city’s diverse architectural styles and successfully captures the technical elements of Sydney’s architecture, all while maintaining a vibrant colour palette and emphasising some fun and offbeat details that a wanderer wouldn’t normally notice.

A must-see for Sydneysiders, both past and present, and also a brilliant present for friends and family living overseas.

Picnic in Provence | Elizabeth Bard | $29.99

Creative Schools: Revolutionising Education from the Ground Up | Ken Robinson | $32.99 Internationally acclaimed expert on creativity and advocate for educational reform Sir Ken Robinson’s latest book will serve not only as a visionary manifesto for years to come but also as a road map to immediately practicable improvements in school curricula and assessment systems. Robinson, witty and engaging, shares here his extensive grasp of how the machinery of education is a deeply flawed legacy of past times and of how all students, alive with imagination and a potential love of learning, deserve better. Readers in general—and teachers, parents and policy makers in particular—will be helped and inspired by this book.

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Elizabeth Bard, author of Lunch in Paris, is now inviting us on a delicious adventure to the heart of Provence. Bidding farewell to the City of Light after the birth of their son, Elizabeth and her partner settle into a rural life of blue skies, lavender fields and fresh fruit. This move opens the door to becoming culinary entrepreneurs, starting an artisanal ice-cream shop and experimenting with local ingredients–all while renovating a historic cottage and navigating motherhood! Elizabeth tells of the joys and pitfalls with her trademark honesty and humour and, best of all, there are plenty of new mouth-watering French recipes.

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