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Vol. 22 No. 8 September 2015
Indigenous Literacy Day Wednesday September 2nd 2015
Australian Literature The Mountain Shadow by Gregory David Roberts ($47, HB)
Indigenous Literacy Day
Indigenous Literacy Day is here again, and I don't need to remind you of the strength of our commitment to the Indigenous Literacy Foundation. I urge you to take a look at the Foundation's excellent website ilf.org.au to get a comprehensive and up-to-the-minute look at what we've been up to. I hope that you can, and will continue to support the Foundation's work. ILD was set up to ask for public support on a day that the book industry pledges to donate funds to the Indigenous Literacy Project. Publishers and booksellers for the past 10 years have pledged funds and we ask you to help as well. You can donate anytime online, or by all means come in to Gleebooks and put a donation in our ILF 'money jar' to show your support. This will help buy books, literacy resources, and make translations into own language and Community-originated publications a reality. Thanks to all those who came, or passed on good wishes for our recent celebratory party, Gleebooks' 40th anniversary. Recently retired Allen and Unwin executive director Paul Donovan, former NSW Upper House President Meredith Burgman, and cherished Australian author David Malouf all spoke beautifully, and, I think, a very good night was had by all. I'd like to thank party organiser supremo, our splendid Events Manager, Liz Allen, and her team, for all the creative and hard work. We'll do it again, some time, I hope. I've just had a week off—most of it spent at the very beautiful Wilson's Promontory in Victoria, which we'd never before visited. I'm a simple soul; besides good food and drink, all I ask of a holiday is lots of walking and reading time—and I managed to finish, or consume, four splendid books. Two memoirs, and two recent or new novels: I mentioned last month that I'd started Richard Glover's Flesh Wounds. Sure, it's a hell of a weird couple of parents fate delivered to Glover, and the mere recording of his upbringing and its life-long impact would make for good reading. But Flesh Wounds is much more than that—at once personally affecting and splendidly entertaining, original and disarmingly candid. Read it and see. The second memoir The Shepherd's Life: a Tale of the Lake District shares the superficial distinction of geography with Flesh Wounds (Glover's parents are Lancashire born). But the lives of Glover's parents and that of author James Rebanks and his forebears couldn't be more different. I loved this beautiful recounting of attachment to place and destiny. I've not previously come across a memoir of a shepherd before, and I found it fascinating and incredibly informative. Rebanks takes no prisoners in an opinion-loaded narrative (tourists to the Lakes District get a big serve), but his is a working life so deeply rooted in our history of connection to the natural world that he takes you with him. Margaret Atwood's The Heart Goes Last (publishing late September) is her first stand-alone novel in fifteen years. Witty, macabre, sharp-edged and intelligent as ever, Atwood has constructed a near-future scenario as funny as it is alarming, and explored the meaning and consequence of freedom and choice with typical, idiosyncratic brilliance. And I have to mention that, although it has taken me a year to get to it, Colm Toibin's Nora Webster won me entirely, as his fiction always does. It's a novel about death, grief and regrowth, written in a beautifully restrained language of everyday meaning and understanding that marks his work. I found it quite beautiful—and very moving. David Gaunt
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It has been two years since the events in Gregory David Robert's epic, Shantaram, and since Lin lost two people he had come to love: his father figure, Khaderbhai, and his soul mate, Karla, married to a handsome Indian media tycoon. Lin returns from a smuggling trip to a city that seems to have changed too much, too soon. Many of his old friends are long gone, the new mafia leadership has become entangled in increasingly violent and dangerous intrigues, and a fabled holy man challenges everything that Lin thought he'd learned about love and life. But Lin can't leave the Island City: Karla, and a fatal promise, won't let him go.
The Promise Seed by Cass Moriarty ($29.95, PB) An elderly man, living alone in the suburbs, thinks back on his life—the missed opportunities, the shocking betrayals, the rare moments of joy. When his 10 year-old neighbour hides in his garden one afternoon, they begin an unexpected friendship that offers a reprieve from their individual struggles. The boy, often left on his own by his mother, finds solace in gardening & playing chess with his new friend, who is still battling the demons of his past. As a sinister figure enters the boy's life, he must choose between a burgeoning friendship & blood ties. Can the old man protect the boy he has come to know—and redeem the boy he once was? Where There's Smoke: Outstanding Short Stories by Australian Men ($25, PB)
A man sleeps at the site of a massacre and wakes refreshed. An unassuming piano tuner is sent off to contribute to the war effort. A woman with Alzheimer's is dragged along by her interfering son to visit Uluru. D.B.C. Pierre, Nam Le, Rodney Hall, J.M. Coetzee, A.S. Patric, Murray Bail, Tony Birch, David Malouf, Shane Maloney, Tim Winton, Patrick Cullen, Alex Miller, Kim Scott, Liam Davidson, Frank Moorhouse, Ryan O'Neill, James Bradley, Patrick Holland, Peter Goldsworthy & Chris Womersley contribute to these tales of love, secrets, doubt and torment, the everyday & the extraordinary.
Rush Oh! by Shirley Barrett ($33, PB)
When the eldest daughter of a whaling family in Eden, NSW, sets out to chronicle the particularly difficult season of 1908, the story she tells is poignant & hilarious, filled with drama & misadventure. Swinging from her own hopes & disappointments, both domestic & romantic, to the challenges that beset their tiny whaling operation, Mary's tale is entirely relatable despite the 100 odd years that separate her world from ours. Chronicling her family's struggle to survive the season & her own attempts to navigate an all-consuming crush on an itinerant whaleman with a murky past, Rush Oh! is also a celebration of an extraordinary episode in Australian history when a family of whalers formed a fond, unique allegiance with a pod of Killer whales—and in particular, a Killer whale named Tom.
The Secret Son by Jenny Ackland ($30, PB)
An old woman sits waiting in a village that clings to a Turkish mountainside, where the women weave rugs, make tea & keep blood secrets that span generations. Berna can see what others cannot, so her secrets are deeper and darker than most. It is time for her to tell her story, even though the man for whom her words are meant won't hear them. It is time for the truth to be told. Nearly 100 years before, her father James had come to the village on the back of a donkey, gravely ill, rescued from the abandoned trenches of Gallipoli by a Turkish boy whose life he had earlier spared. James made his life there, never returning to Australia and never realising that his own father was indeed the near-mythical bushranger that the gossips had hinted at when he'd been a boy growing up in Beechworth. Now, as Berna waits, a young man from Melbourne approaches to visit his parents' village, against the vehement opposition of his cursed, tight-lipped grandfather. What is the astonishing story behind the dark deeds that connect the two men, unknown to each other and living almost a century apart?
The Landing by Susan Johnson ($30, PB)
Jonathan Lott is confused. His wife has left him for a woman and he doesn't like living alone. Is it true that an about-to-be-divorced man in possession of a good fortune is in need of a new wife? Would Penny Collins do, divorced herself, school teacher and frustrated artist? What about beautiful Anna, blown in from who knows where, trailing broken marriages behind her? There's a lot happening at The Landing, where Jonathan has his beach house, and he's about to find out how much love matters. Susan Johnson's stunning new novel, written with her trademark wit and insight, brilliantly observes what it is to be human and to love: the betrayals, the long and the short alliances, the disappointments and the joys. The Landing celebrates all of it with verve and style.
FAIR DAY On D'Hill
New Text Classics by Randolph Stow, $12.95 each The Suburbs of Hell (intr. by Michelle de Kretser) Tourmaline (intr. by Gabrielle Carey) To the Islands (intr. by Bernadette Brennan) The Girl Green as Elderflower (intr. by Kerryn Goldsworthy) Visitants (intr. by Drusilla Modjeska)
Sunday September 13 Exclusive Pre-Publication Book Signing
Fever of Animals by Miles Allinson ($30, PB)
'For nearly five years I have wanted to write something about the surrealist painter Emil Bafdescu: about his paintings, one of which hangs in a little restaurant in Melbourne, and about his disappearance, which is still a mystery. But this is probably not going to be the book I imagined. Nothing has quite worked out the way I planned.' With the inheritance he received upon his father's death, Miles has come to Europe on the trail of the Romanian surrealist, who disappeared into a forest in 1967. But in trying to unravel the mystery of Bafdescu's secret life, Miles must also reckon with his own. Faced with a language and a landscape that remain stubbornly out of reach, and condemned to wait for someone who may never arrive, Miles is haunted by thoughts of his exgirlfriend, Alice, and the trip they took to Venice that ended their relationship..
The Waiting Room by Leah Kaminsky ($33, PB)
Dina is a family doctor living in the melting-pot city of Haifa, Israel. Born in Australia in a Jewish enclave of Melbourne to Holocaust survivors, Dina left behind a childhood marred by misery and the tragedies of the past to build a new life for herself in the Promised Land. After starting a family of her own, she finds her life falling apart beneath the demands of her eccentric patients, a marriage starting to fray, the ever-present threat of terrorist attack and the ghost of her mother, haunting her with memories that Dina would prefer to leave on the other side of the world. Reaching back in a single climactic day through six decades and across three continents to uncover a truth that could save Dina's sanity—and her life.
Buy a copy of Cornersmith: Recipes From the Café & Picklery Have it signed by the authors, Alex Elliott-Howery & James Grant, and receive a Cornersmith shopping bag and a jar of preserved lemons. Gleebooks will donate 10% of sales of the book to the Marrickville Community Fund. 11.30am–12.30pm at Gleebooks Dulwich Hill Then after the Fair, at 4pm, join Peter Doyle and his band at Petersham Bowlo for the launch of his new crime novel The Big Whatever. See you there, Morgan Beauty is a Wound by Eka Kurniawan ($33, PB)
Honour, Duty, Courage by Mohamed Khadra
When old friends Jack and Tom volunteer for the army medical corps, both men are unaware that their lives are about to change forever. Jack is a first-class vascular surgeon with a strong sense of duty to his country, and Tom a highly respected anaesthetist with a young child. Given 48 hours to deploy, they leave behind their comfortable lives – and the petty rivalries and mindless bureaucracy of the Victoria Hospital – for a war zone where their emotional and psychological strength will be tested to the limit. Who can they trust when even young children are potential suicide bombers, and insurgents could be within their very ranks? Will they both return? And if so, will they be able to take up their lives where they left off? ($35, PB)
International Literature
Whispers Through a Megaphone by Rachel Elliott ($33, PB)
35 year-old Miriam hasn't left her house in three years, and cannot raise her voice above a whisper. But today she has had enough, and is finally ready to rejoin the outside world. Maybe it's time to stop living in the shadow of her abusive dead mother? Meanwhile, timid psychotherapist Ralph has made the mistake of opening a closet door, only to discover that his wife Sadie doesn't love him. Yet everyone else seems to have known all about their unhappy marriage – from her tweets. He decides to run away. But where can he go? Each of them is hungry to make sense of the chaos in their lives. Miriam and Ralph's chance meeting in a local wood marks the beginning of a quirky and mutually supportive friendship. With Ralph's gentle help, Miriam begins to piece together her own truth. Because sometimes, the world can seem too much for just one person.
Dispossession by Simon Grennan ($55, HB)
England, 1873. John Caldigate, a young gentleman, gets into debt gambling and decides to try his luck in the gold fields of New South Wales. On the outward journey, he promises to marry Mrs Smith, a divorced actress who is travelling in the same ship. Returning home a rich man, John marries Hester, the sweetheart he left behind. Soon, Mrs Smith also returns from Australia, penniless, and claims that she is already his wife. Inspired by Anthony Trollope's 1879 novel John Caldigate, Dispossession embeds the reader in a uniquely wrought experience of the mid-nineteenth century, including the first ever appearance of the Aboriginal Wiradjuri language in a graphic novel.
Beauty Is a Wound combines history, satire, family tragedy, legend, humour, and romance in an astonishing epic novel, in which the beautiful Indo prostitute Dewi Ayu and her four daughters are beset by every monstrosity. Kurniawan's gleefully grotesque hyperbole is a scathing critique of his young nation's troubled past: the rapacious offhand greed of colonialism; the chaotic struggle for independence; the 1965 mass murders, followed by three decades of Suharto's despotic rule. Drawing on local sources—folk tales and the all-night shadow puppet plays, with their bawdy wit—and inspired by Melville and Gogol, Beauty is a Wound is passionate and ironic, exuberant and confronting. Hailed as 'the next Pramoedya', Eka Kurniawan is an exciting new voice in contemporary literature.
We Never Asked for Wings by Vanessa Diffenbaugh ($30, PB)
How far would you go for your children? Would you lie for them? Flee with them? Let someone else mother them if you thought they would do a better job? As a single parent, Letty does everything for her two children—apart from raise them. Being a mother terrifies her more than she can admit, and so she's always let her mother take that role. When Maria Elena ups and leaves, however, Letty has to confront her fears and become the parent she doesn't think she can be. Even as she tries to give her children a future, Letty's teenage son, Alex, struggles to forgive his mother for choices she made in the past. But he and Letty are not so dissimilar, and both are prepared to risk everything for those they love.
Let Me Tell You: New Stories, Essays& Other Writings by Shirley Jackson ($54, HB)
From the renowned author of The Lottery and The Haunting of Hill House, a spectacular new volume of previously unpublished and uncollected stories, essays, and other writings. Let Me Tell You brings together the deliciously eerie short stories Jackson is best known for, along with frank, inspiring lectures on writing; comic essays about her large, boisterous family; and whimsical drawings. Jackson's landscape here is most frequently domestic: dinner parties & bridge, household budgets & homeward-bound commutes, children's games & neighbourly gossip. But this familiar setting is also her most subversive: She wields humour, terror & the uncanny to explore the real challenges of marriage, parenting & community—the pressure of social norms, the veins of distrust in love, the constant lack of time & space.
Also New Rembrandt's Mirror by Kim Devereux ($28, PB)
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Kim Devereaux's debut novel explores the three women of Rembrandt's life, and the towering passions of the artist, seen through the eyes of his last, great love, Hendrickje.
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International Literature
90mm
Two Years Eight Months and Twenty-Eight Nights by Salman Rushdie ($33, PB)
‘Reading Under Cover feels like eavesdropping on some of the most fascinating conversations in the history of Australian publishing.’
In the near future, after a storm strikes New York City, the strangenesses begin. A down-to-earth gardener finds that his feet no longer touch the ground. A graphic novelist awakens in his bedroom to a mysterious entity that resembles his own sub-Stan Lee creation. Abandoned at the mayor's office, a baby identifies corruption with her mere presence, marking the guilty with blemishes and boils. A seductive gold digger is soon tapped to combat forces beyond imagining. Unbeknownst to them, they are all descended from the whimsical, capricious, wanton creatures known as the jinn, who live in a world separated from ours by a veil—and they will play a role in an epic war between light and dark spanning a thousand and one nights—or two years, eight months, and twenty-eight nights.
The Blue Guitar by John Banville ($33, PB) They leave so little trace, out lost ones. Oliver Orme used to be a painter, well known and well rewarded, but the muse has deserted him. He is also, as he confesses, a thief; he does not steal for gain, but for the thrill of possession, the need to capture and fix the world around him. His worst theft is Polly, the wife of his friend Marcus, with whom he has had an affair. When the affair is discovered, Oliver hides himself away in his childhood home and from here he tells the story of a year, from one autumn to the next. Set in a reimagined Ireland that is both familiar and deeply unsettling, The Blue Guitar reveals a life haunted by the desire to possess and always aware of the frailty of the human heart.
Fiona McFarlane, author of The Night Guest
Where My Heart Used to Beat by Sebastian Faulks
On a small island off the south coast of France, Robert Hendricks, an English doctor who has seen the best & the worst the 20th century had to offer, is forced to confront the events that made up his life. His host, and antagonist, is Alexander Pereira, a man whose time is running out, but who seems to know more about his guest than Hendricks himself does. The search for sanity takes the reader through the war in Italy in 1944, a passionate love that seems to hold out hope, the great days of idealistic work in the 1960s and finally, unforgettably, back into the trenches of the Western Front. ($33, PB)
Fortune Smiles: Stories by Adam Johnson 265mm
Pulitzer Prize for Fiction winner for The Orphan Master's Son, Adam Johnson, takes the reader into the minds of characters they never thought they would meet—a former Stasi prison warden in denial of his past, a refugee from North Korea unsettled by his new freedom, a UPS driver in hurricane-torn Louisiana looking for the mother of his son. These are tales of love and loss, natural disasters, the influence of technology, and how the political shapes the personal. ($33, PB)
The Shepherd's Crown by Terry Pratchett
‘It was such a pleasure to be reminded of the generous spirit which fuelled Australian independent publishing in the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s. Craig Munro writes about what lies at the heart of good publishing and editing: relationships.’ Sophie Cunningham, writer and publisher
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Terry Pratchett's final Discworld novel. Deep in the Chalk, something is stirring. The owls & the foxes can sense it, and Tiffany Aching feels it in her boots. An old enemy is gathering strength. This is a time of endings & beginnings, old friends & new, a blurring of edges & a shifting of power. Now Tiffany stands between the light & the dark, the good & the bad. As the fairy horde prepares for invasion, Tiffany must summon all the witches to stand with her. To protect the land. Her land. There will be a reckoning. ($45, HB)
Nelly Dean by Alison Case ($30, PB)
A reimagining of life at Wuthering Heights through the eyes of the Earnshaws' loyal servant, Nelly Dean. Young Nelly Dean has been Hindley's closest companion for as long as she can remember, living freely at the great house, Wuthering Heights. But when the benevolence of the master brings a wild child into the house, Nelly must follow in her mother's footsteps, be called servant and give herself to the family completely. But Nelly is not the only one who must serve. When a new heir is born, a reign of violence begins that will test Nelly's spirit as she finds out what it is to know true sacrifice. Nelly Dean is a heartbreaking accompaniment to Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights—the story of a woman who is fated to bear the pain of a family she is unable to leave, and unable to save.
Tram 83 by Fiston Mwanza Mujila ($25, PB) In an African city in recession, which could be Kinshasa or Lubumbashi, land tourists of all languages and nationalities. They have only one desire: to make a fortune by exploiting the mineral wealths of the country. They work during the day in mining concession and, as soon as night falls, they go out to get drunk, dance, eat and abandon themselves in Tram 83, the only night-club of the city, the den of all the outlaws: ex children-soldiers, prostitutes, blank students, unmarried mothers, sorcerers' apprentices. Lucien, a professional writer, fleeing the exactions and the censorship, finds refuge in the city thanks to Requiem, a youth friend. Requiem lives mainly on theft and on swindle while Lucien only thinks of writing and living honestly. Around them gravitate gangsters and young girls, retired or runaway men, profit-seeking tourists and federal agents of a non-existent State. An African-rap or rhapsody novel or puzzle-novel hammered by rhythms of jazz, Tram 83 is an observation of human relationships in a world that has become a global village.
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Purity by Jonathan Franzen ($32.99, PB)
Young Pip Tyler doesn't know who she is. She knows that her real name is Purity, that she's saddled with $130,000 in student debt, that she's squatting with anarchists in Oakland, and that her relationship with her mother—her only family—is hazardous. She doesn't have a clue who her father is, why her mother chose to live as a recluse with an invented name, or how she'll ever have a normal life. Enter the Germans. A glancing encounter with a German peace activist leads Pip to an internship in South America with The Sunlight Project, an organisation that traffics in all the secrets of the world—including, Pip hopes, the secret of her origins. TSP is the brainchild of Andreas Wolf, a charismatic provocateur who rose to fame in the chaos following the fall of the Berlin Wall. Now on the lam in Bolivia, Andreas is drawn to Pip for reasons she doesn't understand, and the intensity of her response to him upends her conventional ideas of right and wrong. Jonathan Franzen follows the interwining paths of these Californians & East Germans, good parents & bad, journalists & leakers through landscapes as contemporary as the omnipresent Internet and as ancient as the war between the sexes.
Submission by Michel Houellebecq ($32.99, PB)
In a near-future France, François, a middle-aged academic, is watching his life slowly dwindle to nothing. His sex drive is diminished, his parents are dead, and his lifelong obsession—the ideas and works of the 19th century novelist Joris-Karl Huysmans—has led him nowhere. In a late-capitalist society where consumerism has become the new religion, François is spiritually barren, but seeking to fill the vacuum of his existence. And he is not alone. As the 2022 Presidential election approaches, two candidates emerge as favourites: Marine Le Pen of the Front National, and Muhammed Ben Abbes of the nascent Muslim Fraternity. Forming a controversial alliance with the mainstream parties, Ben Abbes sweeps to power, and overnight the country is transformed. Islamic law comes into force: women are veiled, polygamy is encouraged and, for François, life is set on a new course.
Seiobo There Below by Laszlo Krasznahorkai
The Japanese goddess Seiobo returning to mortal realms in search of perfection. An ancient Buddha being restored; the Italian renaissance painter Perugino managing his workshop; a Japanese Noh actor rehearsing; a fanatic of Baroque music lecturing to a handful of old villagers; tourists intruding into the rituals of Japan's most sacred shrine; a heron as it gracefully hunts its prey. Told in chapters that sweep us across the world and through time, covering the furthest reaches of human experience, Krasznahorkai demands that we pause and ask ourselves these questions: What is sacred? How do we define beauty? What makes great art endure? Finalist for the 2015 Man Booker International Prize. ($33, HB)
Cobalt Blue by Sachin Kundalkar ($35, HB)
A paying guest seems like a win-win proposition to the Joshi family. He's ready with the rent, he's willing to lend a hand when he can and he's happy to listen to Mrs Joshi on the imminent collapse of our culture. But he's also a man of mystery. He has no last name. He has no family, no friends, no history and no plans for the future. The siblings Tanay and Anuja are smitten by him. He overturns their lives. And when he vanishes, he breaks their hearts. 'Weaving two relationships together, one homosexual, the other heterosexual, Kundalker creates a work that is replete with ellipses and silences.' Shanta Gokhale.
A Hand Reached Down to Guide Me by David Gates ($28, PB)
A woman moving calamitously into middle-age; a musician taking in a friend with terminal cancer; a failed actor moving to the country: cynical, unreliable, sinking into middle age or alcoholism, dealing with physical decline or mediocrity, David Gates's characters are a dark reflection of our own urban and suburban lives. Terrifyingly self-aware, overcome by the burdens of the human condition, they find their impulses pulling them away from comfort into distraction or catastrophe. But wherever it is they're going—and sometimes it's nowhere fast—they won't go gently.
SPECIAL OFFER - 3 FOR THE PRICE OF 2
THE NEOPOLITAN NOVELS, BOOKS 1, 2 & 3 BY ELENA FERRANTE ($22.95 each)
October sees the release of Book 4 in the Neapolitan series by Elena Ferrante—the enthralling chronicle of a friendship between 2 women, Elena and Lila, that is obsessive, loving, complicated, hurtful, enduring and constantly startling. Get the first three for the price of two and be prepared for book 4—Story of the Lost Child. Bk 1: My Brilliant Friend Bk 2: The Story of a New Name Bk 3: Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay
Sweet Caress by William Boyd ($30, PB)
Amory's first memory is of her father standing on his head. She has memories of him returning on leave during WW1. But his absences, both actual & emotional, are what she chiefly remembers. It is her photographer uncle Greville who supplies the emotional bond she needs, and, when he gives her a camera & some rudimentary lessons in photography, unleashes a passion that will irrevocably shape her future. Amory begins an apprenticeship with Greville in London, living in his tiny flat in Kensington, earning two pounds a week photographing socialites for the magazine Beau Monde. But her search for life, love & artistic expression will take her to the demi monde of Berlin of the late 20s, to New York of the 30s, to the Blackshirt riots in London and to France in the WW2 where she becomes one of the first women war photographers. Her desire for experience will lead Amory to further wars, to lovers, husbands and children as she continues to pursue her dreams and battle her demons.
Man on Fire by Stephen Kelman ($30, PB)
John Lock has come to India to meet his destiny: a destiny dressed in a white karate suit and sporting an extravagant moustache. He has fled the quiet desperation of his life in England: decades spent in a meaningless job, a marriage foundering in the wake of loss, and a terrible secret he can not bear to share with his wife. He has come to offer his help to a man who has learned to conquer pain, a man whose extreme record-breaking achievements include 43 kicks to the unprotected groin in one minute and a half. In answering Bibhuti Nayak's call for assistance, John hopes to rewrite a brave end to a life poorly lived. But as John is welcomed into Bibhuti's home, into the chaos and colour of Navi Mumbai— where he encounters ping-pong-playing monks, a fearless, 7 year-old martial-arts warrior, an old man hoping for the monsoon to wash him away, and Bibhuti's long-suffering family—he learns more about life, and death, and everything in between than he could ever have imagined.
The Seed Collectors by Scarlett Thomas ($30, PB)
Aunt Oleander is dead. In the Garden of England her extended family gather to remember her, to tell stories and to rekindle old memories. To each of her nearest and dearest Oleander has left a precious seed pod. But along with it comes a family secret that could open the hardest of hearts but also break the closest ties . . . A complex and fiercely contemporary tale of inheritance, enlightenment, life, death, desire and family trees, a 'treasure house of detail' revealing all that it means to be connected, to be part of a society, to be part of the universe and to be human.
When a lovelorn Yahp joins her ageing parents to retrace their honeymoon around their former home, Malaysia, the reality is far from the Technicolor love story they’d envisaged. Instead they discover a country with many fascinating but deeply troubling sides to it – corruption, censorship and injustice continue. Only the family mantra, “Eat first, talk later”, keeps them (and perhaps the nation) from falling apart. Thirty-two years on from The Colour of Magic, Sir Terry Pratchett’s first Discworld novel, his remarkable legacy continues with the 41st book in the much-loved fantasy series. He completed The Shepherd’s Crown in the winter of 2014, not long before he passed. In this, the final Discworld novel, witch Tiffany Aching must summon her fellow witches to stand united and protect the land from an invading fairy horde.
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THE WILDER AISLES
Poor Janice has been stricken by a late winter bug, at the same time as moving house (a comedy of errors she assures me wasn't that funny)—sympathy emails to janice@gleebooks.com.au would be welcomed! So Gleeclubber Sonia, aka Granny's Good Reads has stepped up to fill the September Wilder Aisles breach.
Seveneves, by Neal Stephenson, is not the sort of book I usually read—but after the first few pages where the moon explodes and the President of the United States announces on television that the world will soon be destroyed by Hard Rain, I had to read on. The International Space Station, run by a dedicated crew with a team of clever robots, becomes a Cloud Ark, with every nation sending one boy and one girl to form tiny arklets in a cluster around it. If you can suspend disbelief and accept that humans could survive long-term under these conditions without support from Earth, you will continue reading in order to find out what happens to Dinah, Ivy, Doob, Tekla and the others, and the President, who arrives clandestinely and almost wrecks the whole enterprise. By the end of Part 2 they are left with eight women, seven of whom become the eponymous 'Seven Eves' and Mothers of the Seven Tribes of Part 3. Set 5000 years later, part 3 sees the Tribes, now on what remains of Earth, encountering descendants of the original inhabitants—among them the Diggers (from Dinah’s father Rufus), and the Pingers from Ivy’s submariner fiancé. My disbelief suspension was strained by this stage, though my grandchildren would probably have little difficulty. Nevertheless I finished the book, a tribute to the author’s capacity to sustain interest.
I reread R.Crumb’s History of Genesis Illustrated, with its hundreds of gritty b/w drawings by the author of Fritz the Cat and other underground classics. The characters fairly vibrate on the page. Adam and Eve romp naked in the Garden until a plausible Serpent tempts them and they are ejected into a new hard-scrabble existence wearing coats made from animal skins by the Creator Himself. An angry Cain bashes Abel’s head with a rock. Noah’s animals burst out of the Ark on to newly dry land after the Big Tsunami. The inhabitants of Sodom and Gomorrah are a scary bunch of bovver boys whose cities are demolished by the biblical equivalent of Hard Rain. A tearful Isaac is taken bound to the place of sacrifice. Later he meets his bride, Rebekah, who wears a fetching nose ring. At Pharaoh’s court, Joseph embraces his treacherous brethren who sold him into slavery. The footnotes and commentary are a valuable part of the book, with Crumb suggesting that Abraham’s Sarai might have originally been a Priestess in the old Matriarchy. There is a PG warning on the cover, wise advice because Crumb has included all the less edifying bits. The story of Dinah is an absolute shocker.
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After two blockbusters, it was with some relief that I turned to my favourite detective novel, Gaudy Night by Dorothy Sayers—first published in 1935. The heroine, detective novelist Harriet Vane, first appears in Strong Poison where she is accused of poisoning her lover and is saved from the gallows in the nick of time by Lord Peter Wimsey—who falls in love with her and makes regular proposals of marriage. She keeps refusing, silly girl, because Lord Peter is every thinking woman’s ideal hero—intelligent, considerate and rich. In Gaudy Night Harriet is in Oxford at her old college where a poltergeist cum poison pen figure is causing havoc—dons and undergraduates are all under suspicion. In the course of her investigation Harriet meets a few students as well as some young men from other colleges, and even Lord Peter’s scapegrace nephew. A frightening incident prompts Harriet to enlist the aid of Lord Peter himself. From then on everything heats up, with an attempt made on her life. Susceptible readers, interested in the romance between Peter and Harriet as well as the 'who-dunnit', will be happy to know that on the very last page Harriet succumbs and the pair are left embracing in academic dress, a perfect ending to a perfect novel. They can also, if they wish, accompany them on their Busman’s Honeymoon. Sonia Lee
Crime Fiction
Splinter the Silence by Val McDermid ($30, PB)
Psychological profiler Tony Hill is trained to see patterns, to decode the mysteries of human behaviour, and when he comes across a series of suicides among women tormented by vicious online predators, he begins to wonder if there is more to these tragedies than meets the eye. Similar circumstances, different deaths. Could it be murder? But what kind of serial killer wants his crimes to stay hidden?
X by Sue Grafton ($30, PB) When a glamorous red head wishes to locate the son she put up for adoption thirty-two years ago, it seems like an easy two hundred bucks for P. I. Kinsey Millhone. But when a cop tells her she was paid with marked bills, and Kinsey's client is nowhere to be found, it becomes apparent this mystery woman has something to hide. Riled, Kinsey won't stop until she's found out who fooled her and why. Meanwhile, he friend Pete Wolinsky's IRS audit takes a treacherous turn when Kinsey finds a coded list amongst her friend's files. It soon leads her to an unhinged man with a catalogue of ruined lives left in his wake.
Arcadia by Iain Pears ($30, PB) 1962, and Henry Lytten, a spy turned academic & writer, embarks on the story of Jay, an 11 year-old boy who has grown up within the embrace of his family in a rural, peaceful world—a kind of Arcadia. But when a supernatural vision causes Jay to question the rules of his world, he is launched on a life-changing journey. Meanwhile, in the real world, one of Lytten's former intelligence colleagues tracks him down for one last assignment. As he and his characters struggle with questions of free will, love, duty and the power of the imagination, Lytten discovers he is not sure how he wants his stories to end, nor even who is imaginary. Black-Eyed Susans by Julia Heaberlin ($33, PB) 17 year-old Tessa, dubbed a 'Black-Eyed Susan' by the media, became famous for being the only victim to survive the vicious attack of a serial killer. Her testimony helped to put a dangerous criminal behind bars— or so she thought. Now, decades later, the case has been reopened and the black-eyed Susans planted outside Tessa's bedroom window seem to be a message from a killer who should be safely in prison. Tessa agrees to help with the investigation, but she is haunted by fragmented memories of the night she was attacked and terrified for her own teenage daughter's safety. Can she unlock the truth about the killer before it's too late?.
The Voices Beyond by Johan Theorin ($33, PB) Summer on the beautiful Swedish island of Öland. Visitors arrive in their thousands, ready to enjoy the calm & relaxation of this paradise. Amongst them is Jonas Kloss, excited at the prospect of staying with his aunt, uncle & older cousins. But it is not as he had hoped. One night he takes a boat out onto the moonlit sea. A ship looms out of the darkness and the horror he finds on board is unimaginable. Fleeing for his life, Jonas arrives at the door of an elderly islander, Gerlof Davidsson. Once Gerlof has heard his tale of dead sailors and axe-wielding madmen, he realizes that this will be a summer like none other Öland has ever seen. Make Me by Lee Child ($33, PB)
Jack Reacher has no place to go, and all the time in the world to get there, so a remote railroad stop on the prairie with the curious name of Mother's Rest seems perfect for an aimless one-day stopover. He expects to find a lonely pioneer tombstone in a sea of nearly-ripe wheat ... but instead there is a woman waiting for a missing colleague, a cryptic note about two hundred deaths, and a small town full of silent, watchful people. Reacher's one-day stopover becomes an open-ended quest— into the heart of darkness.
Post Mortem by Kate London ($25, PB) A long-serving beat cop in the Met and a teenage girl fall to their deaths from a tower block in London's East End. Left alive on the roof are a five year old boy and rookie police officer Lizzie Griffiths. Within hours, Lizzie Griffiths has disappeared, and DPS officer Sarah Collins sets out to uncover the truth around the grisly deaths, in an investigation which takes her into the dark heart of policing in London. Grounded in the terrifying realities of life on the force in a city where the affluent middle-classes live cheek-by-jowl with the poorest immigrants, this is an intelligent crime novel by an author who has walked the beat.
Undermajordomo Minor by Patrick deWitt ($28, PB)
Lucien (Lucy) Minor is the resident odd duck in the bucolic hamlet of Bury. Friendless and loveless, young and aimless, he is a compulsive liar and a melancholy weakling. When Lucy accepts employment assisting the majordomo of the remote, forbidding castle of the Baron Von Aux he meets thieves, madmen, aristocrats & a puppy. He also meets Klara, a delicate beauty who is, unfortunately, already involved with an exceptionally handsome partisan soldier. Thus begins a tale of polite theft, bitter heartbreak, domestic mystery and cold-blooded murder in which every aspect of human behaviour is laid bare for our hero to observe. Lucy must stay safe, and protect his puppy, because someone or something is roaming the corridors of the castle late at night.
Detective Work by John Dale ($29.95, PB)
When Dimitri Telegonus is promoted to the Serious Unsolved Crime Unit to investigate the disappearance of a beautiful blonde escort, he thinks he’s finally made the big time. He’d always wanted to do detective work; thought it was his destiny. But things quickly start to unravel. His assigned partner is a disinterested dinosaur and when progress in the investigation is slow, the bosses threaten to pull the plug. Desperate to crack his first cold case, Dimitri tracks the prime suspect down— only to find there are forces at play a naïve young detective will never fully understand. Shirley by Susan Merrell Scarf ($24.99, PB) Best known for her short story The Lottery, Shirley Jackson is an endlessly fascinating figure whose chilling tales of psychological suspense are still widely read and taught around the world. In this darkly captivating novel, Susan Scarf Merrell uses the facts of Jackson's life as a springboard to explore the 1964 disappearance of Paula Weldon, a young Bennington College student. Told through the eyes of Rose Nemser—the wife of a graduate student working with Jackson's husband, Bennington professor Stanley Edgar Hyman—Shirley reimagines the connections between the Hymans' volatile marriage and one of the era's great unsolved mysteries.
Oliver Orme used to be a wellknown painter, but the muse has deserted him. He is also a thief. His worst theft is Polly, the wife of his friend Marcus, with whom he has had an affair. A story of betrayal of friendship by Man Booker Prize-winner John Banville, The Blue Guitar reveals the life of a man desperate for love and haunted by the desire to possess.
Blade of Light by Andrea Camilleri ($30, PB)
When a gentleman arrives at Montalbano's station to report an armed robbery on his wife that ended with a kiss, the inspector's suspicions are aroused. Montalbano finds that none of the witnesses' stories are adding up, and when a body turns up showing all the signs of a mafia hit, the inspector knows he must excavate further. Meanwhile there's a case that keeps winding its way back to Montalbano's office. A locked door has suddenly appeared on a farmer's disused shed, and then, just as quickly, the door disappears. When the anti-terrorist police intervene, Montalbano senses that this case is somehow connected to him.
The American by Nadia Dalbuono ($33, PB) The queues outside the soup kitchens of Rome are lengthening and the people are taking to the piazzas, increasingly frustrated by the deepening economic crisis. Detective Leone Scamarcio is called to an apparent suicide on the Ponte Sant Angelo, a stone's throw from Vatican City. A man is hanging from the bridge, his expensive suit suggesting yet another businessman fallen on hard times. But Scamarcio is immediately troubled by similarities with the 1982 murder of Roberto Calvi, dubbed 'God's Banker' because of his work for the Vatican Bank. Then US Intelligence warns Scamarcio to drop his investigation. The Moth Catcher by Ann Cleeves ($30, PB) Life seems perfect in Valley Farm, a quiet community in Northumberland. But a shocking discovery shatters the silence. A young ecologist named Patrick who has been employed as a housesitter is found dead by the side of the lane into the valley—a beautiful, lonely place to die. DI Vera Stanhope, with her detectives Holly and Joe look round the attic of the big house, where Patrick has a flat, and find the body of a second man. Both victims have a common fascination with moths—catching these beautiful, rare creatures. As Vera is drawn into the claustrophobic world of this increasingly strange community, she realizes that there may be deadly secrets trapped here Mycroft Holmes by Kareem Abdul-Jabbar ($30, HB)
Set in England and Trinidad, the story centres on Mycroft, a recent university graduate working for the British Secretary of State for War. Mycroft learns from his best friend of troubling events occurring in Trinidad—mysterious disappearances, dead children and strange, backward facing footprints in the sand. Mycroft goes to Trinidad to investigate and to follow his fiancée, Georgiana, who was raised on the island. Brother, Sherlock, has a cameo as a King’s College student.
Trigger Mortis by Anthony Horowitz ($29.99, PB)
James Bond is back where he belongs. Anthony Horowitz's new 007 novel features previously unseen material written by Bond's creator, Ian Fleming. The story begins in the lethal world of Grand Prix and an attempt by the Russians to sabotage a race at Nürburgring, the most dangerous track in Europe. Bond is in the driving seat but events swiftly take an unexpected turn, pitching him into an entirely different race with implications that could change the world.
The Nature of the Beast by Louise Penny ($30, PB) Hardly a day goes by when 9 year-old Laurent Lepage doesn't cry wolf. From alien invasions, to walking trees, to winged beasts in the woods, to dinosaurs spotted in the village of Three Pines, his tales are so extraordinary no one can possibly believe him. But when the boy disappears, former Chief Inspector Armand Gamache is faced with the possibility that one of his tall tales might have been true. And so begins a frantic search for the boy and the truth. What they uncover deep in the forest sets off a sequence of events that leads to murder, leads to an old crime, leads to an old betrayal.
Learn how to tune in to your own vocal intelligence. Voice coach extraordinaire, Dr Louise Mahler, offers up practical exercises, inspiring real-life stories and great tips for identifying the physical and mental blocks to public speaking. Unlock confidence and make your messages – and voice – resonate, whether you’re in front of the class, the PTA or the board of directors.
In 1914, when a group of friends first met, it was a carefree time of innocence for a generation that would lose hope and faith on the battlefields of WW1. Now it is 1940, London is a haunted city, and another war has begun. As the bombs fall, and old temptations and obsessions return, the friends are forced to make choices about what they really want.
The dream of a steady job, home ownership, comfortable retirement and good lives for our children is receding. So why has the world entered a period of prolonged economic stagnation, and what does that mean for all of us? This is a clear-eyed account of the state of the economy from one of the few finance writers capable of generating simultaneous outrage and laughs.
Manhattan Mayhem (ed) Mary Higgins Clark
Mary Higgins Clark invites you on a tour of Manhattan's most iconic neighbourhoods in this anthology of all-new stories from the Mystery Writers of America. From the Flatiron District (Lee Child) & Greenwich Village (Jeffery Deaver) to Little Italy (T. Jefferson Parker) and Chinatown (S. J. Rozan), you'll encounter crimes, mysteries, and riddles large & small. Illustrated with iconic photography of New York City Manhattan Mayhem is a delightful read for armchair detectives & armchair travellers alike! ($45, HB)
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Biography
Tonio: A Requiem Memoir by Adri Van Der Heijden
THE DEBUT NOVEL OF 2015 From the director of Love Serenade and South Solitary
On Pentecost 2010, Tonio—the only son of writer Adri van der Heijden—is hit by a car. He dies of his injuries that same day. Tonio is only 21. His parents are faced with the monstrous task of forging ahead with their lives in the knowledge that their only child will never come home, never again stop by just to catch up, never again go out shopping with his mother and bitch about passers-by, never again ask his father: 'Did you work well today?' Never again. Adri van der Heijden is driven by two compelling questions: what happened to Tonio during the final days and hours before the accident, and how could this accident happen? This search takes in various eyewitnesses, friends, police officers, doctors, and the mysterious Jenny—who turns out to have played a crucial role in Tonio's life during those final weeks. Winner of the prestigious Netherlands Libris Literature Prize in 2012. ($40, PB)
Flesh Wounds by Richard Glover
Richard Glover's favourite dinner party game is called 'Who's Got the Weirdest Parents?'. It's a game he always thinks he'll win. There was his mother, a deluded snob, who made up large swathes of her past & who ran away with Richard's English teacher, a Tolkien devotee, nudist & stuffed-toy collector. There was his father, a distant alcoholic, who ran through a gamut of wives, yachts & failed dreams. And there was Richard himself, a confused teenager, vulnerable to strange men, trying to find a family he could belong to. As he eventually accepted, the only way to make sense of the present was to go back to the past—but beware of what you might find there. Truth can leave wounds—even if they are only flesh wounds. ($29.99, PB)
Come, Tell Me How You Live: Memories from Archaeological Expeditions in the Mysterious Middle East by Agatha Christie ($22.99, PB)
To the world she was Agatha Christie, legendary author of bestselling whodunits. But in the 1930s she wore a different hat, travelling with her husband, renowned archaeologist Max Mallowan, as he investigated the buried ruins & ancient wonders of Syria & Iraq. When friends asked what this strange 'other life' was like, she decided to answer their questions by writing down her adventures in this eye-opening book. Described by Christie as a 'meandering chronicle of life on an archaeological dig', this is Agatha Christie's very personal memoir of her time spent in this breathtaking corner of the globe, living among the working men in tents in the desert where recorded human history began.
Prick With a Fork: The World's Worst Waitress Spills the Beans by Larissa Dubecki ($30, PB)
‘Beautiful and brutal, witty and kind, Rush Oh! is a story of great surprises and a beating heart – a book to never forget.’ MARKUS ZUSAK ‘Hugely funny and peopled with a cast of characters I came to treasure like my own friends, Rush Oh! reminded me why I love reading.’ HANNAH KENT
Now in B Format Good Morning, Mr Mandela by Zelda La Grange, $25 Philip Larkin: Life, Art and Love by James Booth $20
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Before she was one of Australia's top restaurant critics, Larissa Dubecki was one of its worst waitresses. A loving homage to her tenyear reign of dining-room terror, Prick With a Fork takes you where a diner should never go. From the crappiest suburban Italian to the hottest place in town, what goes on behind the scenes is rarely less fraught than the seventh circle of hell. Psychopathic chefs, lecherous owners, impossible demands and insufferable customers are just the start of an average shift. Therapy for former waiters, a revelation to diners, and pure reading pleasure for anyone interested in what really happens out the back of the restaurant.
Barbarian Days by William Finnegan ($29.99, PB) Barbarian Days is William Finnegan's memoir of an obsession, a complex enchantment. Surfing only looks like a sport. To initiates, it is something else entirely: a beautiful addiction, a demanding course of study, a morally dangerous pastime, a way of life. Raised in California and Hawaii, Finnegan started surfing as a child. He has chased waves all over the world, wandering for years through the South Pacific, Australia, Asia, Africa. A bookish boy, and then an excessively adventurous young man, he went on to become a distinguished writer and war reporter. An improbable anthropologist, Finnegan shares stories of life in a whites only gang in a tough school in Honolulu even while his closest friend was a Hawaiian surfer. He unpicks the picturesque simplicity of a Samoan fishing village, dissects the sexual politics of Tongan interactions with Americans & Japanese, navigates the Indonesian black market while nearly succumbing to malaria. Throughout, he surfs, carrying readers with him on rides of harrowing, unprecedented lucidity.
Every Time a Friend Succeeds Something Inside Me Dies by Jay Parini ($55, HB)
The product of thirty years of friendship and conversation, Jay Parini's biography probes behind the glittering surface of Gore Vidal's colourful life to reveal the complex emotional and sexual truth underlying his celebrity-strewn life. But there is plenty of glittering surface as well—a virtual Who's Who of the American Century, from Eleanor Roosevelt on down. Through Parini's eyes and words comes an accessible, entertaining story that puts the life and times of one of the great American figures of the post-war era into context, that introduces the author to a generation who didn't know him before and looks behind-the-scenes at the man and his work in frank ways never possible before his death. Parini, provided with unique access to Vidal's life and his papers, excavates buried skeletons, but never loses sight of his deep respect for Vidal and his astounding gifts.
Boyhoodlum by Anson Cameron ($35, PB)
In the late 1960s and early 70s, Anson Cameron waged guerrilla war on his hometown in country Victoria. When he wasn't blowing his family TV to smithereens, he was electrocuting a friend's mother; when he wasn't raining expletives on a genial deaf neighbour, he was raining missiles on classical music fans. And in his leisure hours, he found time to join a Wee Club, stockpiling an ocean of urine for future use. At high school, a posse of hirsute male teachers attempted to put the errant lad in his place. But would the ‘wonderbeards' be able to quell a born entertainer and agitator? Brilliantly evoking an era in which the Cisco Kid, Valiant Chargers and the lethal powers of a home-made shanghai reigned supreme, Anson Cameron's riotous memoir is a crash-investigator's report on how not to be a boy.
Betsy and the Emperor by Anne Whitehead ($33, PB) After Napoleon was defeated at the Battle of Waterloo in 1815, he was sent into exile on Saint Helena. He became an 'eagle in a cage', reduced from the most powerful figure in Europe to a prisoner on a rock in the South Atlantic. But the fallen emperor was charmed by the pretty teenage daughter of a local merchant, Betsy Balcombe. After Napoleon's death, Betsy travelled to Australia in 1823 with her father, who was appointed the first Colonial Treasurer of New South Wales. When the family lost their fortune, she returned to London and published a memoir which made her a celebrity. With her extraordinary connections to royalty and high society, Betsy Balcombe led a life worthy of a Regency romance, but she was always fighting for her independence. Anne Whitehead brings to life Napoleon's last years on Saint Helena, revealing the central role of the Balcombe family. She also lays to rest two centuries of speculation about Betsy's relationship with Napoleon.
The Man With The Golden Typewriter: Ian Fleming's Bond Letters (ed) Fergus Fleming
When he finished writing his first James Bond book, Casino Royale, Ian Fleming treated himself to a gold-plated typewriter. It was on this glittering machine that he typed not only his bestselling novels, but also his letters. Whether dealing with his editor's concerns about the title of Moonraker or badgering his publisher Jonathan Cape about his quota of free copies (they tossed a coin: Fleming lost), replying to a reader who worried about Bond's influence on the assassination of JFK, or exchanging news with friends and other writers like Raymond Chandler, his letters were always charming, witty & engaging. A few of the letters he received marked the beginning of lengthy exchanges. One day, out of the blue, came a letter from one Geoffrey Boothroyd taking issue with James Bond's choice of sidearm (the Beretta was a 'ladies' gun'), and despite Fleming's perturbation at being caught out, the correspondence that followed developed into a relationship that lasted until Fleming's death. ($30, PB)
Alfred Jarry: A Pataphysical Life by Alastair Brotchie ($64, PB)
When Alfred Jarry died in 1907 at the age of 34, he was a legendary figure in Paris—but this had more to do with his bohemian lifestyle & scandalous behaviour than his literary achievements. Most people today tend to think of Alfred Jarry only as the author of the play Ubu Roi, and of his life as a string of outlandish 'ubuesque' anecdotes, often recounted with wild inaccuracy. In this first full-length critical biography Small Acts of Disappearance by Fiona Wright of Jarry in English, Alastair Brotchie reconstructs the life of a This is a collection of ten essays describing Fiona Wright's affliction man intent on inventing (and destroying) himself, not to mention his world, and the with an eating disorder which begins in high school, and escalates into 'philosophy' that defined their relation. Brotchie alternates chapters of biographilife-threatening anorexia over the next 10 years. Wright is a highly cal narrative with chapters that connect themes, obsessions & undercurrents that regarded poet & critic, and her account of her illness is informed by relate to the life. The anecdotes remain, and are even augmented: Jarry's assumption a keen sense of its contradictions & deceptions, and by an awareness of the 'ubuesque', his inversions of everyday behaviour (such as eating backward, of the empowering effects of hunger, which is unsparing in its considfrom cheese to soup), his exploits with gun and bicycle, and his herculean feats of eration of the author’s own actions & motivations. Her essays offer drinking. But Brotchie distinguishes between Jarry's purposely playing the fool and perspectives on the eating disorder at different stages in her life, at deeper nonconformities that appear essential to his writing and his thought, both of university, where she finds herself in a radically different social world to the one she grew which remain a vital subterranean influence to this day. up in, in Sri Lanka as a fledgling journalist, in Germany as a young writer, in her hospital treatments back in Sydney. They combine research, travel writing, memoir & literary How to Talk About Places You've Never Been discussions of how writers like Christina Stead, Carmel Bird, Tim Winton, John Berryby Pierre Bayard ($29.99, PB) man & Louise Glück deal with anorexia & addiction; together with accounts of family Extensive travel and the experience of foreign cultures seem to be life, and detailed and humorous views of hunger-induced situations of the kind that are becoming an essential requirement for the modern citizen. Howso compelling in Wright’s poetry. ($25, PB) ever, actually visiting these places may not be the best way to discover them. Literature professor & psychoanalyst Pierre Bayard champions the importance of 'armchair travel', arguing that being Deep South: Four Seasons on Back Roads able to describe somewhere you have never been may even prove by Paul Theroux ($35, PB) crucial to your survival should you need to lie about where you For the past fifty years, Paul Theroux has travelled to the far corners were. Bayard's psychoanalysis of travel 'experience' encompassof the earth—to China, India, Africa, the Pacific Islands, South Ameres Marco Polo's medieval China (how far did he actually go?), Kant's Konigsberg ica, Russia, and elsewhere—and brought them to life in his cool, ex(what could the famously stay-at-home philosopher who rarely ventured beyond the acting prose. In Deep South he turns his gaze to a region much closer confines of his city know of the world?) and Chateaubriand's early modern North to his home. Travelling through North and South Carolina, Georgia, America (how much was invented to fit the views he already held?), and explores a Tennessee, Mississippi, Alabama and Arkansas he writes of the stunhost of phenomena, from lost islands & stolen marathons, to the invented worlds of ning landscapes he discovers—the deserts, the mountains, the Mischeats, murderers, lovers & adulterers. sissippi—and above all, the lives of the people he meets.
Travel Writing
One Man’s Everest by Kenton Cool ($35, PB)
The story that emerged from the Everest base camp on 21st May 2013 was remarkable even in its bare essentials. A British climber, Kenton Cool, and his Sherpa partner, Dorje Gylgen had marked the 60th anniversary of the first ascent of the world's highest peak by climbing not just Everest but the two huge mountains next to it, all in one go. Cool's first venture into serious rock climbing was, fittingly, a ‘very severe' one on the South Coast near Swanage that had Cool battling for his life, exhausted and exhilarated. That summer he went straight out to the Alps, and stormed up mountains that many climbers will spend lifetimes dreaming of but never quite attempting. From then on, the mountains have been his life. From bivouacing under a rock for nights on end high above the Chamonix valley to getting the great adventurer Ranulph Fiennes , who is by his own admission scared of heights, to the top of Everest in 2009 and climbing the three peaks in 2013, Cool is recognised as the finest British climber of his generation. ‘Why do you do it?', people ask him. This book tells why.
Island of Dreams by Dan Boothby ($33, HB)
Dan Boothby had been drifting for more than twenty years, without the pontoons of family, friends or a steady occupation. He was looking for but never finding the perfect place to land. Finally, unexpectedly, an opportunity presented itself. After a lifelong obsession with Gavin Maxwell's Ring of Bright Water trilogy, Boothby was given the chance to move to Maxwell's former home, a tiny island on the western seaboard of the Highlands of Scotland. Island of Dreams is about Boothby's time living there, and about the natural and human history that surrounded him; it's about the people he meets and the stories they tell, and about his engagement with this remote landscape, including the otters that inhabit it. Interspersed with Boothby's own story is a quest to better understand the mysterious Gavin Maxwell.
The Lost Amazon: The Photographic Journey of Richard Evans Schultes ($49.99, HB)
In 1941, Richard Evan Schultes, often referred to as the 'father of ethnobotany', took a leave of absence from Harvard University and disappeared into the Columbian Amazon. Twelve years later he resurfaced having travelled to places no outsider had ever visited, mapped uncharted rivers, and lived among two dozen Amazonian tribes. Simultaneously, he conducted secret research missions for the US government and collected some 30,000 botanical specimens, including 2,000 novel medicinal plants and 300 species new to science. Over the course of his time in the Amazonian basin, Schultes took over 10,000 images of plants, landscapes, and the indigenous peoples with whom he lived. With text by Schultes’ protégé & fellow explorer Wade Davis.
Eat First, Talk Later by Beth Yahp ($35, PB)
Beth Yahp persuades her ageing parents on a road trip around their former home, Malaysia. She intends to retrace their honeymoon of 45 years before, but their journey doesn't quite work out as she planned. Only the family mantra, ‘Eat first, talk later' keeps them (and perhaps the country) from falling apart. Around them, corruption, censorship of the media, detentions without trial and deaths in custody continue. Her parents argue, while, lovelorn after the end of a grand amour in Paris, Beth tries to turn their story into a Technicolour love story. Meanwhile, she's embroiled in a turbulent relationship with an opposition activist, Jing, who is at the forefront of the democratic struggle for change; and in Australia, Beth's second home, she is dismayed to see politicians on all sides focus on turning back the boats, stopping queue jumpers, controlling the borders of 'the lucky country'.
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books for kids to young adults
compiled by Lynndy Bennett, our children's correspondent
picture books
Capyboppy by Bill Peet ($18, PB) What a truly charming book is Capyboppy. Written and first published by American illustrator Bill Peet in 1966, it is the true story of the author’s son, and his pet capybara. Bill Junior was always fascinated by animals, and had an ever-changing menagerie at home. One fateful day he brought home a capybara, the world’s largest existing rodent, quite similar to a guinea pig, but much larger. What happens next is intriguing, unpredictable and quite fascinating. Illustrated in the humorous style of the time, in black and white, with a fair amount of text, Capyboppy (the capy’s nickname) is a fine example of a real life story that has been turned into an engaging book. As all adults know, animals brought in from the wild nearly always end badly after they have been domesticated. Although the family ultimately can’t keep Capyboppy, there’s a resolution that’s not only happy, but very heart warming. Bill Peet’s illustrations are detailed and engaging, and while they are slightly cartoonlike (which gives them fabulous dynamism) they are very true to life, and brilliantly capture the unexpectedly affectionate, playful nature of Capyboppy (and his human family). Louise (I developed an unexpected obsession with capybaras after reading the children’s novel Woundabout by Lev Rosen, which features a highly intelligent, endearing capybara that is the beloved companion of orphaned siblings sent to live with their aunt in a strangely unchanging community. Capyboppy was the next logical acquisition for the shop. LB)
The Crocodolly by Martin McKenna ($25, HB) In a household where pets are forbidden, young Adelaide is delighted to discover a baby crocodile tumbling from an egg into the cake mix she’s baking. Disguising the crocodile is easy: a dress, wig, bow and nail polish transform her new friend into a charming doll. As her crocodolly Ozzy persists in growing, Adelaide’s resourcefulness is repeatedly tested, and the story writhes around upon itself, building on the humour through references to Ozzy and Adelaide’s previous actions. The bold illustrations bring animation to this comical story celebrating determination. Charmingly reminiscent of the difficulties dog-crazy Edgar encounters with Jarvis the octopus in his earlier picture book The Octopuppy, McKenna’s The Crocodolly will surely win him an even wider fanbase. Lynndy
Pool by JiHyeon Lee ($27.95, HB) I’ve been looking forward to seeing a copy of JiHyeon Lee’s Pool since I read about it in a children’s lit blog that was most enthusiastic about it. Pool is a wordless picture book, portrait shaped & illustrated by hand (as opposed to digitally) with colour pencils & oil pastels. Basically it tells the story of an apparently shy and retiring little boy going for a dip in a crowded pool. It is of course far more than that, the little boy dives deep and finds another lone swimmer in the depths of the pool, and together they embark on a marvellous adventure, with extraordinary creatures and benign monsters and finally an space is used in a most effective way. The early pictures are rather quiet and restrained, evolving into an imaginative riot of colour and detail, and then returning to a quiet, nearly empty pool (but we now know what awaits beneath the surface). This is Lee’s first book, which is remarkable: it’s a standout in a genre (the wordless picture book) that already has many examples of beautiful illustration. Louise
fiction
Bella & the Wandering House by Meg McKinlay (ill) Nicholas Shafer ($13, PB)
Daughter of two very busy, although not very observant parents, Bella has a close relationship with her Grandad, so it’s with him that Bella discusses her concerns the day her house seems to be oriented differently. Grandad loves strange. He invents. He listens, and he doesn’t dismiss Bella’s ‘wild imagination’. With the aid of one of Grandad’s contraptions Bella is able to keep close watch on the house, especially when it sets out on its nightly perambulations. When even her parents can no longer ignore these unexpected journeys, Bella and Grandad solve the mystery. Poignant and full of heart, this is exactly the kind of winsomely quirky story I can imagine a future adult enquiring about in a bookshop or library: 'Do you know this book? I loved it as a child, and I remember it was about a family, and a house that moved…' Lynndy
Beyond the Kingdoms: Book 4—Land of Stories by Chris Colfer ($25, HB)
activities
Pierre the Maze Detective: The Search for the Stolen Maze Stone by Chihiro Maruyama (ill) IC4Design (trs.) Emma Sakamiya & Elizabeth Jenner ($30, HB) Although I’ve yet to explore the entire story, I am captivated by the concept, the art, and the complexity of this oversized puzzle book. Opposite the page listing instructions and contents we embark on the story, which introduces Pierre, Opera City’s specialist maze detective, nonchalantly sipping his tea and waiting for a new challenge. Each turn of the page launches us into an intricate new scene with more of the story, mysterious letters, clues, mazes, objects to find, location-specific challenges, and snippets from the Opera City Times – the newspaper reporting on Pierre’s case. Take time out from the urgency of the storyline to pore over the subplots within the highly detailed pictures. The title hints at more Pierre adventures to follow: I can’t wait! Utterly engrossing for anyone aged 6 to adult. Lynndy
teen fiction
Everything, Everything by Nicola Yoon ($20, PB)
This compelling debut will undoubtedly be consigned to the ‘sicklit’ genre, but don’t expect any heartrending descriptions of teens fading heroically from the lives of everyone who encounters them. With Severe Combined Immunodeficiency, allergic to the world, Maddy is kept in sterile isolation, her every vital sign monitored by her mother, a doctor, and Carla, her nurse and sole personal friend. A new family moving in next door disrupts Maddy’s vanilla life, at first providing a new focus other than online schoolwork, and then complicating it as their intriguing parkour-lithe and very attractive son Olly refuses to be discouraged by Maddy’s inability to engage face to face. Through a series of emails, absurd 3-D jokes, IMs and inventive pantomimes from his bedroom window, Olly becomes the first real obsession of Maddy’s life. Her interest in him grows to a longing that prompts risks defying her 18 years of insularity, and her life crumbles in a mess of betrayals. Intelligent, engaging characters, humour and plot twists combine in a lively compassionate novel. Recommended. Lynndy
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In our universe there are two dimensions: our world and the fairy-tale world. When the Grand Armee attacks the fairy-tale world everyone is trying to recover, but the masked man is out there recruiting a new army more powerful than any other. Join Alex and Conner as they enter the magical Land of Oz, the world of Neverland and the craziness of Wonderland to stop the masked man. Will they succeed or will their world crumble before them? This book is the fourth book in Chris Colfer’s amazing series The Land of Stories. I highly recommend these books for anyone who loves fantasy and adventure. Ryan O’Dempsey (10)
manga
On the holidays my Mum made me come into her work at Gleebooks. In the end she tore me away from reading books and made me hop onto the computer to type this review. The book that I am reading is called Message to Adolf by Osamu Tezuka. (HB, $49) It is a Japanese graphic novel set in wartime Japan. There are three Adolfs: Adolf Hitler the German Fuhrer, Adolf Kaufman and Adolf the Baker’s Son. The story is based around Adolf Kaufman who isn’t necessarily the main character but almost intertwines throughout book one and two. Adolf K is eventually sent off to a German training facility in, as you guessed, Germany. He leaves Japan and says goodbye to his Jewish friend Adolf the Baker’s Son. The Baker’s Son is handed documents containing Hitler’s birth certificate and there is a twist that if found out could destroy the whole of Germany and save many innocent lives, but what is this secret? Find out in Message to Adolf! Taj (14)
breaking news
# If your impression of classic science fiction is that it’s a male-dominated genre with stalwart protagonists saving the worlds, this article might persuade you that dauntless females have been entrenched long before the recent crop of heroines, thanks to Madeleine L’Engle: how-wrinkle-time-changed-sci-fi-forever. # Saturday 10th August was National Bookshop Day, and we were astounded at the response to our dragon-themed celebrations. Thanks to Duncan Ball and bard Allen, our storytellers du jour. If you weren’t here for the festivities, food, lucky dips, and Louise’s cleverly imaginative treasure hunt, here’s a sample of what you missed.
Food & Garden
The Edible City by Indira Naidoo ($45, PB)
When Indira Naidoo transformed her tiny 13th-floor balcony into a bountiful kitchen garden she joined the army of urban gardeners turning concrete into crops, and harvests into hope. Visit the audacious garden in the sky providing a haven (and honey) for homeless visitors, the school bush-tucker garden reconnecting Indigenous kids with their heritage, the rooftop worm farm combatting food waste at a Melbourne restaurant, and the community gardens bringing neighbours together to share meals and stories. Naidoo offers gardening tips and practical advice on beekeeping, worm farming, composting & setting up a community garden, as well as 40 recipes.
The Permaculture Home Garden by Linda Woodrow ($40, PB)
Linda Woodrow has devised a totally integrated organic system of gardening that combines science with common sense. Enter a warmly welcoming household where everyone shares the planting, helps to tend the hens, and relaxes after a satisfying day's work. Step-by-step instructions & helpful diagrams make it easy to plan & plant a garden to suit your taste & space—a garden that not only looks wonderful but also yields bountiful fruit, herbs & vegetables.
Happy Hens by Organic Gardener Magazine
What to look for when buying chickens so you start with healthy, happy layers. A guide to the best backyard breeds available in Australia. How to choose the right bird for your needs—whether you want top egg producers, live in a hot climate, or need to find the perfect chooks for a tiny plot. Great tips on housing and caring for your hens, what to feed them and how to keep them safe from predators and pests. There are even instructions for a DIY hen house. Troubleshooting for the most common chook problems. If you're feeling clucky, learn how to incubate and raise chicks. It's easy to keep your backyard flock happy, healthy—and productive. ($35, PB)
The Cook & Baker by Cherie Bevan & Tass Tauroa
Crowd-pleasing creations that cater for modern tastes but stay true to the nostalgia of your childhood. Who can resist exquisite hummingbird cake, delicate red velvet cake or decadent chocolate salted caramel brownies? Remember the pleasure of an after-school indulgence of Louise cake, peanut butter cookies or a crispy sausage roll? In this mouth-watering collection of foolproof recipes, the geniuses behind busy cafe/bakery The Cook & Baker help you take your home baking up a notch. ($49.99, PB)
Also New:
NOPI: The Cookbook ($59.99, HB) by Yotam Ottolenghi and Ramael Scully
This book includes over 120 of the most popular dishes from Yotam's innovative Soho-based restaurant NOPI—written with long-time collaborator & NOPI head chef Ramael Scully, who brings his distinctive Asian twist to the Ottolenghi kitchen. All recipes have been adapted and made possible for the home cook to recreate at home, With chapters for starters & sides, fish, meat & vegetable mains, puddings, brunch, condiments and cocktails.
A Lombardian Cookbook by Alessandro Pavoni ($59.99, HB)
Chef Alessandro Pavoni, of Sydney's two-chef-hatted Ormeggio at the Spit, hails from Lombardy, home to some of Italy's most famous dishes, including osso bucco, bollito misto & panettone. In his first cookbook he reveals the secrets to these traditional classics, along with more than 100 of his treasured family recipes featuring Lombardy's rich produce—cave-aged cheeses & cured meats, polenta, tender spit-roasted meat & risotto made from rice grown on the plains of the River Po.
The Blue Ducks' Real Food by Darren Robertson & Mark LaBrooy
Darren Roberston & Mark LaBrooy are passionate about growing, sourcing & making their own food. In this new book they share more than 80 delicious recipes, based around whole grains, free-range meat, sustainable seafood, fresh vegetables and fruit, and nuts and seeds. Learn how to make yoghurt, flavoured vinegars & salts, smoked salmon, beef jerky & fermented veggies such as sauerkraut & kimchi. There's a user's guide to grains, nuts & seeds, as well as sections on cooking with spices, using secondary cuts of meat in your recipes, simple ways to cook whole fish, preserving foods, cold-pressed juices etc. ($39.99, PB)
Digby Law's Pickle & Chutney Cookbook by Digby Law ($30, PB)
Digby Law's Pickle & Chutney Cookbook is a New Zealand classic used and respected by home cooks and professionals alike. This indispensable reference contains 300 easy-to-make recipes for chutneys, relishes, sauces, oils, pickles, jellies, vinegars and mustards. Discover traditional preserves from Europe and North America, exotic specialities from Asia and Latin America, and enjoy familiar New Zealand favourites.
Yates Garden Guide 2015 ($40, PB) Hugh Johnson's Pocket Wine Book 2016 ($19.99, HB)
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Chris Bowen
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Australia’s Second Chance in conv. w David Marr Crunching numbers & weaving history into a riveting, rollicking tale, George Megalogenis chronicles the waves of immigration from the First Fleet onwards and uses his unique abilities in decoding economics & demography to advance this new insight into our history, and our future.
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The Money Men: Australia’s Twelve Most Notable Treasurers Former Treasurer Chris Bowen provides a rare insight into Australia's most important economic office through interviews with former Treasurers and senior bureaucrats.
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Event—6 for 6.30 Fiona Wright
Flesh Wounds Part poignant family memoir, part rollicking venture into a 1970s Australia, this is a book for anyone who's wondered if their family is the oddest one on the planet. The answer: 'No'. There is always something stranger out there.
Small Acts of Disappearance In conv. w Rachel Morley This is a collection of ten essays that describes the aFiona Wright’s affliction with an eating disorder which begins in university, and escalates into life-threatening anorexia over the next ten years.
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Advanced The Politics in conv. with An Mark Butler takes of the ageing of boomers and mak more positive app and one that argue ing contribution make to our
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The Knowl Climate scientists we need to chang in ways that are b and threaten estab ter Doherty makes for citizens to beco evaluate the facts themselves and p guidance on how
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Comrade Am Whitlam’s Be In conv. w Jo FitzGerald's story na scholar, adviser lam, first ambassa der prime ministe Malcolm Fraser, h lenge Australia fac self into an A
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Vegan Ve Start and Grow an In conv. w C I wrote this book b find out from vega and entrepreneurs their secrets of su did they cope with running an ethica did they learn? Ho
Satyajit Das—Talk
A Banquet of Consequences This is a lively exploration by financial expert Satyajit Das on why, following the global credit crunch, the world is entering a period of prolonged economic stagnation, and what that means for all of us.
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Historical Justice and Memory Launcher: Tessa Morris-Suzuki This collection highlights the global movement for historical justice—acknowledging & redressing historic wrongs—as one of the most significant moral and social developments of our times.
QE 59: David Marr on Bill Shorten This controversial and brilliant new essay looks at the making of Shorten. It also addresses a key question: how does the union movement for good or ill continue to shape the Labor Party?
Klaus Neumann & Janna Thompson
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On Stalin’s Team: The Years of Living Dangerously in Soviet Politics In conv. w Martin Krygier This is a new approach to Stalin's rule in the Soviet Union, focused on the political team he formed in the second half of the 1920s that was still in existence (though in modified form) thirty years later.
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Event—6 for 6.30 David Marr
In this riv ageing par mer home, ‘Eat first, the
All events listed are $12/$9 concession. Book Launches are free.
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Australia: s of Ageing nthony Albanese s up the challenge Australia's baby kes the case for a proach to ageing es for the continuolder Australians community.
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ledge Wars have warned that ge our behaviour both inconvenient blished power. Pes a passionate case ome informed and of the debate for provides practical w to take action.
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mbassador: eijing Envoy ohn Faulkner y as diplomat, Chir to Gough Whitador to China uners Whitlam and highlights the chalces in managing itAsian future. —6 for 6.30
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FRIDAY 4
Launch—6 for 6.30 Eleanor Limprecht
Long Bay Launcher: Debra Adelaide Set in Sydney in the first decade of the 1900s, Long Bay is based on the true case of a young female abortionist who was convicted of manslaughter. The compelling fictional account examines the limiting effects of poverty, the mistakes we make for love, & the bond between mother & child.
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SATURDAY 5
Launch—3.30 for 4 Caroline de Costa
Double Madness Launcher: Sue Turnbull As local residents and authorities in Far North QLD assess the damage in the aftermath of Cyclone Yasi, a woman's body is found in bizarre circumstances deep in the rainforest. Set in Queensland, this debut crime novel takes us into a sordid underbelly of psycho-sexual depravity.
12 Launch—3.30 for 4 Ian Burnett
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Naser Ghobadzadeh
Archipelago: A Journey Across Indonesia Launcher: Toni Pollard Ian Burnet sets out on a journey across the Indonesian archipelago to discover its rich cultural diversity. He combines his love of adventure & travel with his knowledge of history to take us on a personal journey through history & geographic space.
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Moon Launcher: Libby Gleeson Max's dad is far away on his fishing trawler and Max is missing him badly, until his dad tells him to look at the moon. Dad is looking at the moon too, the same one that is watching over Max.
Swimming Underground Launcher: Anna Kerdijk Nicholson Nixon takes us around the harbour and through the streets of Sydney. We smell the salt and hear the cries of birds and people. And we remember. This is a marvellous collection.—Julie McCrossin
Religious Secularity: A Theological Challenge to the Islamic State This book develops the new concept of 'religious secularity'. It uses untapped Persian-language sources & offers a new reading of Shiite political theology, which is much less often discussed than Sunni political theology.
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Anna Funder Ventures: in conversation with n Ethical Business Clare Mann Kate Evans because I wanted to Wollongong Writers Festival and an business owners the University of Wollongong pres themselves what sent the launch of the program of the uccess were. How Wollongong Writers Festival. h the challenges of Join us for chat, drinks and al business? What refreshments afterwards. ow did they grow?
Matt Zurbo & Sadami Konchi
Jenni Nixon
In October
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Beth Yahp
Eat First, Talk Later in conv. w Nicholas Jose veting memoir Beth persuades her rents on a road trip around their for, Malaysia. Only the family mantra, talk later' keeps them (and perhaps e country) from falling apart.
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Granny's Good Reads with Sonia Lee
Unholy Fury: Whitlam and Nixon at War by James Curran covers our cosy relationship with Washington in the Menzies years and the more fraught times when Labor achieved government after twenty-three years in opposition—and the new PM Gough Whitlam dared to query the bombing of North Vietnam initiated by President Nixon at the beginning of his second term. Did the CIA destabilise the Whitlam government? Curran uses newly released documents to discuss this and other burning questions in a truly enthralling book which has, as a bonus, a photo of that dress worn by Sonia MacMahon, wife of our Prime Minister, at a dinner at the White House in December 1971.
In the July Gleaner, Andrew recommended David Kilcullen's Quarterly Essay: Blood Year. Also of interest in that issue is the correspondence in response to the previous Quarterly Essay, Karen Hitchcock's brilliant Dear Life. This includes letters from Inga Clendinnen (herself now in a nursing home), Stephen Duckett, Rodney Syme (euthanasia advocate), Ian Maddocks (palliative care advocate) and economist Peter Martin, who demolishes Joe Hockey's assertion that the country can't afford first-rate care for the elderly. Karen Hitchcock is a staff physician in a large city hospital. Her column in The Monthly is always worth reading.
My chief delight from this month's book pile is the latest Elly Griffiths title— The Ghost Fields. Features of this novel are the Norfolk landscape, forensic archaeologist Ruth Galloway and her sidekick DI Harry Nelson—a happily married cop with whom, in a moment of unscheduled passion, Ruth has produced a daughter Kate, now five years old. For good measure there are two druids, Cathbad and Hazel, a film crew, an aristocratic family with more than one skeleton in the closet, a Bronze Age body, a World War 2 plane with a corpse in the cockpit, a field called Devil's Hollow and a mysterious bearded figure who looks like the Ancient Mariner. Then human bones are found at a local pig farm. Can the crew out race a looming flood to unmask the killer? Perhaps there is nothing so satisfying as a flood to end a detective novel (see The Nine Tailors by Dorothy Sayers), unless it is a nail-biting court case, as in To Kill a Mocking Bird or Michael Malone’s Time's Witness. Other good reads this month were Tove Jansson: Work and Love—Tuula Karjalainen’s beautifully illustrated biography of Jansson, creator of the Moomins, and My History—Antonia Fraser’s memoir of growing up in England and Ireland and falling in love with history. My re-reads: Jessica Anderson’s Tirra Lirra by the River and Barry Lopez’s 1978 classic Of Wolves and Men, a truly beautiful book. Sonia
Australian Studies
Two Futures: Australia at a Critical Moment by Clare O'Neil & Tim Watts ($30, PB)
What will Australia be like in 2040? Will society be more unequal, the fair go long gone? What will drive economic growth? Will our democracy become ever more fractious, or can we revitalise it? And how should we respond to the Digital Revolution, climate change & regional instability? Too often these questions get churned up in the spin cycle of daily politics—but in this agenda-setting book, two young parliamentarians take the long view. They identify the dramatic changes looming on the horizon and outline creative ideas for tackling them. Fact-driven & progressive, optimistic & impassioned, O'Neil & Watts begin the debate about the decades ahead that we need to have.
David Marr on Bill Shorten: QE 59
($23, PB) Bill Shorten is the man who would be our next prime minister. David Marr's Quarterly Essay profiles of Kevin Rudd and Tony Abbott ignited firestorms of media coverage and were national bestsellers. In Quarterly Essay 59, he turns his enquiring mind toward Bill Shorten—looking at the making of Shorten, and also addressing a key question: how does the union movement for good or ill continue to shape the Labor Party?
Takeover: Foreign Investment & the Australian Psyche by David Uren ($30, PB)
Did the Chiko Roll change Australian history? As a matter of fact, yes. Australia's economy has been built on the back of foreign capital—alone among nations advanced or emerging, we have been able to run deficits with the world throughout our history precisely because foreigners are so keen to invest here. Yet there is an insecurity about the source of our prosperity coming from somewhere else. Where does the national interest lie, and what issues are at stake? Takeover is an authoritative, engaging account of the history of foreign investment in Australia—both the economics & the politics. It is a story of the fights between the protectionists and free traders of the 19th century, of our relationships with the US, Britain, Japan & China, and of the rise of Google & Uber.
Professionals or Part-timers?: Major Party Senators in Australia by Peter van Onselen ($60, PB)
While the minor party & independent senators might attract media attention, the overwhelming majority of Australia's upper house members are affiliated with the major political parties. Highly partisan, they are dependent on the party for re-election & play a vital role in assisting their parties to secure the maximum number of House of Representative seats, acting as ‘shock troops' in marginal seat campaigning. How does this impact the way these senators go about their business? How do they serve their party in the pursuit of lower house seats, the result of which determines who forms government? Van Onselen examines the electoral professionalism of major party senators, as well as how they deal with the sometimes competing interests of factionalism & personal ambition.
Comrade Ambassador: Whitlam's Beijing Envoy by Stephen FitzGerald ($34.99, PB)
Australian Women War Reporters: Boer War to Vietnam by Jeannine Baker ($40, PB)
Why do Australians know the names of Charles Bean, Alan Moorehead & Chester Wilmot, but not Agnes Macready, Anne Matheson & Lorraine Stumm? Jeannine Baker provides a much-needed account of the pioneering women who reported from the biggest conflicts of the 20th century. Two women covered the South African War at the turn of the century, and Louise Mack witnessed the fall of Antwerp in 1914. Others like Anne Matheson, Lorraine Stumm & Kate Webb wrote about momentous events including the rise of Nazism, the liberation of the concentration camps, the aftermath of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima & the Cold War conflicts in Korea & SE Asia. Baker deftly draws out the links between the experiences of these women and the contemporary realities faced by women journalists of war, including Monica Attard and Ginny Stein, allowing us to see both in a new light.
Not Just Black and White by Lesley & Tammy Williams ($32.95, PB)
Lesley Williams is forced to leave Cherbourg Aboriginal Settlement and her family at a young age to work as a domestic servant. Apart from a bit of pocket money, Lesley never sees her wages—they are kept 'safe' for her and for countless others just like her. She is taught not to question her life, until desperation makes her start to wonder, where is all that money she earned? So begins a nine-year journey for answers which will test every ounce of her resolve. Inspired by her mother's quest, a teenage Tammy Williams enter a national writing competition with an essay about injustice. Winning first prize takes Tammy and Lesley to Michael Jackson's Neverland Ranch and ultimately to the United Nations in Geneva. Along the way, they find courage they never thought they had, and friendship in the most unexpected places.
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Modern Australia was in part defined by its early embrace of China—a turning from the White Australia Policy of the 1950s to the country's acceptance of Asian immigration & engagement with regional neighbours. It saw the far-sighted establishment of an embassy in Beijing in the 1970s by Gough Whitlam, headed by Stephen FitzGerald. Here, FitzGerald's story as diplomat, China scholar, adviser to Gough Whitlam, first ambassador to China under prime ministers Whitlam & Malcolm Fraser, is interwoven with the wider one of this dramatic moment in Australia's history. In this memoir, Fitzgerald also highlights the challenge Australia faces in managing itself into an Asian future.
Advanced Australia: The Politics of Ageing by Mark Butler ($27.99, PB)
The average Australian's life expectancy has increased by 25 years over the past century—from mid 50s to early 80s—a monumental achievement with huge political impact. For decades to come ageing will touch almost every area of policy—retirement incomes, housing, employment, urban design, health. The greying Baby Boomers are leading this debate, both because of the size of their generation, as well as their history of reshaping every phase of life in their own image. Mark Butler takes up this challenge & makes the case for a more positive approach to ageing—one that argues for the continuing contribution older Australians make to our community.
Monash by Grantlee Kieza ($40, HB)
John Monash's life is emblematic of Australia's much-heralded egalitarian spirit. The ultimate outsider: poor, Jewish in an era which still practised anti-Semitism, bookish at a time when intellectual pursuits were frowned upon, he rose to become one of the nation's most enduring folk heroes. Despite a scandalous private life and the experience of virulent racism, he established himself as a major force, not just on the bloody fields of wartime Europe but also in post-war society, where he oversaw vital developments in making Australia into a modern nation.
Politics
A Banquet of Consequences: Have We Consumed Our Own Future by Satyajit Das ($35, PB)
For ordinary individuals, the goal of a steady job, a home of one's own, a comfortable retirement & a good life for our children is receding. In this brilliantly clear-eyed account, Satyajit Das links past, present & future to show that it's not just unrealistic expectations, but the poor performance of those governing us that are to blame. The strategies & policies deployed to promote economic growth after the Great Recession have failed, not least because such growth cannot continue indefinitely. The solution—structural change—is electorally unpopular & therefore ignored. A Banquet of Consequences explains why the ultimate adjustment, whether stretched out over time or in the form of another sudden crash, will be life-changing.
Restless Continent: Wealth, Rivalry & Asia's New Geopolitics by Michael Wesley ($30, PB)
History
Black Earth: The Holocaust as History and Warning by Timothy Snyder ($40, PB)
We have come to see the Holocaust as a factory of death, organised by bureaucrats. Yet by the time the gas chambers became operation more than a million European Jews were already dead: shot at close range over pits & ravines. They had been murdered in the lawless killing zones created by the German colonial war in the East, many on the fertile black earth that the Nazis believed would feed the German people. It comforts us to believe that the Holocaust was a unique event. But as Timothy Snyder shows, we have missed basic lessons of the history of the Holocaust, and some of our beliefs are frighteningly close to the ecological panic that Hitler expressed in the 1920s. As ideological and environmental challenges to the world order mount, our societies might be more vulnerable than we would like to think.
The Cost Of Courage by Charles Kaiser
The world has never seen economic development as rapid or significant as Asia's in recent times. Home to 3/5 of humanity, this restless continent will soon account for more than half of the world's economy & consume more energy than the rest of the world combined. All but three nuclear powers are Asian, and the region has the greatest growth in weapons spending. Michael Wesley gives an integrated account of the economic, political & strategic trends across the world's largest continent, and provides a guide for thinking about Asia's future—and the world's. He looks at national psychology—what happens when countries become newly rich & powerful. He explores Asia's 'corridors of blood'—the geopolitics of conflict, and discusses the prospects of war in this most volatile hot zone. Written for general reader and policy expert alike, Restless Continent is an agenda-shaping book about the landscape of international affairs in the 21st century.
In the autumn of 1943, André Boulloche became de Gaulle's military delegate in Paris, coordinating all the Resistance movements in the 9 northern regions of France only to be betrayed by one of his associates, arrested, wounded by the Gestapo, and taken prisoner. His sisters carried on the fight without him until the end of the war. André survived 3 concentration camps & later became a prominent French politician who devoted the rest of his life to reconciliation of France & Germany. His parents & oldest brother were arrested & shipped off on the last train from Paris to Germany before the liberation, and died in the camps. This is the first time the family has cooperated with an author to recount their extraordinary ordeal. ($49.99, HB)
When Wikileaks first came to prominence in 2010 by releasing millions of top secret State Department cables, the world saw for the first time what the US really thought about national leaders, friendly dictators, and supposed allies. It also discovered the dark truths of national policies, human rights violations, covert operations, and cover ups done in your name. This volume uses regional expert contributors including Tim Shorrock, Richard Heydarian, Russ Wellen & Conn Hallinan to collate & analyse the most important cables & show their historic importance. The book reveals previously overlooked secrets from the cables, like what the State department really thought about Putin & Medvedev, sometimes referred to as Batman & Robin; why the NY Times edited out references to imprisoned Ukrainian President Timochenko; how the secret service collected everything from airline miles data to credit card details from UN diplomats; and evidence of the cover up of widespread executions of Iraqis at the hands of US Military during occupation.
The lurid glamour of the dynasty founded by Augustus has never faded. No other family can compare for sheer unsettling fascination with its gallery of leading characters. Tiberius, the great general who ended up a bitter recluse, notorious for his perversions; Caligula, the master of cruelty and humiliation who rode his chariot across the sea; Agrippina, the mother of Nero, manoeuvring to bring to power the son who would end up having her murdered; Nero himself, racing in the Olympics, marrying a eunuch, and building a pleasure palace over the fire-gutted centre of his capital. In the sequel to Rubicon, Tom Holland gives a dazzling portrait of Rome's first imperial dynasty—ranging from the great capital rebuilt in marble by Augustus to the dank & barbarian-haunted forests of Germany, it is populated by a spectacular cast: murderers & metrosexuals, adulterers & druids, scheming grandmothers & reluctant gladiators.
The Wikileaks Files: The World According To US Empirey, intro by Julian Assange ($30, PB)
Economics of Inequality by Thomas Piketty
Thomas Piketty wrote this as an introduction to the conceptual & factual background necessary for interpreting changes in economic inequality over time—it now appears in English for the first time. Piketty begins by explaining how inequality evolves & how economists measure it. In subsequent chapters, he explores variances in income & ownership of capital & the variety of policies used to reduce these gaps. Along the way he introduces key ideas about the relationship between labour & capital, the effects of different systems of taxation, the distinction between historical & political time, the impact of education & technological change, the nature of capital markets, the role of unions, and apparent tensions between the pursuit of efficiency & the pursuit of fairness. ($39.95, HB)
Circling the Square: Stories from the Egyptian Revolution by Wendell Steavenson ($32.99, PB)
In January 2011, as the crowds gathered to protest Mubarak's 3 decades of rule in Egypt, Wendell Steavenson went to Cairo to cover the story. But the revolution defied historical precedent—there was no single villain, no lone hero, no neat conclusion that wouldn't be overturned the next day. Tahrir Square changed its moods like the weather; fickle, violent, hopeful, carnival. As she walks among the tents & the tanks, falling into conversation, sharing cigarettes & cold soda, Steavenson captures the cacophony of dizzying events as protests & elections ebbed & flowed around the revolution, tipping it towards democracy & then back into the military's hands. Mixing reportage & travelogue, Steavenson shows how the particular & the personal can illuminate more universal questions: what does democracy mean? What happens when a revolution throws everything up in the air?
In 100 Years: Leading Economists Predict the Future (ed) Ignacio Palacios-Huerta ($36.95, PB)
In scenarios that range from the optimistic to the guardedly gloomy, Daron Acemoglu, Angus Deaton, Avinash K. Dixit, Edward L. Glaeser, Andreu Mas-Colell, John E. Roemer, Alvin E. Roth, Robert J. Shiller, Robert M. Solow & Martin L. Weitzman consider such topics as the transformation of work and wages, the continuing increase in inequality, the economic rise of China and India, the endlessly repeating cycle of crisis and (projected) recovery, the benefits of technology, the economic consequences of political extremism, and the long-range effects of climate change.
Dynasty: The Rise & Fall of the House of Caesar by Tom Holland ($35, PB)
Vendetta: Bobby Kennedy vs Jimmy Hoffa By James Neff ($49.99, HB)
From 1957 to 1964, Robert Kennedy & Jimmy Hoffa channelled nearly all of their considerable powers into destroying each other. Kennedy's battle with Hoffa burst into the public consciousness with the 1957 Senate Rackets Committee hearings & intensified when his brother named him attorney general in 1961. RFK put together a 'Get Hoffa' squad that became a mini-FBI within the Justice Department, devoted to destroying one man. But Hoffa, with nearly unlimited Teamster funds, was not about to roll over. Drawing upon a treasure trove of previously secret & undisclosed documents, James Neff has crafted a heart-pounding epic of crime & punishment, a saga of venom & relentlessness & two men willing to go beyond the lines to demolish each other.
The Silk Roads: A New History of the World by Peter Frankopan ($30, PB)
For centuries, fame and fortune was to be found in the west— in the New World of the Americas. Today, it is the east which calls out to those in search of adventure & riches. The region stretching from eastern Europe & sweeping right across Central Asia deep into China & India, is taking centre stage in international politics, commerce & culture—and is shaping the modern world. This region, the true centre of the earth, is obscure to many in the English-speaking world. The Silk Roads were no exotic series of connections, but networks that linked continents & oceans together. Along them flowed ideas, goods, disease & death. This was where empires were won & lost. As a new era emerges, the patterns of exchange are mirroring those that have criss-crossed Asia for millennia. In a major reassessment of world history, The Silk Roads is an important account of the forces that have shaped the global economy and the political renaissance in the re-emerging east.
Now in B Format Phantom Terror: The Threat of Revolution and the Repression of Liberty 1789–1848 by Adam Zamoyski, $25 Disobeying Hitler: German Resistance in the Last Year of WWII by Randall Hansen, $25 15
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Science & Nature
Fair Food: Stories from a Movement Changing the World (ed) Nick Rose ($29.95, PB)
Australia's food system is more than just broken: it's killing us. Told through the experiences of several of the leading figures in Australia's Fair Food movement, this book tells stories of personal change, courage, innovation and food activism, from local food hubs and backyard food forests, to the GE-free movement, urban farming, radical homemaking and regenerative agriculture. In a time of bullying corporations, supermarket monopolies and environmental degradation, Fair Food offers compelling and inspiring stories of personal transformation from everyday people, showing us that we, too, can be powerful agents of change in this time of need.
A Beautiful Question: In Pursuit of the Hidden Logic of the Universe by Frank Wilczek ($60, HB)
S
treets of Papunya is the story of the women painters
of Papunya today, rising stars of a new art centre called Papunya Tjupi Arts. Western Desert art expert Vivien Johnson reveals the whole history of Papunya as a site of art production, from Albert Namatjira’s final paintings, executed in Papunya days before his death in 1959, through Papunya’s glory days of the 1970s and ‘80s, the dark time when it was known as ‘carpetbagging capital of the desert’ to its inspirational renaissance, as its leading painters reinvent Papunya painting for the twenty-first century.
Is the world a work of art? Artists and scientists throughout human history have pondered this age-old 'beautiful question'. In a book that stretches from the ancient Greeks to the deep waters of 20th century physics to the present day, Nobel Prize-winning physicist Frank Wilczek explores just how intertwined our ideas about beauty & art are with our scientific understanding of the cosmos, from the infinitesimal to the infinite. In the process, he traces the bright lines of thought connecting Pythagoras's triangles to Plato's solids & Newton's classical equations to Einstein's spooky ones. As he shows us, the equations for atoms & light are almost literally the same equations that govern musical instruments & sound; the subatomic particles that are responsible for most of our mass are determined by simple geometric symmetries. The universe embodies beautiful forms—forms whose hallmarks are symmetry, harmony, balance and proportion—and the quest for beauty has always been at the heart of scientific pursuit.
Atmosphere of Hope: Searching for Solutions to the Climate Crisis by Tim Flannery ($29.99, PB)
Tim Flannery argues that Earth's climate system is approaching a crisis. Catastrophe is not inevitable, but time is fast running out. In the leadup to the UN Climate Change Summit to be held in Paris in December 2015, Atmosphere of Hope provides both a snapshot of the trouble we are in & an up-to-the-minute analysis of some of the new possibilities for mitigating climate change that are emerging now. From atmospheric carbon capture through extensive seaweed farming, CO2 snow production in Antarctica and the manufacture of carbon-rich biochar to reflecting the sun's rays by releasing sulphur into the atmosphere and painting landscapes and cities white, Flannery outlines an array of innovative technologies that give cause for hope.
The Universe in Your Hand: A Journey Through Space, Time & Back by Christophe Galfard
I
n Australian Women War Reporters, Jeannine Baker
provides a much-needed account of the pioneering women who reported from the biggest conflicts of the twentieth century. Two women covered the South African War at the turn of the century, and Louise Mack witnessed the fall of Antwerp in 1914. Others such Anne Matheson, Lorraine Stumm and Kate Webb wrote
about momentous events including the rise of Nazism, the liberation of the concentration camps, the aftermath of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and the Cold War conflicts in Korea and Southeast Asia. These women carved a path for new generations of female foreign correspondents who have built upon their legacy.
w w w. n ews o u t h p u b l i s h i n g .co m
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Astrophysicist Christophe Galfard takes the reader on a wonder-filled journey through the past, present & future of the universe—a journey into science fact. He explains Quantum Mechanics, General Relativity and String Theory using storytelling instead of graphs and equations, transporting the reader to the surface of our dying Sun, flying the reader to distant galaxies, putting the reader into the deathly grip of a Black Hole, and explaining the mysteries of physics in language that will leave no reader behind. ($30, PB)
How Life Works: The Inside Word from a Biochemist by William & Daphne Elliott ($29.95, PB)
Complete with colour illustrations biochemist William Elliott unravels the mystery of life while revealing its majesty. How do chemical reactions occur? How do genes hold information? Why do our bodies age? What happens when someone gets cancer? This book provides the inside word for those who are curious about the workings of the microscopic world inside us. Biochemistry not only explains what DNA is & how it forms the blueprint for who you are, it also explains how the food you eat is broken down, supplying the energy to run a marathon. It shows the intricate structures of proteins & describes their amazing functions. With millions of interactions & reactions all taking place in accord, biochemistry is the science of how life works.
Amazing Rare Things: The Art of Natural History in the Age of Discovery by David Attenborough et al
From the 15th century onwards, as European explorers sailed forth on grand voyages of discovery, their encounters with exotic plants & animals fanned intense scientific interest. Scholars began to examine nature with fresh eyes, and pioneering artists transformed the way nature was seen & understood. The book focuses on an exquisite selection of natural history drawings and watercolours by Leonardo da Vinci, Alexander Marshal, Maria Sibylla Merian, and Mark Catesby, and from the collection of Cassiano dal Pozzo. Attenborough and his coauthors offer lucid commentary on topics ranging from the 30,000-year history of human drawings of the natural world, to Leonardo’s fascination with natural processes, to Catesby’s groundbreaking studies that introduced Europeans to the plants and animals of North America. With 160 full colour illustrations, this beautiful book will appeal to readers with interests that extend from art and science to history and nature. ($39.95, PB)
Philosophy & Religion Deep Within the Brain by Helmut Dubiel ($28, PB)
At the age of 46, philosopher & university professor Helmut Dubiel was diagnosed with Parkinson's disease. In the early stages of his sickness, fearing censure and ostracism, Dubiel did his utmost to conceal his condition. But when his symptoms became too obvious to camouflage, he was obliged to admit defeat and decided to undergo deep brain stimulation surgery. Following this operation, Dubiel found himself in possession of a peculiar power: with little more than the flick of a switch he was able to choose between a personality defined as irascible and maudlin and the lucid, quick-thinking academic he had always been. In this fascinating book, Dubiel describes the course of his illness with a philosopher's aplomb, ennobling his personal experience with intellectual flair and scientific insight as he makes connections between his own medical drama and some of today's most significant global tendencies.
On Inequality by Harry G. Frankfurt ($31.95, HB)
Economic inequality is one of the most divisive issues of our time. Yet few would argue that inequality is a greater evil than poverty. The poor suffer because they don’t have enough, not because others have more, and some have far too much. So why do many people appear to be more distressed by the rich than by the poor? Harry Frankfurt presents an unsettling response to those who believe that the goal of social justice should be economic equality or less inequality. He argues that we are morally obligated to eliminate poverty not achieve equality or reduce inequality. Our focus should be on making sure everyone has a sufficient amount to live a decent life. To focus instead on inequality is distracting & alienating. At the same time, he argues that the conjunction of vast wealth & poverty is offensive. If we dedicate ourselves to making sure everyone has enough, we may reduce inequality as a side effect.
Unlearning with Hannah Arendt by Marie Luise Knott ($23, PB)
After observing the trial of Adolf Eichmann in Jerusalem, Hannah Arendt formulated her controversial concept of the 'banality of evil' and asked the question: how can seemingly normal people carry out genocidal acts? She found her answer by focusing on the machinery of Nazi genocide and the organisational capacity of the victims: the Jewish Councils drawing up lists for deportation. The latter proved hugely controversial when the book was first published in serial form in the New Yorker. Anchoring its discussion in the themes of laughter, translation, forgiveness, and dramatisation, this book explores how the iconic political theorist 'unlearned' trends and patterns to establish her own theoretical praxis.
God in Proof: The Story of a Search from the Ancients to the Internet by Nathan Schneider
In this tour of the history of arguments for & against the existence of God, Nathan Schneider embarks on a remarkable intellectual, historical, and theological journey through the centuries of believers & unbelievers from ancient Greeks, to medieval Arabs, to today's most eminent philosophers & the New Atheists. Schneider's portrayal of the characters & ideas involved in the search for proof challenges how we think about doubt & faith while showing that, in their quest for certainty & the proofs to declare it, thinkers on either side of the God divide are often closer to one another than they would like to think. ($49.95, PB)
A Philosophy of Pessimism by Stuart Sim
To counter the optimists & their rosy outlook, it is necessary to keep the dark side of human affairs at the forefront of our consciousness; perhaps, after all, it is more rational to adopt an essentially pessimistic attitude. How pessimism has developed, and its multifaceted nature, forms the subject of this book. Pessimism deserves to be cultivated, and it is in the public interest that its cause is defended vigorously: it is as relevant today as it has ever been. ($40, PB)
Islam and the Future of Tolerance: A Dialogue by Sam Harris & Maajid Nawaz
In this deeply informed exchange, Sam Harris and Maajid Nawaz present an antidote to the polarising rhetoric and obscurantism that define our time: honest dialogue. Guided by a commitment to the belief that no idea is above scrutiny and no people beneath dignity, Harris and Nawaz challenge each other, and their readers, to discover common ground. Maajid Nawaz is an author and Founding Chairman of Quilliam—a globally active think tank focusing on matters of integration, citizenship & identity, religious freedom, extremism and immigration. He encourages the reform of Islam today, inclusive citizenship-based participation of Muslims in their respective countries, and seeks to synergise a respect for human rights with the civic liberal imperative to defend those in danger of being stigmatized by extremists of all stripes due to their personal choices. ($35.95, PB)
New & Updated: Elbow Room: The Varieties of Free Will Worth Wanting by Daniel C. Dennett ($47.95, PB)
In this landmark 1984 work on free will Daniel Dennett concludes that we can have free will and science too. This new edition includes as its afterword Dennett's 2012 Erasmus Prize essay.
Psychology Before I Forget: How I Survived a Diagnosis of Younger-Onset Dementia at 46 by Christine Bryden ($33, PB)
When she was just 46, Christine Bryden—science advisor to the prime minister & single mother of three daughters—was diagnosed with younger-onset dementia. Doctors told her to get her affairs in order as she would soon be incapable of doing so. 20 years later she is still thriving, still working hard to rewire her brain even as it loses its function. The unusually slow progress of her condition puts Christine in a unique position to describe the lived experience of dementia, a condition affecting tens of millions of people worldwide. She looks back on her life in an effort to understand how her brain—once her greatest asset, now her greatest challenge—works now. She shares what it's like to start grasping for words that used to come easily. To be exhausted from visiting a new place. To suddenly realise you don't remember how to drive. To challenge, every day, the stereotype of the 'empty shell'.
Playing Scared: A History and Memoir of Stage Fright by Sara Solovitch ($30, PB)
Stage fright is one of the human psyche's deepest fears. Over half of British adults name public speaking as their greatest fear, even greater than heights and snakes. As a young child, Sara Solovitch studied piano and fell in love with music. As a teen, she played Bach & Mozart at her hometown's annual music festival, but was overwhelmed by stage fright, which led her to give up aspirations of becoming a professional pianist. In her late 50s, Sara gave herself a one-year deadline to tame performance anxiety & play before an audience. She resumed music lessons, while exploring meditation, exposure therapy, cognitive therapy, biofeedback & beta blockers, among many other remedies. She practiced performing in airports, hospitals & retirement homes. Finally, the day before her 60th birthday, she gave a formal recital for an audience of fifty.
Resonate: For People Who Need to be Heard by Louise Mahler ($33, PB)
Voice coach Dr Louise Mahler approaches voice through an understanding of the whole body to explain how your state of mind determines the way you hold your body, how your feelings resonate through your voice & how this sequence ultimately influences the efficacy of your communication. Whether you struggle to make a point at work or a school committee meeting; whether you're going for the next big job or trying to improve your performance in the one you have; or you simply want better ways to communicate, this book shows how to tune in to your own vocal intelligence, identify the physical & mental blocks that are holding you back, and reclaim your authentic voice.
The Narcissist You Know by Joseph Burgo
Are there people in your life who dominate every social situation or work meeting? In their presence, do you feel ignored, insignificant & even humiliated? If so, you may be dealing with a narcissist. Extreme narcissists make up 5 per cent of the population. Chances are, you have a best friend, partner, mother, or boss who is a narcissist. Narcissists do not empathise, there is no give & take & they never admit mistakes. Narcissists deplete the confidence of those around them in order to stay on top. If you have one in your life, you need help. With more than 30 years of experience studying personality disorders & treating extreme narcissists, Dr Joseph Burgo has developed a useful guidebook to help you defuse hostile situations & survive assaults on your self-esteem should you ever find yourself in an extreme narcissist's orbit. ($29.99, PB)
While on the 'me' subject—new & updated this month: The Life of I Updated Edition: The New Culture of Narcissism by Anne Manne—updated to include Mon Haron Monis, Andreas Lubitz & Jake Bilardi ($32.99, PB) Now in B format The Organized Mind: Thinking Straight in the Age of Information Overload by Daniel Levitin ($25, PB) Political Freud: A History by Eli Zaretsky
Political Freud is Eli Zaretsky's account of the way twentieth century radicals, activists, and thinkers used Freudian thought to understand the political developments of their century. He shows how important political readings of Freud were to the theory of fascism and the experience of the Holocaust, the critical role they played in African American radical thought, particularly in the struggle for racial memory, and in the rebellions of the 1960s and their culmination in feminism and gay liberation. Yet Freudianism's involvement in history was not one-sided. Its interaction with historical forces shaped the Freudian tradition as well, and in this illuminating account, Zaretsky tracks the evolution of Freudian ideas across the decades so we can better recognize its manifestations today. ($66, HB) 17
A Little Life Despite the daunting size of this book (over 700 pages), and the rather discouraging blurb on the back cover (two of the reviewers mention weeping through the book), I decided to broach it— mainly because one of our managers told me I should. So I did, and while I did sob silently (on a train), I also managed to race through it as it's an extremely accessible book despite its size.
Cultural Studies & Criticism
Set mainly in New York, roughly over the past 30 years, A Little Life is ostensibly a book about four young men who become friends at college. There is Malcolm an architecture student, JB a nascent artist, Willem a budding actor, and the mysterious Jude St Francis, a promising mathematician who is studying law. Fast paced, yet highly descriptive, the narrative has a telescoping effect—we go in and out of the background of each the friends, and their relationships with each other—while avoiding a lot of detail about Jude, whose formative years are as much a mystery to his friends as they are to the reader. Little by little Jude's past is revealed, as his place becomes more central in the book. It's not a spoiler to say his childhood is horrific, but it is a warning. The focus eventually narrows on Jude and Willem's friendship, and ultimately on Jude himself. What starts out as a buddy book becomes a damning indictment on the welfare of orphans, particularly those left in the care of the Catholic Church (amongst other institutions). The descriptions of abuse are chilling, and almost, but not quite, unbelievable. However, the book is not just a tale of horror, it is also a testament to friendship, to loyalty and courage, and has some tremendous, credible peripheral characters. The four main protagonists are interesting in their own right. Malcolm is privileged and talented, and makes exquisite, impossible model houses as well as designing the real thing. JB is a brilliant, spoilt artist, whose self-absorbed antics are outrageous and very funny, while the description of his paintings runs through the book like a mirrored ribbon, reflecting the lives of his friends. Willem is charismatic, beautiful and compassionate, almost a superman; and Jude is extraordinary—and impossible to sum up in a few sentences. Mistakes are made, apologies given (rather a lot of saying sorry), and time slips away (just like real life). Tragedy and triumph abound through the book, leaving the reader fairly devastated. A harrowing but great book! Louise Pfanner
Penguin and the Lane Brothers: The Untold Story of a Publishing Revolution by Stuart Kells ($40, HB)
An intimate partnership of three brothers—Allen, Richard and John Lane—lay at the heart of Penguin Books, one of the 20th century's greatest publishing house. The Lane boys did their best thinking together in bathroom board meetings, where at least one director would always be 'mother naked'. But the 1942 death of John Lane brought the troika to a halt. Allen, the enthusiastic front man who relied on his younger brothers to drive Penguin's success, became more erratic and suspicious over time. Ultimately, he would force Richard out of the company he had co-founded and built. A portrait of a remarkable family and a publishing powerhouse, this book also explores the little known story of Richard Lane – the heart and backbone of Penguin, and its strongest influence. Richards's experience as a youth in Australia shaped his character and outlook; his dedication to the business was matched only by his devotion to his brothers.
Ovid by Carole E. Newlands ($36.95, PB) Virgil, Horace & Ovid are often cited as the 3 great canonical poets of classical Roman literature. Carole Newlands introduces her subject as an ancient author with a vital place in the modern cultural canon: and also as the inspiration behind figures as diverse as Chaucer, Titian, Dryden & Ted Hughes. She views Ovid as a Latin writer who is uniquely suitable for times of change: he appeals to postmodern sensibilities because of his interest in psychology, his fascination with cultural hybridity & his challenge to the conventional divide between animal & human. This book explores the connection between the historical poet & the works he produced: love elegies, the Metamorphoses & the Fasti. It shows that unlike Virgil—who wrote early in Augustus' reign, anticipating a golden age of peace and prosperity—Ovid was a product of the late Augustan age: one of hardening autocracy & the greater influence of Tiberius behind the scenes. His elegies & erotic myths must therefore be understood as the result of complex, shifting political circumstances.
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Under Cover: Adventures in the Art of Editing by Craig Munro ($30, PB)
Craig Munro began his blue-pencil adventures at UQP in 1971. Over the next 30 years, he became friend, counsellor & occasionally foil to some of the country's leading authors. From a champagne-fuelled telegram to Patrick White to a run-in with Xavier Herbert, Craig's editorial life was punctuated by encounters with remarkable writers. Championing the early works of Peter Carey, right up to the Booker– winning True History of the Kelly Gang, Craig also edited David Malouf's first novel, Johnno. He was teased by Murray Bail's tantalising mind games, discovered a passion for Olga Masters' fiction, and helped create UQP's acclaimed Indigenous list. Blending book history with memoir, Munro explores the invisible art of editing in an entertaining tour of three audacious, intoxicating, and ultimately inspiring decades of publishing mayhem.
The Lioness in Winter: Writing an Old Woman's Life by Ann Burack-Weiss ($55.95, HB)
When she started working with the aged more than 40 years ago, Ann Burack-Weiss began packing away the knowledge & skills she thought would help when she became older herself. It was not until she hit her mid-70s that she realised she had packed sneakers to climb Mount Everest, not anticipating the crevices & chasms that constitute the rocky terrain of old age. The professional literature offered little help, so she turned to the late-life writing of beloved women authors who had bravely climbed the mountain & sent back news from the summit. Maya Angelou, Colette, Simone de Beauvoir, Joan Didion, Marguerite Duras, M. F. K. Fisher, Doris Lessing, Mary Oliver, Adrienne Rich, May Sarton & Florida Scott-Maxwell were among the many guides she turned to for inspiration. In this book Burack-Weiss blends an analysis of key writings from these & other famed women authors with her own wisdom to create one essential companion for older women and those who care for them.
Wounding the World by Joanna Bourke ($30, PB)
Wars are frequently justified 'in our name'. Militarist values & practices co-opt us, permeating our language, invading our dream space, entertaining us at the movies or in front of game consoles. Our taxes pay for those war machines. Our loved ones are killed & maimed. With killing now an integral part of the entertainment industry in video games and Hollywood films, war has become mainstream. With the 100th anniversary of the declaration of WW1, has come a deluge of books, documentaries, feature films & radio programmes. We will hear a great deal about the horror of the battlefield. Joanna Bourke acknowledges wider truths: war is unending & violence is deeply entrenched in our society. But it doesn't have to be this way. Her book discusses the history, culture & politics of warfare in order to interrogate and resist an increasingly violent world.
J. M. Coetzee and the Life of Writing: Face to Face with Time by David Attwell ($33, PB)
J. M. Coetzee—winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, twice winner of the Man Booker Prize—is one of the world's most celebrated and intriguing authors. Yet the heart of his fiction remains elusive. David Attwell explores the extraordinary creative processes behind Coetzee's novels, from Dusklands to The Childhood of Jesus. Through a close examination of Coetzee's manuscripts, notebooks and research papers, Attwell reveals the strong autobiographical thread that runs through his work, demonstrating that Coetzee's writing proceeds with never-ending self-reflection.
All Your Friends Like This: How Social Networks Took Over News by Hal Crawford et al ($28, PB)
How do you get your news? Chances are not from a newspaper or the TV—that's so old-school. If you're anything like the rest of us, you get it from Facebook or Twitter. The great power shift from traditional media to social networks is happening right now. This boom means that, for millions of us, our first exposure to information about the world comes from our friends, not news media. But social networks don't do news the old-fashioned way. Because we share stories that make us look good, inspire us and fire us up, the tone and flavour of the news-making process is irrevocably altered. What does this mean for media? For journalists? The audience? Are we better off or worse off because of it? All Your Friends Like This does for the media what Freakonomics did for economics. If you're interested in the news, in what we read and why we read it then this game-changing book is essential.
On Writing by Charles Bukowski ($33, PB)
If a man truly desires to write, then he will. Rejection and ridicule will only strengthen him . . . There is no losing in writing, it will make your toes laugh as you sleep, it will make you stride like a tiger, it will fire the eye and put you face to face with death. You will die a fighter, you will be honored in hell. The luck of the word. Go with it, send it. Piercing, unsentimental and often hilarious, On Writing is filled not only with memorable lines but also with the author's trademark toughness, leavened with moments of grace, pathos and intimacy. In the previously unpublished letters to editors, friends and fellow writers collected here, Bukowski is brutally frank about the drudgery of work and uncompromising when it comes to the absurdities of life and of art.
s d d w n n a o 2 H R
The Shiralee by D'Arcy Niland PB. $15.00
Notes on the Death of Culture: Essays on Spectacle and Society by Mario Vargas Llosa ($35, PB)
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In the past, culture was a kind of vital consciousness that constantly rejuvenated & revivified everyday reality. Now it is largely a mechanism of distraction & entertainment. Taking his cues from T. S. Eliot—whose treatise Notes Towards the Definition of Culture is a touchstone precisely because the culture Eliot aimed to describe has since vanished— Nobel prize winner Mario Vargas Llosa traces a decline whose ill effects have only just begun to be felt. He mourns, in particular, the figure of the intellectual: for most of the 20th century, men & women of letters drove political, aesthetic & moral conversations; today they have all but disappeared from public debate. But Vargas Llosa stubbornly refuses to fade into the background. He is not content to merely sign a petition; he will not bite his tongue. A necessary provocateur, here vividly translated by John King, provides an impassioned and essential critique of our time and culture.
Three Songs, Three Singers, Three Nations by Greil Marcus ($39.95, HB)
Greil Marcus' new book delves into three episodes in the history of American commonplace song: Bascom Lamar Lunsford's 1928 I Wish I Was a Mole in the Ground, Geeshie Wiley's 1930 Last Kind Words Blues, and Bob Dylan's 1964 Ballad of Hollis Brown. How each of these songs manages to convey the uncanny sense that it was written by no one illuminates different aspects of the commonplace song tradition. Some songs truly did come together over time without an identifiable author. Others draw melodies and motifs from obscure sources but, in the hands of a particular artist, take a final, indelible shape. And, as in the case of Dylan's Hollis Brown, there are songs that were written by a single author but that communicate as anonymous productions, as if they were folk songs passed down over many generations. A hypnotic treatise about how songs journey from origin to ether, from nowhere to everywhere, from a single voice to a common one.
Obfuscation: A User's Guide for Privacy & Protest by Finn Brunton & Helen Nissenbaum ($39.95, HB)
This book offers ways to fight today's pervasive digital surveillance—the collection of our data by governments, corporations, advertisers & hackers. To the toolkit of privacy protecting techniques & projects, Brunton & Nissenbaum propose adding obfuscation: the deliberate use of ambiguous, confusing, or misleading information to interfere with surveillance & data collection projects. They provide tools & a rationale for evasion, noncompliance, refusal, even sabotage—especially for average users who are not in a position to opt out or exert control over data about themselves. They describe a series of historical & contemporary examples, including radar chaff deployed by World War II pilots, Twitter bots that hobbled the social media strategy of popular protest movements, and software that can camouflage users' search queries and stymie online advertising.
shiralee. Noun. Informal. Australian. A swag; a bundle of personal belongings or blankets carried by a swagman. Late 19th Century. Origin unknown. - The Oxford English Dictionary. He had two swags, one of them with legs and a cabbage-tree hat, and that one was the main difference between him and others who take to the road, following the sun for their bread and butter. Some have dogs. Some have horses. Some have women. And they all have mates and companions, or for this reason and that, all of some use. But with Macauley it was this way: he had a child and the only reason he had it was because he was stuck with it. D'Arcy Niland's enduring novel, published in 1955 is featured this month. Firstly, for the striking cover art of this film edition, released in 1957. Secondly, to mark the recent passing of Australian actress Dana Wilson (1949–2015) who played 5 year old 'Buster' opposite Peter Finch (1916–1977), as Macauley the swagman, in the memorable movie. D'Arcy Niland (1917–1967) author and journalist, had worked as an itinerant farm labourer during the 1930s Depression as well as an opal miner, carnival boxer and, during the 1940s, as a shearer and a railway worker. He was rejected for military service in World War II due to a heart condition. This would cause his premature death at 49. He married the New Zealand born novelist, Ruth Park (1917–2010) in 1942, and they both decided on careers as professional writers. The Shiralee was Niland's first novel and an international success. The equally successful Ealing Studios film (interior scenes shot in London and exterior scenes near Scone, NSW) also featured a smattering of expat Aussie actors—Bill Kerr, Ed Devereaux, Bill Hunter and Charles 'Bud' Tingwell. The film's publicity pulled no punches when describing the plot: Tough yet tender is this racy story of Macauley, an Australian swagman who roves the country ... besides his pack, he has another 'shiralee' or burden—his small daughter Buster, whom he takes with him to spite his sluttish wife. Bitterly he resents the child. Then gradually, as they share hardships and adventures, her loyalty and affection bring him to realise that she is his only joy. But wait, there's more!...British Pop sensation Tommy Steele provided the title song: Female Chorus: Shiralee! / Tommy: With this burden by my side, I wander far and wide; And through the Outback I had to roam. / But my sorrow she cannot tell, she's just a little girl; Who's lonely like me without a home. Shiralee! Female Chorus: Walk with me! / Tommy: Ma ma ma ma My Shiralee!" Before you all mock, bear in mind that this tearful little ditty reached No.11 on the 1957 UK Singles Charts. The Poms lapped it up—as did we. Peter Finch later recalled the film as one of his favourites. Niland's novel was filmed a second time in 1987 as an equally popular television Mini-Series starring Bryan Brown as Macauley and Rebecca Smart as Buster. Stephen Reid
Language
Going to Hell in a Hen Basket by Robert Rubin
'without further adieu'; 'hair-brained'; 'I was curled up in a feeble position'; 'exercising demons'—Delighting in the creative misuse of words and celebrating the verbal flubs that ignore the conventions of standard English, Robert Alden Rubin provides an illustrated dictionary of contemporary malapropisms. ($25, HB)
Riddledom: 101 riddles & Their Stories by David Astle ($30, PB)
David Astle plunges into the realm of riddles in a mindtrip across time & place. He uncovers relics from over 50 cultures, delving into language & deception, sampling Pompeii walls & Dothraki warriors. Unravel each mini-chapter, & wrestle with riddles from Wonderland or Zanzibar, Oedipus Rex or Harry Potter.
A Barrel of Monkeys: A Compendium of Collective Nouns for Animals ($29.95, HB)
'a shrewdness of apes', 'a busyness of ferrets', 'a piddle of puppies', 'a crash of rhinoceroses'. Drawing on a range of sources, from 15th century hunting terms to more recent inventions this book collects over 100 examples of the most interesting collective nouns for animals, each illustrated with charming woodcuts by the renowned naturalist engraver of the 18th century, Thomas Bewick.
For the Reference Shelves: The First English Dictionary 1604— Robert Cawdrey's A Table Alphabeticall, $28.95 The First English Dictionary of Slang 1699 by B. E. Gent, $29.95 The Victorian Dictionary of Slang & Phrase by J. Redding Ware, $35.95
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Winter's Icy Blast I realise the publishing schedule of our esteemed journal means that my handful of—doubtless bemused—readers will be perusing this article in early
Spring.
However, as I write, the predicted Antarctic blast has locked our Blue Mountains redoubt in its icy grip. As proof, yesterday, 16 July 2015, I saw a genuine snowfall at Blackheath. This was only the third time in my life that I had witnessed this phenomenon. The first was at a 1973 week long high school excursion to Lake Jindabyne (anyone else remember those?). The second was in West Berlin during Winter 1989. In Ancient Greek Myth, Aeolus was the God of Winds and Chione the Goddess of Snow—she was the daughter of Boreas, God of the North Wind, and Oreithyia, the Lady of Mountain Storms. They are all making their presence felt as I write.
The Odyssey by Homer (Tr. E.V Rieu) ($19.99, PB) So, where better to begin than with Homer’s saga of Odysseus’s ten year journey home after the Trojan War and—among many other adventures—his meeting with the Keeper of the Winds himself? Since it was the one I enjoyed reading as a teenager, I have chosen E.V. Rieu’s now classic prose translation—originally published in 1946 as the very first Penguin Classic. However, for those of my readers given to poetry, Robert Fagle’s highly acclaimed modern verse translation, first published in 1996, is also recommended. We next came to the floating island of Aeolia, the home of Aeolus...who is a favourite of the immortal Gods. Aeolus shares his house with his family of twelve, six daughters and six grown-up sons... With their father and mother they are always feasting. Countless delicacies are laid before them... and the courtyard echoes to the sound of banqueting within. For a whole month Aeolus entertained me... When I asked him if I might continue my journey and count on his help he gave it willingly...and presented me with a leather bag made from the skin of a full-grown ox, in which he had imprisoned the boisterous energies of all the winds... Then he called up a breeze from the West to blow my ships and their crews across the sea... At the Back of the North Wind by George MacDonald ($28, HC) I write, not for children, but for the child-like, whether they be of five, or fifty, or seventy-five. I wonder how well known the books of Scottish fantasy writer George MacDonald (1824–1905) are these days? Although praised as 'a master' by C. S. Lewis, and as a direct inspiration for his Narnia novels, I fear MacDonald is now unjustly neglected. His other famed works include: The Princess and the Goblin, Phantastes and Lilith. At the Back of the North Wind (written in 1868) tells the story of Diamond, the young son of a poor coach driver, and his wife. While sleeping in the hayloft above his parent's stables the boy is awoken by a mysterious and beautiful woman who is the North Wind. Leaning over him was the large, beautiful, pale face of a woman ...'Will you go with me now, little Diamond?' asked the North Wind bending over him and speaking very gently. 'Yes, yes!' cried Diamond, stretching out his arms toward her. 'Yes, I will go with you, dear North Wind. I am not a bit afraid. I will go! But,' he added, 'how shall I get my clothes? They are in mother's room and the door is locked.' 'Oh never mind your clothes. You will not be cold. Nobody is cold with the North Wind.' 'I thought everybody was,' said Diamond. 'That is a great mistake. People are not cold when they are with the North Wind—only when they are against it. Now will you come?' Swept up into her embrace, Diamond joins her on her travels - even to and from the land where the North Wind is forbidden to visit. During his journey Diamond learns of goodness, truth and duty and is able to enrich the lives of his family, friends and complete strangers. Chock full of Victorian moralising, digressions, a rather meandering narrative as well as passages of memorable beauty, this unique tale is not to everyone's taste. It has been labelled a book 'that people despise, adore, are unable to finish or find supremely comforting'. Read it and see. The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame ($15, PB) I first read The Wind in the Willows when I was ten or eleven. I’d already seen the Disney cartoon version and enjoyed Mr. Toad’s destructive antics with horse-drawn caravans and motor cars. So I was taken completely unawares when I reached the astonishing Chapter Seven—The Piper at the Gates of Dawn—when Ratty and Mole encounter the Great God Pan on the river bank while searching for Otter’s son. Then suddenly the Mole felt a great Awe fall upon him, an awe that turned his muscles to water, bowed his head, and rooted his feet to the ground. It was no panic terror—indeed he felt wonderfully at peace and happy—but it was an awe that smote and held him and, without seeing, he knew it could only mean that some august Presence was very, very near. With difficulty he turned to look for his friend and saw him at his side cowed, stricken, and trembling violently. And still there was utter silence in the populous bird-haunted branches around them; and still the light grew and grew... You will have to read the rest of this description in the Chapter yourselves. The scene of Mole crying with joy at the beauty of what he sees made me cry too. The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe by C. S. Lewis ($17, PB) My favourite episode in this whole book, and the one that hooked me into reading the entire Narnia series, is Chapter Four, Turkish Delight. It describes ten year old Edmund Pevensie's encounter with Jadis, the evil White Witch and Queen of Narnia. Able to turn people to stone with her magic wand, the Queen is served by Giants, Werewolves, Tree Spirits, Minotaurs, Spectres, Ogres, Bats, Vultures and 'creatures that are so horrible that if I told you, your parents probably wouldn't let you read
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this book'. Jadis has cast Narnia into an endless Winter of Ice and Snow. She meets Edmund while journeying in her sledge through the Wood of the Lantern Waste and questions him about the strange, new visitors to Narnia. Edmund is tricked into betraying his friends by drinking a warm potion and eating an enchanted sweet: 'It is dull, Son of Adam, to drink without eating,' said the Queen presently. 'What would you like best to eat?' 'Turkish Delight, please, your Majesty', said Edmund. The Queen let fall another drop from her bottle on to the snow, and instantly there appeared a round box, tied with a green silk ribbon, which, when opened, turned out to contain several pounds of the best Turkish Delight...While he was eating the Queen kept asking him questions. At first Edmund tried to remember that it is rude to speak with one's mouth full, but he soon forgot about this and thought only of trying to shovel down as much Turkish Delight as he could, and the more he ate the more he wanted to eat, and he never asked himself why the Queen should be so inquisitive... At last the Turkish Delight was all finished and Edmund was looking very hard at the empty box and wishing that she would ask him whether he would like some more... for this was enchanted Turkish Delight and that anyone who had once tasted it would want more and more of it and would go on eating it till they killed themselves. Enjoy reading these selected classics with some (hopefully) un-enchanted Turkish Delight, on a (hopefully) beautiful early Spring day. Stephen Reid
Poetry
Citizen: An American Lyric by Claudia Rankine
In this moving, critical and fiercely intelligent collection of prose poems, Claudia Rankine examines the experience of race and racism in Western society through sharp vignettes of everyday discrimination and prejudice, and longer meditations on the violence—whether linguistic or physical—which has impacted the lives of Serena Williams, Zinedine Zidane, Mark Duggan and others. Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for Poetry & Winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Poetry. ($23, PB)
What about This: Collected Poems of Frank Stanford ($72, HB)
What About This introduces to a broader audience an important and original American poet sensitive, death-haunted, surreal, carnal, dirt-flecked and deeply Southern whose promise, only partly fulfilled, it hurts to contemplate. His poems flick on a heretofore unnoticed porch light in your mind. Many of these poems seem as if they were written with a burnt stick. With blood in river mud... Frank Stanford, demonically prolific, approaches the poem not as an exercise of rhetoric or a puzzle of signifiers but as a man 'looking for his own tongue' in a knife-fight with a ghost.
Burning Daylight by Christine Fellows ($32, HB) Musical theatre meets poetry in Burning Daylight, a poetry collection and song cycle drawing together the Yukon Gold Rush of the early 20th century and the Arctic iron ore mining mega-projects of the modern day. Through a feminist lens, it examines dislocation, isolation, family and frailty, reflected in our relationship with the ever-changing northern landscape. Mahabharata: A Modern Retelling ($72, HB)
Originally composed approximately two thousand years ago, the Mahabharata tells the story of a royal dynasty, descended from gods, whose feud over their kingdom results in a devastating war. A seminal Hindu text, which includes the Bhagavad Gita, it is also one of the most important and influential works in the history of world civilization. Innovatively composed in blank verse rather than prose, Carole Satyamurti's English retelling covers all eighteen books of the Mahabharata. This new version masterfully captures the beauty, excitement, and profundity of the original Sanskrit poem as well as its magnificent architecture and extraordinary scope..
Faber Poetry Diary 2016, $25 In Pale or Dark Blue
The Faber poetry list, originally founded in the 1920s, was shaped by the taste of T. S. Eliot who was its guiding light for nearly forty years. Since the sixties, each passing decade has seen the list grow with the addition of poets who were arguably the finest of their generation. These diaries are a week-to-view offering poetry lovers a different poem or illustration to enjoy for each week of the year.
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Possessed of a Past: A John Banville Reader, HB
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The Jewels of Paradise Donna Leon, HB
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The Mathematics of Love: The Midas Touch: World Patterns, Proofs, and the Search Mythology in Bite-Sized Chunks for the Ultimate Equation Mark Daniels, HB Hannah Fry, HB
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How to Cook Everything: Basics Mark Bittman, HB
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Fired with Passion: Contemporary Japanese Ceramics: Lurie & Chang, HB
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The Secret Museum Molly Oldfield, HB
Beastly Things Donna Leon, PB
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Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal? Jeanette Winterson HB
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The Shadow of a Great Rock: Inside the Dream Palace: The Life and Times of New York's A Literary Appreciation of Legendary Chelsea Hotel the King James Bible Sherill Tippins, HB Harold Bloom, PB
The Cooks' Book: For the Cook Who's Best at Everything Louise Dixon, HB
Was $108
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Fidelity Grace Paley, HB
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Under the Sun: The Letters of Bruce Chatwin, HB
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Raised from the Ground Jose Saramago, HB
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Diary of a Baby Wombat Jackie French, HB
The Wreck of the Zephyr Chris Van Allsburg, HB
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Gifts of the Sultan: The Arts of Giving at the Islamic Courts (ed) Linda Komaroff, HB
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The Changing Status of the Artist Barker et al, HB
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The Arts
Australian Predators of the Sky by Penny Olsen, foreword by Sean Dooley
This book comprises over 200 striking paintings, lithographs and engravings of all 34 Australian species—25 diurnal birds of prey and nine owls. From odd-looking first depictions to stunning, detailed portrayals of the species, the illustrations cover more than two centuries of bird art, selected from the National Library of Australia’s collection. The artists include George Raper and John Hunter (First Fleet naval officers), Sarah Stone, John and Elizabeth Gould, Henry Constantine Richter, Henrik Grönvold, Ellis Rowan, Neville Henry Cayley, Lionel Lindsay, Lilian Medland, Ebenezer Edward Gostelow, and, more recently, Betty Temple Watts, Frank Knight and Jeff Davies. ($40, PB)
Streets of Papunya: The reinvention of Papunya Painting by Vivien Johnson
Some of Australia’s most exciting contemporary art comes from the daughters of the ground-breaking Papunya Tula artists of the 1970s, the founding fathers of the desert art movement. This is the story of the women painters of Papunya today, rising stars of a new art centre called Papunya Tjupi Arts. Among them are some of the first women in the desert to join the original Papunya art movement, who continue Papunya’s rich history as the birthplace of contemporary Indigenous art. Vivien Johnson reveals the whole history of Papunya as a site of art production, from Albert Namatjira’s final paintings, executed in Papunya days before his death in 1959, through Papunya’s glory days of the 1970s and 80s, the dark time when it was known as ‘carpetbagging capital of the desert’ to its inspirational renaissance, as its leading painters reinvent Papunya painting for the 21st century. ($50, PB)
The Language of Light and Dark: Light and Place in Australian Photography by Melissa Miles ($65, HB)
Myths of a distinctly Australian light have shaped national identity and belonging, and the notion that photography is a language of light has particular significance for the country’s photographic works. Using an extensive selection of pictures from photographers including Norman Deck, Harold Cazneaux, Max Dupain, Olive Cotton, Mark Strizic, John Cato, Jane Burton & Bill Henson, Melissa Miles reveals how myths of light & place have been reinvented, renewed & challenged. She explores how approaches to darkness & light have been affected by debates about colonisation, the landscape, urban development & contemporary patterns of global & environmental change.
Everything is Happening: Journey into a Painting by Michael Jacobs ($35, HB)
Michael Jacobs had been haunted by Velazquez's enigmatic masterwork, Las Meninas, for most of his adult life. In this fascinating book, he searches for the ultimate significance of the painting by following the trails of associations and memories from each individual character in the picture. From the Italian roots of the mysterious dwarf, to Mastiff breeders and the complex politics of Golden-Age Madrid, from the theatrical youth of Velazquez in Seville to the seedy bars of turbulent contemporary Spain, Jacobs dissolves the barriers between the past and the present, the real and the illusory.
How Posters Work by Ellen Lupton ($45, HB)
Rather than provide a history of the genre or a compilation of collectible posters, this book is organised around active design principles. Concepts such as 'Simplify', 'Focus the eye', 'Exploit the diagonal', 'Reverse expectations' & 'Say two things at once' are illustrated with a diverse range of posters, from avant-garde classics & rarely seen international works to contemporary pieces by today's leading graphic designers. Using over 150 works from the collection of Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum, Ellen Lupton provides a stunning education in seeing & making, demonstrating how some of the world's most creative designers have mobilised principles of layout, composition, psychology & rhetoric to produce powerful acts of visual communication. Goya: The Portraits ($86, HB) Francisco de Goya y Lucientes (1746–1828) was one of the greatest portraitists of his time. This handsome volume features portraits that shed light on Goya & his subjects, as well as on the politically turbulent & culturally dynamic era in which they lived. Whether portraying royalty, philosophers, military men, or friends, these works are memorable both for the insight they provide into the relationship between artist & sitter, and for their penetrating psychological depth—his break with traditional, late 18th-century conventions allowed him to achieve a new modernity in portraiture that paved the way for artists such as Matisse and Picasso. Xavier Bray traces Goya's career from his beginnings at the Madrid court of Charles III to his final years in Bordeaux, played out against the backdrop of war with France & the social, political & cultural shift of the Enlightenment. More than 60 remarkable portraits, including drawings and miniatures, reveal the full range of Goya's technical & stylistic achievements.
DVDs with Scott Donovan Dior and I ($29.95, Region 2)
This documentary takes the viewer inside the storied world of the Christian Dior fashion house giving a behind-the-scenes look at the creation of Raf Simons' first haute couture collection as its new artistic director—a true labour of love created by a dedicated group of collaborators. Melding the everyday, pressure-filled components of fashion with mysterious echoes from the iconic brand's past, the film is also a colourful homage to the seamstresses who serve Simons' vision.
Still Alice ($32.95, Region 2)
Single Father ($29.95)
As a bike rider it was disconcerting to watch two films within the space of a week with plots based around the death of a cyclist. In the BBC series Single Father David Tennant stars as a single dad struggling to raise a young family after his wife's fatal accident. Torn between the emotional and practical needs of his children, the intrusive if well-meaning attention of friends and relatives, and the pressures of work while also trying to cope with the burden of his own grief Tennant's 'single father' is taken to the breaking point. But when secrets about his wife's past are revealed in the months following her death he realises he knew very little about the woman he loved and must now fight to keep his family together.
Human Capital ($32.95)
The hit and run death of a cyclist is at the centre of Human Capital—Paolo Virzi's seering examination of class politics in contemporary Italy. Two families from two very different social worlds are drawn together when the only son and daughter of each, once romantically involved, are implicated in the cyclist's death. An attempted cover-up and the unrelated collapse of a business partnership between the two families exposes old class divisions as each fight to clear their children's names and protect their assets.
The Dark Horse ($21.95, Region 2)
This New Zealand film directed by James Napier Robertson and starring Cliff Curtis is based on the life of a charismatic, little-known New Zealand hero, Genesis Potini. Once a heralded chess champion, Genesis has spent the last few battling severe bipolar disorder. After being released from the psychiatric ward he moves in with Ariki, his gang-patched and distant brother, and Ariki’s soon-to-be-patched teenage son, Mana. Genesis joins a rough-as-guts local chess club, with the wild idea of coaching the motley crew of kids to the national chess championship—navigating conflict within the gang world and trying to survive the potentially devastating strife that breaks out between him and his brother over his nephew’s future.
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Alice Howland (Julianne Moore), happily married with three grown children (Kristen Stewart, Kate Bosworth and Hunter Parrish), is a renowned linguistics professor. When she receives a devastating diagnosis of early-onset Alzheimer's disease, Alice and her family find their bonds thoroughly tested. Her struggle to stay connected to who she once was is frightening, heartbreaking and inspiring.
Suite Francaise ($32.95, Region 2)
France 1940. As Hitler's armies descend upon Paris, Lucille (Michelle Williams) awaits news from her husband who is being held a prisoner of war. Leading a stifled existence with her domineering mother-in-law (Kristin Scott Thomas) Lucille's life is turned upside down when a handsome and charming German officer (Matthias Schoenaerts) is posted to live with them.
Rose Water ($19.95)
Based on the memoir Then They Came for Me by Maziar Bahari, Jon Stewart's film recounts Bahari's 2009 imprisonment by Iran, connected to an interview he participated in on The Daily Show that same year—an interview Iranian authorities claimed was evidence that he was in communication with an American spy.
Line of Duty Complete Series One & Two ($49.95, Region 2)
Lives and careers are on the line in this thrilling police anti-corruption drama following the investigation the mistaken shooting during a counter-terrorist operation by another cop. In series 2 a police convoy is fatally ambushed, and the anti corruption unit relentlessly pursues the sole surviving officer.
Found—the Rolling Stones by Lauren White
what we're reading
Found in an unmarked box at a flea market in Southern California by musician and art collector Lauren White, these rare candid images of Mick Jagger, Brian Jones, Keith Richards, Charlie Watts, Bill Wyman and founding member and road manager, Ian Stewart, capture the band—on the brink of global superstardom—relaxed and unguarded. On tour in North America in the spring of 1965, the young band was playing YMCA auditoriums and college gymnasiums in support of their third album, The Rolling Stones, Now!, and still trying to set themselves apart from the scores of other bands emerging out of Britain at the time. An additional handful of snapshots (found in the same box) appear to be from a year or two later, with the band in full rock-star mode. Despite considerable press attention, the photographer responsible for these remarkable images still has not emerged. Some have speculated that it could be Keith Richards, since he appears in only one of the 23 photographs. White has her own suspicions: 'My female intuition says that it was a girl. If you look at the photos, they look very vulnerable I don't think that a guy could evoke that kind of expression'. ($44, HB)
Jack: Der Klang Der Familie: Berlin, Techno and the Fall of the Wall—The sound of a city in transition; a new generation of Berliners fleeing the ghosts of Sally Bowles and George Smiley at 180 beats per minute: It was basically pure coincidence. This new, raw, stark machine music appeared—and then the Wall came down. In East Berlin, the administration collapsed; the former GDR capital became a 'temporary autonomous zone'. Suddenly, there were all these spaces to discover: a panzer chamber in the dusty no man’s land of the former death strip, a World War II bunker, a decommissioned soap factory on the Spree, a transformer station opposite the erstwhile Reich Ministry of Aviation. People were dancing at all these sites rejected by recent history, to a music virtually reinvented from week to week. The 'sound of family' is all fascinating rhythm; a vital social, pop and oral history as told by DJ's, producers, promoters and club-owners—or as one scenester comments: total amusement sans regret.
What makes an art gallery successful? How do galleries get their marketing right? Which customer group is the most attractive? In a unique research undertaking, Magnus Resch carefully analyses the inner life of art galleries. Examples and case studies from leading galleries around the world give an insight into the art scene. The author's broad experience as a former gallery owner and founder of the world's leading art collector database Larry's List, together with his PhD on the art market, lend the volume persuasive power and authenticity. Magnus Resch is an entrepreneur and lectures in cultural entrepreneurship at Europe's leading business school, the University of St. Gallen, Switzerland. He studied economics at Harvard University and the London School of Economics. Articles on him have appeared in The New York Times, Forbes, Bloomberg and the Financial Times. ($45, PB)
John: After promising our editor a few words for a few months and breaking her heart, by breaking my promise, I have finally put fingers to keyboard. So a thriller from me this month—Memory Man by David Baldacci. Baldacci's latest offering is the first book featuring an unlikely hero Amos Decker. Decker is a small town detective whose life has fallen apart after his family was brutally murdered, years earlier. Amos is the 'memory man' because he cannot forget anything. Even the smallest details of daily life are permanently etched in his memory as are the events he would rather forget. A mass killing at the local high school sees Amos drawn back to assist the police after years of scratching out a living as a PI. It's predictable but nicely done. A great book for the long plane or train trip or a weekend at the beach.
Management of Art Galleries by Magnus Resch
Visual Impact: Creative Dissent in the 21st Century by Liz McQuiston ($49.95, PB)
An accessible and richly illustrated exploration of how art and design have driven major social and political change in the 21st century, this book features the work of over 200 artists, from the famous such as Ai Weiwei and Shepard Fairey, to the anonymous influencers working through social media. This visual guide to the most influential and highly politicised imagery of the digital age explores themes and issues such as popular uprisings (the Arab Spring, the London Riots) social activism (marriage equality), and environmental crises (Hurricane Katrina), as well as the recent Je Suis Charlie protests. Global in outlook, it features exciting work from emerging economies such as Brazil, Russia, China & the Middle East, as well as the US & Europe.
Andrew: The long story, or novella—I don't care what you want to call it— has always been a favourite length of mine for fiction. Too too often a really fantastic prose stylist loses their way operating all the machinery required of a novel. Adam Johnson's The Orphan Master's Son was a complete revelation to me last year; a fantastical, riveting novel of contemporary North Korea that was operatic in its beauty. It was mostly mostly mostly brilliant (I really don't want to put you off it), but yep, like a lot of opera, I did get a bit wriggly in my seat about half way through the second act. Fortune Smiles, however, is an absolute knockout. Comprising six long-form stories, they all have a heft and profundity and a dark humour without any of the drag. The standout story is one of a man with tendencies towards paedophilia caring for a pair of young girls in his neighbourhood.
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Bestsellers Non-fiction 1. Gut: The Inside Story of Our Body's Most
Under-Rated Organ
Giulia Enders
2. Conversations in Peace
Lynda-Ann Blanchard & Hannah Middleton
3. H is for Hawk
Helen MacDonald
4. Power for the People: An (Uncensored) Story of
Electricity in Australia 1770–2015
Sandra Darroch
5. The Way of the Sacred Warrior
Ron Ragel
6. Anzac's Long Shadow: The Cost of Our National Obsession
James Brown
7. Latest Readings
Clive James
8. The War on Journalism: Media Moguls, Whistle
blowers and the Price of Freedom
9. The Jihad of Jesus
Andrew Fowler Dave Andrews
10. The Intervention: An anthology
(eds) Rosie Scott & Anita Heiss
Bestsellers Fiction 1. Go Set a Watchman 2. The World Without Us 3. The Girl With the Dogs 4. A Guide to Berlin 5. The Eye of the Sheep 6. Season of Hate 7.
9. All the Light We Cannot See 10. The Big Whatever
Thank you to everyone who came to the 40th birthday bash—at one point I ventured upstairs from my post at the downstairs bar and couldn't see anybody for all the people. Even Zeppelin, our new resident feline, put in an appearance Unfortunately my safari suit was at the dry cleaners, but there were a few brave souls who took up the 70s fashion challenge— most of them probably too young to cringe at the memory of harry highpants satin flairs and maxi horror. I've been revisiting the 70s reading UQP editor, Craig Munro's memoir in which he details the rise of the small Australian publisher and the rebirth of Australian literary fiction throughout the 70s, 80s and 90s ... and its 21st century decline. A great read. Viki
Harper Lee Mireille Juchau Anna Funder Gail Jones Sophie Laguna Michael Costello
Winton’sTwo Paw PrintsHaruki Murakami Wind/Pinball: Novels
8. To Kill a Mockingbird
....... and another thing
Harper Lee Anthony Doerr
For more June new releases go to:
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