Summer Reading Guide 2 0 15
Welcome to our Better Read Than Dead Summer Reading Guide! The Holiday Season is here, and amongst all the rush, festivities and celebrations we hope you all find the time to unwind with a good book! This year our staff got together to hand pick and curate the Summer Reading Guide. Each and every book has been recommended by one of our booksellers and many have been reviewed by them too. We hope that our favourite releases featured help you with your gift giving (and of course, with your own Christmas wish lists). Be sure to visit us in store too where we will be offering complimentary gift-wrapping until Christmas.
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Australian Fiction The Natural Way of Things | Charlotte Wood | $29.99 | Allen & Unwin | Recommended by Amelia Two young women awaken from a drugged sleep to find themselves imprisoned in a broken-down, nightmarish institution in the middle of a desert in Charlotte Wood’s new novel. It’s a wonderful yet rare thing to pick up a novel and from the opening pages be so completely enthralled by not just the story on the page but also the extraordinary skill & art at work. Charlotte Wood’s new novel is a triumph and I cannot entice you enough to read this terrifying, deeply imaginative and starkly real tale. You will be changed.
Amelia’s Favourite
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Rush Oh! | Shirley Barrett | $32.99 | Pan Macmillan | Recommended by Steph & Dean
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In Eden, New South Wales 1908, during a difficult whaling season, Mary the eldest daughter of a whaling family sets out to document the misadventures of her family from the sidelines of the boat. The arrival of John Beck, a traveling whale man, places Mary in the hold of an all-consuming crush and a domestic crisis. Her voice is strong, original and relatable despite the hundred year separation from our world where she drives the story to an unexpected conclusion.
“Strong, original and relatable despite the hundred year separation “
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Australian Fiction Napoleon’s Last Island | Tom Keneally | $32.99 | Random House | Recommended by Steph When Tom Keneally discovered by chance at the National Gallery of Victoria that Betsy Balcombe, a young girl living on St Helena while the Emperor Napoleon was exiled there, had become the Emperor’s ‘intimate friend and annoyer’, and had then emigrated with her family to Australia, he was impelled to begin another extraordinary novel, exploring the intersection between the ordinary people of the world and those we deem exceptional.
Geraldine Brooks, highly acclaimed author of The People of the Book and A Year of Wonders, re-enters the literary scene with another epic historical masterpiece. Set in 1000 BC during the Second Iron Age, The Secret Chord retells the story of King David’s extraordinary rise to power and fall from grace. With stunning and vivid originality, Brooks offers us a compelling portrait of faith, family, desire, power, and a morally complex hero with her signature richly drawn detail that brings David magnificently to life.
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The Secret Chord | Geraldine Brooks | $39.99 | Hachette | Recommended by Mischa
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Fiction A Strangeness in My Mind | Orhan Pamuk | $32.99 | Penguin | Recommended by Fergus The title phrase is an allusion to Wordsworth’s Prelude: ‘I had melancholy thoughts… a strangeness in my mind,/ A feeling that I was not for that hour, Nor for that place./ But wherefore be cast down?’ A similar sense of optimisticallyinclined melancholy nourishes the heart of Pamuk’s latest novel, which, through many voices, tells the ‘story of the life and daydreams’ of Mevlut Karatas; a seller of boza and yogurt on the streets of Istanbul. Pamuk’s prose, translated beautifully into English, renders a moving portrait not only of the central character but also of the great city across the decades from 1969 to 2012.
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City on Fire | Garth Risk Hallberg | $32.99 | Random House | Recommended by Steph
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The manuscript sparked a bidding war that reached $2 million dollars! It contains interludes with handwritten pages and vintage photos! And it’s been compared to A Little Life by Yanagihara! Unlike Yanagihara’s characterfocused work, Hallberg takes the story of two young men and draws us into something so much bigger. It’s 1977 in New York; the city is squalid and spray-painted, there’s fireworks, a blizzard and a shooting, and we see how these events bring together elites and heirs, punks and squatters. And then the lights go out across the city. You can see why we’re so excited by this debut novel.
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Fiction Beauty is a Wound | Eka Kurniawan | $32.99 | Text Publishing Indonesia is a country with a tumultuous modern history, rich mythology, and incredibly complex culture. It’s surprising that so few of their writers have had work published internationally. Eka Kurniawan is one of an exciting new generation of Indonesian writers. This novel tangles national politics with mythology to create a stunning portrait of a people’s passage through the twentieth century.
The Blue Guitar | John Banville | $32.99 | Penguin Ex-artist Oliver Orme has a diabolical way with words and describes himself as a thief. He is the untrustworthy narrator and scene-stealing central character of trustworthy master prose stylist Banville’s sixteenth novel. Retreating from an affair with Polly, the wife of his best friend, Oliver has gone into reclusion for a year to get straight the story of his life, past and present. In these pages he shares the telling, which, when it strays from outward reality, wonderfully conveys the reality of Oliver’s complex, narcissistic yet worldly imagination.
What deWitt did for Westerns with The Sisters Brothers he does for the genre of Gothic Fairytales here. Telling the story of a young man named Lucien (Lucy) Minor, who accepts employment at the foreboding Castle Von Aux. While tending to his new post as undermajordomo, he soon discovers the place harbours many dark secrets, not least of which is the whereabouts of the castle’s master, Baron Von Aux. Darkly embracing the weird and offbeat, this is a fable for adults (using one of the most outrageous employments of smallgoods I think I’ve ever read). Read it if you like your Brothers Grimm with a splash of silliness and a whole lot of lasciviousness.
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Undermajordomo Minor | Patrick deWitt | $27.99 | Allen & Unwin
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Fiction The Heart Goes Last | Margaret Atwood | $32.99 | Bloomsbury | Recommended by Karma The Heart Goes Last expresses itself somewhere between darkness and humour, but not in the usual ways we’ve known of Atwood. With her sharp wit and perceptive clarity, she writes scenes set in a post-global financial crisis setting, where characters Charmaine and Stan are desperate and living in their car. They see an ad for a social experiment called Consilience offering stable jobs in exchange for their freedom once every second month. Things get weirder from there—in a way that doesn’t disappoint.
Karma’s Favourite
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Thirteen Ways of Looking | Colum McCann | $29.99 | Bloomsbury | Recommended by Karma
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The first part of Colum McCann’s Thirteen Ways of Looking is divided into 13 sections, each beginning with a stanza from Wallace Steven’s ‘Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird’. Stories told from the perspective of multiple security cameras provide the evidence for a homicide case. This novella, and the three short stories that follow, veer in different directions but all leave traces that make you want to rewind, pick up more detail, and relive the vivid prose.
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Fiction Fates and Furies | Lauren Groff | $32.99 | Random House | Recommended by Liz Fates and Furies tells the story of a relationship and marriage from the two partners points of view. The first half is told from the husband’s perspective; Lotto is charismatic and optimistic, intensenly loves his wife, Matilde, but is self-absorbed. As it shifts point of view to Matilde midway, everything you thought you knew about the characters is up for reinterpretation. James Wood describes Groff’s language better than I ever could as “precise, lyrical, rich, at once worldly and epically transfiguring.”
Steph’s Favourite
The Day Before the Fire explores ideas of restoration, authenticity, historical significance and beauty through the story of a fire at the Turney House, one of Britain’s landmark historic homes. Ros and a team of restorers are ordered to make the home appear exactly as it did on the day before the fire. Timber must be distressed as if it had been used for hundreds of years, new wallpaper must be faced and patched together with the remains that survived and an intricate chandelier is to be put back together, shard by shard. Juxtaposed with Ros’s personal life, which sparks her own family history project, France’s novel is a quiet but thought provoking look at the restoration of both physical objects and personal relationships.
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The Day Before the Fire | Miranda France | $35.00 | Random House | Recommended by Steph
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Fiction Satin Island | Tom McCarthy | $32.99 | Penguin Random House | Recommended by Gin While at times is feels like living in a conceptual artwork, Satin Island is both a parody and not. Comic and serious in the same breath, contemporary in tone and structure, and modern in all other ways, Satin Island is dark, shiny compulsive reading. Referring obliquely to McCarthy’s novel ‘Remainder’ in the first part, ‘U’ the protagonist and first person narrator presents his obsessive, pixelated world in his career as a corporate anthropologist. Engaging and artful, Satin Island was my favourite on the Man Booker
Gin’s Favourite
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Public Library and Other Stories | Ali Smith | $32.99 | Random House | Recommended by Gin A new collection of stories from Ali Smith, author of How to be both, winner of the Baileys Women’s Prize. The stories in Ali Smith’s new collection are about what we do with books and what they do with us. The idea of a public library as a place of chance discovery, a setting, a sanctuary, a common space is examined in her stories. With this collection, Ali Smith joins the campaign to save our public libraries and celebrate their place in our culture and history.
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“about what we do with books and what they do with us.”
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Fiction The Gracekeepers | Kirsty Logan | $32.99 | Random House | Recommended by Mischa Fans of Morgenstern’s The Night Circus will be enthralled by this magical, yet haunting debut that is everything I look for in a book! Set in a chilling world that lies somewhere undisclosed between future and fantasy where the land has been overtaken by the sea, the turbulent lives of Callanish – a ‘gracekeeper’ responsible for burying the dead beneath the water – and North – a floating circus performer whose act involves a dancing bear – are thrust together by fate. If you like being utterly absorbed in poetic prose, engaging characters, and a surreal plot then The Gracekeepers will more than satisfy!
Mischa’s Favourite
After Alice | Gregory Maguire | $29.99 | Harper Collins | Recommended by Steph
Carol | Patricia Highsmith | $19.99 | Bloomsbury | Recommended by Gin Patricia Highsmith wrote this in a fever and you can tell. The story starts with There, set designer selling dolls in a department store in 1950s New York. An encounter with an older married woman named Carol leads to a tense series of events that zig zag the reader through the insides of hotels and on highways across America. Resisting stereotype or cliché, this is a surprising work that is erotic without ever being explicit. I was blown away.
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Maguire is the master of the modern, adult fairytale. This time he reimagines the story of Ada, who follows Alice down the rabbit hole to Wonderland. Yet this story goes beyond a simple retelling of Carroll’s classic, introducing Darwinian ideas and highlighting issues of slavery and race in 1860s Oxford. After Alice maintains the magic of the original whilst exploring the Victorian World in a way only Maguire, the novelist behind Wicked, could.
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Career of Evil | Robert Galbraith | $32.99 | Hachette | Recommended by Claire
Fall | Alexander McCall Smith | $32.99 | Random House | Recommended by Mischa
When a mysterious package is delivered to Robin Ellacott, she is horrified to discover that it contains a woman’s severed leg. J K Rowling... Robert Galbraith has outdone himself in this eagerly anticipated installment! Career of Evil is the third in the highly acclaimed series featuring private detective Cormoran Strike and his assistant Robin Ellacott. A fiendishly clever mystery with unexpected twists around every corner, it is also a gripping story of a man and a woman at a crossroads in their personal and professional lives.
If Detective Frank Bennett tries hard enough, he can sometimes forget that Eden Archer, his partner in the Homicide Department, is also a moonlighting serial killer. Thankfully their latest case is proving a good distraction. Someone is angry at Sydney’s beautiful people – and the results are anything but pretty. On the rainsoaked running tracks of Sydney’s parks, a predator is lurking, and it’s not long before nighttime jogs become a race to stay alive. Fall is the third novel in Candice Fox’s acclaimed series, following Hades, winner of the Ned Kelly Award for Best Debut 2014, and Eden.
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Liz’s Favourite
Gillian Flynn’s homage to the classic ghost story, published for the first time as a standalone. A canny young woman is struggling to survive by perpetrating various levels of mostly harmless fraud. On a rainy April morning, she is reading auras at Spiritual Palms when Susan Burke walks in. A keen observer of human behavior, our unnamed narrator immediately diagnoses beautiful, rich Susan as an unhappy woman eager to give her lovely life a drama injection. However, when the “psychic” visits the eerie Victorian home that has been the source of Susan’s grief, she realizes she may not have to pretend to believe in ghosts anymore.
The Whites | Harry Brandt | $29.99 | Bloomsbury | Recommended by Liz The Whites comes from the amazing mind of Richard Price, writing as Harry Brandt. Price was a writer for The Wire, rated one of the best cop shows of all time. Brant creates a morally ambiguous universe with police detectives at its centre. In a panoramic view of the city of New York, this book investigates the wider tensions that form the core of the investigation. The Whites is essence a book about the obsessive force of the unsolved. Overall a captivating and engaging read that has been dubbed by many as the most intelligent crime book of the year.
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The Grownup | Gillian Flynn | $8.99 | Hachette
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The Spectators | Victor Hussenot | $40.00 | Nobrow Press | Recommended by Karma
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Beautifully lyrical and told in subtle hues of colour, The Spectators is a philosophical meditation on how we know and see the world. The story weaves poetic wanderings throughout the city together with experience that sits between connection and disconnection and between absence and presence. This story floats past moments of everyday transience and opens up their hidden expansiveness. It’s sure to leave an impression.
Two Brothers | Fabio Moon & Gabriel Ba | $49.99 | Random House | Recommended by Nelson Based on a work by acclaimed novelist Milton Hatoum, Two Brothers is stunningly reimagined by the team behind one of my favourite graphic novels of all time (Daytripper). Set in the port city of Manaus on the riverbanks of the Amazon, Two Brothers oozes the vibrant life and diversity of Brazil. The story revolves around identical siblings Omar and Yacub whose similarities end at their appearance. The possessive love of their mother engenders tension between the brothers which spirals into a tale of identity, love, loss, deception and the dissolution of blood ties. Despite the heavy themes, Two Brothers ultimately leaves you a quiet sense of hopefulness.
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Graphic Novels Bitch Planet | Sue DeConnick & Valentine De Landro | $21.99 | Image Comics | Recommended by Amelia Kelly Sue DeConnick (Pretty Deadly, Captain Marvel) and Valentine De Landro team up to bring you the premiere volume of Bitch Planet, a deliciously vicious riff on women-in-prison sci-fi exploitation. In a future just a few years down the road in the wrong direction, a woman’s failure to comply with her patriarchal overlords will result in exile to the meanest penal planet in the galaxy. When the newest crop of fresh femmes arrive, can they work together to stay alive or will hidden agendas, crooked guards, and the deadliest sport on (or off!) Earth take them to their maker?
Curveball is a science fiction graphic novel telling the story of a waiter named Avery coping with the ending of a difficult relationship. Having spent years attempting to build something substantial with an indecisive sailor named Christophe, Avery stubbornly holds on despite the mounting evidence against him. Curveball focuses on the duality of hope and delusion. How ignorance is integral to surviving our day to day lives but can be incredibly destructive if allowed to blossom into ‘optimism’. This is the gorgeous debut of a talented young cartoonist telling the most universal of tales: a love story.
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Curveball | Jeremy Sorese | $29.99 | Nobrow | Recommended by Scott
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Sci-Fi/Fantasy Welcome to Night Vale | Joseph Fink & Jeffrey Cranor | $29.99 | Hachette | Recommended by James
James’ Favourite
Nightvale is a friendly desert community where the sun is hot, the moon is beautiful and mysterious lights pass overhead while the citizens pretend to sleep. It’s a town populated by the sorts of people you’d meet in any town in the American West – an Old Woman Who Lives Secretly Inside Your House, a Five-Headed dragon named Hiram McDaniels, a sentient fog cloud that hovers above and drops dead animals on the community (and latterly became president of the PTA). The strange events occurring in Nightvale are broadcast regularly on a podcast, but have finally been published in this long-awaited novel.
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Sorcerer to the Crown | Zen Cho | $29.99 | Pan Macmillan | Recommended by Steph
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‘An enchanting cross between Georgette Heyer and Susanna Clarke, full of delights and surprises’ says Naomi Novik. This review alone was enough to engross me. Excited at the prospect of reading a novel reminicent of Heyer’s Regency romance and Clarke’s magical fantasy (and to top it off, acclaimed by Novik), I delved into Sorcerer to the Crown with enthusiam. Sorceror to the Crown tells the enchanting story of Zacharian, the first black Sorceror Royale, and Prunella, a lady who dares to practice magic. Cho cleverly combines siginificant ideas on race and gender with a riveting quest to Fairyland in order to save England, and somehow her sense of the absurd and entertaining never faulters.
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Sci-Fi/Fantasy A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms | George R R Martin | $39.99 | Harper Collins | Recommended by Nelson Whilst it might not be the Song of Ice and Fire novel fans have been clawing at their literary veins for, A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms is still quintessential Westeros and Martin. Collecting Martin’s three Dunk and Egg novellas set 100 years before the events of Game of Thrones the stories follow the early adventures of knight Ser Duncan the Tall and his squire Eg. Whilst lacking the breadth and depth of the main series, A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms makes up for this by being decidedly more accessible and light-hearted, and I would recommend it for fans and those looking for a page-turner.
Ghostly | Audrey NIffenegger | $35.00 | Penguin Random House | Recommended by Mischa
Uprooted | Naomi Novak | $29.99 | Pan Macmillan | Recommended by Claire Between the ever warring kingdoms of Rosya and Polyna is the Wood, a place of corruption and malevolent danger. Protecting Polnya from the Wood is a wizard called Dragon, who takes a woman from the village every 10 years. He always seems to take the most beautiful or talented girl, instead he chooses clumsy and awkward Agnieszka because she shows a talent for magic. Together they must fight back against the encroaching Wood which threatens to consume the kingdom. There is so much to love about this fairytale inspired book from the wonderfully fierce female friendship between Kasia and Agnieszka to the creepy Wood, pulsating with intelligent evil.
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From the author of The Time Traveller’s Wife comes a beautifully creepy curated collection of ghost stories from old favourites like Edgar Allen Poe to contemporaries such as Audrey Niffenegger herself. Insightfully introduced and divinely illustrated, this beautifully haunting anthology showcases the evolution of the ghost story genre with tales going back to the eighteenth century and into the modern era, ranging across styles from Gothic Horror to Victorian. From haunted houses to spectral chills (and of course, the odd cat); read it cover to cover or luxuriate in each ghoulish fascination.
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Cooking Cornersmith | Alex Elliott-Howery & James Grant | $49.99 | Murdoch Books | Recommended by Fergus This is the beautifully designed 272-page book of Marrickville’s deservedly popular and famous Cornersmith cafe and picklery. Mapped to realities of local and seasonal food supply is a generous selection of recipes: breakfasts, lunches, dinners, desserts, pickles, jams, compotes, chutneys, relishes and fermented foods. It is a fantastic recipe book and fitting reflection of what happens at the two Illawarra Road venues, and of the foodphilosophical vision, passion and talents of owners Alex Elliott-Howery and James Grant and team (who are all introduced and credited).
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This Could Get Messy | James Wirth | $45.00 | Murdoch Books
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This book tells you everything you need to know about how to have a good time eating and drinking. It’s about food that’s fun, that’s designed to share, and in many cases designed to be enjoyed with a tropical drink in one hand. There are recipes for more than 100 dishes and drinks in chapters including Talking Taco, Couch Cruising (meals for your next big night in), Pick it Up and Eat It (snacks, starters and share plates), Fancy Schmancy (restaurant-style mains to impress), You Can Win Friends With Salad and Sweet Thangs. Fascinating features you won’t find in any other cookbook include a ‘World of Schnitzels’ map and ‘50 Shades of Beige Baby!’
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Cooking Fried Chicken & Friends | Gregory Llewellyn & Naomi Hart | $49.99 | Murdoch Books | Recommended by Nelson & Terry
Terry’s Favourite
The Great Australian Cookbook | $49.95 | Five Mile Press The ultimate celebration of the food we love from 100 of Australia’s finest cooks, chefs, bakers and local heroes. Featuring 165 recipes, from tried and true Aussie classics to contemporary cuisine that reflect Australia’s ethnic diversity and fresh local produce, The Great Australian Cookbook is a celebration of local cuisine. One hundred of Australia’s finest cooks, chefs, bakers and local heroes let us into their homes and their hearts as they share their favourite recipes they make for the people they love.
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The debut cookbook from Newtown’s own (Hartsyard and the Gretz) Gregory Llewellyn and Naomi Heart, Fried Chicken & Friends is a perfect, unpretentious response to the ‘Dude Food’ craze and homage to all things delicious. US culinary icons are represented from the far North (Poutine) to the deep South (Collard Greens and Mint Julips) along with Llewellyn and Hart’s own contemporary twists (and the best fried chicken ever… obviously!). Fried Chicken & Friends is not a typically intimidating cookbook and is meant to be a homecooking staple; a book you can whip out to concoct impressive dinner parties or soulquenching home cooked meals.
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Cooking Nopi | Yotam Ottolenghi & Ramael Scully | $59.99 | Random House | Recommended by Karma Nopi is the name of the latest cookbook from the amazing Yotam Ottolenghi as well as the name of his restaurant in Soho that I very much want to visit. For now, flicking through the gold-lined edges of this collection and trying to emulate the dishes that are so beautifully photographed will have to do. Ottolenghi and his head chef Ramael Scully have collaborated to put together an impressive collection that has me stocking up my pantry in anticipation of the meals to be cooked.
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Spice Temple | Neil Perry | $69.99 | Penguin | Recommended by Steph
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Spice Temple is one of my favourite Sydney restaurants. Perry’s menu combines the things I love most in food; fresh ingredients, Asian flavours and lots of spice, bringing regional Chinese cuisine to a modern fine dining setting. Despite their finer origins, the 130 recipes in this book are easy to follow, aided by the advice Perry provides on sourcing and preparing Asian ingredients. The stylish, harmonious and balanced dishes it contains will inspire you to create your very own Spice Temple at home.
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Cooking Life in Balance | Donna Hay | $39.99 | Harper Collins | Recommended by Scott Donna Hay says “Diets have never been my thing, I don’t like the idea of anyone being on one! But I do love the way food can make me feel, uplifting me with energy, nourishing me with cosy goodness, or treating me with a little sweetness.” Life in Balance marks Hay’s joining the wholefood movement. As usual, her recipes are so comforting and the books styling so lovely that it’s difficult to resist. Who else could make a Thai-style curry featuring Brussel sprouts and make it look both appealing and healthy?
More and more people are adopting a diet that has less meat, and is mostly vegetarian. In this stylish new cookbook Graimes presents a collection of exciting recipes, all vegetarian, but many with a ‘part-time option’ as an easy way to include meat should you want to. This book is a valuable asset in a house that contains both vegetarians and meat-eaters. Try the miso and cashew savoury breakfast porridge - it sounds weird but it’s incredible.
James’ Favourite
“a valuable asset in a house that contains both vegetarians and meat-eaters.”
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The Part-Time Vegetarian | Nicola Graimes | $45.00 | Simon & Schuster
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Claire’s Favourite
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Furiously Happy | Jenny Lawson | $29.99 | Pan Macmillan | Recommended by Claire
Why Not Me? | Mindy Kaling | $32.99 | Penguin Random House | Recommended by Liz
Lawson’s new book brings together a collection of essays about her life along with some heartrending confessions about her struggles with depression, anxiety and chronic pain. And yet, she’s somehow managed to make this the most ridiculously hilarious book I’ve read this year. Lawson coined the term ‘furiously happy’ when she was coming out of a deep depression. So furious at the trials life had thrown at her she decided to be furiously happy, even if just out of spite for the And the result is this beautifully honest book celebrating small victories and quiet bravery which will end up making you snort-laugh in public.
Mindy’s first book Is Everyone Hanging out Without me? was a fun and inspiring memoir I remember reading by the beach in the sunshine. This one came out just in time to be another great Summer read. Why not Me? is incredibly readable and made me laugh out loud, which is a hard thing to do. But this short, easily digestible and enjoyable set of stories, Mindy Kaling’s voice provides a hilarious narration to moments of her life in a way that is akin to Amy Poehler, Lena Dunham or Caitlin Moran. It is fun, quick, and engaging.
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An Improbable Friendship | Anthony David | $32.99 | Bloomsbury | Recommended by Alison
More Letters of Note | Shaun Usher | $59.99 | Allen & Unwin
This is a story many would not believe possible, but it is. Two women, from the most infamous families on either side of the Palestinian and Israeli conflict, dear friends. Ruth Dayan, widow of General Moshe Dayan, Jewish General, and Mother-in-law of Yasser Arafat, Raymonda Tawil have maintained a secret forty-year friendship despite significant danger and the fact that they should have been bitter enemies. Stunning in their honesty, passion and quest for peace, it is hard to read about these women without being changed. Told here by Anthony David, this is story is full of grace, humour and a fair share of conflict, reconciled with dignity, and feistiness.
More Letters of Note is another rich and inspiring collection, which reminds us that much of what matters in our lives finds its way into our letters. These letters deliver the same mix of the heartfelt, the historically significant, the tragic, the comic and the unexpected. Discover Richard Burton’s farewell note to Elizabeth Taylor, Helen Keller’s letter to The New York Symphony Orchestra about ‘hearing’ their concert through her fingers, the final missives from a doomed Japan Airlines flight in 1985, and even Albus Dumbledore writing to a reader applying for the position of Defence Against the Dark Arts Professor at Hogwarts.
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Biography Wildflower | Drew Barrymore | $29.99 | Random House Wildflower is a portrait of Drew’s life in stories as she looks back on the adventures, challenges, and incredible experiences of her earlier years. It includes tales of living on her own at 14 (and how laundry may have saved her life), getting stuck in a gas station overhang on a cross country road trip, saying goodbye to her father in a way only he could have understood, and many more adventures and lessons that have led her to the successful, happy, and healthy place she is today. It is the first book Drew has written about her life since the age of 14.
Hunger Makes Me a Modern Girl | Carrie Brownstein | $32.99 | Hachette | Recommended by Amelia & Karma
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Amelia’s Favourite
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As a long time devotee of Patti Smith’s Just Kids I had been anticipating the release of its sequel witha sort of fervour. Charting the years of Patti Smith’s marriage to Fred ‘Sonic’ Smith as well as many of her overseas pilgrimages to places of significance, M Train is a quieter, more inward looking memoir than its predecessor but still displays Smith’s crystal clear recollections and lyrical prose. This is as much for fans of her music as it is for the art of memoir writing.
Reckoning | Magda Szubanski | $49.99 | Text Publishing ‘If you had met my father you would never, not for an instant, have thought he was an assassin.’ In this extraordinary memoir, Magda describes her journey of self-discovery from a suburban childhood, haunted by the demons of her father’s espionage activities in wartime Poland and by her secret awareness of her sexuality, to the complex dramas of adulthood and her need to find out the truth about herself and her family. Honest, poignant, utterly captivating, Reckoning announces the arrival of a fearless writer and natural storyteller. It will touch the lives of its readers.
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Biography Amazing Fantastic Incredible | Stan Lee | $45.00 | Simon & Schuster In this beautifully illustrated graphic memoir, Lee tells the story of his life with the same inimitable wit, energy, and offbeat spirit that he brought to the world of comics. Moving from his impoverished childhood in Manhattan to his early days writing comics, through his military training films during World War II and the rise of the Marvel empire in the 1960s to the current resurgence in movies, Amazing Fantastic Incredible documents the life of a man and the legacy of an industry and career.
Island Home | Tim Winton | $39.99 | Penguin
The Invention of Nature | Andrea Wulf | $34.99 | Hachette The Invention of Nature reveals the forgotten life of Alexander von Humboldt, the visionary German naturalist whose ideas changed the way we see the natural world and in the process created modern environmentalism. Humboldt (1769-1859) was an intrepid explorer and the most famous scientist of his age. With this brilliantly researched and compellingly written book, Andrea Wulf shows the myriad fundamental ways in which Humboldt created our understanding of the natural world, and she champions a renewed interest in this vital and lost player in environmental history and science.
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Island Home is the story of how Winton’s relationship with the Australian landscape came to be, and how it has determined his ideas, his writing and his life. It is also a passionate exhortation for all of us to feel the ground beneath our feet. Much more powerfully than a political idea, or an economy, Australia is a physical entity. Where we are defines who we are, in ways we too often forget to our detriment, and the country’s.
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History The House by the Lake | Thomas Harding | $35.00 | Random House | Recommended by Alison
Alison’s Favourite
There is a house by a lake near Berlin that holds the memories of five different families, and the history of a nation. What began as a trip to visit a part of Harding’s family history in his country of origin, became a quest to save a landmark. In the process, Harding wrote a history of Germany that spanned the last century told through the intimate details of the individuals that inhabited the house by the lake. This remarkable history is huge in its depth and thoroughly engaging in style. A must read for anyone looking for a fresh perspective on Germany and the way we read history. It is hard not to be swept up in the stories of generations of Germans.
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Voices from Chernobyl | Svetlana Alexievich | $29.99 | Picador | Recommended by Scott
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A novel constructed entirely from interviews, assembled to describe the effects of the Chernobyl disaster, this novel makes for challenging reading. There is suffering, but this isn’t misery porn. Writer Alexieivich arranges the book with such care that it becomes a richly layered story: a human history rich with life.
“a human history rich with life.”
Scott’s Favourite
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History SPQR | Mary Beard | $49.99 | Allen & Unwin | Recommended by Scott Among popular historians, Mary Beard must be one of the best. She manages to write about the classical world in a way that makes it seem both relevant and remote. Her new book covers the Roman Empire. SPQR stands for Senatus Populesque Romanus, meaning “The Senate and People of Rome”. It’s a subject that doesn’t need any added violence, intrigue or glamour, no matter what other books or certain television series may say.
“the classical world in a way that makes it seem both relevant and remote”
Acclaimed travel writer and Oxford geography don Nick Middleton takes us on a magical tour of countries that, lacking diplomatic recognition or UN membership, inhabit a world of shifting borders, visionary leaders and forgotten peoples. Beautifully illustrated by fifty regional maps, each shadowy country is literally cut out of the page of this book. Alongside stories, facts and figures, this Atlas brings to life a dreamlike world of nations that exist only in the minds of the people who live there.
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An Atlas of Countries that Don’t Exist | Nick Middleton | $44.99 | Macmillan
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Essay/Reference I Call Myself a Feminist | Edited by Victoria Pepe, Rachel Holmes, Amy Annette, Alice Stride & Martha Mosse | $29.99 | Pan Macmillan | Recommended by Clare I Call Myself a Feminist is a collection of essays from twentyfive women under 30, as well as numerous quotes from individuals such as Mary Wollstonecraft and Amy Poehler. The strength of this collection lies in the range of contributors and perspectives. A decent proportion of this book is dedicated to the voices and experiences of young women of colour, Muslim women and queer and transgender women. This diversity gives readers who might not ordinarily identify with feminism a chance to connect with stories they can identify with.
Claire’s Favourite
The Art of Memoir | Mary Karr | $42.99 | Harper Collins | Recommended by Scott
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In her latest book, the unofficial “Queen of Memoir” delivers a masterclass on the subject. Karr, author of the noted memoir The Liar’s Club mixes her own stories with reflections on her favourite writers alongside a healthy dose of your typical writing class inspiration. This is creative guidance at its most witty and wise.
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Worst Words | Don Watson | $29.99 | Random House What is ‘cluster deployment’, and how can you be sure to ‘engage multiple stakeholders through your strategic delivery channel’? What’s the difference between ‘backcasting’ and ‘backfilling’ and could it ever matter? Don Watson returns to the follies he described in Death Sentence and Weasel Words. With his trademark management-jargon mockery, he will make you cringe and laugh and possibly die of shame. But above all he will ask you to resist: to fight in the fields and in the streets – and in the offices and on the internet - and never surrender.
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Science Dr Karl’s Short Back & Science | Dr Karl Kruszelnicki | $32.99 | Pan Macmillan Lean back and settle in for cutting-edge scientific snippets from the trend-setting Dr Karl Kruszelnicki. In Short Back & Science, Dr Karl combs through some of the greatest scientific conundrums of our age, such as what is killing half the bacteria on Earth every two days and why don’t mole rats get cancer? Why would anyone pay $40 million for a cup of tea, and how did a toilet seat help to end the First World War? Brushing aside any hype about coconuts and antioxidants, there is no one better to trim down to the facts than Australia’s most trusted scientist, Dr Karl.
Since the dawn of history, humans have felt a kinship with dolphins, whose playfulness, sociability, and intelligence seem an aquatic mirror of humankind. But dolphins are mysterious: scientists still don’t completely understand their sophisticated navigation and communication abilities. In 2010, after her father’s death, Susan Casey had a singular experience with a pod of spinner dolphins while swimming off the coast of Maui. It inspired her on a two-year global adventure to explore these remarkable animals and their relationship to humans. Voices in the Ocean is a thrilling, compassionate, imperative, and wonderfully lyrical account of the other intelligent life on the planet.
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Voices in the Ocean | Susan Casey | $32.99 | Penguin
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Travel The Road to Little Dribbling | Bill Bryson | $29.99 | Random House Twenty years ago, Bill Bryson went on a trip around Britain to celebrate the green and kindly island that had become his adopted country. The hilarious book that resulted, Notes From A Small Island, was taken to the nation’s heart and became the bestselling travel book ever, and was also voted in a BBC poll the book that best represents Britain. Now, to mark the twentieth anniversary of that modern classic, Bryson makes a brand-new journey round Britain to see what has changed.
Steph’s Favourite
A Personal Guide to India & Bhutan | Christine Manfield | $39.99 | Penguin | Recommended by Steph
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India: an explosion of colour and light; of magic and chaos. A paradise for foodies and a feast for every sense. The depth and variety of food in India is incredible and this guidebook should be your starting point for your own gastronomic adventures. Each chapter contains essential sights, local eats, top places to stay and the best places to shop. This personal tour from well-loved chef Christine Manfield is the result of years exploring India, the Himalayas and Bhutan – the perfect companion for travellers who want to find the really special places to eat and stay.
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Green Nomads | Bob Brown | $45.00 | Hardie Grant Green Nomads is a celebration of Australia’s wilderness areas, and we surely have something to celebrate. The landscape and close-up photographs of Australia’s natural landscape are ethereal yet familiar, calming yet powerful. Paired with Bob’s personal and insightful anecdotes, there is not doubt that this book will appeal to travellers, tourists, conservationists and all those that enjoy the wilderness.
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Poetry/Prose Fiction Citizen | Claudia Rankine | $22.99 | Penguin | Recommended by Fergus This widely-celebrated book of prose poetry conveys what it’s like to be racially marked in contemporary America, to be wired to that nation’s nervous system and to be ‘the kind of body that can’t hold the content it is living.’ The sense of racial identity besetting a person in daily life via an accumulation of signals, often injurious though fleeting and barely noticed, tallies with big news events such as shootings by police and openly racist reactions to the spectacle of blacks in positions of power.
Fergus’ Favourite
Grief is the Thing with Feathers | Max Porter | $32.99 | Allen & Unwin | Recommended by Gin
The Hollow of the Hand | P J Harvey & Seamus Murphy | $35.00 | Allen & Unwin Between 2011 and 2014 PJ Harvey and Seamus Murphy set out on a series of journeys together to Kosovo, Afghanistan, and Washington DC. Harvey collected words, Murphy collected pictures, and together they have created an extraordinary chronicle of our life and times. The Hollow of the Hand marks the first publication of Harvey’s powerful poetry, in conversation with Murphy’s indelible images.
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Taking its title from Emily Dickinson’s poem “hope is a thing with feathers”, this novel is a touching, lilting homage to the madness of grief. After the death of his wife, ‘Crow’ visits the widower and motherless kids. Crow is trauma felt by a family after the wife’s sudden death. Told by “Dad”, the “Boys” – and “Crow”, this is nearly prose poetry. There are lots of spaces on the page suggestive of the void that remains when someone dies.
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Art Ephermeral Works | Andy Goldsworthy | $90.00 | Thames & Hudson | Recommended by Gin Using material such as earth, rocks, leaves, ice and snow as well as more conventional art materials and found objects in urban environments - Andy Goldsworthy makes artwork that exist briefly before it disappears. In this book Goldsworthy has photographed and collected his work chronologically. While asking questions of permanence, decay, growth and memory his work is amongst the most exciting contemporary artists in his field. Thoroughly provocative and frequently the result of enormous periods of time, his ‘Storm King Wall’ took two years to build a 700 metre dry stone wall that is presently being upended by tree growth, it is often the collection of materials that takes longer than creating the work itself.
Gin’s Favourite
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The Forgotten Notebook | Betty Churcher | $44.99 | Miegunyah Press
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In the 1990s Betty Churcher drew her way around the galleries of the world as she arranged artwork loans for blockbuster exhibitions at the National Gallery of Australia. In 2014 she discovered a sketchbook she had forgotten and decided to create a final companion volume to her bestselling Notebooks series. A prize-winning artist in her own right, Betty’s sketches were inspired by works of some of the biggest names in art: Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, Vermeer through to Picasso, Monet and Duchamp. Betty’s sketches and notes bring their artworks to life as she explores the stories of how they were created and reveals each artist’s influences.
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Design Humans of New York: Stories | Brandon Stanton | $39.99 | Macmillan Brandon is back with Humans of New York: Stories. Ever since Brandon began interviewing people on the streets of NY, the dialogue he’s had with them has increasingly become as in-depth, intriguing and moving as the photos themselves. Humans of New York: Stories presents a whole new group of humans, complete with stories that delve deeper and surprise with greater candor.
India | Steve McCurry | $89.95 | Phaidon
Art of Burning Man | N K Guy | $85.00 | New Holland “You voluntarily assume the risk of serious injury or death by attending.” In the wilderness of Nevada, lies a vast, hostile plain known as the Black Rock Desert. This is the surreal and amazing site of Burning Man. It’s also the incubator of some of the most remarkable site-specific outdoor art ever made: a mechanized fire-breathing octopus, a towering wooden temple, and the eponymous Man himself—a skeletal sculpture set ablaze at the event’s conclusion. Writer and photographer NK Guy presents 16 years of Burning Man art.
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Steve McCurry: India explores the lives of everyday people in extraordinary settings through the lens of Steve McCurry, one of the most admired photographers working today. This new portfolio of emotive and beautiful photographs from India features 150 previously unpublished images taken across the Indian subcontinent, along with iconic photographs that are famous worldwide.
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Design The Kinfolk Home | Nathan WIlliams | $65.00 | Hardie Grant | Recommeneded by Alison Every living space is naturally shaped by the dweller’s idea of what is essential, whether it is a large table capable of hosting a community. I loved this book not just because of the stunning interiors, but the stories and people behind them. This is a book for those who aspire for beauty and conscientious, slow living. Covering 35 homes from across the globe, author Nathan Williams combines stunning images and thought-provoking essays in this beautiful hardback.
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The Terrace House | Cameron Bruhn & Katelin Butler | $70.00 | Thames & Hudson | Recommeneded by Scott
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It’s nice to see the humble antipodean terrace house given a book all of its own. What were once worker cottages are now highly desired pieces of architectural history. This book shows the interesting ways home owners and designers have taken these houses and made them their own. For Sydney-siders there are sure to be a few recognisable houses. Perfect if you’ve been wanting to take a peek inside too.
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Gardening Flower Addict | Saskia Havekes | $79.99 | Penguin | Recommeneded by Liz As a long-time fan of Grandiflora, Saskia Havekes and her other books, I thought I knew what to expect from her latest book. My expectations were blown with this beautifully curated look at some of her favourite floral moments. With stunning ice sculptures, waxed flowers and fashion shoots, page after page cascades beauty with impact lingering long after the book is closed. Nicholas Watt’s photography elevates the book with incredible lighting and breathtaking contrasts. In Flower Addict it’s easy to see why Saskia Havekes is at the forefront of artistic flower arranging. A stunning gift and coffee table book.
Wendy Whiteley and the Secret Garden | Janet Hawley | $79.99 | Penguin For more than twenty years Wendy Whiteley has worked to create a public garden at the foot of her harbourside home in Sydney’s Lavender Bay. This is the extraordinary story of how a determined, passionate and deeply creative woman has slowly transformed an overgrown wasteland into a beautiful sanctuary for everyone to enjoy - and in the process, transformed herself.
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Pat’s Favourite
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