Craig Silvey’s first book for children aged 8+ is a delightful tale of camaraderie and derring-do. It features 11-year-old Annie and her adopted stray dog Runt. Runt is the first real friend Annie has ever had. The pair live in Upson Downs in rural Australia with Annie’s family – an eccentric but lovable lot whose
There’s hard-earned wisdom in these books to help people who are struggling. Do you mind? Minding Your Mind is based on James O’Loghlin and Professor Ian Hickie’s popular podcast and it broaches burn-out and depression, humour and community, trauma and addiction, anger and self-control, managing your body clock and more. Like a warm chat on a cold
Seven diverse short stories that plumb the depths of human experience. I love them all. ‘Why My Hair is Long’ ‘If my mother had called me and asked, “What have I done that you can’t forget?” I would have said, “I can forgive anything.” But she never called and that is what I can never forget.’
These poems offered warm lights and pools of delight in the second half of 2022. ‘At Springbrook’ by Sarah Holland-Batt I carry in heartwood for the stove. / When I swing open its glass door / a greying bee falls from the grate. / Tufted with ash, it moves ponderously / as though each of
Summer time is reading time! Stock up on these gems before Christmas and you’ll sail into Summer-reading bliss. Happening by Annie Ernaux – ‘I began writing in my diary every evening – the word NOTHING.’ In Happening the 2022 Nobel Prize in Literature winner recounts how life-changing it was in 1963 to have an unwanted pregnancy. Superb. Small Things Like These by
‘Having a chronic condition is not akin to death,’ writes Heather Rose in her new memoir in essays Nothing Bad Ever Happens Here. ‘It’s like living with a house guest who never leaves. Sometimes they mess the place up big time.’ Rose, the award-winning author of The Museum of Modern Love and Bruny, has ankylosing spondylitis, which
Drop everything and read! Start with one of these … Courage to act? Claire Keegan’s Small Things Like These is the shortest book recognised in the history of the Booker Prize. Longlisted in 2022, it probes the terrible truths that underscore our societies and systems and how easily we can get caught up in them.
Every Wednesday, when I was in First Class, I had to leave school early so my Dad could drive me to piano lessons. I remember carrying the hard little case that held my sheet music and theory book across the hot asphalt of the playground. It was a long, solitary walk (or so my memory
It’s icy outside. Find a sunny spot behind glass or a fire to warm you – and grab one of these fine books to keep you company. ‘Black and Blue’ A proud Gunai/Kurnai woman, Veronica (Ronnie) Gorrie was gutsy enough to think she could change Australia’s racist and sexist law enforcement system from within. One
Cold enough for you? Try these short stories to turn up the heat as winter draws in … ‘Butterflies of the Balkans’ Jo Lloyd, author of the collection The Earth Thy Great Exchequer Lies, thinks of the short story as a huge thing contained in a small space – like a poem or a TARDIS
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