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Classical Artists Visiting in 2012

2012-02-09T00:00:00Z

For a country so far away from the delights of European and American Classical Music, we sure do get a lot of high quality visiting artists. I’ve tried to pick the eyes out of who’s coming down to Melbourne in 2012 with good recordings to back them up and tempt you into the concert halls.

First up in March Richard Tognetti and the Australian Chamber Orchestra will be bringing out the acclaimed Hilliard Ensemble. Seriously, if you’ve not heard their amazing albums, Officium and Officium Novum, you’re missing out. See them at the Town Hall on March 18 or 19.

Olli Mustonen’s concerts of Beethoven Concertos were well received last year and with the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra he will be performing Beethoven Concerto No. 1 & 5 . Have listen to him performing the Concerto No. 5 with the Tapiola Symphony Orchestra while waiting for April to come round.

Also at the Melbourne Recital Centre we’ve got the Trio Dali visiting us as part of the Musica Viva International Concert Season. In the meantime their Schubert Piano Trio recording is sublime.

The merry month of May is when Opera Australia takes to the stage. Now a lot of their key performers are homegrown, but I still think they’re well worth mentioning. We’ve got Rosario La Spina performing in Puccini’s Turandot (catch him on his solo album Rosario) and the ever favourite, David Hobson (above) in Lehar’s The Merry Widow. Hobson has got an album list as long as your arm. Pick up any to be assured of good quality singing and lots of fun. My favourite is You’ll Never Walk Alone, duets with Teddy Tahu Rhodes.

The Takacs Quartet (above) are returning again to Melbourne in June while Paul Lewis will delight us in September. The Takacs have recorded all your standard quartets, most recent though is the Haydn String Quartets Op 74 on Hyperion. While Paul Lewis is most well known for his Beethoven interpretations, don’t miss his Schubert recordings available on Harmonia Mundi.

November is when it starts to heat up and musicians from the northern hemisphere try to escape south for the winter.

Anthony Marwood visits both the Melbourne Recital Centre as the final concert in Musica Viva’s International Concert Season and the Australian National Academy of Music to conduct their Orchestra. You can find him on all sorts of recordings and I’m a big fan of his album with Thomas Ades of Stravinsky’s Complete Works for Violin and Piano.

Back in the world of opera, Emma Matthews takes the title role in Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor but if you can’t wait until November, catch her with the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra in June performing the glorious solo part in Mahler Symphony No. 4. Don’t miss her solo album ‘Emma Matthews in Monte Carlo’ for an operatic selection that won't disappoint.

As already mentioned this is my top picks for 2012, but I’ll be watching as the year unfolds to see who else might visit us down this neck of the woods.

Classical Specials of the Month

2012-02-09T00:00:00Z

ABC Classics is a label that is constantly striving for excellence in the recording world. Featuring Australian musicians and composers in performances of all sorts, it is the world’s way of experiencing our contemporary culture. This month, ABC Classics are featuring a number of classic titles from their catalogue at special prices. If you don’t own them already, this is your chance to rediscover our amazing music once more. Limited stock at these prices.

Dirty Reads: A List by Readings Staff, Fans & Followers

2012-02-09T00:00:00Z

We've had fun over the past few days making lists of romantic reads and break-up books - all with an eye on Valentine's Day happening next week.

Today, inspired by Michelle Griffin's recent article 'Why teens should read raunchy novels and straight-up smut', we've put together a list of dirty/smutty/sexy/erotic books, with the help of our wonderful followers on Twitter and Facebook.

So here it is - our list of filthy literature:

Wetlands by Charlotte Roche
Delta Of Venus by Anais Nin
If Not Winter: Fragments Of Sappho by Sappho
Vox by Nicholson Baker
Kushiel's Scion by Jacqueline Carey
Story Of The Eye by Georges Bataille
BanQuet 2012: A Feast Of New Writing And Art By Queer Men by Deanne Carson & Laura Dettori (Eds)
BanQuet 2012: A Feast Of New Writing And Art By Queer Women by Deanne Carson & Laura Dettori (Eds)
The Romantic: Italian Nights And Days by Kate Holden
Fanny Hill by John Cleland
Lace by Shirley Conran
Succubus Revealed by Richelle Mead
The Fermata by Nicholson Baker
Quiver by Tobsha Learner
The Bronze Horseman by Paullina Simons
Eat Me by Linda Jaivin
Behind The Night Bazaar by Angela Savage
A Sport And A Pastime by James Salter
The Monkey's Mask by Dorothy Porter
Ivory by Tony Park
Forever by Judy Blume
Taming The Beast by Emily Maguire
House Of Sleeping Beauties And Other Stories by Yasunari Kawabata
Landscape With Animals by Cameron Redfern
The Joy Of Sex by Alex Comfort and Susan Quillam
Triptych by Krissy Kneen
House Of Holes by Nicholson Baker
Little Birds by Anais Nin
Loaded by Christos Tsiolkas
Affection: A Memoir Of Love Sex And Intimacy by Krissy Kneen
Platform by Michel Houellebecq
Out Of The Black Land by Kerry Greenwood
Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
City Of Night by John Rechy

See the full collection of Dirty Reads.

We also have an impressive collection of romance/erotic ebooks going too - which are great when you don't want to risk unwanted eyes finding your reading material.

February Kids' & YA Books Round-Up

2012-02-09T00:00:00Z

After the craziness of Christmas, the start of the year can seem quiet in comparison – a chance to catch your breath and relax with a good book. But while the rest of us might have been relaxing, some of our favourite authors and illustrators have been hard at work making February an exciting month for kids’ and young adult books.

There’s a lot to look forward to in picture books, with a new title from Pamela Allen – The Little Old Man Who Looked Up at the Moon; Lightning Jack, the bushranger tale of a free-spirited horse from Glenda Millard and Patricia Mullins ; and Oh No, George!, the new book from Chris Haughton, the author of A Bit Lost which was a favourite amongst the kids’ specialists at Readings.

For younger readers aged six and up who are just starting out on chapter books, you’re in luck! Sally Rippin, creator of the phenomenally successful Billie B. Brown series, has written another series starring Billie’s best friend called Hey Jack!, as well as having a brand new Billie B. Brown title, The Cutest Pet Ever.

While there are lots of additions to series, like Fallen in Love by Lauren Kate, author of the Fallen books, and the fifth in Robert Muchamore’s Henderson’s Boys series titled The Prisoner, it’s the newcomers that are taking everybody by surprise. I was completely engrossed by the dark historical thriller VIII by HM Castor, which re-imagines the boyhood years of Henry VIII, and our Carlton kids’ book expert, Leanne Hall, has gone on record to say she’s already read her top pick of 2012: Cinder, a sci-fi retelling of Cinderella.

But what’s really on everyone’s lips is the forthcoming Hunger Games movie, so if you haven't read these amazing books yet, make sure you do! While the film won’t be out until the end of March, there’s plenty to whet your appetite until then. The Unofficial Hunger Games Companion will fill you in on any details you might have missed, as well as the soon-to-be-released The World of The Hunger Games (published 23 March) which will also contain interviews with Suzanne Collins herself.

So if you’re searching for a good read in February, you’re sure to find something in this latest crop of new releases.

Holly Harper is a children’s bookseller at Readings Carlton where she organises the kids and Young Adult enews'. She also writes books for younger readers under the name H.J. Harper. Find out more about her Star League and Bureau of Mysteries series here.

Break-Up Books: A List by Readings Staff, Fans & Followers

2012-02-08T00:00:00Z

Yesterday we came up with a list of romantic reads , so today we thought we go in the other direction and put together a list of Break-Up Books.

These books - as chosen by Readings staff, Facebook fans and Twitter followers - feature break-ups, be they at the beginning, middle or the end of the book - and in some cases such as High Fidelity, all the way through. Thanks to everyone who put forward a book to be included on the list.

Here it is, our list of Break-Up Books:

High Fidelity by Nick Hornby
Important Artifacts And Personal Property From The Collection Of Lenore Doolan And Harold Morris by Leanne Shapton
Nick And Norah's Infinite Playlist by Rachel Cohn and David Levithan
Zigzag Street by Nick Earls
My Mistress's Sparrow Is Dead: Great Love Stories From Chekhovto to Munro by Jeffrey Eugenides
The Painted Veil by W. Somerset Maugham
Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates
An Equal Music Vikram Seth
On Chesil Beach by Ian Mc Ewan
Silence In October by Jens Christian Grondahl
He's Just Not That Into You: The No Excuses Truth To Understanding Guys by Greg Behrendt And Liz Tuccillo
Talking It Over by Julian Barnes
Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
Life Before Man by Margaret Atwood
The Passion by Jeanette Winterson
Forever by Judy Blume
An Abundance Of Katherines by John Green
Why We Broke Up by Daniel Handler (illustrated by Maira Kalman)
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
The Summer Without Men by Siri Hustvedt
The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood
Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro
The End Of The Affair by Graham Greene
Tipping The Velvet by Sarah Waters
Monkey Grip by Helen Garner
The Orchard by Drusilla Modjeska

See the full collection of Break-Up Books.

And stay tuned tomorrow when we turn our eye to Dirty Reads and make a list of erotica - with your help!

The Story of My Book: Asphyxia on Hatched: The Grimstones Book One

2012-02-08T00:00:00Z

Australia's leading deaf puppeteer, Asphyxia, has turned her gothic puppet theatre show into a new series of children's books that has just launched with book #1 - The Grimstones: Hatched. Asphyxia guest blogs to tell us the story of how the Grimstones came to the stage, and then the page.

The seeds for The Grimstones were sown in Guatemala several years ago. On the street I saw a dreadlocked man, Sergio Barrios, performing with marionettes. I was captivated, for despite the rough appearance of his puppets, they were so expressive that they seemed to be alive. After the show, I stayed, and begged Sergio to share his skills with me. Lucky for me, he did.

The first puppet I made was Bronwyn, and she looked just like me. Performing with Bronwyn was like playing with dolls, which it seems I’ve never entirely grown out of! I’d been a circus performer for many years, but decided puppetry would be my way forward. Although my audiences loved Bronwyn, she was too small for some of the larger stages I performed on. I started thinking about another puppet show, something bigger, something gothic… In my teens I was an ardent goth, and it seems that’s also something I haven’t entirely grown out of.

I started scultping with clay, just to see if I could make the kind of face I envisaged for my puppets, with big dark eyes, and my rough versions turned out even better than I dared to hope. I was hooked. I spent the next eighteen months holed up in my loft studio, creating my family of puppets and their miniature home. While I’ve always loved making things, I’ve never had any special training in the making of miniatures, so I had to invent as I went along. I wanted every aspect to be lifelike, and to look as if it had been created a hundred years ago. I knew audiences wouldn’t be able to see each detail from the stage, but I didn’t want the illusion to be shattered after the show, when they might come in close and discover it was all made of foam and cardboard. I wanted them to find more: titles of books, details of spells, little notes tacked to the walls…

The Grimstones theatre show stunned me with its success. It seemed that like me, my audiences fell in love with my family of puppets, and we were invited to perform on stages around the world. Someone from Allen & Unwin saw the show, and we received a call asking if The Grimstones could become a book. I can’t tell you how much fun I’ve had getting into Martha Grimstone’s head to 'help' her write her journal.

Hatched is a gothic fairytale about a girl who keeps her secrets safe between two pieces of cardboard, a mama who cries lakes of tears every night, and a giant egg that seems to take forever to hatch.

The Grimstones: Hatched is out now. Mortimer Revealed: The Grimstones #2 is out in April. You can read more about The Grimstones here.

Adelaide Festival Awards for Literature 2012 Shortlists Announced

2012-02-07T00:00:00Z

The shortlists for the 2012 Adelaide Festival Awards for Literature (which has a total prize pool of $135 000) have been announced.

Stalwart titles That Deadman Dance (Kim Scott), All That I Am (Anna Funder) and Autumn Laing (Alex Miller) have all made the fiction lists. Hazel Rowley's ever-popular biography, Franklin and Eleanor: An Extraordinary Marriage, and Brenda Walker's Reading By Moonlight are both contenders for the non-fiction prize, as are Vikki Wakefield's All I Ever Wanted and Georgia Blain's Darkwater in the young adult category.

The Awards were introduced in 1986 and is presented biennially during the Adelaide Festival's Writers' Week. The winners in each category will also vie for the overall Premier’s Award (worth an additional $10 000). Previous winners include Peter Carey, Helen Garner and David Malouf.

The prizes will be announced on March 3, the first day of Adelaide Writers' Week, and the full shortlists are below - congrats to all!

Fiction ($15 000)

All That I Am by Anna Funder
Five Bells by Gail Jones
Autumn Laing by Alex Miller
That Deadman Dance by Kim Scott
Bright and Distant Shores by Dominic Smith
The Roving Party by Rohan Wilson

Non-Fiction ($15 000)

1835: The Founding of Melbourne and the Conquest of Australia by James Boyce
My Blood’s Country by Fiona Capp
A Three Cornered Life: The Historian W.K. Hancock by Jim Davidson
An Eye for Eternity by Mark McKenna
Franklin and Eleanor: An Extraordinary Marriage by Hazel Rowley
Reading By Moonlight: How Books Saved A Life by Brenda Walker

Poetry ($15 000)

Barefoot by Jennifer Compton
The Wing Collection: New & Selected Poems by Diane Fahey
Taller When Prone by Les Murray
Phantom Limb by David Musgrave
The Argument by Tracy Ryan
The Simplified World by Petra White

Drama ($10 000)

A Cathedral by Nicki Bloom
Helen Back by Elena Carapetis
Wolf Hunger by Duncan Graham

Young Adult Fiction ($15 000)

Darkwater by Georgia Blain
Monster Blood Tattoo Book Three: Factotum by D. M. Cornish
The Golden Day by Ursula Dubosarsky
The Dead I Know by Scot Gardner
The Life of a Teenage Body-Snatcher by Doug MacLeod
All I Ever Wanted by Vikki Wakefield

Children’s Literature ($15 000)

The Ghost of Miss Annabel Spoon by Aaron Blabey
Crow Country by Kate Constable
A Bus Called Heaven by Bob Graham
Taj and the Great Camel Trek by Rosanne Hawke
The Last Viking by Norman Jorgensen and James Foley (illus.)
The Keepers: Museum of Thieves by Lian Tanner

Unpublished Manuscript ($10 000, plus publication by Wakefield Press)

The Red Hat: An Australian Gothic Novel by Henry Aybee
The Sparrow by Belinda Broughton
The Sixth Creek by Rachael Mead
The First Week by Margaret Merrilees
Tropeland by Rob Walker

Romantic Reads: A List by Readings Staff, Fans & Followers

2012-02-07T00:00:00Z

With Valentine's Day approaching we thought we'd put together a list of romantic reads (ooh la la, hubba hubba, etc). We started off with a handful of books chosen by Readings staff and put the call out to our Facebook fans and Twitter followers this morning, looking for more suggestions.

In the end we've come up with a pretty solid list of books. It's not a list of love stories or ideal endings only. Many of the books feature tragedy and heartbreak. But all, are romantic in some way or another. Thanks for everyone who added a book to the list.

So here they are. A list of romantic reads, as compiled by Readings staff, fans, followers and customers:

Possession: A Romance by A.S. Byatt
One Day by David Nicholls
Just Kids by Patti Smith
The History of Love by Nicole Krauss
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
Beauty And Sadness by Yasunari Kawabata
The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger
Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte
Addition by Toni Jordan
The Notebook by Nicholas Sparks
Holding The Man by Timothy Conigrave
The Go-Between by L.P. Hartley
Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton
Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro
The Lover's Dictionary by David Levithan
A Song For Arbonne by Guy Gavriel Kay
Atonement by Ian McEwan
Essays In Love by Alain de Botton
The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood
Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami
The Year Of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion
The Story Of A Marriage by Andrew Sean Greer
She Came To Stay by Simone De Beauvoir
South Of The Border, West Of The Sun by Haruki Murakami
Middlemarch by George Eliot
I Capture The Castle by Dodie Smith
Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates
Paper Towns by John Green
Venus As A Boy by Luke Sutherland
A Single Man by Christopher Isherwood
The Remains Of The Day by Kazuo Ishiguro
A Room With A View by E.M. Forster
Love In The Time Of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
The Great Fire by Shirley Hazzard
Here On Earth by Alice Hoffman

See the full list of romatic reads.

And stay tuned tomorrow when we compile another Valentiney list - this time looking at break-up books.

Q&A with Michael Sala, author of The Last Thread

2012-02-07T00:00:00Z

The Last Thread is a novel about a life in fiction - recalling a young boy's childhood in the Netherlands and a family's journey to Australian during the 1980s, as well as the tangled strings that bind them together.

Here, Readings’ Books Division Manager Martin Shaw, who describes the book as 'a gutsy, moving, beautifully wrought and utterly compelling work' chats to author Michael Sala about autobiography and the dark pull of the past.

Michael, I loved your book – congratulations on a fine debut. But love’s a loaded word in the context of this novel, isn’t it? We hang on to it in our kin and other close relationships – sometimes as a ‘last thread’ – but there can be a whole history of devastations under its veneer. I loved the steadfastness you exhibit in your examination of a sometimes quite gut-wrenching family history. Did you struggle with trying to retain some critical distance?

Love is a loaded word in The Last Thread, and I think that one of the themes of this book is the idea of love, what it means to different people and how it gets corrupted. I’m not just talking about love between people, but about the way people see themselves.

I made many false starts before I wrote The Last Thread. For a long time, the material was too confronting – too painful, too raw. It amazed me how, when I started writing about what I remembered, my childhood returned to me in such a visceral way. For a while, when I began writing about the difficult events in my life (my father’s abuse of my brother, my stepfather’s violence, my younger brother’s disappearance), I became more depressed and felt far more vulnerable, but gradually I started to find my feet.

Critical distance to the material in my childhood was a massive challenge, but it was a crucial one too. On the one hand, you have to feel the material that you are writing about in order to really bring it to life. On the other, you can’t let that raw feeling dominate you or the story.

Almost a character in its own right is the city of Newcastle. In one passage, the mother character, Nici, says ‘the city just becomes the memories you have of it’. You reside there still. Does the city have a pull all of its own, or is it so constitutive of your identity that you cannot imagine living anywhere else?

I did intend Newcastle to become a kind of character in this book that changes and grows over time. I think what my mother says at that stage of the book is an interesting idea, but I don’t agree with the underlying sentiment, or maybe I think the idea should be carried through to its natural conclusion. Yes, the city you live in is partly a product of your memories, but you are constantly adding new layers of memory to the picture. The more time that you spend there, the more your experience of the place diversifies and changes. I guess it’s about how you live your life: whether you repeat the past or build from it, and perhaps that’s reflected in your view of wherever you find yourself.

A book by Booki.sh

The ‘Michael’ character in this novel visits Holland, the country of his birth, for the last time as a 13 year old. Several of your characters are reckoning with versions of events, stories of the past that have accreted new layers over the years. Did you return to Holland for your research for this book? Or is it written entirely from your own memories of that time, with some imaginary excavations of events you were too little to comprehend fully?

I haven’t been back to Holland since I was 13. So, in a sense, the Holland that I came from is a product of memory coupled with imagination. It’s more of an emotional place than a physical one. But The Last Thread is not a book about the past; it’s about how the past relates to the present. It’s about what I live with now as an adult. I like your idea of imaginary excavations. At the best of times, memory is not precise, and how can I remember precisely things that were said, when they occurred in a language with which I am no longer that competent? But I have carefully attempted to brush back the muck, to capture what happened as I remember it.

One scene that I struggled with in this way was a visit to an aunt when I was nine, just before we left Holland for the second time. She literally spoke as if I wasn’t there and decided to summarise the whole scandalous past of my family for my mother. It was horrible but fascinating, my grandmother’s involvement with the Nazis, her intense anti-Semitism, the callous way that she’d treated some of her children. I’ll never forget how dramatically my view of the whole world changed in just a couple of hours, just through listening to someone talk. I never looked at my grandmother in the same way again.

Towards the end you describe a pair of nineteenth-century brass candleholders from a ship, that the mother gifts to Michael. ‘They’re designed with hinges so that the candles always stay level. The ship might be going down, but at least you’ll be able to see the look on people’s faces, the water coming in.’ You’ve been prepared to stare down some really strong themes, and the candleholders, like Michael, are still around to tell the tale. Michael has the occasional nightmares, but he also has love, a child of his own to care for ... an equilibrium, of sorts?

There’s a kind of question in that image of the candleholders for me. If the ship is going down, if you’re stuck down there and heading towards the bottom of the ocean, is there a point in seeing the looks on people’s faces, the water coming in?

There were definitely times, while writing this book, that I wondered if illuminating all of this experience was worth it. I didn’t want to get consumed by it, and that’s always the risk, and it’s probably inevitable that it happens for a while, but somehow you have to find a way of pulling yourself free enough to be able to tell the story without becoming damaged by it all over again. Because in the end, the story isn’t about the damage, it’s about the interesting perspectives and experiences of the people involved.

I didn’t want to become that figure of my aunt towards the end of the book who is consumed by the bitterness of her experiences, but at the same time, I think the past matters. I don’t think that you can bury it indefinitely. You need to be able to look at it with a steady eye and that takes practice; it helps if you can find a good balance in your life as a whole. My daughter, towards the end, is a really important part of the book for me. Becoming a father really put me in a position to write this book.

Martin Shaw, Readings’ Books Division Manager, is what they call a ‘career bookseller’, which might be an interesting concept as the world turns ‘E’. Formerly an avid fiction reader, now ‘Jolly Jumper’ supervisor to an adorable 7-month-old. Follow him on twitter - @thebooksdesk

The Last Thread is out now in paperback ($27.95) and ebook ($11.95).

Vintage Classics 3 for 2 Offer

2012-02-06T00:00:00Z

The bold red spines of the Vintage Classics range are immediately recognisable to anyone browsing a bookstore these days - relaunched in 2007, with the idea of using modern, contemporary book design to unify some of the best literature of the past centuries, the Vintage range has gone from strength to strength.

Australian novelist Richard Flanagan is one of the latest authors to join the ranks of Iris Mudoch, Kurt Vonnegut, Stella Gibbons, José Saramago, Nancy Mitford and co. and wrote recently about why the classics mattered to him:

'These books are written not to flatter the stupidities of their age, of the past, which is why many of them were often reviled and even lost at the time of their first publication. They were written for us, now. And that is why they have endured, why they have grown, why they refuse to die. Because great novels always belong to the future. To us.'

This February, you can buy any 3 of the Vintage Classics for the price of 2 in store, and receive a free Vintage Classics hessian bag in which to carry them home in. As if being $12.95 wasn't enough of a bargain already.

*Please note that this offer is not available for online purchases.

Australian Music Prize 2012 Shortlist Announced

2012-02-02T00:00:00Z

The shortlist of albums in the running to win this year's AMP - Australian Music Prize - has been announced and it's a real who's who of Australian music from 2011.

The prize is judged by 42 industry judges, including Readings Carlton's own music buyer Dave Clarke.

Congratulations to all the bands and artists who have made the cut:

Abbe May – Design Desire
Adalita – Adalita
Boy & Bear – Moonfire
Gotye – Making Mirrors
Gurrumul – Rralaka
Jack Ladder & The Dreamlanders – Hurtsville
The Jezabels – Prisoner
Kimbra – Vows
The Middle East – I Want That You Are Always Happy

The Story of My Book: H.M. Castor on VIII

2012-02-02T00:00:00Z

Ruthless kings, tragic queens, swordfights, secrets, and a young, charismatic heir to the Tudor throne named Henry - H.M Castor's VIII is an dramatic, sumptuous and sinister re-imagining of the youth of one of Britain's most infamous rulers. Here, she guest blogs for us about the story behind the book, and what drew her to the tale of how a hero becomes a monster.

I’m obsessed with history. I love it. When I try to work out why, it traces back to summer holidays when I was a kid. My parents weren’t madly keen on the bucket-and-spade experience, so we spent most of our time visiting old buildings – castles, churches, stately homes, the ruins of monasteries. The worn stone steps fascinated me; I thought of all those feet walking to and fro. I stood in rooms, looked at views, and thought of the people who had stood in exactly the same spot hundreds of years before me. People who had laughed and argued, tripped over, got the hiccups – had been, in short, every bit as alive and human as we are now. This mysterious fact – that people like us have been here, done astonishing things, lived and loved and disappeared forever – is endlessly fascinating to me.

Right from the start, Tudor history grabbed me most of all. Why? I think it was the terrific, dramatic stories: scary kings, tragic queens, betrayals, secret messages and swordfights, sumptuous palaces, sinister ravens, the whisper of headless ghosts… what more could anyone want?

But why Henry VIII in particular, why this book? Well, astonishing as it may sound when we’re talking about such a famous figure, I was gripped by the conviction that I had something new to say. The idea for the book grabbed me by the scruff of the neck and just wouldn’t let go.

We may think we know Henry VIII. He’s that big-bellied guy with a beard, who chopped off his wives’ heads, right? The English Bluebeard. Yes, but… that was only the later Henry. Just look at him when he’s young… he was a brilliant youth – unusually virtuous, we’re told, and built most definitely in the heroic mould: over six foot tall, muscular and ridiculously talented at sports. His particular passion was for what today would be called an ‘extreme sport’: jousting. A sport so dangerous, men regularly made their wills before playing.

Henry was brilliant at it. He was fun-loving, intelligent, good-humoured, good-looking. He became king at 17 and was the fresh young hope of the nation.

So: what went wrong? How did that heroic boy become one of the most villainous kings in British history? And, more than that: what did it feel like to be him, to go through that transformation?

This is an archetypal story, a fallen angel story. It’s like a 16th-century version of the story of Anakin Skywalker from Star Wars – the young hero who becomes Darth Vader. In watching Anakin on-screen, we identify with his grief, his struggles with the temptations of the dark side… Why, I wondered, had no one ever shown me this aspect of Henry? Yes, there are plenty of books about him, and you can find detailed, fascinating accounts of what he did as well as speculation as to why – he needed a son, he was tired of his wife – but I’ve never read anything that made me identify with him… that drew me right into his mind, and made me understand why he acted in the extraordinary way he did.

The key to that question – why? – lies, I believe, in Henry’s childhood and teenage years: dramatic, traumatic years that usually we simply don’t hear about. I wanted to write VIII to explore them and to find out – from the inside – what it felt like to turn from hero to monster.

St Kilda Festival: Musings on a Melbourne Friend

2012-02-01T00:00:00Z

With the St Kilda Festival almost upon us - it kicks off this Saturday February 7th - Festival Producer Adele Denison guest blogs about the event and what it's like running one of Melbourne's most popular festivals.

What I do for a living does not make me a favourite amongst some of the St Kilda community. Having produced the St Kilda Festival for five years now – going on six – I have also heard all of the reasons why. And I get it – this Festival shuts down a suburb for a day. It disrupts, it inconveniences, it disturbs.

And yet, each year I find that I devote myself and my summer to putting this Festival back on. Sometimes fairly obsessively, if I’m being honest with myself. It isn’t just me either: there’s the most amazing team of Festival staff going above and beyond – I can’t tell you how hard these guys are working – for the same cause. Then there’s the Festival goers, who tell us loudly and proudly each year that the Festival is still important, that it is worth their time, that it is worth it, full stop.

So I’m opting for a little indulgence here, the chance to talk about what this Festival does mean and can do, and why I personally think it is such a vital part of Melbourne.

St Kilda is at its best on days like Festival Sunday; its streets were built for promenading, its restaurants and café strips best for watching the world go by, its beach never happier than when it is hosting thousands of friends.

The moments when the frequency of the music and the wind are just right and a melody carries across the whole suburb are enchanting. The moments when one of those songs comes on…the ones that everyone knows the words and sings along to…are about as unified as Melbourne gets. And the moments where you can just lose yourself in a tune or get carried away with a beat can remind you of just how important music can be (always a happy reminder to get).

One of the magical things about a festival like St Kilda is its power to transform what is usually such an urban and everyday space. It’s as if for one day, a spell has been cast, and a road usually reserved for traffic jams is suddenly there to parade on, along with thousands of fellow Melbournians. A park, usually one you might cross without thinking, suddenly houses one of your favourite bands playing one of your most special songs. Or a car park, usually…a car park, suddenly becomes a space where complete strangers dance together.

Closing the roads brings this place back to the people – it’s ephemeral and fleeting, it’s transformational, it’s restorative. There is no more fitting a beach for Melbourne than St Kilda, and there is no better gift to bring to St Kilda than to close its thoroughfares, just once a year, and rediscover the delight of these everyday spaces.

The front window of Readings St Kilda with its 2012 festival decorations

There’s a lot more I can say, and we do regularly say it. The Festival is free, so anyone can go. It brings people together, gathers and connects communities. It showcases well over 150 bands every year, and celebrates Australian music. It creates tradition, custom and ritual. It acknowledges and relives St Kilda’s history as one of Melbourne’s music heartlands.

I have a thousand memories of going to the St Kilda Festival, in so many different years and for just as many different reasons. The memories are equally of people and of place. If we can create memories like that for a new generation, then I am very proud of what I do and know that this Festival is still worth doing. It is unique, it is a tradition and it is one of my best friends. In the words of one of the Festival’s favourites, The Vaudeville Smash, it’s “a thousand times the best of them”.

Long live the St Kilda Festival and happy St Kilda day to you all!

The 2012 St Kilda Festival runs from February 4-12. Readings is a proud supporter of the festival.

As part of this year's festival our Readings St Kilda shop is hosting two great events - an in-store performance from Tristen Bird on Tuesday 7 Feb at 7pm and free screening of the documentary The Triangle Wars on Thursday 9 February at 6.30pm. We'd love to see you there.

Q&A with Peter Carey, author of The Chemistry of Tears

2012-02-01T00:00:00Z

Peter Carey, one of Australia's best-loved novelists, is set to delight readers once again with his latest novel The Chemistry of Tears - a story of love, loss, mystery and clockwork that moves effortlessly between the settings of contemporary London and nineteenth-century Germany. Here, Readings Managing Director Mark Rubbo, who describes the book as 'a truly original and compelling work', chats with Peter about alienated grief, half-imagined people and the beauty of invention.

One of the central characters, Catherine, has been conducting a secret affair with a married man. His sudden death highlights her emotional isolation; this alienated grief is something that’s rarely discussed. What made you want to fictionalise this?

I don’t think I know. I’m not sure I can even explain why.

As always I began The Chemistry of Tears in a very muddy landscape, with lots of possibilities, clockworks, chemicals, half imagined people, flotsam, jetsam, sketches. As the work progressed a lot more stuff was excavated and a lot more stuff was thrown away. One day I saw how two different elements could be joined together. The possibilities of Mathew’s death and Catherine’s grief connected with the question raised by automata – what is life? What is death? Are we machines? Do we have souls? Why do we cry?

So this 'alienated grief' opened the door to the great questions of life and love itself.

A key character in The Chemistry of Tears, is an automaton, a mechanical duck. Where did you get the idea for this?

As we are now living with the consequences of the industrial revolution, I wished to explore all the amazing human inventiveness that produced that revolution. I suppose I could have used a steam engine, but I was drawn to the duck because it could carry the same freight without being a predictable or industrial machine, and because ... well, it made me smile.

When we first meet Henry Branding (in 1854) he has just crossed into Germany where his plans for the duck look suspicious to a customs inspector who 'had it in his great German block-head that [I was] smuggling plans for what exactly? A very comic instrument of war?'

There is an important character in the novel who thinks this is precisely correct.

There are a lot of historical references, how extensive is your research and how important is it to the final shape of the book?

E.L. Doctorow is often asked how much research he does. I have always admired his perfect answer: 'Less than you’d think.'

My response is: 'Don’t worry about it.'

Of course my life’s experience feeds every book I write, and that naturally includes everything I’ve read. But it would be insane for me expect the reader to have read the same books I have. If you have never heard of a certain historical character in the The Chemistry of Tears, be patient, read on.

This novel should be to be a source of pleasure, not an exam. Please do not interrupt that pleasure to go online and google. Everything you need to know is already in your heart or your head, and to read with Google at your side is like visiting Cologne Cathedral and spending all your time crawling around the foundations with a flashlight.

Maybe rewarding for a building inspector, but no-one else.

Concerns about research tend to obscure the real nature of the project which is that it is a work of imagination. If the hidden question is 'how do you know that?', the correct answer is 'by inventing it'.

The book has two parallel narratives, Catherine’s in contemporary London and 19th century Germany. Catherine’s narrative seems much more interior than the other one, which is more philosophical in nature; how do you envisage readers will react? How would you like them to react?

The real magic of a novel only begins when the readers eyes fall upon the page. And the real human reaction always has some degree of pleasant surprise for me.

In your question you point out that Catherine’s narrative is more interior and Henry’s more philosophical, and I do not doubt that this is true, but it never occurred to me before.

Generally, I’d hope my readers would trust me, that they would relax and enjoy the ride. I would also hope they would love my characters as much as I do. I would wish them to be moved, to find poetry in the sentences.

Mark Rubbo is the Managing Director of Readings

Carrie Tiffany talks to Gregory Day about Mateship with Birds

2012-01-31T00:00:00Z

Carrie Tiffany made her mark on the Australian literary scene with her first novel, Everyman’s Rules for Scientific Living, which was shortlisted for The Orange Prize, the Miles Franklin Literary Award, The Guardian First Book Award and the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize. It won the Dobbie Award and the West Australian Premier’s Award for Fiction. Novelist Gregory Day spoke to Carrie for Readings about her eagerly awaited second novel, Mateship with Birds.

Deep in the middle of Carrie Tiffany’s new novel, Mateship with Birds, is perhaps a clue to the brilliant surface of her prose:

'At school number 2502, Cohuna, Little Hazel’s teacher sets aside fifteen minutes on a Friday afternoon for the class to write up their nature diaries … Little Hazel brings pressed leaves and flowers from home and traces around them on the page, but they break apart and it takes too long to colour in the outlines. She takes some advice from Harry and she tries to write what she sees.'

Harry, in this case, is the bachelor dairy farmer who lives next door to Little Hazel. He is good with his cows and a gentle chap, a bird watcher who writes observations about a family of kookaburras in an old milk ledger. He is also instructing Little Hazel’s elder brother Michael in the rather DIY expertise he has gained about sex, not only from his own personal stirrings, but from his clear-eyed observations of the animal world around him.

Harry’s instruction to write what you see seems simple advice, but in Carrie Tiffany’s hands it takes on a layered meaning. In her first novel, Everyman’s Rules for Scientific Living, the main character Jean (who teaches embroidery on the government sponsored Better Farming Train as it snakes its way through the Mallee in the 1930s) suggests to the countrywomen that they simply ‘sew the things they see around them’. Jean’s advice, like Harry’s, is both Virgilian and vernacular. And there is something of those two qualities in the vivid clarity of this author’s work.

Interestingly, when Carrie Tiffany arrived in Australia as a six-year-old from England, she was utterly shocked by what she saw. ‘We had a colouring book we were given on the plane. There were gum trees in it and I thought they would be pink like my gums, salmon pink. And when I found that the swans were black, I thought this was outrageous. I thought they’d been painted by the government to match the washed-out look of everything else. It seemed hellish.’

And unlike her family’s former house in Halifax Yorkshire, whose front door opened straight out onto the street, the new house in suburban Perth had a nature strip out the front, complete with its own straggly gum tree. Tiffany remembers not only being fascinated by the extra space of the nature strip, but looking up the street at all the others and imagining that they all must lead somewhere, most probably to the much-fabled ‘bush’, a mythical subject now being inserted into her consciousness at school.

Years later, when as an excruciatingly shy 18-year-old she became the first member of her family to attend university, Tiffany didn’t last long, preferring to take up a job as a ranger in central Australia rather than try to fit in with ‘the sea of private schoolgirls sipping milkshakes on the lawn’. Was she following that childhood nature strip trail to its inevitable destination? Perhaps, though this was not to be the end of the story.

In 2005, 20 or so years after she fled university for the bush, Tiffany’s first novel was published to such acclaim that it took her full circle back to England. Everyman’s Rules was shortlisted for the high profile Orange Prize for women writers and the prestigious Guardian First Book Award. The book which had prompted this somewhat feted return to her country of origin was not about white swans gliding through the Yorkshire rain, but rather the parsimonious dry soils and vast blue skies of the Mallee in northwestern Victoria, in the faraway continent that had jolted her so much as a child. As anyone who has lived in the Mallee will tell you, it can hit you quickly in the eye and then slowly break your heart. In her debut novel, Tiffany explored with great panache the comic possibilities inherent in gung-ho nationalisation programs which throw data at dust storms, and ideas of ‘moving forward’ on a visually astonishing landscape – one that is in many ways unsuited to monocultural concepts or linear time.

Often the best historical writing offers us unexpected insights into our own era, and given Everyman’s Rules’ clever dovetailing of contemporary environmental issues with the historical materialism of the Better Farming Train, many readers have been waiting eagerly for the next offering from Tiffany to appear. She’s taken her time, but finally – with the slim Flaubertian miniature, Mateship with Birds – they get their wish.

A book by Booki.sh

This time we’ve moved slightly east on the map of northern Victoria to a squelchy dairy farm on the Gunbower Creek at Cohuna. Mateship with Birds documents the lives of a single mother, Betty, her two children Michael and Little Hazel, and the bachelor dairyman on the next-door farm, Harry. It is a bowerbird of a book, constructed through the accumulation of closely regarded details and objects, and it’s also a moving inquiry into the similarities between the lives, and particularly the sex lives, of people and animals. More so than the first novel, where human culture was painted as vainglorious in the face of circadian realities, in Mateship with Birds Tiffany brings a deep sympathy to her characters’ life on the land, showing the way mortal loneliness abides at the very heart of our deepest connections.

In composing the novel, Tiffany spent a lot of time reading the case studies of Freud and of the British sex-psychologist Havelock Ellis. A remarkable feature of the novel is how she has transposed the pathological exactitude of such documents into a series of intensely local tableaux rich with poignancy and wit. These are people without pretensions. Betty works as a nurse at the local hospital and so is under no illusions about the physical realities of existence. In one memorable vignette, she watches a crow hopping on the bonnet of her car through the ward window as she holds the cheeks of an old man’s arse apart during a faecal impaction. Likewise, Harry is made real by the basic necessities of those around him. In his case, those necessities are largely to do with cows.

‘I spent a lot of time sitting on roadsides looking into paddocks of cows,’ Tiffany says, ‘looking at a particular herd of cows and looking at how they were 20 individual cows standing in a paddock but they weren’t, they were something more than this. And the relationship between animals that happens without speech in a herd, that happens in some other way, some bodily way that’s transferred between them and sort of plugs them together, seemed to me very similar to how families operate. It was fascinating to me that the really good farmers know and respect that in some intrinsic way, they understand that they’re not ever actually just dealing with an individual animal, they’re dealing with a herd, with a family.’

This touching interrelation between animal and human behaviour, and the positive co-dependent nature of communities, lies at the heart of Mateship with Birds. Tiffany expresses this in many ways, including through the written notes Harry makes on the kookaburra family, which, because of the narrow columns of the milk ledger he writes them into, are condensed into short poem-like lines: ‘The sky has sufficient depth / to give each bird / its own strata / its precise allocation of air. / Yet, like us, / they find it difficult / to live in peace’.

Through the agency of Betty’s young daughter Little Hazel, Tiffany shows how the personal foibles of a remote farming community are often impossible to rein in or censor. The idiosyncracies that play themselves out in the sheds of farms take on some hair-raising forms, but in Mateship with Birds, the prose that depicts this is exquisitely without judgement. As well as having its roots in Flaubert’s famous credo – of the author being always present but never visible in the text – this stylistic approach may also be a reaction to the difficulty Tiffany had when employed to write a government report on biodiversity.

‘In the writing of that paper everything about biodiversity had to be scientific. There’s a lot of information now being collected about biodiversity through the observations of individual farmers and landholders, but the committees overseeing the report didn’t want to have any of this information in it, because it didn’t meet their rigorous scientific standards. So all the stuff based on experiencing the landscape because you live on it was all just pushed out and we had to have these appalling facts and figures and all this language that meant nothing and didn’t try to describe or honour in any way the thing it was talking about.’

As well as helping to fund her simultaneous writing of this novel, the exclusion of everything that wasn’t considered to be ‘hard science’ for the government report – in favour of a dry acronym-laden document which talked never of beauty but frequently of ‘amenity’ – helped further crystallise her approach to writing about people on the land.

As a result, Mateship with Birds is a highly aesthetic experience, which in itself is something of a juxtaposition with the stereotypically ad hoc nature of the backblocks culture it presents. But in the heightened pastoral realities of Carrie Tiffany, nothing is taken for granted. We are invited to look again at the country around us, and the ordinary people who know it best. In doing so, we are treated to a refreshed understanding of our fundamental condition, living as we do like all other creatures of the earth.

Gregory Day is a writer, poet and musician, whose three novels so far share the setting of the fictional Victorian coastal town of Mangowak. His latest is The Grand Hotel. In 2011, Day and Carrie Tiffany shared first prize in the Australian Book Review’s Elizabeth Jolley Short Story Prize.

Mateship with Birds is out now in paperback ($19.99) and ebook ($12.99).

A Round-Up of February New Release Books

2012-01-31T00:00:00Z

Booksellers traditionally look forward to the month of February in the publishing cycle to spruce up their shelves post-xmas with some fresh new titles. But more often than not the 'big books', with clear critical and/or commercial clout, are held over until March, when it’s assumed readers are paying attention again after the long summer break.

2012 however appears markedly different. As if it were a jousting tournament, our local publishers seem to be squaring off with some particularly long literary lances this year! A new Alain de Botton (Religion for Atheists) – whyever not! Indeed, bring it on, I say - it makes for some genuinely exciting books, guaranteed to make even the most hot and bothered amongst us at this time of year reach for a cool drink and a suitable recliner!

Here then a very brief survey of a few other noteworthies:

First up that wonderful intellectual historian Peter Watson (Terrible Beauty; The German Genius) takes on 'history and human nature in the old world and the new' in The Great Divide. Spanning sixteen and a half millennia, it is, as one advance review puts it, 'the first necessary read of the year', and I can only concur – it looks a magisterial work.

For a different sort of take, enter 29-year-old Eric Knight with Reframe: How to Solve the World’s Trickiest Problems. An economics consultant, he explains 'how a change of focus can reveal a solution that was lying just outside our frame of vision'. With topics ranging from terrorists to boat people to climate change, don’t be at all surprised if Mr Knight becomes a regular on Q&A this year!

Probably capturing the 'most mentioned' book of the month will of course be the new Peter Carey: The Chemistry of Tears. The Oz literary community on twitter – a very gossipy clique of course - was briefly abuzz a few weeks back when one regular book reviewer, a Carey fan, pronounced himself notably lukewarm. But Carey is always reinventing himself, and reactions are bound to differ with each new work. Mark Rubbo for instance declares that the new novel 'has all of Carey’s fabulist trademarks', and is 'deeply satisfying'.

Carrie Tiffany is the other big name, with a splendid second novel, Mateship with Birds. It is obviously a daunting prospect following up an acclaimed debut, but Tiffany has clearly taken her time since 2005’s Everyman’s Rules for Scientific Living, and the new book benefits enormously: not least because it reveals a deep understanding and connection with life on the land in rural Australia - that for us city-slickers is almost like a foreign country.

Finally a big shout-out for our debut fiction feature this month. As Charlotte Wood remarked recently, Michael Sala is 'serious talent', and it’s everywhere on display in The Last Thread. One for the prize shortlists already, me thinks.

Enjoy the feast this month, then, and let’s look forward to further riches in the months to come!

Q&A with Sally Rippin, Author of Billie B Brown and Hey Jack!

2012-01-30T00:00:00Z

Sally Rippin's series for junior readers Billie B Brown has been such a hit that Hey Jack! - a spin-off series starring Billie's best friend Jack - has just been launched. We chat with Sally about Jack, Billie and writing for children.

Can you tell us a little bit about your latest book?

I am currently working on a new series of early chapter books for kids called Hey Jack. Jack is best friends with Billie from the Billie B Brown series and, being the quieter of the two, I thought it would be nice to be given the opportunity to see the world from his perspective.

In my mind, the Billie B Brown series is an antidote to all the fairy and princess books out there marketed towards girls, whereas the Hey Jack series is for boys who can’t relate to super heroes or sporting stars. While Billie likes to dress-up, she also likes to climb trees and kick a soccer ball around. She is very good on the monkey bars but hopeless at ballet. Jack, on the other hand, might be shy, but he shines in his school musical. He builds excellent Lego castles and even makes his own robot costumes out of cardboard boxes. I hope kids who have read and enjoyed the Billie series will love the Jack series, too.

What has been your favourite experience as a writer?

I have to say writing the Billie B Brown series has been the highlight of writing career so far. I love writing the stories and feel like I’ve tapped into an infinite well of memories to draw on from my own childhood. Most of all, I am overwhelmed by how popular this series has become, and in such a short time. I receive dozens of incredibly cute emails every month from young readers and I can’t tell you how many invitations Billie has received to birthday parties! I am thrilled, too, to receive emails from parents who have told me that the series has inspired their child to read. This is everything I could have hoped for as a writer and I feel enormously grateful.

Why do you write for children?

I like kids. I like the way their view of the world constantly reminds me to be open and inspired and in awe of everything around me. I like their sense of humour, playfulness and innate creativity. I also think having such a strong memory of myself at a young age helps me empathise and understand children and why they do things that from an adult’s point of view may seem incomprehensible. I think it is a great honour to perhaps be among the very first books a person has ever read. Many of the books I read as a child had a profound effect on me. I remember many of them with fondness and many of the characters have stayed with me like old friends. I would love to think that one of my books could have the same effect on a child today.

Describe your main characters in three words.

Jack: Introspective, imaginative and insightful
Billie: Boisterous, bossy and brave

What has been your favourite book of the past month? The past year? Of All time?

Oh, that’s a hard one. Past month: I just finished reading Ann Patchett’s State of Wonder and loved it, but I also recently read The Brain That Changes Itself by Norman Doidge and loved that, too – obviously for very different reasons. One took me out of my head, the other lead me into it. Both gave me great insight into what makes people tick.

Past year: Hmmm... Maybe Skellig By David Almond, or When You Reach Me by Rebecca Stead – two beautiful and wildly imaginative children’s books that I read around the time of writing my own children’s novel Angel Creek and both inspired me greatly.

All time? Oh, way too hard. Recently I’ve been saying To Kill A Mockingbird is my all-time favourite novel, so I’ll stick with that, but I was also blown away by Niccolo Ammaniti’s I’m Not Scared. I love the way that both these stories explore the darkest places of humanity from the skewed and largely innocent perspective of a child.

What’s your favourite place to read?

Bed. Hands down. As long as I can stay awake...

What kind of reader do you think will love your book the most?

I write a wide range of books from picture books to Young Adult novels, but if we are talking specifically about the Jack and Billie series, let’s say a young reader who is ready to try their first chapter book. Someone who wants to read about a character they can relate to and who could, very possibly, become their very best friend.

The first four Hey Jack! books are out now.

Holly Harper is a children’s bookseller at Readings Carlton where she organises the kids and Young Adult e-newsletters. She also writes books for younger readers under the name H.J. Harper. Find out more about her Star League series and other books here and follow her on twitter - @hj_harper.

Readings Port Melbourne – End-of-Lease Sale and Final Markdowns

2012-01-27T00:00:00Z

After ten years at the magnificent heritage-listed Post Office building on Bay Street, the lease on our Port Melbourne shop has sadly come to an end.

Unfortunately, Readings has been unable to come to an arrangement with the landlord and the shop’s last day of trading will be on Sunday 5 February.

Readings managing director Mark Rubbo, as well as the Port Melbourne staff, would like to thank all of our customers for their wonderful support and enthusiasm over the years, and invite you to come along to say a goodbye and pick up a bargain or two at our end of lease sale that weekend:

End-of-Lease Sale

Saturday 4 – Sunday 5 February, 10am–6pm

Readings Port Melbourne, 253 Bay Street

40% off all books, 20% off all CDs and DVDs

Our Readings St Kilda shop will continue to welcome all customers in the Bayside area. Readings also has plans to open a new Neuroscience shop in late April within the University of Melbourne’s Brain Centre on Royal Parade.

Up to 25% off Great Australian Ebook Titles

2012-01-26T00:00:00Z

In celebration of Australia Day, we have some brilliant local fiction and non-fiction titles available at bargain prices.

Among our collection of Great Australian Ebook Titles are Mungo MacCullum's The Good, the Bad and the Unlikely: Australia's Prime Ministers and Alan Frost's Botany Bay: The Real Story are both available for just $9.95 till the end of this week.

Also, don't forget our Ebook Sale, which is finishing in one day's time, and includes titles such as Sophie Cunningham's Melbourne ($9.99), David Marr's Panic ($7.95) , Kate Grenville's Sarah Thornhill ($8.56) and Christos Tsiolkas's The Slap ($9.99) and Anh Do's The Happiest Refugee ($9.99).

Readings Ebooks are easily accessed via your iPad, smartphone or any device with a modern web browser through the book.ish cloud.

Have a look at more of our Great Australian Ebooks or sign up to book.ish.

A book by Booki.sh

Indie Awards Shortlists Announced for 2012

2012-01-25T00:00:00Z

The shortlists for the 2012 Indie Awards have been announced, with books by Anna Funder, Gillian Mears, Paul Keating and Anh Do all making the cut.

The awards, which honour the best Australian books from the past year, are chosen by independent booksellers around the nation, and the winners in each category, as well as the overall 'Book of the Year' award, will be announced on Wednesday 14 March.

Congratulations all! The full shortlists are:

Fiction

Caleb's Crossing by Geraldine Brooks
The Street Sweeper by Elliot Perlman
Foal's Bread by Gillian Mears
Five Bells by Gail Jones

Non-Fiction

Worse Things Happen at Sea by William McInnes and Sarah Watt
Notebooks by Betty Churcher
After Words: Post-Prime Ministerial Speeches by Paul Keating
A Private Life by Michael Kirby

Debut Fiction

Past the Shallows by Favel Parrett
All That I Am by Anna Funder
The Roving Party by Rohan Wilson
Watercolours by Adrienne Ferreira

Children's Books

The Jewel Fish of Karnak by Graeme Base
The Little Refugee by Anh and Suzanne Do (illustrated by Bruce Whatley)
The Coming of the Whirlpool: Ship Kings Book One by Andrew McGahan
The 13-Storey Treehouse by Andy Griffiths and Terry Denton