Summer Recommendations
Wanting
Richard Flanagan
$35.00$29.95 (Hardcover book / Alfred A Knopf )
It is 1839. A young Aboriginal girl, Mathinna, is running through the long wet grass of an island at the end of the world to get help for her dying father, an Aboriginal chieftain. Twenty years later, on at island at the centre of the world, the most famous novelist of the day, Charles Dickens, realises he is about to abandon his wife, risk his name, and forever after be altered because of his inability any longer to control his intense passion.
Connecting the two events are the most celebrated explorer of the age, Sir John Franklin - then governor of Van Diemen's Land - and his wife, Lady Jane, who adopt Mathinna, seen as one of the last of a dying race, as an experiment. Lady Jane believes the distance between savagery and civilisation is the learned capacity to control wanting. The expe...
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Best CDs of 2008
Alas I Cannot Swim
$24.95 (Compact disc / Virgin Records )
Debut album from the young British Folk singer/songwriter who will appeal to fans of Kirsty Maccoll, Linda Thompson and Kate Nash. Although not legally old enough to buy a drink, this darling of the Art-Folk circuit has ... More »
Review
For Emma Forever Ago
$24.95 (Compact disc / Rogue Records )
For Emma, Forever Ago is the debut of this lineage of songs. As a whole, the record is entirely cohesive throughout and remains centered around a particular aesthetic, prompted by the time and place for which it was reco... More »
Review
Fleet Foxes
$24.95 (Compact disc / Sub Pop Records )
Fleet Foxes are five. There are five of them, and they are from Seattle. They are, for lack of an imminently more marketable descriptor, a group trafficking in baroque harmonic pop. And the joy they derive in doing so is... More »
ReviewReadings Recommends: Kids' Books
Somebody's Crying
Maureen McCarthy
Enigma
Graeme Base
Moby Dick: A Pop-Up Book
Sam Ita
Swords: An Artist's Devotion
Ben Boos
From Little Things Big Things Grow
Kev Carmody and Paul Kelly
Summer Classical Music
Tribute To John Cargher
Various
David Oistrakh: The Complete EMI Recordings
David Oistrakh
Pavarotti: The Duets
Pavarotti
Handel: Messiah
John Butt/Dunedin Consort
Barack Obama
The Audacity Of Hope: Thoughts On Reclaiming The American Dream
Barack Obama
$24.95 (Paperback book / Text Publishing )
Dreams From My Father: A Story Of Race And Inheritance
Barack Obama
$24.95 (Paperback book / Text Publishing )
New DVDs
Celebrity: Dominick Dunne
$29.95 (Digital video disc / )
Vanity Fair Special Correspondent Dominick Dunne has become known the world over for his vociferous championing of the rights of the victim in high-profile murder cases. His powerful commentaries have made compelling rea... More »
The Dark Knight: 2 Disc Special Edition
$44.95 (Digital video disc / Warner Bros Home Vid )
The follow-up to Batman Begins, The Dark Knight reunites director Christopher Nolan and star Christian Bale, who reprises the role of Batman/Bruce Wayne in his continuing war on crime.
With the help of Lt. Jim Gordon and... More »
And When Did You Last See Your Father?
$39.95 (Digital video disc / Icon Film Distribution )
Based on the award winning best selling book by Blake Morrison, And When You Last See Your Father is a moving and candid memoir of a son living his last weeks with his dying father who is diagnosed with terminal cancer a... More »
Tropic Thunder
$39.95 (Digital video disc / Paramount Pictures )
The movie they think they're making... isn't a movie anymore.
Ben Stiller, Jack Black and Robert Downey Jr. lead an ensemble cast in "Tropic Thunder", an action comedy about a group of self-absorbed actors who set out to... More »
The Year My Voice Broke
$29.95 (Digital video disc / Village Roadshow Ent )
The Year My Voice Broke is set in the summer of 1962 in a remote New South Wales country town. Adopted as a baby, sixteen year old Freya (Loene Carmen) is a constant target of cruel gossip and speculation. Spirited and i... More »
By Any Means
$29.95 (Digital video disc / )
Following the phenomenal success of Long Way Round, Race to Dakar and Long Way Down, adventurer extraordinaire Charley Boorman is back with a brand new voyage. Charley is faced with the utmost challenge: To get himself f... More »