Mark Rubbo
Mark Rubbo is chairman of Readings. He is a past president of the Australian Booksellers Association and was founding chair of the Melbourne Writers Festival. In 2006 he was awarded a Medal of the Order of Australia.
Review — 22 Apr 2024
Wanderings: Small Paintings and Photographs by Bruno Leti & Alex Skovron (poetry; ed.)
As well as being a painter, photographer and print-maker, Bruno Leti is a prolific maker of artists’ books. These books are themselves pieces of art painstakingly put together and beautifully…
Review — 21 Apr 2024
Give While You Live: A Practical Guide to More and Better Giving in Australia by Peter Winneke
The 200 wealthiest families in Australia have an aggregate wealth of $563 billion and 56,000 Australians have assets worth more than $10 million. Many families have more money than they…
Review — 21 Apr 2024
The Coast Road by Alan Murrin
Izzy Keaveney is in an unhappy marriage; her friend Colette Crowley ruefully observes, ‘So what if your husband’s a bit of a bully, they all are in their own way.’…
Review — 21 Apr 2024
Table for Two by Amor Towles
The television adaptation of Amor Towles charming bestseller, A Gentleman in Moscow, has just started streaming. I’m not sure how it will translate, for Towles’ writing exhibits a style…
Blog post — 21 Nov 2023
Mark's Say, November 2023
As I write this, I’m about to head off to Bali for the 20th Ubud Writers & Readers Festival. It’s a testament to its founders, Melbourne-born Janet DeNeefe and her…
Review — 1 Sep 2023
Doll's Eye by Leah Kaminsky
Karin Magnussen was a Nazi scientist who was complicit in research into the pigmentation of irises to provide scientific proof of Nazi racial theories. Originally, her research was done on…
Review — 31 Aug 2023
The Visitors by Jane Harrison
On the 26th of January 1788, a fleet of 11 British ships sailed into Sydney Harbour. From the British side, the arrival is well documented. What we don’t really know…
Blog post — 7 Aug 2023
Mark's Say, August 2023
The horror of the Holocaust has been the topic of many thousands of books; the scale of the savagery wrought by a sophisticated Western society is something that people struggle…
Blog post — 7 Jul 2023
Mark's Say, July 2023
Next month we’ll be partnering with Libro.fm to offer our customers access to audiobooks. Up until now, subscriptions or purchases of audiobooks has been limited to Apple or Amazon’s Audible…
Review — 3 Jul 2023
After the Funeral: Stories by Tessa Hadley
I mentioned to a writer friend that I was reading this collection and she reminded me that I’d recommended Tessa Hadley’s novel Late in the Day to her some years…
