Martin Shaw
Martin Shaw is a former head book buyer
Blog post — 29 Oct 2014
November Highlights
Well just the other day we announced the winner of the inaugural Readings New Australian Writing Award, which goes to Sydneysider Ceridwen Dovey for Only the Animals. I was…
Blog post — 25 Sep 2014
October Highlights
A couple of years back I had the honour of judging the Commonwealth Book Prize for a best first book. When it came to final deliberations, it was an almost…
Blog post — 28 Aug 2014
Martin Shaw's top picks for September
Shortly after you read this column, the shortlist for the Man Booker Prize 2014 will be announced. Due to a quirk in the prize’s eligibility criteria (namely, to allow not-yet-published…
Blog post — 31 Jul 2014
Martin Shaw's top picks for August
It’s been a sombre couple of weeks in the Australian book trade, with two tragic passings: the highly respected Melbourne novelist, critic and educator Liam Davison (on the ill-fated MH17)…
Review — 22 Jul 2014
Demons by Wayne Macauley
At the beginning of the year, in a column on my ‘most anticipated books of 2014’, I wrote: ‘In recent years, Wayne Macauley has well and truly arrived as one…
Blog post — 29 May 2014
Martin Shaw's top picks for June
Of all the book titles I’ve ever come across, Janet Frame’s You Are Now Entering the Human Heart remains one of my all-time favourites. It’s wonderful news then that the…
Blog post — 29 Apr 2014
May Highlights
Several books likely to make my best-books-of-the-year list are released this month – and also several surely bound for literary prize shortlists. It really is an extraordinary offering!
So, let’s…
Blog post — 30 Mar 2014
April Highlights
Earlier this year I penned a ‘Most-Anticipated Books of 2014’ column, and – as is always the way – I soon came to regret my sins of omission…
Blog post — 27 Feb 2014
March highlights
Well, it behoves me to mention, first of all, the latest work by one of Readings’ own , namely, children’s book buyer Emily Gale, who has penned two books for…
Blog post — 2 Feb 2014
February highlights
February of course is back-to-school month, but with the new Liberal government signalling education is in need of ‘pulling its socks up’, as it were, it’s salient that two new…