Dear Reader, July 2018
Winter is here at last. As I write, it’s pelting rain, an Antarctic gale is blowing, and I couldn’t be happier. I love the drama of Melbourne’s weather, which confounds and annoys my friends from interstate no end. But really, there could be no better incentive to stay indoors and read until your eyes will read no more.
This July you must begin with our Fiction Book of the Month, Boy Swallows Universe, Trent Dalton’s debut novel, which mines his childhood experience to create a story that feels destined to be an Australian classic. Our reviewers also recommend new local literature from Moreno Giovannoni, Tiffany Tsao, Future D. Fidel, Sally Piper, and Kate van Hooft. Last year’s winner of the PM’s Literary Award, Ryan O’Neill, continues his satirical revision of the Australian literary canon with The Drover’s Wives, meddling with Henry Lawson’s ‘The Drover’s Wife’ in 99 fabulously different ways.
This month I loved Convenience Store Woman by Sayaka Murata, a rising star of Japanese fiction, and the new collection from A.M. Homes, Days of Awe. Tommy Orange’s There, There is highly praised by our reviewer, and it’s garnering great international reviews too. I think we’ll also hear a lot more about it, Melissa Broder’s The Pisces and Rebecca Makine’s The Great Believers on the awards circuit. Olivia Laing found many new fans with the nonfiction work, The Lonely City; she will find even more with her first novel, the experimental Crudo. Rachel Kushner’s The Mars Room is in store at last. Mid-month, we’ll have the new novels from Anne Tyler and Louis de Bernières. We also have stock direct from the Nexus Institute in Amsterdam of Patti Smith’s poem, The New Jerusalem: it’s a beautiful illustrated (and bilingual!) volume.
Our Nonfiction book of the month is by local hero Kon Karapanagiotidis, who tells his life story and documents the calling that drove him to establish the Asylum Seeker Resource Centre. This NGO offers crucial support to and advocacy for refugees, and we’re proud to tell you that $2 from the purchase of each copy of the book this month will be donated to the ASRC (also supported by Readings Foundation grants). Gabbie Stroud’s Teacher is another strong Australian memoir; it will make you question seriously the way we value the labour of educators in this country.
Nelson Mandela would have turned 100 this July; this month his prison letters are published. For fans of novelist Glen David Gold, reading his memoir will be a fait accompli; for those unacquainted, our reviewer’s resounding praise should bring it to your attention. We also have memoirs from Seymour Hersh, Bob Carr and Nadia Wheatley, while Beck Dorey-Stein, accidental stenographer for Barack Obama, dispatches From the Corner of the Oval Office. There is a clutch of forthcoming books about reducing waste, and we have two this month: A Zero Waste Life and Waste Not. Bird expert Gisela Kaplan turns her attention to one of my favourites, the Tawny Frogmouth.
And finally, dear reader, I’d like to express our congratulations and admiration for our talented colleague at Readings St Kilda, Gerard Elson, on the news that Scribe will publish his work about the late, great Rowland S. Howard, Something Flammable, in late 2019. Brilliant stuff.
