Page 361 of our blog posts
Meet the bookseller with Savannah Indigo
Why do you work in books?
When I was younger, I had a fascination with organising bookshelves. I would obsess over mine at home and reorganise any shelves at bookshops that I thought weren’t up to scratch (much to staff frust…
A Girl is a Half-formed Thing wins the 2014 Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction
Eimear McBride’s debut novel, A Girl Is A Half-Formed Thing, has been named the winner of the 2014 Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction.
Chair of judges Helen Fraser says, “An amazing and ambitious first novel that impressed the judges with its inventiveness and energy. This is an extraordinary new voice – this novel will move and astonish the reader”.
With astonishing insight and in brutal d…
Guess the winner of the 2014 Miles Franklin Literary Award!
We’re running a competition to guess the winner of the upcoming Miles Franklin Literary Award. Anyone who correctly guesses the winner goes in the draw to win a $100 Readings gift voucher. To enter, simply fill in the form below before midnight on Wednesday 25 June. Update: entries have been extended to 5pm on Thursday 26 June.
Fill out my online form.Five reasons to attend Graphic Contents at the Emerging Writers' Festival
This Thursday night Graphic Contents: A Night of Comics, Zines and Visual Oddities brings together artists, animators and writers for a multimedia visual storytelling event. This performative celebration of all things comics, zines and visual art is one of the must-see events at the Emerging Writers’ Festival. Here are five reasons not to miss it….
1. You like to get a little bit naughty.Anyth…
The story of my book: Last Bets
I was overseas when I first read the news report, ‘Man dies in casino fray.’ I’d been scanning the newspapers for weeks out of homesickness and habit, but this headline caused my heart to stop beating as I waited for the story to load. A few weeks earlier, I’d had a huge fight with my boyfriend in a grand old casino in the Czech Republic. He wanted to gamble, and show off his Russian, and I wasn’…
Q&A with Justin Heazlewood
Justin Heazlewood – AKA The Bedroom Philosopher – talks about his rogue self-help book.
In Funemployed, you look at the actualities of being a working artist in Australia. Can you tell about your motivation to write this book, and how the process unfolded?I was down and out! I was thousands of dollars in debt from an overly ambitious Melbourne Comedy Festival campaign. I was bitter and burnt…
Sam Cooney on Kurt Vonnegut’s sense of humour
In primary school, I learned pretty quickly that there were two ways to find yourself lying on the playground concrete, holding your stomach and gasping for air. A fist or a knee from an older or bigger kid straight into the guts: that’d do it every time. The other way was by laughing so much I couldn’t possibly stay vertical. Many of my school years were punctuated by equal parts roughhousing an…
Our top ten bestsellers of the week
Liam Pieper chats to Lorelei Vashti about The Feel-Good Hit of the Year
The photo on the cover of The Feel-Good Hit of the Year is of a boy who looks like he’s running away from something. It was taken at Labassa, the National Trust-listed nineteenth-century mansion in Caulfield where the author, Liam Pieper, lived as a child.
‘Dad took the photo,’ Pieper says. ‘I can’t remember it, but I assume we were playing Robin Hood, ’cause that was my Robin Hood outfit.’ He p…
What we’re reading
Each week we bring you a sample of the books we’re reading, the films we’re watching, the television shows we’re hooked on or the music we’re loving.
Bronte is reading American Wife by Curtis SittenfeldOne of the best things about working in a bookshop is being surrounded by people who have Lots of Important Opinions about Books. Of course, the problem of working in bookshops is that some…