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Five reasons we love The Cat With the Coloured Tail by Gillian Mears
The Cat with the Coloured Tail is one of the six books shortlisted for this year’s Readings Children’s Book Prize. Here are five reasons why we think it’s brilliant.
1. It’s lovely and life-affirming.
Mr Hooper has a magical cat with a colour-changing tail, and the two of them use their unusual magic to bring colour to the lives of the people around them. They spend their days selling moon-creams (these are like ice-creams with the power to make sad…
Brilliant new novels featuring dysfunctional families
Here at Readings we love stories that explore difficult families dynamics – from Leo Tolstoy’s enduring story of Anna Karenina, to the shifting allegiances and political manoeuvres in George R.R. Martin’s bloodthirsty Game of Thrones series; from a tense dinner between two brothers in Herman Koch’s The Dinner to an overbearing, erratic father in Christina Stead’s Australian classic The Man Who Loved Children.
Here are some recent new releases featuring even more wonderful, fantastic stories about dysfunctional families…
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Charlotte Wood wins the 2016 Stella Prize
The winner of this year’s Stella Prize is Charlotte Wood for her darkly gripping novel, The Natural Way of Things.
The Natural Way of Things is a starkly imaginative exploration of contemporary misogyny and corporate control. 10 women are imprisoned on an isolated property in the middle of Australia, and forced into hard labour in scorching heat. While initially given no explanation for their imprisonment, it soon becomes clear that each has been involved in a public sex scandal…
Viet Thanh Nguyen wins the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction
Viet Thanh Nguyen has been awarded the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for his astonishing debut novel, The Sympathizer.
Part satire, part espionage thriller and part historical fiction, The Sympathizer opens at the end of the Vietnam War and follows a communist spy as he travels between Vietnam and America – eventually ending up on a film set that could have been where Francis Ford Coppola filmed Apocalypse Now.
Nguyen, who lives in Los Angeles, was born in…
The Ledger Award recipients 2016
The Ledger Awards are prizes awarded to acknowledge excellence in Australian comic art and publishing. Named after pioneering Australian cartoonist Peter Ledger (1945–1994), the Ledger Awards were first held in 2005. Find out more here.
Here is a list of award recipients for 2016.
Gold Ledger
Neomad: The Complete Collection by Sutu, The Love Punks and Satellite Sisters
Silver Ledger
Anders and the Comet by Gregory Mackay
Black Magick #1-3 by Nicola Scott (artist), Chiara Arena (colour assists), Greg…
Our children's and YA top ten bestsellers of the week
The Bad Guys: Episode 1 by Aaron Blabey
The Treehouse Fun Book by Andy Griffiths, Jill Griffiths and Terry Denton
Rockhopping by Trace Balla
In My Heart: A Book of Feelings by Jo Witek and Christine Roussey
Crazy Weird: WeirDo Book 6 by Anh Do and Jules Faber
88 Lime Street by Denise Kirby
Girl Detective: Friday Barnes Book 1 (Special edition) by R.A. Spratt
Matilda by Roald Dahl
Run, Pip, Run by J.C. Jones
Frankie by Shivaun Plozza
Aaron…
The CBCA notable books of 2016
The Children’s Book Council of Australia (CBCA) have announced their Notable Books for 2016. Congratulations to all the authors, illustrators and publishers!
Here are the notable books for each category.
Older Readers
Books in this category may be fiction, drama or poetry and are appropriate in style and content for readers in their secondary years of schooling.
Find the full list of notables for this category here.
Younger Readers
Books in this category may be fiction, drama or poetry and…
Our top ten bestsellers of the week
Everywhere I Look by Helen Garner
All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr
The Waters of Eternal Youth by Donna Leon
My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante (translated by Ann Goldstein)
Talking to My Country by Stan Grant
A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara
The Other Side of Silence by Philip Kerr
An Isolated Incident by Emily Maguire
The Road to Ruin by Niki Savva
Generation Less: How Australia is Cheating the Young by Jennifer Rayner
Helen Garner…
What we're reading: Michael Grant, Dodie Smith and Roald Dahl
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.
Isobel Moore is reading The Town in Bloom by Dodie Smith
I just finished this novel from the always delightful Dodie Smith, which tells the story of a young actor and her first summer in London. It’s beautiful – of course it is, thank you Dodie – and sublimely written. Everything that I’ve…
A record that made me sit up and take notice
Tomorrow is Record Store Day and to celebrate we’re offering 20% off vinyl throughout April. Find out more here. Here, our music specialists (and vinyl enthusiasts) each share a record that made them sit up and take notice.
Live at Max’s Kansas City by The Velvet Underground
This reissue captures the final, brilliant moments of the Velvets; by this stage they’d cast off the atonal experiments of the first two records and were writing straight up, smart pop songs…
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