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Leigh Hobbs is the new Australian Children's Laureate
Author and illustrator Leigh Hobbs has been named the new Australian Children’s Laureate! The role of the Australian Children’s Laureate is to promote the importance of reading, creativity and story in the lives of young Australians.
Hobbs is known as the creator of such iconic characters as Old Tom, Mr Chicken and Horrible Harriet and over the past two decades has won the heart of many a young fan with his dark humour and distinctive drawing style. The interplay between…
What we're reading: Madeleine St John, Rajith Savanadasa and Michael Robotham
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.
Ed Moreno is reading The Queen of the Night by Alexander Chee
Historical fiction doesn’t usually grab me but Alexander Chee’s novel made for obsessive reading. I’m a fan of nineteenth-century French realism (especially Émile Zola) so the time and setting appealed, but the subject matter (opera) was new to me. However, the…
Booksellers reflect on guilty pleasures
Booksellers reflect on their favourite ‘guilty pleasures’ in books, and whether they agree with this term at all.
My mum is a fan of the ol’ bodice ripper, but she also has a tendency to shove said bodice ripper underneath the couch to hide it whenever people come over to the house. While I find this pretty amusing, I don’t really believe in guilty pleasures. I think if you enjoy something, you should just hold your head up high and…
Booksellers reflect on pretending to have read books
Booksellers reflect on the realities and ethics of telling some white lies about which books they’ve read – or haven’t read.
I don’t feel like I studied any of the same books in high school as most other people did – I’ve still never read To Kill A Mockingbird, The Catcher in the Rye or Great Expectations. While I’ve subsequently caught up on some ‘classics’, there are a large number of them that have passed me by, but…
Meet four talented international authors in February
We’re delighted to have some very special international guests visiting us this month.
Meet Virginia Reeves…
Virginia Reeves is a graduate of the Michener Center for Writers at the University of Texas at Austin. Work Like Any Other is her first novel.
This debut has been stacking up praise from all over the place. National Book Award finalist Kevin Powers described it as an ‘exceptional and starkly beautiful debut’, while Stella Prize shortlisted author Fiona McFarlane said: ‘Thick with dread…
Best new crime books in February
NEW CRIME FICTION
Rain Dogs by Adrian McKinty
The fifth book in the Sean Duffy trilogy proves yet again that we should be grateful that McKinty went into literature and not maths. I’ve yet to meet a reader who wasn’t thrilled by Duffy’s company – he’s the kind of down-on-his-luck but quick-on-the-uptake character you love to spend time with, always losing girlfriends for various reasons and colleagues to the general danger that is Northern Ireland during the Troubles. Here, Duffy…
Reimagined visions of Australia in YA books
Last week, Marlee Jane Ward’s Welcome to Orphancorp was named the winner of the Prize for Writing for Young Adults as part of the Victorian Premier’s Literary Awards. Set during Mirii’s last few days at an industrial orphanage, this punchy genre-busting debut presents a dystopian vision of our nation that is terrifying in its familiarity and fascinating in its strangeness. Ward’s re-positioning of the Australia we know is of the best kind – considered and complex, alien yet still…
Mark's Say, February 2016
Those of you who know me will be well aware of how pleased I am with The Readings Foundation and the projects it supports. Since we started in 2009, we’ve given away almost $1 million. The money comes from Readings’ profits, some private donations, and the gold coin donations our customers make when we gift-wrap their purchases. The gift-wrap donations alone add up to around $25,000 per annum. The Foundation supports organisations working in the areas of literacy and the…
Why I'm excited about Blak & Bright
Bookseller Neika Lehman tells us why she’s so excited for the Blak & Bright festival (18 – 21 February), and shares some reading recommendations.
As a Australian bookseller who happens to be Indigenous, and who also happens to have a major crush on fresh new writing borne of this continent – especially those which resist the easy definitions of what Australian Literature is – I couldn’t be more enthused by this new Victorian Indigenous Literary Festival
The voices of Indigenous…
Ann Le Lievre shares what's in her 'To Be Read' pile
Our schools and libraries liaison Ann Le Lievre shares what’s in her ‘To Be Read’ pile for the start of 2016.
Last year I kept a list of all the books I read, and it came in handy as the months progressed. These books could easily have tumbled into the back of my memory, however the list meant I could reconnect with them at a moment’s notice. This year I’m going to go one step further: I’m going to make…
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