Our latest blog posts

What the team at Kill Your Darlings is reading in November

The team behind Melbourne literary journal Kill Your Darlings tell us what they’re reading this month.

Veronica Sullivan, Online Editor:

Fiona Wright’s personal essay collection, Small Acts of Disappearance, floored me. Each essay focuses on a different aspect of the physical and psychological hunger that has shadowed Wright throughout her adult life. She seamlessly interweaves the theoretical with the personal, providing readers with medical, cultural, historical and literary contexts for anorexia and its manifestations. Describing the ways anorexia consumes…

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What we're reading: Rainbow Rowell, Eka Kurniawan and Jacqui Newling

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.

Mark Rubbo is reading Beauty Is A Wound by Eka Kurniawan

I’ve just been to Indonesia and read this remarkable novel by Eka Kurniawan. At 498 pages, it’s a monster but I finished it in a few days. Kurniawan tells the story of modern Indonesia through the eyes of a prostitute, Dewi Ayu…

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Upcoming changes to our shipping rates

For the past four years, Readings has been proud to offer our customers free shipping for all online orders within Australia. Over this time postage costs have continued to rise, and shipping has become a cost we are no longer able to absorb. Consequently we need to introduce a small delivery fee on all orders. We remain committed to offering our customers the best value possible, so we’re keeping our shipping fee to an absolute minimum.

From Wednesday 18 November,

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Christmas gift guide: What to buy for your children

FOR AGES 0-2

My Dog Bigsy by Alison Lester is an energetic read-aloud story about a little dog with a big personality.

What does your perfect day look like? Perfect by Danny Parker & Freya Blackwood is a beautifully evocative picture book that brings to life all the pleasures of a day spent playing and exploring.

Patience can be a hard virtue to learn, but I’ll Wait, Mr Panda by Steve Antony is a hilarious way to drive home the…

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Christmas gift guide: What to buy for your sibling

If they love to travel

Lonely Planet’s Ultimate Travel shares a list of 500 amazing sights and attractions from around the world, ranked by Lonely Planet’s global community of travel experts.

Part travel guide and part coffee table book, New York: An Inspired Wander Through Manhattan And The Brooklyn Boroughs looks beyond the well-known façades of this iconic city, and into the depths of Manhattan and Brooklyn.

In 1988, Lydia Bradey became the first woman to climb Mount Everest without…

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Signed cookbooks from Matthew Evans and Hana Assafiri

by Chris Gordon

Here at Readings we are pretty big fans of Matthew Evans. Earlier this week he dropped by to sign copies of his wonderful new cookbook, Summer on Fat Pig Farm. This gourmet farmer is a fair charmer; within minutes, he had booksellers and customers alike laughing – and wondering why we were not making our own ice-cream every day.

I asked him a few questions about his new cookbook. He told me that his favourite recipe for hot windy…

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Christmas gift guide: What to buy for your parent

If they’re wordsmiths

With his trademark wit and wisdom, the talented Don Watson will make your parents cringe and laugh in Watson’s Worst Words.

In A Shakespearean Botanical, Margaret Willes marries the beauty of Shakespeare’s lines with hand-painted engravings of the plants he describes, and provides an intriguing look into daily life in Tudor and Jacobean England.

Mary Norris has spent more than three decades in The New Yorker’s copy department, maintaining its celebrated high standards. Now she…

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Christmas gift guide: What to buy for your significant other

If they want to delve into fiction over summer

At 944 pages long, Garth Risk Hallberg’s debut City on Fire is a great pick for anyone looking for a big meaty book to get stuck into over summer. You can find more suggestions for really, really, really long novels here.

Stephanie Bishop’s The Other Side of the World is this year’s winner of our Readings Prize for New Australian Fiction. Read some testimonials from staff about how much…

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