Our latest blog posts

What we're reading: Miles Allinson, Anna Jones and Laini Taylor

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.

This week, we not only share what our own staff are reading, but also what the team behind Melbourne literary journal Kill Your Darlings is reading too (see here).

Nina Kenwood is reading Fever of Animals by Miles Allinson

Everyone at Readings is talking about this debut Australian novel (our head book…

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What the team at Kill Your Darlings is reading in September

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.

This week, we not only share what our own staff are reading (see here), but also what the team behind Melbourne literary journal Kill Your Darlings is reading too.

Hannah Kent, Publishing Director:

I recently read the slender, beautiful A Whole Life by Robert Seethaler, translated from the German by Charlotte Collins…

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Reflecting on the final Discworld novel

by Dani Solomon

Longtime Terry Pratchett fan Dani Solomon writes about the bittersweet experience of reading the final Discworld novel. (Please note, there are some spoilers in here.)

A few weeks ago I held an unread Discworld novel in my hands for what would be the last time. I didn’t want to read it. I didn’t want to open it. I didn’t want to never have a new Discworld book to look forward to. Terry Pratchett’s family and friends had a wake and…

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Read an excerpt from The Anti-Cool Girl by Rosie Waterland

by Rosie Waterland

The Anti-Cool Girl is a blackly comic Australian memoir for our times and a clarion call for all anti-cool girls everywhere. This is an edited extract from the book. (For a limited time, we have signed copies of the book available for purchase online.)

Oh Rosie. Not even born yet, and already on the run. How exhausting. At a time when you should be concentrating on not growing an extra thumb, you’re being tossed around in your mum’s belly while…

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New graphic novels for teens

by Bronte Coates

Baddawi by Leila Abdelrazaq

Raised in a refugee camp called Baddawi in northern Lebanon, Ahmad is just one of the many thousands of refugee children born to Palestinians who fled their homeland after the war in 1948 established the state of Israel.

Leila Abdelrazaq’s graphic novel is a loosely-drawn account of her father’s childhood in Baddawi, a Palestinian refugee camp in Lebanon, and it’s a surprisingly gentle telling given the subject matter. In short chapters, Abdelrazaq depicts Ahmad’s daily life…

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Highlights from our September event program

by Chris Gordon

Events Manager Chris Gordon shares her top five picks from our September event calendar.

If your parents ever told you to never talk about sex, religion or politics in polite company then move away now…. We have all taboo subjects covered in our events program for September and some of them will not make you feel good about where Australian is heading, and why. But by joining in the debate, we hope that you feel inspired to listen a little…

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10 picture books we really love right now

by Emily Gale

Here are ten recent picture books that collectively demonstrate the enormous depth and variety in this category, and individually stand tall. We think there are a few future favourites in this list.

Stick and Stone by Beth Ferry and Tom Lichtenfeld

Some things never change, and the tradition of a certain type of kid keeping a collection of sticks, stones and other found items in their pockets is one of them. Sometimes these sticks and stones even need a place…

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Small Press Network - Most Underrated Book Award (MUBA) 2015 shortlist

The Most Underrated Book Award (MUBA) is presented annually to the best title released by a small, independent Australian publisher that, for whatever reason, didn’t receive its fair dues when first published.

Here are the three books shortlisted for 2015…

Funemployed by Justin Heazlewood

Funemployed goes beyond the press releases and the hype to show what it’s really like to be a working artist in Australia. Through candid interviews, brutal honesty and lacerating wit, Justin Heazlewood (aka The Bedroom Philosopher)…

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What we're reading: Eliza Henry-Jones, Karen Joy Fowler and Sarai Walker

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 Coates is reading In the Quiet by Eliza Henry-Jones

We announced the shortlist for the Readings Prize for New Australian Fiction last week and I’m in the process of reading my way through the list. I want to finish all six books in time for our Shortlist Showdown, to be hosted by…

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