Our latest blog posts
Books to read after a breakup
LOVE STORIES TO WALLOW IN
Who knew feeling sorry for yourself could feel so good
Rainbow Rowell’s Eleanor & Park is an extremely lovely, extremely heartbreaking story of two teenage misfits falling in love.
Speaking of misfits falling in love, Don’s journey to finding the love of his life in The Rosie Project is guaranteed to make you feel a little bit gooey and sentimental.
Sit down and cry it all out with The Fault In Our Stars.
Hit…
When Julia Donaldson came to visit
Julia Donaldson, the author of The Gruffalo and many other wonderful children books, dropped by our Carlton shop to meet her fans and have some fun with Readings booksellers.
Why I wrote a book about death for kids
by Andrew McDonaldA friend asked me recently why I’d written a novel about death for children. They asked with eyebrows raised, as if to suggest that the topic of death was surely not an appropriate subject matter for young readers.
Son of Death came about because I thought it would be fun to throw a rock’n’roll-obsessed 14-year-old into the middle of a secret world of grim-reaping. It was a great opportunity to play around with grim reaper mythology and tell a funny…
Seven crime novels to read this February
BOOK OF THE MONTH
Wolf Winter by Cecilia Ekbäck
Swedish Lapland, June 1717 (note, this reader virtually never reads things set in the past): Finns Maija and Paavo take their children Frederika and Dorotea to Sweden, away from the fear that has beaten Paavo into a shadow of the man he once was. They settle in Lapland, beside the mountain Blackåsen, ill-equipped for living in an isolated and storm-racked area. They have been there only a short time when the…
Our top ten bestsellers of the week
The First Bad Man by Miranda July
We are All Completely Beside Ourselves by Karen Joy Fowler
The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins
A Spool of Blue Thread by Anne Tyler
The Brain’s Way of Healing: Remarkable Discoveries and Recoveries from the Frontiers of Neuroplasticity by Norman Doidge
Plenty More by Yotam Ottolenghi
The Narrow Road to the Deep North by Richard Flanagan
Wild: A Journey from Lost to Found by Cheryl Strayed
Our youngest ever reviewer: Meet Rocket
Bookseller Fiona Hardy recently interviewed her two-year-old daughter Rocket about a picture book they’d read together: Sam & Dave Dig a Hole. Here’s Fiona on what went down.
A lot of the time, customers ask if Klassen’s slightly edgy work is really for children or more for parents (I bought my first of his books before I had a kid). But my two-year-old has always loved his books, even if she doesn’t understand some of the concepts, such as…
What we're reading: Dianne Touchell, Garth Nix and Liane Moriarty
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.
Ann Le Lievre is reading A Small Madness by Dianne Touchell
I love our Aussie young adult authors and my recent experience of reading Western Australian author Dianne Touchell’s A Small Madness was explosive. This book has made me feel as if my heart has been slammed up against a wall. The central…
Classical music to set the mood on Valentine's Day
Valentine’s Day has never meant much to me and as an adult I’ve always had partners who’ve agreed it’s far too commercial. We have consciously avoided ‘the day’ and instead, unconsciously done special things for each other during the year. As a teenager though, I do remember sending a Valentine to a boy I fancied in the trumpet section of a band I was playing in. I got a secret thrill wondering if he’d received it and hoping he knew…
February 2015 Children's & YA Highlights
There’s a stunning young adult anthology out this month. Eat the Sky, Drink the Ocean is a collaboration between editors Kirsty Murray (The Year It All Ended), Anita Roy and Payal Dhar, featuring speculative fiction (including six graphic stories) from Australian and Indian authors. From the Australian contingent we’ve got Isobelle Carmody (Obernewtyn), Penni Russon (Only Ever Always), Justine Larbalestier (Razorhurst), Margo Lanagan (Sea Hearts), Alyssa Brugman (Alex As…
The Stella Prize Longlist 2015
The Stella Prize longlist for 2015 was announced today! The $50,000 prize is awarded for the best work of literature, fiction or non-fiction, published in 2014 by an Australian woman.
The twelve longlisted books are:
Foreign Soil by Maxine Beneba Clarke – Read our review
The Strays by Emily Bitto – Read our review
Only the Animals by Ceridwen Dovey – Read our review
This House of Grief by Helen Garner – Read our review
Golden Boys by Sonya Hartnett…
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