Our latest blog posts

Our favourite (and worst) Christmas recipes

Our staff share their favourite – and sometimes their least favourite – recipes for Christmas time.

Christmas is an excuse to combine dairy and liquor at any and every opportunity. Eggnog. Cheese and wine. And the best of them all: brandy butter. Cream together unsalted butter, icing sugar and brandy. I don’t measure anything because it leaves me with an excellent excuse to eat at least half of it along the way while I check the balance of ingredients.

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Our Christmas opening hours

Here are our Christmas trading hours.

Carlton

Christmas Eve: 8am – 8pm
Christmas Day: Closed
Boxing Day: 10am – 9pm
New Year’s Eve: 9am – 9pm
New Year’s Day: 10am – 9pm

Hawthorn

Christmas Eve: 8am – 6pm
Christmas Day: Closed
Boxing Day: 10am – 5pm
New Year’s Eve: 8am – 8pm
New Year’s Day: Closed

St Kilda

Christmas Eve: 10am – 6pm
Christmas Day: Closed
Boxing Day: 10am – 9pm
New Year’s Eve: 10am – 5pm
New Year’s Day:

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Behind the scenes at Christmas

Here’s a sneak peek at our staff hard at work this Christmas season.

We’d love you to come visit us in-store! Find out where our shops are located here.

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Our thoughts on the final episode of Serial

The final episode of the phenomenally popular Serial podcast has aired. We ask our staff where it’s left them.

Nina Kenwood is 65% sure Adnan did it

From the very beginning, I loved Serial. After the first few episodes had aired I began pushing it on people mercilessly. I have several friends I think are deliberately not listening to it because I mentioned it to them too many times. I went all-in on it – I read a lot of…

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What we're reading: John Jeremiah Sullivan, Nina Stibbe and Meghan Daum

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.

Nina Kenwood is listening to Hozier and readings lots of books

This week, I discovered Irish musician Hozier, and I’ve pretty much had his songs ‘Take Me To Church’ and ‘From Eden’ on non-stop repeat ever since. I highly recommend you take a listen.

In regards to reading, I recently read Meghan Daum’s…

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Comics & graphic novels we loved in 2014

Our staff share some of their favourite comics and graphic novels from the past year.

Bronte Coates, Digital Content Coordinator

The last two years I’ve had clear winners for my favourite comic of the year. In 2012, I was blown away by Chris Ware’s Building Stories and in 2013 I fell in love with Marion Fayolle’s In Pieces. But this year, the water’s a lot murkier – in a good way!

I thought Box Brown’s biography of Andre

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Books we didn't finish (but you might)

Our staff share the books they didn’t finish in 2014 – but that you might want to…

In general, I have no problems stopping a book that doesn’t interest me, but when this happens with authors I really, really want to love, things get more complicated. Early this year, I got halfway through Jennifer Egan’s Look At Me before giving up. Jennifer Egan is a writer I admire, and I am always excited about reading her books, but I never…

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Six Australian short-story collections that made an impression on me this year

by Chris Somerville

For a long time, even before I’d written a book but told people, misguidedly, that I was working on a collection of short stories, the response I received would usually be, ‘I heard short stories are making a comeback’, sometimes with a sympathetic nod, or whispered like a quiet, sad mantra. That was several years ago. Did this happen? I honestly can’t tell, and it probably doesn’t even matter.

Here are six Australian short story collections that made an impression…

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Books we haven't had time to read yet

Our staff share the books they missed in 2014, and have put on their 2015 reading lists.

Everything? I’m always so overwhelmed this time of year when everyone’s ‘Best of’ lists start coming out. This year I’ve thought of all the things I’ve missed and, again, I come back to everything. A few notables on my list include On Immunity: an Inoculation by Eula Biss, Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel and Men We Reaped by Jesmyn Ward. Did…

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