Our latest blog posts

Gifts with hidden messages

Make the most of this Christmas season by selecting gifts that will subtly persuade and inspire your friends and family to your own (naturally superior) way of thinking.

Want your co-worker to take a long holiday?

Try: An Innocent Abroad: Life-Changing Trips from 35 Great Writers
Because: Travel will change your life and for the better. Allow your co-worker to discover this through stories.

Want your partner to stop buying lunch out at work?

Try: Salad Love: How to Create

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Our picks for children's and young adult prizewinners in 2014

Australian

The Readings Children’s Book Prize

Song For A Scarlet Runner by Julie Hunt

The Inkys (Australia’s teen choice awards)

The First Third by Will Kostakis

CBCA Book of the Year for Older Readers

Wildlife by Fiona Wood

YABBA Award (children’s choice book award for Victoria) for Younger Readers

Billie B Brown: The Best Project by Sally Rippin

Speech Pathology Australia Awards, Indigenous children category

Deadly D & Justice Jones – Making the Team by Scott Prince and Dave Hartley

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Five debut Australian books I loved this year

by Nina Kenwood

Digital marketing manager Nina Kenwood selects her favourite debut Australian books from this year.

The Feel-Good Hit of the Year by Liam Pieper

This was the first book I came across in 2014 that made me want to start shouting from the rooftops, ‘Everyone should read this!’.

It’s a memoir about Liam’s early life – his childhood through to his twenties – and it tells of how drugs, addiction and loss came to loom over his family. It’s a dark…

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The best book I ever received (or gave) as a gift...

Our staff share the best literary gifts they’ve ever received, or given. And also the worst (see here)…

My bookish world is a total mystery to my partner, so as you can imagine he never ventures into a bookshop when it comes to choosing presents for me. This is why I was so staggered and thrilled when he gave me a memoir one year. For Better For Worse was written by a couple, using a very funny dual narrative…

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The books by women we read in 2014: Part II

We recently published a blog post about the books by women we’d read in 2014 (as a celebration of the #readwomen2014 campaign). You can find it here.

In response to our post, a customer tweeted back saying it would be nice to hear a male perspective on reading women too… So, here are some of the books by women that our male staff loved in 2014.

Martin Shaw, Books Division Manager:

I must admit that this year there…

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The worst book I ever received (or gave) as a gift...

Our staff share the worst literary gifts they’ve ever received, or given. And also the best (see here)…

I remember unwrapping a hardback edition of Roget’s Thesaurus the Christmas after I turned nine. This was the year that I perfected the art of hiding my feelings. I loved books and I loved reading but when I was nine I wanted the Careless Whisper 7” or a Care Bear, not 325,000 words and phrases. But if that sounds ungrateful, it’s…

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Prime Minister's Literary Awards 2014 Winners

The 2014 Prime Minister’s Literary Awards winners have been announced with three categories naming joint winners, and two of the winning authors donating their prize money to key organisations working toward change in Australia

Richard Flanagan (this year’s Booker Prize winner) was named a joint winner for the Fiction Award and gave his full $40,000 prize money to the Indigenous Literacy Foundation. In addition, Bob Graham was named the winner of the Children’s Fiction Award and donated $10,000 of…

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Ask Agatha: How can I turn my fussy eaters into vegetable-lovers?

Our wise bookseller Agatha answers all your tricky questions. If you have a question for Agatha please email [email protected].

My mother-in-law is always criticising my children for being fussy eaters. How can I transform them into vegetable-lovers by 25 December and prove her wrong? We are having parsnips, carrots, sprouts and peas: please help.

Studies have (probably) shown that children who experience an intense period of reading books about vegetables, followed by exposure to said vegetables, will show a…

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Books v. Cigarettes in 2014

by Chris Gordon

Chris Gordon reflects on George Orwell’s memorable essay from the ‘40s, Books v. Cigarettes, in relation to our lives today.

I recently read a wonderful essay by the great man himself, George Orwell, where he disputes with great aplomb the idea that books, and book buying, are a luxury. Granted, he wrote this essay in the early 1940s and he used himself as an example. He looks loosely at his own book purchases over the preceding 15 years and…

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