Our latest blog posts

Christmas Gift Guide: What To Buy For Hard-To-Buy-For Children and Teenagers

For a voracious reader who ploughs through everything…

Egg and Spoon by Gregory Maguire ($24.95): A rich and layered fantasy set in Tsarist Russia. Told with wry humour, this is the story of a girl from the impoverished countryside who accidentally swaps places with the daughter of a wealthy noble family.

Song For a Scarlet Runner by Julie Hunt ($15.99): The winner of the Reading Children’s Book Prize takes place in a totally absorbing fantasy landscape and follows the adventures…

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Martin Shaw on literary prizes

by Martin Shaw

Suddenly, it’s the end of the year and time for lots of bookish gift-giving! To help you in that regard, we’ve created a number of top ten lists in various categories from a rather wonderful year of new releases. (Find these lists here.)

Of course, these lists are intended just as much to help you with gifts to yourself, as the prospect of summer is, for many of us, a chance to tackle those books we didn’t quite get…

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20 Gifts under $20

We Should All be Feminists ($9.99) by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Argued in the same observant, witty and clever prose that has made Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie a best-selling novelist, here is one remarkable author’s exploration of what it means to be a woman today.

Salad Days ($9.99) by Ronnie Scott

In Salad Days, Ronnie Scott interrogates our current obsession with food – and asks whether it’s actually such a bad thing. If food offers us a ‘curious mixture between comfort…

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Rebecca Harkins-Cross on Hilton Als

by Rebecca Harkins-Cross

‘I come from the Stanislavski school of writing,’ said Hilton Als, delivering a keynote on ‘The Role of the Critic’ in 2010. ‘You become the subject.’

A theatre critic for the New Yorker since 2002, it’s no surprise that performance metaphors abound in Als’s essays too. But the notion of the non-fiction writer embodying their subject as an actor would is radical, profoundly shifting the way we define the designation. Isn’t acting always a fiction? Stanislavski’s revolutionary approach taught performers…

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2014 ARIA Award Winners

Congratulations to the winners of the 2014 ARIA Awards!

Here is the full list of winners:

Sia,
Album of the year
Best female artist
Best pop release
Best video for Chandelier (Directed by Sia and Daniel Askill)

Chet Faker,
Best male artist
Best independent release

Sheppard,
Best group

Iggy Azalea,
Breakthrough artist

5 Seconds of Summer, She Looks So Perfect
Song of the year

Neil Finn and Paul Kelly,
Best adult contemporary album

John Butler Trio,
Best blues and roots…

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Ask Agatha: How can I convince my housemate to let me bring a cat home?

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

I’m obsessed with the podcast Serial and am so disappointed they’re taking a break this week. But (sigh) I’ve decided to turn this event into a positive and use the time to read something that will complement my listening of it. What would you suggest?

Buzzfeed recently published an article about why Janet Malcolm’s The Journalist and the Murderer is…

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Great new Christmas books for children

by Emily Gale

If you’re looking for Christmas books that feature new Australian stories:

Please note, Tea and Sugar Christmas is now out of stock at Readings and more stock cannot be supplied in time for Christmas.

Christmas books can get a bit samey, so when an original idea pops up you take notice. I can remember the moment I heard about Tea and Sugar Christmas.

I was at a children’s literature conference in May and happened to be standing next to…

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Our thoughts on the film adaptation of Mockingjay: Part 1

Three fans of The Hunger Games trilogy – Nina Kenwood, Chris Gordon and Bronte Coates – share their thoughts on the the most recent film adaptation, Mockingjay: Part 1.

Bronte: Okay, let’s kick this off with an easy question… How did film rate against the first two?

Chris: I loved Mockingjay: Part 1 the best of all three. I think the actors came into their own in this film and really owned the characters. I particularly enjoyed watching the…

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Our top ten bestsellers of the week

The Narrow Road to the Deep North by Richard Flanagan

Plenty More by Yotam Ottolenghi

Amnesia by Peter Carey

Merciless Gods by Christos Tsiolkas

Not That Kind of Girl: A Young Woman Tells You What She’s ‘Learned’ by Lena Dunham

Yes Please by Amy Poehler

The Rosie Effect by Graeme Simsion

What Days Are For by Robert Dessaix

Nora Webster by Colm Tóibín

The Bush: Travels in the Heart of Australia by Don Watson

Our bestsellers list features lots of…

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Five books that have made an impression on me this year

by Jason Austin

Bookseller Jason Austin shares five books that have made an impression on him in 2014.

Young Hearts Crying by Richard Yates.

Every year I try to read at least one novel by Richard Yates. It’s a relatively new tradition of mine that will sadly only last a couple more years as Yates only wrote seven novels and only has two short-story collections available. His own story is a sad one. He suffered from alcoholism and mental illness and his books…

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