Our staff bring us an update from the Melbourne International Film Festival – what they’ve seen so far and what’s still to come!

Suzanne Steinbruckner absolutely adored the newest Dardenne brothers film.

I’ve enjoyed a trimmed down MIFF this year, picking films to fit my schedule rather than trying to play tetris with that mammoth MIFF program grid – which is full workout in itself!

My favourite has been the documentary The Salt of the Earth which looks at the…

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Last Friday night, the Bendigo Writers Festival started with a flurry of events and the next morning, I set off on the V/Line train, waving goodbye to Melbourne’s tall towers and crowded streets for the torn-cotton clouds and mid-city fountains of Bendigo. My Kangaroo Flat-residing friend of some twenty-seven years – we’d met in our first year of primary school, bonding over being the two shortest kids in the class – met me at the station with a giant warm…

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Optimism: Reflections on a Life of Action by Bob Brown

The Wonders by Paddy O'Reilly

James Halliday Australian Wine Companion 2015 by James Halliday

Warning: The Story of Cyclone Tracy by Sophie Cunningham

The Book of Paul: The Wit and Wisdom of Paul Keating by Russell Marks

All the Birds Singing by Evie Wyld

Game Day by Miriam Sved

Lost & Found by Brooke Davis

The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt

The Miniaturist by Jessie Burton

Former Parliamentary Leader of the…

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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 is reading Optimism: Reflections on a Life of Action by Bob Brown

Bob Brown’s new memoir has been reviewed recently by Maloti Ray here and I can’t hold back my enthusiasm either. When I picked it up and turned to the back cover my heart melted. Here is a photo of a…

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Last week we had a special request from a customer…

One morning Sharon, the assistant manager at our Carlton shop, received a request from a customer asking if he could propose to his girlfriend in our shop. Sharon agreed and a plan was hatched.

Morgan (the customer) arranged for us to shelve a book that he had specially created, which contained the engagement ring. Later, he said, he would come in with his girlfriend, Dassy, head to our enquiry counter…

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Savannah Indigo, Bookseller at Readings Malvern:

When I was younger, I had a fascination with organising bookshelves. I would obsess over mine at home and reorganise any shelves at bookshops that I thought weren’t up to scratch (much to staff frustration). I think from around age 10, I knew that I needed to work with books.

Marie Matteson, Bookseller at Readings Carlton:

I feel I’ve been surrounded by books my whole life and it seems entirely natural to me that…

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Chris Rainier, Bookseller at Readings Hawthorn:

Apart from having very large Che Guevara hardcover biographies thrown at my head and resuscitating narcoleptics in the gift book section, my all-time best anecdote has to be when an elderly gentleman brought a copy of the classic Western High Noon to the counter. Upon remarking that it was a classic of the genre, he proceeded to inform me: ‘It’s not for me, it’s for the dogs.’ (His two Great Danes had their own…

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No doubt like many people, when I first watched Jane Campion’s 1990 film An Angel at My Table, some ten years ago, I intended to read Janet Frame’s three-part autobiography – To the Is-Land, An Angel at My Table and The Envoy from Mirror City – on which the film is based, and anything else of hers I could get my hands on.

The books cover, respectively, Frame’s childhood and teenage years; then her twenties, much of which…

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This Saturday 9 August is National Bookshop Day, a special day to celebrate bookstores, booksellers, book-lovers and, of course, books! We are delighted to announce we will have some very special guests on the day…

The Gruffalo and the mouse will be joining us for storytime at three of our shops!

Bring the kids along to Readings St Kilda at 10.30am (details here), Readings Carlton at 12pm (details here) or Readings Hawthorn at 2pm (details…

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The best kind of storytellers are the ones so adept at their craft that they can hypnotise even those readers bitterly opposed to the subject matter. So it is with Miriam Sved, whose debut novel, Game Day, addresses the complex, often insidious and interweaving relationships formed between the members of an Australian Football League club.

The book is being sold as the journey taken by two young rookies, Mick ‘Mickey’ Reece and Jake Dooley, as they endure the gruelling…

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