Jo Case

Last week, a Gen-X friend of mine asked me for advice on books to gift his voraciously well-read, book-loving niece for her fourteenth birthday. She’d given him an impressively eclectic list of authors she liked, ranging from Jennifer Niven to…

Every year our staff vote for their favourite books, albums, films and TV shows of the past 12 months. Here are our top 10 DVDs of the year, voted for by Readings’ staff, and displayed in no particular order. (You…

Usually, it’s the books I read that lead me to other books. I finish one and follow the references and ideas to the next. But while I was watching David Fincher’s new Netflix series, Mindhunter, about the birth of…

I first discovered Jock Serong last year, when Readings’ Stella Charls, Alice Pung and I were reading through an enormous book pile, judging the Victorian Premier’s Literary Award for Fiction. None of us expected to be utterly seduced by a…

1. Jo March It’s no coincidence that my name is Jo. Okay, I’m not named after her, but I’ve always identified with Little Women’s tomboyish writer Jo March. The second-oldest of four sisters during the American Civil War, Jo is…

There’s something both delicious and dangerous about working in a bookshop. Every other day, I discover a new – or old – book that I suddenly can’t live without. It’s tempting enough working on the shop floor at Readings Doncaster…

Jo Case interviews Jessica Friedmann about her debut collection of essays, Things That Helped. The opening chapter in Jessica Friedmann’s memoir-in-essays, Things That Helped, closes with her lying on her bathroom floor in the middle of the night…

Jo Case talks to Melbourne author Tony Birch about his latest novel, Blood. You’re best known as a short-story writer, for your collections Shadowboxing and Father’s Day. Do you think your experience in that form affected how you…

Jo Case interviews Sydney author Charlotte Wood about her latest novel, Animal People. In Animal People, you revisit the family from The Children, concentrating on the hapless (middle-aged man-child) brother, Stephen. What drew you to revisit this…

Jo Case interviews Australian writer Anna Funder, of Stasiland fame, about her first foray into fiction, All That I Am. The idea of choosing not to witness – and the moral responsibilities that carries – is central to the book…