Nonfiction
Blueberries by Ellena Savage
To make a living as an author, Ellena Savage writes, you need to have a diverse portfolio. As an editor, academic, teacher, critic, literary event host (among other things), Ellena Savage has had to live at least a double life…
Difficult Women: A History of Feminism in 11 Fights by Helen Lewis
A woman is ‘difficult’ when she refuses to conform to society’s expectations. When she fights for her rights. When she is not the perfect stereotype of what is seen as a woman. A woman is difficult, that is, when she…
The Lost Pianos of Siberia by Sophy Roberts
‘Instead of tigers, I would track pianos,’ Sophy Roberts declares while sharing a meal with a Siberian tiger researcher in the Far East of Russia. This was the moment when Roberts decided she would search for one of the lost…
Make It Scream, Make It Burn by Leslie Jamison
Leslie Jamison’s first essay collection, The Empathy Exams, made Readings’ Best of Nonfiction list in 2014. It is a book we still recommend and to which many of us still return. Jamison’s new essay collection, Make It Scream, Make…
The Man in the Red Coat by Julian Barnes
With this ‘narrative nonfiction’, Julian Barnes leads us through the literary and arty world of Paris of the 1880s and 1890s, the Belle Époque of glittering salons and vicious gossip and social sniping as shown in Marcel Proust’s Remembrance of…
Big Sister, Little Sister, Red Sister by Jung Chang
British–Chinese writer Jung Chang (Wild Swans, Empress Dowager Cixi: The Concubine Who Launched Modern China) is well-known for writing intimate biographies set against some of the world’s most turbulent events. She continues this trajectory with Big Sister,…
The Witches Are Coming by Lindy West
Lindy West’s is the voice we need in 2019 – she’s snarky, sensible, accessible, inclusive and aware, and above all, hilarious. In The Witches are Coming, West takes her reader on a journey through pop culture, visiting Adam Sandler…
Yellow Notebook: Diaries Volume I, 1978–1987 by Helen Garner
When Helen Garner’s debut novel Monkey Grip was published in 1977, a couple of larrikins made some beer money by publishing a pamphlet, ‘Who’s Who in Monkey Grip’ and there might be a temptation for someone to do the same…
Finding the Heart of the Nation by Thomas Mayor
In 2017, over two hundred and fifty Indigenous representatives from around the country gathered at Uluru and unanimously adopted the Uluru Statement from the Heart. The last paragraph reads, ‘In 1967 we were counted, in 2017 we seek to be…
Guest House for Young Widows by Azadeh Moaveni
What might make a woman – perhaps an educated woman from a stable family situation – travel to Syria to join the Islamic State? This is the foundational question of the brilliantly provocative and genuinely eye-opening Guest House for Young…
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