Nonfiction
Neon Pilgrim by Lisa Dempster
Written long before she became director of the Melbourne Writers Festival, Neon Pilgrim is an often humorous, brutally honest record of a walking expedition taken when Dempster was 28 years old and needed a dramatic change in her life. Even…
Watching Out by Julian Burnside
Julian Burnside, intellectual hero of the left and early advocate for the rights of asylum seekers, voted Liberal in every election from 1972 to 1996. And while he infamously defended the MUA in the waterfront dispute with Patrick Stevedores, it…
October by China Miéville
What’s the difference between a Bolshevik and a Menshevik? And why, 100 years on from the Russian Revolution, should any of us care? If you’re wondering, then China Miéville has written this book for you.
October is an exhilarating retelling…
Draw Your Weapons by Sarah Sentilles
In Draw Your Weapons, Sarah Sentilles weaves together politics, memoir and history to create a meditation on the relationship between war, art and critical theory. The fractured narrative recalls the bricolage style of filmmaker Adam Curtis, where individual narratives…
Not Just Lucky by Jamila Rizvi
Jamila Rizvi is by no means ‘just lucky’. She has forged a stellar career in federal politics and the media by using her formidable intelligence and working ridiculously hard. Of course, luck has played an important role, and she’s the…
Anaesthesia by Kate Cole-Adams
It varies, but if you’re sinking into a general anaesthetic, a number of things are happening, or could be happening. Your consciousness (whatever that is) is being switched off (whatever that means, though it may mean the channels between parts…
Depends What You Mean by Extremist by John Safran
Self-described ‘television prankster’ John Safran confirms that he’s a major writing talent with his second book. Here, he embeds himself with Australian political extremists and attempts to tease out the many contradictions between what they do and what they publicly…
The Pleasures of Leisure by Robert Dessaix
In The Pleasures of Leisure, Robert Dessaix extols the virtues of doing less, with compelling insight and humour. He weaves an argument that we’ve lost the capacity to enjoy idleness and leisure. That, despite advances in science and technology…
Utopia for Realists by Rutger Bregman
Most of the highly paid jobs in our new economy are bullsh*t jobs. The best and the brightest are paid huge amounts of money, yet they don’t create anything of value. Rutger Bregman is a young Dutch academic; his new…
A Writing Life by Bernadette Brennan
I have to admit that I loved this book; I’m an unabashed fan of Helen Garner’s work and have been ever since the publication of her first book, Monkey Grip. As a young Carlton bookseller in 1977, the publication…
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