Nonfiction
Phosphorescence by Julia Baird
We already know and love Julia Baird. She has written many articles and (two) books addressing gender and politics. She is a journalist with something to say. She is the host of ABC TV’s The Drum and we love to…
Design Lives Here by Penny Craswell
The beauty of this book is that it does many things in a (seemingly) effortless, elegant fashion. For every house or apartment featured, the sum of its parts creates the whole: architecture, interior design, furniture and lighting.
All projects are…
She I Dare Not Name by Donna Ward
This is Donna Ward’s first book, but she has been writing for a long time. Her essays have appeared in all our major journals and she is known as a thoughtful and concise author. She I Dare Not Name is…
Truganini by Cassandra Pybus
Cassandra Pybus’s Truganini tells the story of a journey full of deception and dead ends as George Augustus Robinson, ‘Protector of Aboriginals’, leads a group of Indigenous survivors from Lunawanna-alonnah around lutruwita on a mission of ‘conciliation’, which turns into…
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,…
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