The books your favourite authors recommend
13 December 2021
Apart from literary award long and short lists, book recommendations from the world’s best authors are a sure fire way to find novels to add to your to-be-read list. Along with American writer Min Jin Lee, and British author Kazuo Ishiguro, Australian novelists Anna Funder, Helen Garner, Hannah Kent, Sofie Laguna, Alexis Wright, and Craig Silvey, talk about their favourite reads of the past twelve months.
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Wild Abandon, by Emily Bitto
13 December 2021
The year is 2011, and Will, a young Australian, heart-broken after his girlfriend Laura left him, buys a cheap flight to America. His plan is to spend a few months in New York City, partying and meeting people, hoping he can put the break-up behind him. But not long after arriving in the city that never sleeps, an unsettling incident sees Will pack his bags and travel to a small town in Ohio. Here an old school friend introduces him to Wayne, a former soldier, and Vietnam veteran.
Wild Abandon (published by Allen & Unwin, September 2021), the second novel of Melbourne based Australian author Emily Bitto, tells a familiar story. A displaced person, struggling to find direction at home, sets off into the wide blue yonder, on the belief travel to places new and exciting will be a panacea for their ills.
Once he reaches Ohio, Will begins working for Wayne, who owns a private zoo where he keeps exotic animals. What better way to heal, you might ask, than caring for the beasts inhabiting a menagerie. Better, surely, that the drug infused parties of the big city. But Wayne is man with deep problems, and before long Will is lurching towards another calamity.
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Emily Bitto, fiction, TBR list, writing
Sally Rooney voted top fiction writer in the 2021 Goodreads Choice Awards
11 December 2021
Beautiful World, Where Are You, by Sally Rooney, has been voted the best fiction title for 2021 by Goodreads members, who voted for books across seventeen categories in the annual Goodreads Choice Awards. Congratulations to all authors whose works were nominated this year.
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books, literature, novels, Sally Rooney
To all the people who’ve blocked me on Twitter
11 December 2021
“For everyone who blocked me on Twitter”… I can’t tell you much about the book itself, but there’s a book dedication you don’t see every day, as seen in The End of Gender, by Canadian sex neuroscientist Dr Debra Soh.
Via Paul Dalgarno, on Bookstagram.
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Sci-fi and fantasy novels with disabled characters
11 December 2021
Kit Kavanagh-Ryan, a presenter of The Book Show, has put together a selection of five science fiction and/or fantasy novels featuring central characters who are disabled.
Sometimes, however, speculative fiction creates a space where readers and writers get to imagine ‘crip futures’ in our fiction: spaces real or imagined where we question our idea of what ‘normal’ bodies and minds look like – what normal means at all.
Maybe it’s the sort of novels I read, titles usually found on literary award shortlists, but now that I think about it, few of them include people with disabilities.
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The two hundred greatest Australian albums of all time
10 December 2021
Keeping it all Australian today, not the plan, just the way it turned out: Rolling Stone’s list of the top two hundred albums of all time. While the top twenty titles include household names, only the work of two artists, Tame Impala, and 5 Seconds of Summer, is less than ten years old. Many of the top albums were released in the latter part of last century, and I’ll be curious to see how they’ve fared in terms of chart position, in say twenty years’ time.
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Prime Minister’s Summer Reading List 2021
10 December 2021
Australian public policy think tank the Grattan Institute has selected six books for the Australian Prime Minister to read over the upcoming summer break.
This year’s list covers a wide range of important issues including the disparity between private and public education systems; land use and the environment; grief, loss, and the female voice; poverty; sovereignty of the First Nations of Australia; and technology’s impact on our lives, our politics, and our values.
The only fiction offering on this year’s list is She Is Haunted, by Melbourne based author Paige Clark, a collection of short stories exploring themes including grief, heartbreak, and illness. Here’s hoping the Prime Minister takes the time to read these titles, and others, during the holiday break.
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Australian writing, literature
The Indie Book Awards 2022 longlist
10 December 2021
Another place to source titles for your to-be-read list, the longlist of the
2022 Indie Book Awards was unveiled earlier this week. The awards, which focus on Australian works, honour fiction, debut fiction, non-fiction, illustrated non-fiction, children’s, and young adult books.
Established in 2008, the Indie Book Awards celebrate the best Australian writing; and who better to nominate and judge the best-of-the-best than indie booksellers! What makes indie booksellers uniquely placed to judge and recommend the best Aussie books of the past year, is their incredible passion and knowledge, their contribution to the cultural diversity of the Australian reading public, by recommending beyond the big brands, and above all, their love of quality writing. The Awards recognise and celebrate indie booksellers as the number one supporters of Australian authors.
The shortlists for each category will be announced on 19 January 2022, while the winners will be named on 21 March 2022.
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Australian writing, literature
West Side Story, by Steven Spielberg
9 December 2021
Steven Spielberg’s film adaptation of the 1957 Broadway musical West Side Story (trailer) arrives in Australian cinemas on Sunday 26 December 2021, though if you look around there are some preview screenings before then. A Romeo and Juliet inspired story for the twentieth century, remade for the twenty-first.
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film, Steven Spielberg, trailer
Earth’s climate change black box
9 December 2021
An aircraft’s black box contains data that may help investigators piece together what caused an accident, and hopefully ensure there isn’t a repeat of whatever went wrong. What then to make of Earth’s Black Box? It is a quadrilateral-like shaped structure that will stand in a geologically stable location, on the west coast of Tasmania, and collect climate data. Like an aircraft flight recorder, the information Earth’s black box stores is intended to one day guide a future civilisation, should global warming spell the demise of ours. Thank you, and have a nice day.
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