FREE SEPTEMBER 2016

BOOKS MUSIC FILM EVENTS

INTRODUCING THE READINGS PRIZE 2016 SHORTLIST

NEW IN SEPTEMBER STEVEN ANN ROBERT BARRACUDA RYLEY AMSTERDAM PATCHETT FORSTER $34.95 WALKER

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READINGS MONTHLY SEPTEMBER 2016 3

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FATHER’S DAY It’s Father’s Day on Sunday 4 September. We’ve included a handy gift guide in this issue of Readings Monthly to help you find the perfect bookish present, and you’ll also find plenty of ideas in our five shops.

READINGS DONCASTER OPENING WEEKEND SALE Readings Monthly We’re thrilled to announce that Readings Free, independent monthly newspaper Doncaster (Shop G089, Ground Level, published by Readings Books, Music & Film Westfield Doncaster, 619 Doncaster Rd, Doncaster) will be officially opening later Subscribe this month. We’re celebrating the Readings You can subscribe to Readings Monthly and our e-news by visiting our website: Doncaster opening weekend on Saturday readings.com.au/newsletters-and-e-news 24 and Sunday 25 September by offering 20% off everything – all books, film, music Editor and stationery – all weekend! Sale only Elke Power available on in-stock items at Readings [email protected] Doncaster. Not valid for special orders, lay- bys or gift cards, or in conjunction with any Editorial Assistant other offer. Not valid online. Sale begins Grant (Talking to My Country) and author was established in 2009 to support Victorian Alan Vaarwerk 9am, Saturday 24 Sept and ends 5pm, Richard Flanagan (The Narrow Road to the individuals and organisations that wish [email protected] Sunday 25 Sept. Deep North). Flanagan is the Boisbouvier to further the development of literacy, Founding Chair in Australian Literature community work and the arts. Applications Advertising at the University of Melbourne. Tickets must be completed and lodged electronically Stella Charls THE READINGS PRIZE are $30 per person or $25 concession. All by 5pm, Monday 31 October 2016. For more [email protected] 2016 SHORTLIST proceeds will be donated to the Indigenous information please visit (03) 9341 7739 We’re delighted to announce this year’s Literacy Foundation. For information and readings.com.au/the-readings-foundation shortlist for The Readings Prize for New bookings visit readings.com.au/events. Graphic Design Australian Fiction. The shortlisted books are Cat Matteson Portable Curiosities by Julie Koh (UQP), The CZECH & SLOVAK FILM FESTIVAL colourcode.com.au High Places by Fiona McFarlane (Penguin 3-FOR-2 OFFER ON A The fourth Czech and Slovak Film Festival Random House), Music and Freedom by Zoë SELECT RANGE OF BOLINDA of Australia (CaSFFA) is on this year from Front Cover Morrison (Penguin Random House), Wood AUDIOBOOKS 14–23 September, with the theme of ‘Text The September Readings Monthly cover by Sean Rabin (Giramondo), Looking to build your collection of and Texture’ encompassing all those features the authors of the The Readings Green Ruins audiobooks? Well, now is your chance – Prize for New Australian Fiction 2016 by Rajith Savanadasa (Hachette) and Salt points where the cinematic and literary shortlisted books. In order of appearance, the Creek by Lucy Treloar (Pan Macmillan). buy any two from a select range of Bolinda arts collide. Inspired by Melbourne (2008) authors are: Julie Koh (Portable Curiosities, Our judging panel comprises Readings audiobooks throughout September and Prague’s (2014) newly shared status published by UQP; author photo by Hugh staff, and acclaimed author Maxine Beneba and receive a third for free. From Enid as ‘UNESCO Cities of Literature’, the 2016 Stewart), Fiona McFarlane (The High Places, Clarke will join them as a guest judge to Blyton to Andy Griffiths, Hannah Kent program includes a pick of the greatest published by Penguin Random House; author select a winner from the shortlist. The to Richard Flanagan, both adults and film adaptations of Czech and Slovak photo by Andy Barclay), Zoë Morrison winning author will be announced online children will find much to love here. literature, such as Cutting it Short and the (Music and Freedom, published by Penguin This offer is available on a select range of Random House; author photo by Nicholas and featured in the November edition of medieval epic Marketa Lazarova, as well as Purcell Studio), Sean Rabin (Wood Green, Readings Monthly and will receive a prize in-stock titles only, while stocks last until ’60s cult classic Who Wants to Kill Jessie?. published by Giramondo; author photo by of $4,000. Read more about the shortlisted 30 September, 2016. The lowest-priced Readings is a proud supporter of The Czech Caroline Constantine), Rajith Savanadasa titles and the prize on page 6. audiobook is free of charge. Available in and Slovak Film Festival. Tickets and full (Ruins, published by Hachette; photo by Readings Carlton, Hawthorn, Malvern, and program details are available at casffa.com.au Craig Peihopa) and Lucy Treloar (Salt Creek, St Kilda. Not available online, at the State published by Pan Macmillan; author photo by INDIGENOUS LITERACY DAY Library shop, or at Readings Doncaster. Nicholas Purcell Studio). All author photos WANGARATTA FESTIVAL OF courtesy of the publishers. To find out more This year Indigenous Literacy Day is on Wednesday 7 September. The Indigenous JAZZ & BLUES about The Readings Prize for New Australian CLASSICAL BOX-SET SALE Fiction 2016 shortlist see page 6. Literacy Foundation (ILF) aims to raise The 2016 Wangaratta Festival of Jazz and literacy levels and improve the opportunities The Readings classical box-set sale is Blues (28–30 October) showcases some of Father’s Day Illustration of Indigenous Australians living in remote back! With discounts of up to 50%, this the world’s finest local and international jazz Illustration by Eirian Chapman, courtesy of The and isolated regions. 10% of funds from year’s sale includes recordings featuring and blues artists in a bounty of scintillating Jacky Winter Group. books sold in our shops on Wednesday 7 JS Bach, Mozart, Haydn, Beethoven, performances. Your weekend in jazz country September will be donated to the ILF. Messiaen, Richard Strauss,Tchaikovsky, might also include sharing a picnic rug Cartoon Schubert, Vivaldi and Wagner. These with friends and family in the King George Oslo Davis classics are all performed by greats of the Gardens enjoying ‘cross-over’ musical acts, oslodavis.com STAN GRANT IN CONVERSATION classical world – John Williams, Yo-Yo great local food and wine, and live music and WITH RICHARD FLANAGAN, IN Ma, Kiri Te Kanawa and Renata Tebaldi, artistic installations on the friendly streets of Prices and availability SUPPORT OF THE ILF among others. The sale is available in Wangaratta. Readings is the official retailer Please note that all prices and release dates Readings is honoured to be hosting a all Readings shops and online from now of the Wangaratta Festival of Jazz and Blues. in Readings Monthly are correct at time of very special evening together with the until 30 September, while stocks last. Tickets and full program details are available publication, however prices and release dates may change without notice. Special price Melbourne Athenaeum, the Indigenous at wangarattajazz.com. Special ticket offer Literacy Foundation and the University for Readings customers: When booking offers apply only for the month in which they THE READINGS FOUNDATION are featured in the Readings Monthly. of Melbourne. Join us on Tuesday 27 your festival tickets, enter the promotion GRANTS OPEN September at the Melbourne Athenaeum code READINGS16 prior to 30 September Readings donates 10% of its profits each for a fascinating conversation about politics, Applications for The Readings Foundation and receive discounted tickets to the festival. year to The Readings Foundation: privilege and Australian culture between grants 2017 will open 9am, Monday 26 readings.com.au/the-readings-foundation two award-winning writers – journalist Stan September 2016. The Readings Foundation

BOOKINGS (03) 9347 5610 • 313 DRUMMOND ST, CARLTON • LUNCH & DINNER 7 DAYS • 11AM TILL LATE ¬@MASANIDINING —MASANI_DINING ­MASANI.DINING 4 READINGS MONTHLY SEPTEMBER 2016

September Events THE GRESTE FAMILY WELCOME TO 14 ON FREEING PETER 24 READINGS WORDSMITHS ON Freeing Peter is the true story of how the DONCASTER 13 THE AUSTRALIAN Greste family successfully campaigned for As well as holding a 20% off sale (see News, NATIONAL the Egyptian government to release their son page 2, for details), we’re hosting special guests DICTIONARY and brother, Peter Greste, from prison. Hear at our Readings Doncaster shop on its opening brothers Andrew and Michael talk frankly of weekend. Beloved author and children’s The Australian National Dictionary is a their experiences. laureate Leigh Hobbs will be in-store at remarkable publication of words and 10:30am, and bestselling author of The Rosie meanings that have a special significance Free, but please book at readings.com.au/events Project, Graeme Simsion, will be signing his in Australian history. Editors Bruce Moore Wednesday 14 September, 6.30pm new book The Best of Adam Sharp at 2.30pm. HETTY MCKINNON and Amanda Laugesen will discuss the tome Readings Hawthorn 6 IN CONVERSATION with fellow wordsmith David Astle. Free, no booking required Saturday 24 September, all day! Free, but please book at readings.com.au/events NICOLA GATES ON WITH ROHAN Shop G089, Ground Level, Westfield Doncaster, ANDERSON Tuesday 13 September, 6.30pm 16 REDUCING YOUR 619 Doncaster Road, Doncaster Readings Hawthorn Hetty McKinnon’s Community was our RISK OF DEMENTIA bestselling cookbook of last year, and we’re Neuropsychologist Nicola Gates will share CLEMENTINE FORD advice on how to reduce your risk of delighted to be hosting an event celebrating 26 IN CONVERSATION her newest cookbook, Neighbourhood. dementia, drawing on her work and from her McKinnon will chat with food activist new non-fiction book, A Brain for Life. WITH JULIA BAIRD Rohan Anderson about the inspiration she Free, but please book at readings.com.au/events Writer and social commentator Clementine finds in her own neighbourhood. Friday 16 September at 12.30–1.30pm Ford’s quest to shine a spotlight on urgent feminist topics is unrelenting. Free, but please book at readings.com.au/events Readings Hawthorn Come along to hear Ford discuss her Tuesday 6 September, 6.30pm new book with Julia Baird. Part memoir Church of All Nations: 180 Palmerston St., Carlton ROBERT FORSTER 13 IN CONVERSATION A WORKSHOP WITH and part polemic, Fight Like A Girl 17 ILLUSTRATOR will change the way you see the world. CHRIS CLEAVE IN WITH BRIAN NANKERVIS LANCE BALCHIN Tickets are $45 and include a signed copy of Fight 12 CONVERSATION Lance Balchin’s Mechanica is a beautifully Like a Girl. Please book at readings.com.au/events In Grant and I, Robert Forster tells the story WITH GABRIELLE illustrated field guide from the future. At this Monday 26 September, 6.30–7.30pm of the 1980s creative partnership he shared workshop, young artists 8 and up can learn Melbourne Athenaeum, 188 Collins St., Melbourne WILLIAMS with Grant McLennan, providing fans with how to create their own steampunk-inspired Drop by our Hawthorn shop to meet visiting a never-seen-before glimpse backstage with illustrations with help from Balchin. British author Chris Cleave. Cleave will The Go-Betweens. Come along to our St JOCK SERONG IN discuss his work, including his most recent Kilda shop to hear Forster tell stories from Free, but please book at readings.com.au/events 26 CONVERSATION novel Everyone Brave is Forgiven, with the book, and discuss songwriting, music Saturday 17 September, 11am–12pm Join us as Australian crime author Jock Australian author Gabrielle Williams. and more with Brian Nankervis. Readings Hawthorn Serong discusses celebrity, masculinity and his gripping new thriller, The Rules of Free, but please book at readings.com.au/events Free, but please book at readings.com.au/events Backyard Cricket. Monday 12 September, 6.30pm Tuesday 13 September, 7–8.30pm CARMEL BIRD IN Readings Hawthorn Readings St Kilda 19 CONVERSATION Free, but please book at readings.com.au/events WITH LINDY Monday 26 September, 6.30pm CAMERON Readings Hawthorn Carmel Bird’s new novel, Family Skeleton, is a dark comedy about the secrets families keep, AN EVENING WITH New York, 2007: a city where the newly-arrived and and why. Come along to hear her chat about 26 JIMMY BARNES the long-established jostle alike for a place on the the book with fellow author Lindy Cameron. Come along for a special evening with Australian rock icon Jimmy Barnes as we ladder of success. And Jende Jonga, who has come Free, but please book at readings.com.au/events celebrate the release of his much-anticipated from Cameroon, has just set his foot on the first rung. Monday 19 September, 6.30pm memoir, Working Class Boy. Barnes will A powerful story of marriage, class, race and the Readings Hawthorn pursuit of the American Dream. tell the story of how his childhood dream to escape the misery of the suburbs was PAUL MITCHELL IN realised through rock’n’roll. 19 CONVERSATION Tickets are $55 and include a signed hardback WITH TONY BIRCH copy of Working Class Boy. Please book at Paul Mitchell’s new novel, We. Are. Family., readings.com.au/events considers the destructive impact of trauma on Monday 26 September, 8.30–9.30pm future generations. Mitchell will talk about Melbourne Athenaeum, 188 Collins St., Melbourne Born in Paris in 1824, Céleste made her name as his work and writing process with author a dancer in the Parisian dance halls, however it Tony Birch. Their discussion will be chaired STAN GRANT IN was as the city’s most celebrated courtesan that she by Readings’ own Hilary Simmons. found genuine fame and fortune. This true story 27 CONVERSATION of the Countess Céleste de Chabrillan is a rich and Free, but please book at readings.com.au/events WITH RICHARD tempestuous tale of an extraordinary womann Monday 19 September, 6.30pm FLANAGAN Readings Carlton far ahead of her time. We are honoured to host this very special evening together with the Melbourne INTRODUCING Athenaeum, the Indigenous Literacy 20 BREAD, WINE & Foundation and the University of Melbourne. THOU Join us for a fascinating conversation about politics, privilege and Australian culture Bread, Wine & Thou is a new Melbourne- between two award-winning writers – based literary periodical that explores our food and drink culture. The latest issue, journalist and author Stan Grant (Talking to With the outbreak of the Second World War, a new breed ‘Maternal’, walks the reader back through My Country) and Richard Flanagan, author of reporters joined the ranks of war correspondents - and time, exploring Carlton and the emergence of (The Narrow Road to the Deep North) and through the reach and power of radio Australians back the Australian restaurant scene. Bread, Wine & Boisbouvier Founding Chair in Australian home heard their voices. A remarkable tale about a group Thou editor Yossi Klein will be in conversation Literature at the University of Melbourne. of men and how they changed the reporting of warr with legendary Australian chef, Tansy Good. Tickets are $30 per person or $25 concession. and how the war changed their lives. This event is supported by Café Di Stasio and Di All proceeds will be donated to the Indigenous Stasio Wines. Literacy Foundation. Please book at Free, but please book at readings.com.au/events readings.com.au/events Tuesday 20 September, 6.30pm Tuesday 27 September, 6.30pm Readings Carlton Melbourne Athenaeum, 188 Collins St., Melbourne READINGS MONTHLY SEPTEMBER 2016 5

HANNAH KENT IN Join us for the launch of Earl de Blonville’s 27 CONVERSATION new non-fiction adventure book, Savage Mark’s Coast, which explores leadership resilience News and views from Readings’ Managing Director, WITH ELKE POWER in a turbulent world. Say Mark Rubbo We’re excited to get our hands on The Wednesday 14 September, 6.30pm Good People – the story of three women Readings Carlton brought together by troubling events in As President Obama’s term comes to an end you get a sense of the wellspring of goodwill 1825 Ireland and Hannah Kent’s follow- Melbourne Writers Festival program toward the President. It’s in stark contrast to Bill Clinton and George Bush, whose presidential legacies were tainted by tawdriness and disastrous foreign expeditions respectively. Obama is up to her breakout debut of 2013, Burial manager Jo Case will launch Laura seen by most as an honourable person who despite being frustrated by a resistant legislature Rites. Kent will discuss the new novel Elizabeth Woollett’s The Love of a Bad has managed to push through some of his key policies. Obama is also a reader and is a regular with Readings Monthly editor Elke Power. Man, which offers fictional imaginings of real women who were romantically involved at Washington’s leading independent bookseller, Politics & Prose. I’ve seen delightful pictures Free, but please book at readings.com.au/events with ‘bad’ men in history. of Obama and his family shopping at Politics & Prose, surrounded by excited staff. It would Tuesday 27 September, 6.30pm Thursday 15 September, 6.30pm be a bookseller’s dream come true to have the President of the United States as a customer! Readings Hawthorn Readings Carlton Each year around this time Obama takes a few weeks off and the White House releases a list of books that he’s going to read on his vacation; it’s always an interesting list, nothing too Join us for the launch of Dyna Eldaief’s challenging but intelligent and diverse – what you’d expect for holiday fare. This summer’s MEET GARTH NIX: mouth-watering new cookbook for the home list is no exception with a couple of my favourites on it. Top of the list is William Finnegan’s 28 THE FIFTH cook, The Taste of Egypt. terrific surfing memoir, Barbarian Days ($24.99). The book won the Pulitzer Prize earlier this INSTALMENT OF Friday 16 September, 7pm year and I met Finnegan last month when we were in conversation at our Hawthorn shop. He’s Readings Carlton a charming, literate man obsessed by surfing; he’d tried to go to Bells the day before our event OLD KINGDOM IS but couldn’t get hold of a board or wetsuit. The book is not just about surfing; it’s about growing HERE! Join us for the launch of Trevor Barr’s new up and male friendship too – a perfect gift for any man. Also on the list is The Underground The long-awaited fifth instalment of Garth novel, Grand Intentions, which was inspired Railroad by Colson Whitehead (special price $27.99), a novel loosely based on the network of Nix’s Old Kingdom series is here: Goldenhand by real events. safe houses and people who’d get American slaves to the slave-free north. The New York Times takes place six months after the events of Wednesday 21 September, 6.30pm described it as ‘a brave and necessary book’. Helen MacDonald’s H is For Hawk ($22.99), about Abhorsen (published in 2003) and continues Readings Hawthorn a woman training a goshawk, became an unlikely bestseller. Obama also reveals a penchant for Lirael’s story. We are thrilled to have Nix with crime and science fiction in selecting the bestselling crime novel The Girl on the Train by Paula us to talk about the series – for one night only. Join us for the launch of David Henderson’s Hawkins ($22.99) and Seveneves by Neal Stephenson ($24.99). Stephenson has a reputation for

history book about German Australian producing gripping, literary science fiction and has deservedly developed a cult following. Tickets are $25 and include a signed copy of internment during WWII, Nazis In Our Midst. One of my favourite charities is the Indigenous Literacy Foundation. Founded in 2005 by Goldenhand. Please book at readings.com.au/events Wednesday 28 September, 6.30pm Brisbane bookseller Suzy Wilson, it has developed an impressive and effective suite of programs Wednesday 28 September, 6.30pm Readings Carlton to encourage literacy in remote communities around Australia. Each year it donates thousands Readings Hawthorn of culturally and developmentally appropriate books to remote communities around Australia; Join us for the launch of Traces of History it’s developing an early literacy program for toddlers and preschoolers; and is working with as we recognise the significant contribution communities and Australian authors to publish community stories. Although I’m now on the September board and slightly biased, I believe the ILF is on the road to making a real difference to children’s author, writer and historian Patrick Wolfe lives. Wednesday 7 September is Indigenous Literacy Day and Readings will be donating 10% of Launches made to Australian literature before his our book sales to the cause. In addition, Readings donates $15,000 per annum to the ILF. Imagine untimely death. what we could achieve if every person reading this gave $10 on the 7th? You can donate at www. All launches are free and no booking is Thursday 29 September, 6.30pm required unless otherwise specified below. indigenousliteracyfoundation.org.au and help by coming to our fundraising event with Stan Readings Carlton Grant and Richard Flanagan. Thanks in anticipation! Join us for the launch of Where I Live, a book written, designed and published by A peek at October kids with The Field Trip. It’s about their Dear Alison Huber, homes, friends, families, schools and lives. Head Book Buyer Monday 5 September, 5pm TEXT CLASSICS: Reader Readings Carlton 4 RECLAIMING October AUSTRALIAN Here we are in September, which, as the years go on, is really starting to feel like the official start Join us as Melanie Joosten launches Anna AUTHORS of the festive season in bookselling and publishing. That means that lots of Big Books for 2016 Snoekstra’s debut novel, Only Daughter, a are about to come your way! For example, you can expect to hear a lot about Ann Patchett’s chilling psychological thriller in which the OF THE PAST new novel, Commonwealth (already a firm favourite amongst early readers, including myself ). past and future collide. Join us for a discussion about the depth and The new Ian McEwan is – well, it’s the new Ian McEwan, so not much more needs to be said Monday 5 September, 7pm breadth of our literary heritage chaired by really, does it, aside from that it is called Nutshell and is told with an appropriately McEwan- Readings Carlton Text publisher Michael Heyward. In the ish narrative twist. Jay McInerney’s Brightness Falls (published in 1992) is one of my favourite space of four years, Text Publishing has reading memories of the 1990s, so I am excited that the third instalment of Russell and Corinne’s Join us for the launch of Gillian Polack’s new released 100 Text Classics, most of them story (following 2006’s The Good Life) is out this month. I saw Matthew Griffin read an extract novel, The Wizardry of Jewish Women, a long out of print. This series has brought from his debut novel, Hide, when I was in the US earlier this year, and I was transfixed; I share feminist Jewish Australian story. numerous extraordinary writers from our reviewer’s enthusiasm for this moving story. The wondrous Mary Gaitskill wrote The in 2015, and it is at last available in an Australian edition this month. Throw in new books Tuesday 6 September, 6.30pm Australia and New Zealand to domestic and Mare from two more former winners of the Booker Prize (Dirt Road from James Kelman; Selection Readings Hawthorn international attention, including Elizabeth Day from Aravind Adiga), a highly anticipated new novel from Jonathan Safran Foer (Here I Harrower, Kenneth Cook, David Ballantyne, Author Gabrielle Carey will launch Maurilia Am), the second novel by a recent winner of the Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction (The Lesser Amy Witting and Madeleine St John. Meehan’s wickedly witty new novel, 5 Ways Bohemians from Eimear McBride), and a few books getting a lot of attention in the international to be Famous Now. Tickets are $15 and include a copy of one novel literary pages (Kris Lee’s How I Became a North Korean; Imbolo Mbue’s Behold the Dreamers; Wednesday 7 September, 6.30pm from the Text Classics series, as available on the Colson Whitehead’s The Underground Railroad), and you’ll see that this month is a big one. Lucia Readings Carlton night. Please book at readings.com.au/events Berlin’s amazing short story collection, A Manual for Cleaning Women, made a lot of people’s Tuesday 4 October, 6.30pm ‘best of 2015’ lists, and while I hand-sold quite a few copies of the imported hardcover late last Join us for the launch of Rose Mulready’s Cinema Nova: 380 Lygon St., Carlton year, it’s finally available in paperback, so please do revisit this book. So much for international fiction: Australia’s writers bring us great things this month too. 2016 Seizure Viva La Novella Prize-winning One of our most exciting, Steven Amsterdam, publishes his long-awaited new work, The Easy novella, The Bonobo’s Dream, to be launched Way Out. This story of a nurse who assists terminally ill patients seeking death on their own by one of last year’s winners, Jane Rawson. TIM DUNLOP ON 5 WHY THE FUTURE terms cannot fail to get people talking and thinking about the ethics, realities and necessity of Thursday 8 September, 6.30pm October a dignified exit strategy. Local publishing house Scribe, who celebrated their 40th birthday in Readings St Kilda IS WORKLESS August, have Laura Elizabeth Woollett’s exciting debut, The Love of a Bad Man, a cycle of short Join us to hear Tim Dunlop discuss his stories that focus on the women who loved the ‘bad men’ of history. Heather Rose was the Join us for the launch of local artist Karen new book, Why the Future is Workless. The inaugural writer in residence at MONA in Hobart during 2012–13, and she spent her time there Allen’s gorgeous new creature-filled landscape of work is changing right before working on The Museum of Modern Love, which is based on the work of performance artist alphabet book, An A–Z of Creatures. our eyes as new paradigms emerge including Marina Abramovic: our reviewer calls it her ‘book of the year so far’! Monday 12 September, 6.30pm everything from Uber, Airbnb and the new Our book of the month is Grant and I, the memoir from musician, writer and general hero, Readings St Kilda share economy to automated vehicles, 3D Robert Forster. I think I genuinely gasped with excitement when I heard at some point last year printing and advanced artificial intelligence. that he was writing this book. Forster is the ultimate stylist, and this work will be a treat for fans Singer–songwriter, author and filmmaker Why the Future is Workless is a timely of Forster and The Go-Betweens, and an education for those yet uninitiated. I suggest you buy a Richard Frankland will launch Charlie examination of the future of work. copy immediately. Before I forget, I advise you to look out for The Hidden Life of Trees, by Peter Ward’s examination of the Gurindji people’s Wohlleben, released mid-month, a book that I suspect might well be on everyone’s ‘want list’ by famous Wave Hill Walk-off in 1966, Free, but please book at readings.com.au/events the end of the year. And finally, dear reader, I urge you to explore the full shortlist for this year’s A Handful of Sand. Wednesday 5 October, 6.30pm Readings Prize. As a judge this year, and a vocal participant in the many arguments – I mean Tuesday 13 September, 6.30pm Readings Carlton ‘discussions’ – we had at the meeting to decide the shortlist, I can say that my fellow judges and Readings Carlton I feel very close to all these books, and we know you’ll find much to enjoy and admire in these six outstanding works from Australian early career writers. 6 READINGS MONTHLY SEPTEMBER 2016

New Fiction

subject matter is fascinating in itself but Australian Fiction Heather Rose deserves credit for taking the initial inspiration to create her own THE EASY WAY OUT thoughtful, multi-layered work; deftly Steven Amsterdam grabbing the reader’s attention right from Hachette. PB. Was $29.99 the beginning and sustaining the multiple narrative threads throughout. The theme of $24.99 connection is predominant and I found the Available 30 August most significant part of the novel to be how This is what we the characters respond to the exhibition The Readings Prize already know 2016 judges’ report and whether they are able to take that about Amsterdam’s experience into their own lives (i.e. truly writing: he spins connect art to life). This is ultimately a recognised worlds book for Abramovic fans (if you need some upside down. He has background try the excellent documentary the ability to see into also entitled The Artist is Present) but also he Readings Prize for New Australian Fiction the future and then to considers first and second books from Australian for those who love New York and the arts discuss, reasonably, in general. authors, and aims to recognise exciting and what would happen if this was our actual exceptional new contributions to local literature. reality. We experienced this in his last, Amanda Rayner is from Readings Carlton TThe six books shortlisted for this year’s Reading Prize tell excellent novel, What the Family Knew, stories of complicated families, of relationships good and and quite frankly, he’s done it again. THE LOVE OF A BAD MAN bad, of desire and ambition, humour and heartbreak, identity However, this time we are not dealing Laura Elizabeth Woollett and loss. The shortlist includes two short-story collections with superpowers, but rather with the Scribe. PB. $27.99 and four novels, and their settings range from South more taboo topic of euthanasia. What Available 29 August Australia in 1835 to Colombo, Sri Lanka in 2008, with an issues would emerge, asks Amsterdam, if The women in extraordinary diversity of places and people in between. this course of action was accessible and Laura Elizabeth The Readings staff judges for this year’s Prize – Tom supported? To answer, Amsterdam centres Woollett’s assured Hoskins, State Library Victoria shop manager; Christine the narrative on Evan, a legal suicide short-fiction collection Gordon, events manager; Alison Huber, book division assistant. Evan is inevitably quiet about The Love of a Bad Man manager; Nina Kenwood, marketing manager; and Simon his role at the hospital with his lovers and are the kind that get McLean, Hawthorn book buyer – felt that the quality of the friends, and he’s also quiet about his social under your skin and eligible books was extremely high, which is testament to the life when he’s with his aging mother. The stay there. This depth of emerging talent in Australian literature. Managing Easy Way Out explores those themes of collection offers director Mark Rubbo and celebrated author Maxine Beneba selectively hiding and disclosing identity as readers an unusual and affecting reading Clarke will join the judging panel to select the winner from Evan grapples with all of his secrets. experience, coupling true crime with the six shortlisted books. The winner will be announced As his mother comes to terms with literary fiction. Each story centres on a online in late October, and will feature in the November the end of her life, Evan is drawn into a real-life woman enamoured with a ‘bad issue of the Readings Monthly, and will receive $4,000. consideration of the cost of his role. This man’ – criminals from throughout the 20th novel is a superb example of a multi-layered century from across the USA, UK and ‘A collection of funny, bold and delightfully weird story that centres on assisted suicide, but is Australia. Whether mistresses, also the story of son’s relationship with his short stories. Koh is an ambitious writer with a accomplices, or victims themselves, these mother. Amsterdam’s writing encourages women all stand by the men in question, unique voice and a wild imagination. discussion and in the end asks the question: including Hitler’s young wife Eva Braun, A playful and challenging book.’ what would you do? This is a brilliant, Jim Jones’ first wife Marceline Baldwin, compelling novel that is confronting, and the sister wives of Charles Manson, Portable Curiosities by Julie Koh courageous and genuinely moving. among many others. Chris Gordon is the events manager for Readings While some cases are more well-known ‘In the tradition of the greats of the short form, than others, Woollett’s skill as a writer this is an accomplished and sophisticated THE MUSEUM OF ensures that no prior knowledge of each MODERN LOVE crime is needed to fall completely into collection of stories by the author of the each story. The book’s appendix details Heather Rose acclaimed novel The Night Guest.’ the historical information clearly and A&U. PB. $27.99 The High Places by Fiona McFarlane succinctly, but The Love of a Bad Man Available 1 September exists first and foremost as an engrossing I pounced on The (if sometimes disturbing) work of literary ‘This expertly crafted novel is a profound and Museum of fiction. Woollett displays a great deal heartbreaking portrait of one woman’s life, Modern Love as soon as of talent in locating the reader in each touching on issues of ambition, wealth, class, I heard about its subject setting – from a fugitive hideout in 1930s matter: the performance Joplin, Missouri (‘Blanche’), to the and violence.’ artist Marina Abramovic. Saddleworth Moor in the 1960s (‘Myra’), to Music and Freedom by Zoë Morrison Written by Australian 1980s suburban Perth (‘Cathy’). author Heather Rose, The collection seamlessly strings this blend of fact and ‘Set in Tasmania, this is a charming, quirky and together an impressive range of voices, but fiction centres on those two and a half the most remarkable aspect of The Love very clever debut novel, bursting with literary months in 2010 when Abramovic staged of a Bad Man is the degree of empathy references and boasting a memorable cast of perhaps her most famous work, The Artist displayed for each protagonist. While the is Present, at MOMA in New York. For the characters. A genuine pleasure to read.’ majority of these women are involved, duration of the exhibition, Abramovic sat either directly or indirectly, in an array Wood Green by Sean Rabin silently in a chair while members of the of heinous crimes (which makes for public were invited one by one to sit unsettling reading at times), Woollett ‘A complex and compelling family saga set in opposite the artist for an unspecified presents each woman as complex and, period. The apparent simplicity of the piece Sri Lanka in the final days of the civil war, to varying degrees, remarkably relatable. (although a monumental feat of endurance These are considered portraits of flawed deftly exploring conflicts around gender, class, for Abramovic) struck a chord with many and fascinating women, offering a mature generational divide, race and more.’ and soon people were camping out depiction of the lengths to which some overnight for their chance to sit with will go for the men they love. Ruins by Rajith Savanadasa Marina. The Museum of Modern Love The Love of a Bad Man is an accomplished follows the impact of those 75 days from a and engrossing collection from a young ‘Set in South Australia in 1835, this beautifully variety of viewpoints: a composer, a widow, Australian literary talent. Laura Elizabeth written and emotionally rich debut novel grapples a PhD student, an art reviewer, a ghost, a Woollett is refreshing, challenging and utterly muse and Abramovic herself. unique and I’m already looking forward to with the devastating effects of colonisation and Reaction to art is of course personal her next achievement. and similarly the response to this novel the harsh realities of frontier life.’ Stella Charls is the marketing and events may vary, but I adored it and it is my Salt Creek by Lucy Treloar coordinator for Readings book of the year so far. It’s true that the READINGS MONTHLY SEPTEMBER 2016 7

WE. ARE. FAMILY. FAMILY SKELETON Paul Mitchell Carmel Bird Midnight Sun. PB. $24.99 UWAP. PB. $29.99 Available 1 September Available 1 September Paul Mitchell’s From inside her Toorak first novel is an mansion, Margaret O’Day, exploration of widow of funeral director Australian masculinity Edmund Rice O’Day, and the suffocating secretly surveys her limitations we place family in the garden. on our boys and men. Everyone, including The first page is a Margaret herself, is family tree, but not a oblivious to the secrets that threaten to be sprawling tangle that uncovered by a visiting American relative reaches back and across oceans, rather it is who is determined to excavate the O’Day’s truncated and limited to living generations. family history. How far will Margaret go in This the theme of the book: that people order to bury the truth? Deftly woven with become so caught up in familial elegant wit and with compassion, this dark relationships that they can’t bring comedy is about what you can unearth if themselves to make changes, despite the you dig deep enough. internecine nature of their situation. Mitchell moves us around this family tree, THE BEST OF ADAM SHARP through time and from branch-to-branch, Graeme Simsion building up the characters and the story in Text. PB. Was $29.99 a non-linear fashion. It is a story of $24.99 domestic violence – both visceral and Available 19 September psychological – and the seeds of On the cusp of 50, Adam dysfunction and decay that it sows. Sharp has a loyal partner, The characters are not instantly earns a good income and is recognisable. They begin as archetypes, the music-trivia expert at the Stevensons, and their particularly quiz nights. But something’s bland Australian names suggest they are missing. Two decades ago, almost interchangeable. Bernie sits atop his part-time piano playing this structure, a brute and a drunk. The led him into a passionate son is named Ron and the grandsons relationship with Angelina Brown, and now Peter, Terry and Simon, the uncles, two he can’t shake off his nostalgia for what might HAPPY FATHER’S DAY brothers, named Nick and Tim. The book have been. Then, out of nowhere, Angelina is driven almost entirely through the male gets in touch. What does she want? Does perspective and their various degrees of Adam dare to live dangerously? How far will failure, longing and regret. It is a saga too, he go for a second chance? of marriages in disrepair, of depression and madness, of ill-gotten money and regret by the truckload. The Stevensons WILD ISLAND scrabble about for meaning and hope, their Jennifer Livett hopes and voices muffled by the spectre of A&U. PB. $29.99 past and family. Available 1 September What Mitchell does particularly well Harriet Adair has come to is capture Australianness. Hardship, Van Diemen’s Land with mistakes, dim-wittedness – these Mrs Anna Rochester, New Indie Reads are universal. But the vernacular is trying to unearth long- unmistakably ours, as nowhere else would buried secrets. Meanwhile, you tell your brother to ‘rack off’, or Sir John Franklin donate money to ‘the Salvos’. There is a uncovers some secrets of touch of Tim Winton in this, of getting the his own when he replaces finer details right. Though grim at times, Colonel Arthur as Governor. This dazzling Mitchell’s debut is a fine novel, cleverly modern recreation of Jane Eyre ingeniously structured and expertly wrought, and he is entwines Charlotte Bronte’s iconic love without doubt a writer to watch. story with Sir John Franklin’s great tale of Robbie Egan is the operations manager for exploration and empire – a brilliant and Readings historically accurate depiction of colonial FICTION FICTION HISTORICAL society in the 1800s that proves fiction and TRUE ADVENTURE THE SCIENCE history are not so different after all. From piranha-infested Big waves, black On Australia’s vast waters to mining magic and mad southern oceans, OF APPEARANCES company boardrooms, Aussie expats make sealers and their Jacinta Halloran International Fiction triumphs and disasters for dangerous surf. captives must Scribe. PB. $29.99 on the gold trail. cooperate or die. Available 29 August COMMONWEALTH Dominic and Mary are COMING Ann Patchett twins, but they are also SOON opposites: Dominic is Bloomsbury. PB. Was $29.99 thoughtful and quiet, $26.99 Mary is passionate and Available 8 September impetuous. When Mary If you enjoy stories escapes to Melbourne in that explore the SHORTLISTED NED KELLY pursuit of sensuality and nuances of big, messy, AWARD 2016 art, Dominic must irresistible families, then shoulder the mantle of family this new novel from CRIME CRIME CRIME responsibility. But the past cannot be left Orange Prize-winning The cowboy capitalists There’s a killer on Iris Foster is behind so easily. Set in an era of social author Ann Patchett is for of Perth’s 1980s just the loose in Broome the Fire Lady – constraint but profound genetic discovery, you. Commonwealth is an rode into town and and it’s no croc. psychological The Science of Appearances examines how immersive read that drops you right into PI Frank Swann is in profiler and the complex interplay of heredity and the thick of one such family. the firing line. suspected arsonist. environment makes, shapes, and The story opens on a stiflingly hot day sometimes breaks us. in 1960s Southern California. Looking to escape his wife Teresa and their four fremantlepress.com.au children, Bert Cousins shows up uninvited (and with an unexpected bottle of gin 8 READINGS MONTHLY SEPTEMBER 2016 in hand) to Beverly and Fix Keating’s novel, but while we are still yearning for her journey, Whitehead brilliantly recreates but things begin to get complicated. The christening party for their second daughter. marriage equality here in Australia the the unique terrors of the pre-Civil War era. Mare is a devastating portrait of the When he develops a sudden passion for the isolation that Wendell and Frank find The Underground Railroad is both a kinetic unbridgeable gaps between people, and the hostess, he sets in motion the dissolution of themselves in resonated with me. adventure tale and a powerful meditation on search for fairytale endings that don’t exist. both marriages and within a few years the Jason Austin is from Readings Carlton the history we all share. Keating and Cousins children are spending THE LESSER BOHEMIANS their summers together in Virginia. BRIGHT, PRECIOUS DAYS BEHOLD THE DREAMERS Eimear McBride Patchett follows the two families over the Jay McInerney Imbolo Mbue Text. PB. $29.99 next five decades, tracing the ways their Bloomsbury. PB. $29.99 HarperCollins. PB. $29.99 Available 1 September lives fold into one another. The tangled Available now Available 1 September An eighteen-year-old girl, relationships that develop between them all New York, 2007: Clark recently arrived in London will likely be familiar to anyone who comes Occasionally a Edwards is a senior from Ireland, is enrolled in from a blended family themselves. slight snobbery partner at Lehman drama school. She is eager While the novel’s narrative is fractured emerges from working in Brothers bank, in need of a to make an impression, to by continual shifts in time and perspective, a bookshop. With all the chauffeur, and too do well. She meets a the story largely circles around two key books out there, not all preoccupied to check the man – older, a well- events that are inexorably entwined. One is are equally worthy of our paperwork of his latest regarded actor in his own a tragedy and the other is a book – a thinly- time. Is every book employee, Jende Jonga, right – and falls for him. veiled fictional imagining of the former. amazing? Life changing? who has come from But he’s haunted by more than a few demons, Patchett poses questions about the stories No, but if it’s enjoyable Cameroon. Jende’s new job draws him and and their tumultuous relationship might be families tell about themselves: how do they often that’s expressly what you want and his family into the privileged orbit of the the undoing of them both. Set across the begin? What is their significance? And, need in a book. city’s financial elite. But when the financial bedsits and squats of mid-90s north London, what happens when the cracks in them are And then there’ s the slight shame and crisis threatens everything they have The Lesser Bohemians is a story of love, exposed? delight associated with the deceptively worked for, each must decide how far they innocence, discovery and renewal. On a purely sentence level, Patchett is simple story – how can I enjoy this so much will go – and what they will sacrifice – in a delight. The novel’s tone is wonderfully when I am reading it so fast, consuming it pursuit of their dreams. HOW I BECAME A matter-of-fact and wry, especially when the like a candy bar? – it is tempting to assume the writing must be simplistic to a fault; NORTH KOREAN characters are at their most vindictive – THE COSMOPOLITANS the first time that Teresa is able to send but there’s real art and form behind a Krys Lee the children to Bert without a chaperone rollicking story, well-defined characters Anjum Hasan Faber. PB. $29.99 she purposefully forgets a suitcase, ‘A who resonate, who are alive in your mind Xoum. PB. $29.99 Available 1 September bold manoeuvre she would never have as you read. Available 1 September Three young lives attempted when Bonnie or Wallis was on With Bright, Precious Days by Jay Qayenaat is a middle- converge at Chinese- duty’, and gleefully imagines him hitting McInerney, I grappled with some of aged critic at the edge of North Korean border the ground running. Highly recommended. these questions. Gradually I found myself the Bangalore art scene. region – Danny, a grinning as I read, drawn in. There’s no When the return of her Chinese-American Bronte Coates is the digital content reason why the quintessential New York coordinator for Readings former protégé, now a teenager visiting his story can’t be compelling. hugely successful artist, missionary mother; HIDE The easy languor of well drawn brings back painful Yongju, a privileged characters, Russell and Corinne Calloway memories, Qayenaat Matthew Griffin North Korean student and their rich or famous friends made for commits an unforgivable escaping persecution Bloomsbury. PB. $28 addictive reading. The satirical edge of crime, fleeing to rural India to escape its after the Dear Leader has his father killed; Available 1 September their habits and conversations, the pattern repercussions. There she forms a and Jangmi, a poor smuggler trying to Matthew Griffin’s of their lives – cheat on or be cheated on, relationship with the local monarch whose protect her unborn child. As they struggle debut novel is a get reservations at exclusive restaurants palace, like the region, has fallen into to survive in a place where danger seems to beautiful character study. and speculate about real estate and charity disrepair. Asking questions about art, love close in on all sides, in the form of Wendell and Frank fall in functions – was, in some ways, predictable, and class, The Cosmopolitans is a rich and government informants, husbands, thieves, love in an era before gay but nevertheless, fun. engaging novel, by turns tender and satirical. abductors, and even missionaries, they liberation and they This is the third time McInerney has come to form a kind of adopted family. remain stuck in that time written about these characters, starting NUTSHELL for over fifty years, unable with Brightness Falls, The Good Life and DEAR MR M to trust a world that has now Bright, Precious Days – but each can be Ian McEwan Herman Koch moved on without them. When Wendell read independently. McInerney’s fondness Jonathan Cape. HB. Was $32.99 Text. PB. $29.99 first catches sight of Frank during one cold and familiarity with the characters $27.99 Available 29 August twilit afternoon just after the Second World is evident, as we follow their daily Available 1 September Once a celebrated writer, War, he thinks Frank is the tallest man he exhortations in the lead up to the Lehman Trudy has betrayed her M’s greatest success came had ever seen as he observes him standing Brothers financial crisis and the election of husband, John. She’s still with a suspense novel on the train tracks in front of Wendell’s Obama in 2008. in the marital home – a based on a real-life, taxidermy business, his shoulders hunched Just as Armistead Maupin did for San dilapidated, priceless unsolved disappearance. and constricted by his ill-fitting jacket. So Francisco, McInerney does for New York: London townhouse – but But that was years ago, and begins a relationship between the two men artfully weaving vignettes in concentric not with John. Instead, M has all but faded into during a time when their love could jail or circles that radiate out from Corinne she’s with his brother, obscurity – but not when it institutionalise them. and Russell at the heart. We should coin the profoundly banal comes to his bizarre, seemingly timid Heartbreakingly, cutting themselves a subgenre for this – the authors who Claude, and the two of neighbour who keeps a close eye on him. A off from family and friends for decades substantiate and perpetuate the mythical them have a plan. But there is a witness to writer in decline, a teenage couple in love, a they come to rely and trust no one but each qualities of these cities so that their fictions their plot: the inquisitive, nine-month-old missing teacher – thanks to M’s novel, other. The purchase of a small house in and facts become indistinguishable. resident of Trudy’s womb. Told from a supposedly a work of fiction, multiple lives the North Carolina countryside affords a perspective unlike any other, Nutshell is a Anaya Latter is from Readings St Kilda seem linked forever – until something freedom of sorts. For years living remotely classic tale of murder and deceit from one unexpected spins the story off its rails. they venture into town together only when THE UNDERGROUND of the world’s master storytellers. vital, going about their errands pretending RAILROAD to be strangers in order not to draw HERE I AM attention to their lifestyle. But after arriving Colson Whitehead THE MARE Jonathan Safran Foer home from a grocery run one afternoon, Hachette. PB. Was $32.99 Mary Gaitskill Hamish Hamilton. PB. Was $32.99 Wendell discovers eighty-three-year-old $27.99 Serpent’s Tail. PB. $29.99 $27.99 Frank lying in their vegetable garden. Their Available now Available 1 September Available 19 September secret life together is in danger of exposure. Cora is a slave on a Recovering alcoholic This is the story of a This is one gorgeously written novel. I cotton plantation in Ginger can’t have a baby fracturing family in a cannot tell you how many times I re-read Georgia, an outcast even of her own – so she and moment of crisis. Over the paragraphs aloud just to actually hear their among her fellow her husband sign up to an course of three weeks in composition. It’s so refreshing to read a Africans. Caesar, a organisation that sends present-day Washington love story about two older men, especially recent arrival from poor inner-city kids to DC, three sons watch their when it’s a relationship that has spanned Virginia, tells her about stay with country parents’ marriage falter years in the shadows. Being a gay man in the Underground families. That’s how and their family home fall my forties in a committed relationship for Railroad, and they plot Velveteen Vargas, an apart. Meanwhile, a larger catastrophe the last fifteen years, this struck a chord their escape – but eleven-year-old Dominican girl from one of engulfs another part of the world: a massive with me even though I came of age in a matters do not go as planned. As Cora Brooklyn’s toughest neighbourhoods, arrives earthquake devastates the Middle East, time after gay lib. This is not a political encounters different worlds at each stage of in their lives. Ginger is instantly besotted, sparking a pan-Arab invasion of Israel. READINGS MONTHLY SEPTEMBER 2016 9

With global upheaval in the background protestors, gentrifiers, karaoke bars, house and domestic collapse in the foreground, parties and cultish self-help seminars, Jonathan Safran Foer explores the true washing up in each other’s lives once again. September’s To-Read List meaning of home. HARMLESS LIKE YOU A MANUAL FOR Rowan Hisayo Buchanan CLEANING WOMEN John Murray. PB. $32.99 Lucia Berlin Available 30 August Picador. PB. $19.99 Written in startlingly Available 13 September beautiful prose, Harmless The stories in A Manual for Like You is set across New Cleaning Women make for York, Berlin and one of the most remarkable Connecticut, following the unsung collections in stories of Yuki Oyama, a twentieth-century Japanese girl fighting to American fiction. With make it as an artist, and extraordinary honesty and Yuki’s son Jay who, as an adult in the magnetism, Lucia Berlin present day, is forced to confront his Told from a perspective unlike any other, Sapiens showed us where we came from. invites us into her rich, itinerant life: the mother who abandoned him when he was Nutshell is a classic tale of murder and Homo Deus shows us where we’re going. drink and the mess and the pain and the only two years old. An unforgettable novel about the complexities of identity, art, deceit from one of the world’s master beauty and the moments of surprise and of storytellers. grace. Her voice is uniquely witty, anarchic adolescent friendships and familial bonds, and compassionate. A decade after her offering a unique exploration of love, death, Berlin is set to become the writer loneliness and reconciliation. everyone is talking about. THE SECRET DIARY OF THE NAKANO THRIFT SHOP HENDRIK GROEN, 83 1/4 Hiromi Kawakami YEARS OLD Portobello. PB. $27.99 Hendrik Groen Available 1 September Penguin. PB. $32.99 When Hitomi takes a Available 29 August job on the cash register Hendrik Groen may be of a neighbourhood old, but he is far from thrift store, she finds dead. So he sets out to herself drawn into a write an expose – a year very idiosyncratic in the life of his community – there’s the Amsterdam care home, The stories behind one of the world’s Ten years after the high-profile enigmatic ladies’ man revealing all its ups and worst sporting disasters: The night that kidnapping of two young boys, only with several ex-wives; downs. Holland’s fifteen young men of the Mornington one returns home... By the international his sister, the artist who never married; unlikeliest hero has Football Club would never make it home. number one bestselling author of Tell No and Hitomi’s shy but charming co-worker become a cultural phenomenon in his One and Fool Me Once. Takeo. As curios are bought and sold, each native Netherlands and now he and his one containing its own surprising story, famously anonymous creator are Hitomi and Takeo begin to fall for one conquering the globe. The Secret Diary of another – and find themselves in the Hendrik Groen will delight older readers centre of their own drama. with its wit and relevance, and will charm and inspire us all. SELECTION DAY Aravind Adiga THE WINTERLINGS Macmillan. PB. $29.99 Cristina Sanchez-Andrade Available 30 August Scribe. PB. $29.99 Fourteen-year-old Available 29 August Manju is good at cricket After a long absence, two – if not as good as his sisters return to the small elder brother Radha. He parish of Tierra de Chá in knows that he hates his Galicia, from which they Melina Marchetta’s gripping new novel The story of a fracturing family in a moment domineering and fled as children – but for Tell the Truth, Shame the Devil is part of crisis from the bestselling author of cricket-obsessed father, the local villagers, their family saga, part crime fiction, and wholly Everything Is Illuminated. admires his brilliantly return stirs up memories unputdownable. talented brother and is best left alone. When fascinated by CSI and news arrives that famous curious and interesting scientific facts. But American actress Ava Gardner is shooting a when Manju meets Radha’s great rival, a movie in Spain and that lookalikes are boy as privileged and confident as Manju wanted, the sisters have a chance to make is not, he is faced by decisions that will their dreams come true. But the family challenge both his sense of self and of the secrets that led to the Winterlings’ return world around him. won’t stay buried for long. PRIVATE CITIZENS DIRT ROAD Tony Tulathimutte James Kelman OneWorld. PB. $26.99 Canongate. PB. $29.99 Available 1 September Available 1 September Capturing the anxious, Music-obsessed teenager self-aware mood of the Murdo wishes for a life noughties, Private Citizens beyond his Scottish island The extraordinary true story of how an Australia’s favourite cricket writer on embraces the home, and dreams of ordinary Australian family took on the how one player – and his photograph – contradictions of our new becoming his own man. Egyptian government to get Peter Greste changed a sport and a nation. century. The novel’s four Tom, battered by loss, out of prison. whip-smart narrators – stumbles backwards idealistic Cory, Internet- towards the future, lurking Will, awkward Henrik, and vicious terrified of losing his dignity, his control, his Linda – are torn between fixing the world son and the last of his family life. Both are in and cannibalising it. In boisterous prose search of something new as they set out on that ricochets between humour and pain, an expedition into the American South. On the four estranged friends stagger through the road we discover whether the hopes of the Bay Area’s maze of tech startups, youth can conquer the fears of age. 10 READINGS MONTHLY SEPTEMBER 2016

New Crime Dead Write THE RULES OF BACKYARD ‘The bravest, CRICKET with Fiona Hardy Jock Serong most intrepid Text. PB. $29.99 and honest reporter Crime Book of the Month Available 29 August Jock Serong won last year’s who went where others TELL THE TRUTH SHAME THE DEVIL Ned Kelly Award for best didn’t dare’ Melina Marchetta debut crime novel for his Penguin. PB. Was $32.99 previous book Quota–and The Guardian $27.99 deservedly so, since it was Available 29 August an excellent book. His Like many readers, I’ve adored Melina Marchetta since my English lyrical prowess – laconically Australian, laced with no teacher issued Looking for Alibrandi as a Year 11 text and we all gleefully discussed it in class since all of us actually happily read it small amount of shrewdness and wit – shines instead of reading the study guide and bluffing our way through exams. again with The Rules of Backyard Cricket, Here, Marchetta has written her first novel for adults, and it’s a crime book – and nothing which opens with Darren Keefe tied up and could have prevented me from enjoying it. shot in the boot of a car, considering his fate Beginning near Calais, where a bus full of international students has been bombed, it as the Geelong Road spins out through the follows British ex-Chief Inspector Bish Ortley as he rushes headlong into Calais, in mortal hole in the tail light he watches it through. fear for the daughter, Bee, who was on that bus, even as he is still burning from grief over And so he considers how he got from scrappy the death of his son. Bee turns up – mostly fine, apart from what she has seen – but Bish kid playing endless backyard cricket with his realises another name on that bus is familiar. older brother Wally to shameless sporting celebrity and mischief-maker to a man clearly ‘Marchetta is a wonderful storyteller, with every interaction on his way to a fiery end in a burnt-out car. Seventies Australia is in its glorious, orange- important, thrilling, enjoyable or all of the above, and every tinted nostalgic best in Serong’s match- character gifted with such an honest, gloriously vivid life of their calloused hands, and Darren’s hapless own that reading the whole thing in a searing rush of pages in one suburban boy is recognisable as those you know personally or see in the media. And no, sitting is irresistible.’ you don’t have to know cricket to know that this is a winner. Violette LeBrac, sullen teenager and bomb survivor, is seventeen years old, and thirteen years ago her extended family was arrested for its part in a supermarket bombing that killed twenty-three people. Thirteen years ago, Bish was the one who took Violette from her DARKTOWN mother Noor’s desperate arms and placed her in care as Noor was jailed for life. The media Thomas Mullen immediately latches onto Violette and her family history, even though she’s been living Little, Brown. PB. $32.99 peacefully in Australia for years, but before anyone can prove anything, Violette and another Available 13 September student vanish. Bish is struggling enough with his own daughter when suddenly he has With the American fight for another teenager to worry about – but the deeper he delves into Violette’s whereabouts, the racial equality ongoing – more he realises that, even back then, his assumptions were clouded by judgement. especially in the current As the media and the public become more and more frenzied with sightings of Violette, climate of police even to the point of people engaging in violent acts towards anyone who looks remotely shootings – Darktown’s suspicious, Bish searches further for the truth – of what happened thirteen years ago; of devastation remains what kind of father, husband and police officer he became after his son’s death; and of what relevant, despite being set happened to get a bomb onto a bus of schoolkids. Marchetta is a wonderful storyteller, with some seventy years ago. In every interaction important, thrilling, enjoyable or all of the above, and every character Atlanta in 1948, the city has its own black gifted with such an honest, gloriously vivid life of their own that reading the whole thing in a police force, but the members are restrained searing rush of pages in one sitting is irresistible. by white authorities, unable to arrest white people or even drive a squad car, and are unable to enter the Atlanta Police Station, CLOSED CASKET: THE victim at this gathering … but who? Oh, instead reporting to the basement of a it’s just too wonderfully delicious. segregated YMCA. So when two of the cops NEW HERCULE POIROT in the black police force find a black woman MYSTERY THE JEALOUS KIND dead and the suspect is not only white but Sophie Hannah James Lee Burke also ex-police, they have to overcome the HarperCollins. PB. $29.99 bone-deep hatred and bigotry of those Orion. PB. Was $32.99 Available 6 September around them to find justice for her by toeing $27.99 I must confess that I the line and attempting to find allies in the glared rather frostily at The fitting end to the white police force that sees nothing in the the new Hercule Poirot loose trilogy that began systematic abuse of African-American mysteries written by with the Holland family suspects. This is a galling, brilliant, Sophie Hannah, in Wayfaring Stranger unmissable slice of fictional history, and one thinking they could not and Rising Sun, this that is all too factual. be as wonderful as instalment follows Agatha Christie’s divine seventeen-year-old NOTHING SHORT OF DYING Aaron Holland books –the ones that got Erik Storey Broussard as he makes me into crime fiction all those years ago, S&S. PB. $29.99 his way to adulthood in a 1952 that is less little yellowed books I picked up from Available 1 September polka-dots-and-milkshakes and more markets and school fairs. And yet, picking Like a hard whiskey on a mobsters-and-mayhem. Houston at that this up, I was utterly entranced – here soft summer night, this is time is a brutal place: the murder capital of were all the trappings of a Christie book: the type of book sharp and the world, a place steeped in violence and oversized estate, weeping servants, a edgy enough to give you a one that Burke (who would also have been great old mix of extravagantly named paper cut and tough enough seventeen in 1952) knows well. characters thrown into rooms to out- that you won’t even After he’s involved in an altercation at scandalise each other with witty and whimper and look for a a drive-in while defending a girl in a fight caustic repartee as Poirot sits quietly in a bandaid. Clyde Barr is fresh with rich local thug, Grady Harrelson, corner letting his little grey cells do all outta jail and sixteen years out of the Aaron finds that confrontation can lead to the work for him. Here, Poirot and Colorado town he grew up in, but when he dire consequences for everyone he loves. Inspector Edward Catchpool are called to gets a call from his sister, Jen, asking for help, That’s a brief summary that can’t give much the grand home of children’s author Lady there’s nothing he can do but say yes. Back away, but Pulitzer-nominated Burke has a Athelinda Playford, who declares to her home he goes, and it’s just one solid night’s glorious sense of prose and here the harsh family that she’s changing her will – sleep in a hotel before he’s being chased by realities of youth in a dark place are set leaving her vast estate to her dying criminals – well, criminals worse than he – in the foreground against the onset of the secretary instead of her two children. But along with a bartender named Allie, and he’s Korean War and the bitter results of WWII why, if she will outlive him, would she do on his way to save the sister who once saved trauma, while Burke’s razor-sharp dialogue such a thing? It becomes increasingly him. This is a fast and dirty thriller and you’ll and flawlessly flawed characters all meet in apparent that someone will become a enjoy every damn page of it. a perfect storm of literature. READINGS MONTHLY FATHER'S DAY SEPTEMBER 2016

SELECTION DAY A BEAUTIFUL YOUNG Aravind Adiga WIFE Macmillan. PB. $29.99 Tommy Wieringa Available 30 August Scribe. PB. $19.99 Fourteen-year-old Manju is good Available now at cricket – if not as good as his Edward Landauer, a brilliant brilliantly talented brother Radha – microbiologist in his forties, meets and is fascinated by science and a beautiful young woman. When forensics. But when Manju meets Edward and Ruth marry, Edward is Radha’s great rival, a boy as privileged the happiest man in the world. But Fiction and confident as Manju is not, he faces after the birth of their long-awaited decisions that will challenge his sense son, Edward no longer recognises his of self and of the world around him. great romance or his wife. DEAR MR M Herman Koch Text. PB. $29.99 BRIGHT, PRECIOUS DAYS COMMONWEALTH Available 29 August Jay McInerney Ann Patchett From various perspectives, Herman Bloomsbury. PB. $29.99 Bloomsbury. PB. Was $29.99 Koch tells the dark tale of a writer in Available 24 August $26.99 decline, a teenage couple in love, a In 2008 Russell clings to the illusion Available 8 September missing teacher, and a single book that of downtown bohemia in New York, In 1964 Bert Cousins, the deputy entwines all their fates. Thanks to this while Corrine longs for more space district attorney, shows up at Franny book, a work of fiction based on a real- for their twins. When a friend’s Keating’s christening party, uninvited life disappearance, everyone seems posthumous, autobiographical novel and drunk. When Bert kisses Franny’s to be linked forever, until something garners a cult following, the memory mother, the two families are joined unexpected spins the ‘story’ off its rails. of their friend begins to haunt the in a tragic spiral. In 1988, Franny couple, and their marriage feels recounts her family’s story to her idol, increasingly unstable. NUTSHELL a famous author, with unexpected and wide-reaching ramifications. Ian McEwan Jonathan Cape. HB. Was $32.99 NEVERNIGHT $27.99 Jay Kristoff THE WINDY SEASON Available 29 August HarperCollins. PB. $29.99 Sam Carmody Trudy has betrayed her husband, Available now A&U. PB. $29.99 John. She’s still in their priceless In a land where three suns almost Available now London marital home, but she’s there never set, Mia, daughter of an A young fisherman is missing from a with John’s brother, the profoundly executed traitor with a gift for small West Australian town and Paul, banal Claude, and the two of them speaking to shadows, joins a school of his younger brother, is the only one have a plan. But there is a witness assassins and seeks vengeance against who seems to be actively searching. to their plot: the inquisitive, nine- those who destroyed her family. Taking Elliot’s place on the crayfish month-old resident of Trudy’s womb. Treachery and trials await her, and boats, Paul soon learns how many Nutshell is a classic tale of murder to fail is to die. But if she survives to opportunities there are to disappear on and deceit from a master storyteller. initiation, Mia will be one step closer the vast and lonely coastline. A vividly to the only thing she desires. Australian story of an inhospitable town and its residents. SEEING THE ELEPHANT Portland Jones TRULY MADLY GUILTY Margaret River Press. PB. $24 Liane Moriarty THE MIDNIGHT WATCH Available now Macmillan. PB. Was $32.99 David Dyer A poignant story of the relationship $27.99 Hamish Hamilton. PB. $32.99 between Frank Stevens, an Australian Available now Available now soldier sent to the Vietnamese Six responsible adults. Three cute On a wretchedly cold night in the highlands to recruit and train local kids. One yapping dog. It was just North Atlantic, a steamer stopped in tribes, and his Vietnamese translator, an ordinary backyard barbecue on a an icefield sees distress rockets on Minh. Nearly fifty years after the Sunday afternoon. They were friends the horizon. Why did the midnight war, Minh, now living in Australia of friends. They could so easily have watchman of the SS Californian, and seriously ill, remembers the said no. But Clementine and her Herbert Stone, look on while experiences they shared and discovers husband Sam can never change what the Titanic sank? Reporter John that even amongst his traumatic they did and didn’t do that beautiful Steadman knows there’s another memories, there is consolation and joy. winter’s day. story lurking behind the official one.

THE SALAMANDERS THE TOYMAKER MUSIC AND FREEDOM William Lane Liam Pieper Zoë Morrison Transit Lounge. PB. $29.95 Hamish Hamilton. PB. Was $29.99 Vintage. PB. $32.99 Available now $26.99 Available now Arthur lives in a hut by the Hawkesbury Adam Kulakov likes his life. His toy A prodigious piano talent, Alice River, the detritus of suburban life company brightens the lives of millions Murray is sent from her rural gradually encroaching. When Rosie, the of children, and fulfils the vision of Australian home to a boarding school adopted daughter of his father’s second his grandfather, Arkady, a survivor in the bleak north of England. Years wife, returns from England to visit, of Auschwitz reaching the end of his later, she meets Edward, an Oxford their time together raises childhood life. As the past reaches for Arkady, economics professor who sweeps her memories of their father Peregrine, a a mistake threatens to bring Adam’s off her feet. But Edward is damaged, famous and controversial artist, and world tumbling down and upend and she’s trapped. She clings to her what happened at a holiday by the everything the Kulakov family think playing and to her dream of becoming ocean years ago. they know of the world. a concert pianist until disaster strikes. READINGS MONTHLY FATHER'S DAY SEPTEMBER 2016

Crime Fiction Politics & Australian Studies

THE BLACK WIDOW ERROR AUSTRALIS YIJARNI Daniel Silva Ben Pobjie Erika Charola & Felicity HarperCollins. PB. Was $32.99 Affirm Press. PB. $29.99 Meakins (eds) $27.99 Available now Aboriginal Studies Press. PB. $39.95 Available now As a country obsessed by reality Available 1 September Art restorer and spy Gabriel Allon is television, it’s easy to neglect the In 1966, approximately 200 Gurindji about to become the chief of Israel’s reality of our nation and how it came stockmen and their families walked secret service. But on the eve of his to be. TV columnist, comedian and off Wave Hill Station in the Northern promotion, events lure him into history buff Ben Pobjie recaps the Territory, driven by poor treatment of the field for one final operation. history of Australia. From a small Aboriginal workers, decades of killings, ISIS has detonated a massive bomb patch of rapidly cooling rock to one stolen children and other abuses by in the Marais district of Paris, and of the modern-day major powers of early colonists. Told in both English a desperate French government the sub-Asian super-Antarctic next- and Gurindji, these compelling and wants Gabriel to eliminate the man to-Africa region, Pobjie provides a detailed oral accounts are a fascinating responsible before he can strike again. visceral, and often hilarious, sense and challenging record of the frontier of our nation’s defining events. battles and the Stolen Generations. WATCHING EDIE Camilla Way THE TURNBULL THE GAME OF THEIR HarperCollins. PB. $29.99 GAMBLE LIVES Available now Wayne Errington & Peter Van Nick Richardson Onselen Beautiful, creative, a little wild – Macmillan. PB. $34.99 Edie caused a stir when she walked MUP. PB. $29.99 Available now Available 8 September into Heather’s life. Back when they As the Great War raged in 1916, two both had dreams and before it all Malcolm Turnbull leads a party whose teams of Australian soldiers played went terrifyingly wrong. Years culture he doesn’t exactly share. an Australian Rules football match in later, Edie is pregnant and alone, After achieving his lifelong dream of London. More than just an exhibition desperately trying to rebuild her becoming prime minister, his ambitions match , it also reflected sport’s role life. But someone’s been watching in the role are unclear. While the in driving young athletes to enlist. her, waiting for the chance to prove narrow election win may have justified Now, 100 years on, Nick Richardson what a perfect friend she can be. the gamble to place him in office, does rekindles an incredible moment in our Turnbull have the leadership qualities history and pays tribute to the men THE GIRL IN GREEN to break the cycle of division and who played the game of their lives. instability of the last decade? Derek B. Miller Scribe. PB. Was $32.99 THE NEW RUSSIA WHAT A TIME TO BE $27.99 Mikhail Gorbachev ALIVE Available now Wiley. HB. Was $49.95 Mark Di Stefano British journalist Thomas Benton $44.95 MUP. PB. $27.99 hasn’t seen disgraced US army Available now Available 1 September soldier Arwood Hobbes since In this new work, Russia’s elder Desert Storm, where a girl in a Buzzfeed’s Mark Di Stefano reveals a statesman Mikhail Gorbachev green dress died in Arwood’s arms. diary of the 2016 election campaign and draws on his wealth of knowledge 22 years later, a new coalition has shows how an Australian election is and experience to critique the left behind another post-war Iraq, made. Taking you into the bizarre world performance and motives of the Putin and a video has gone viral. A video of staged photo-ops, booze-drenched regime, as well as wider problems in of a mortar attack in Kurdistan regrets and dirty direct messages, Di the region and the world. The New that, astonishingly, may have killed Stefano uncovers how the campaigns Russia stands as a testament to one the girl in green again. manufacture, massage and manipulate of the greatest and most influential their parties, policies and principles. statesmen of the twentieth century. THE RULES OF BACKYARD CRICKET THE GREAT MULTI- CONVICT TATTOOS NATIONAL TAX RORT Jock Serong Simon Barnard Martin Feil Text. PB. $29.99 Text. HB. $39.99 Scribe. PB. $32.99 Available 29 August Available 29 August Available 29 August Darren has two big talents: cricket Australian convicts were possibly the and trouble. No surprise, then, that Tax avoidance is legal, but its abuse world’s most heavily tattooed English- he becomes an Australian sporting by multinational corporations speaking people of the nineteenth star of the bad-boy variety, one around the world has had a century. Each convict’s details, tattoos who can seemingly get away with devastating effect on governments included, were recorded when they anything – until the day we meet and honest local competitors – as disembarked. Simon Barnard has him, middle-aged, in the boot of a well as individual taxpayers. Martin meticulously combed through those car: gagged, cable-tied, a bullet in Feil’s exposé is a call to action for records to explore various aspects of his knee. Everything seems to point citizens and governments to restore tattooing, from symbolism to inking towards a shallow grave. a fair taxation system. methods, to their use as a means of identification and defiance. BLACK TEETH MOMENTS IN TIME Zane Lovitt Jim Davidson THE 15:17 TO PARIS Text. PB. $29.99 NLA. PB. $44.99 Anthony Sadler, Alek Available now Available now Skarlatos, Spencer Stone, Jason Ginaff works at home, Old postcards have an immediacy & Jeffrey E. Stern researching people on the internet – about them that is striking: they give Text. PB. $29.99 job candidates doing bucket bongs on us a glimpse of another life, another Available 29 August Instagram, the prospective new head time. Among the 300 postcards in this On 21 August 2015, an ISIS terrorist of sales stripping for a hens’ night. book, most from the late 1880s to the boarded a train in Brussels bound He’s been searching for something 1950s, there are postcards of just about for Paris with an AK-47, a pistol, a on his own time, too – the phone everything – war and peace, disasters box cutter, and enough ammunition number of the man he believes to be and celebrations, holidays and home to obliterate the 554 passengers on his father. Rudy Alamein is looking life, rural and city living, love for the the crowded train. But his attack was for the same man – the difference Old Country and pride in Australia. foiled by three American friends. being, Rudy wants to kill him. This is their extraordinary story. READINGS MONTHLY FATHER'S DAY SEPTEMBER 2016

DARK MONEY THE BARBER BOOK THE SUMMER OF ’82 Jane Mayer Phaidon Dave O’Neil Scribe. PB. $35 Phaidon. HB. $29.95 Nero. PB. Was $29.99 Available now Available now $26.99 America is in an age of profound A fun guide to the most popular Available now economic inequality. Employee men’s hairstyles of the 20th century, Do you remember finishing your last protections have been decimated, including instructive line drawings to Year 12 exam, waiting for your results? and state welfare is virtually non- achieve the ‘total look’. With a focus Forming a band, fighting skinheads, existent, while billionaires and big on the personalities, cultures, fashions making a bomb and getting arrested? businesses make astounding profits at and events that inspired each look, The Or did all this only happen to Dave the expense of the environment and of Barber Book also includes a directory O’Neil? That’s what this book is their workers. Investigative journalist of the world’s finest barber shops. about – 10 weeks stuck in limbo in the Jane Mayer exposes the network summer of ’82, and a hilarious and of billionaires trying to buy the US PLANTING DREAMS heartfelt journey of a boy becoming a electoral system – and succeeding. man in suburban Australia. Richard Aitken NewSouth. HB. $49.99 TRILLION DOLLAR Available 1 September THE GIRL WITH THE BABY Planting Dreams celebrates the artists LOWER-BACK TATTOO Paul Cleary and imaginations that have shaped Amy Schumer Black Inc. PB. $27.99 Australian gardens. Respected garden HarperCollins. HB. Was $29.99 Available 29 August historian Richard Aitken explores the $24.99 For most of its history, Norway environmental and social influences Available now eked out a marginal existence from that have helped to produce our She’s provocative and original and fishing, forestry and shipping. But unique gardening culture. so is her memoir – Amy Schumer since 1969, when the country found can’t see a limit without pushing it. one of the world’s biggest offshore THE MUSIC THAT Covering everything from losing her oilfields, Norway has taken a non- MATON MADE virginity to abusive relationships, renewable resource and turned it from make-up to the non-negotiable into a financial asset that can last Andrew McUtchen, Jeff Jenkins & Barry Divola necessity of orgasms during sex, Amy for generations to come. This is the goes there. story of how they did it. Scribe. HB. $75 Available now EVATT WHERE ARE OUR From Bill May’s backyard workshop John Murphy BOYS? on the outskirts of Melbourne to the favoured instrument of Elvis NewSouth. HB. Was $49.99 Martin Woods Presley and the Rolling Stones, the $44.99 NLA. PB. $49.99 Maton guitar is an inspiring success Available 1 September Available now story. Published to coincide with Even decades after this death, HV In 1914, newspapers supplied daily Maton’s 70th anniversary, this is a ‘Bert’ Evatt remains a polarising maps to explain the progress of the comprehensive tribute to a guitar figure. Many in Labor still consider Great War to the public at home. For range loved around the world. him the man who ‘split the party’. every campaign and battle, these Looking at Evatt’s personal life maps conveyed a semi-fictional war MEN AND THEIR SHEDS as well as his controversial and story of Australian and Allied exploits Craig Wetjen eventually tragic public career, John abroad. Martin Woods tells the story Murphy pieces together some of the of these maps – sometimes beautiful, Echo. HB. $45 puzzles that have lead Evatt to be sometimes misleading – and how they Available now considered erratic, even mad. helped to convey the conflict and the Intricate and illuminating, these immense human costs of war. photographs showcase the private relationship between a man and his BRETT WHITELEY: THE CHASER’S shed. Photographer Craig Wetjen ART, LIFE AND THE AUSTRALIA travelled thousands of kilometres OTHER THING and discovered that as well as being Ashleigh Wilson The Chaser places for tinkering and repurposing, Text. HB. Was $49.99 Black Inc. PB. $24.99 some sheds hold treasures and are $44.99 Available now museum pieces in their own right. Available now The Chaser’s Australia is a comprehensive guide to everything Arguably Australia’s most celebrated that makes Australia one of the top artist, Brett Whiteley won the 196 countries in the world today. Biography Archibald, Wynne and Sulman Featuring fewer verifiable facts than prizes in the same year – his prices Wikipedia, but still more accurate FINDING A WAY soared, as did his fame. Yet addiction took its toll, and an inglorious end than an Andrew Bolt column, Graeme Innes The Chaser’s Australia includes approached. Handsomely illustrated, UQP. PB. $29.95 everything you thought you wanted this dazzling biography reveals for Available now to know about Australia, but didn’t. the first time the full portrait of a Blind from birth, Graeme Innes was mercurial artist. blessed with a family who instilled a belief in his own abilities and the PABLO ESCOBAR: determination to persevere. After MY FATHER General Interest a long and successful career – from lawyer to company director to Human Juan Pablo Escobar RISE OF THE Rights Commissioner – he shares Ebury. PB. $35 MACHINES his story of challenges, failures, and Available 29 August Thomas Rid overcoming discrimination. When infamous drug lord Pablo Scribe. PB. $35 Escobar died, his then teenage son Available now THE GOOD COP vowed revenge, but later denounced his father’s violent legacy. My As lives offline and online merge even Justine Ford Father is the intimate story of a man more, it is easy to forget how we got Macmillan. PB. $34.99 who was celebrated by some as a here. Rise of the Machines reclaims Available now benevolent Robin Hood figure and by the spectacular story of cybernetics, Part biography, part true-crime, part others as the dangerous leader of the a control theory of man-and-machine thriller, The Good Cop tells the story most ruthless mafia organisation in and one of the 20th century’s pivotal of veteran homicide detective Ron human history. ideas. Drawing on interviews with Iddles’ incredible life in crime. From hippies, anarchists, sleuths, and spies, his working methods and instinct for this is a revealing insight into our human behaviour to his determination anxious embrace of technology. to make good out of bad, his quest for a safe society is clear. READINGS MONTHLY FATHER'S DAY SEPTEMBER 2016

HALLIDAY WINE CHAMPIONS ALL Food & Wine COMPANION 2017 Matt Zurbo James Halliday Echo. PB. $32.95 ALIMENTARI Hardie Grant. PB. Was $39.99 Available 1 September Linda Malcolm & Paul Jones $33.99 Champions All is a warts-and-all look Hardie Grant. HB. Was $39.99 Available now into the inner workings of Australian $33.99 Keenly anticipated each year by Rules football from the 1940s to now, Available now winemakers, collectors and wine told through stories big and small. Over 170 of footy’s greatest players and ‘Alimentari’ means ‘good food and lovers, the Halliday Wine Companion coaches, cult heroes and characters camaraderie’ – and that is just what remains the industry benchmark for share their life stories and the stories of is celebrated at this cult Melbourne Australian wine. In his inimitable their teams, teammates and times. cafe. Like having your favourite café style, James Halliday shares detailed at home, this book shares the secrets tasting notes, vintage-specific ratings of their best recipes: perfect for easy and details, and information about COMEBACK weeknight dinners, entertaining with wineries and winemakers. James Button friends, and lazy breakfasts. MUP. PB. $29.99 Available 29 August NEIGHBOURHOOD As a boy, James Button fell in love Hetty McKinnon Travel with the Geelong Football Club. But Plum. PB. Was $39.99 as the years wore on and the defeats $32.99 SHANNON mounted, it became clear his team BENNETT’S would never win a flag. Comeback Available 30 August LONDON tells the story of his glorious mistake Hetty McKinnon is back with a second and Geelong’s resurgence, and reveals cookbook that is as sure to delight as Shannon Bennett why so many of us are gripped by an These salad and dessert Hardie Grant. HB. $49.99 Community. unreasonable passion for the game. recipes are inspired by many different Available now places around the world – from Acclaimed chef and restaurateur Brooklyn to the Mediterranean, Asia, Shannon Bennett and travel writer THE PETER THOMSON Australia and more. Scott Murray compare their FIVE experiences of London from boutique Tony Walker, Peter Thomson MILK. MADE. hotels to fine-dining restaurants MUP. PB. $45 and hip eateries. The result is an Nick Haddow Available now entertaining guidebook to the city. Hardie Grant. HB. $55 Peter Thomson won five golf Open Available now Championships – an extraordinary THE SHEPHERD’S LIFE feat. On the 50th anniversary of his last Milk.Made. is a comprehensive tour Open Championship, Thomson talks of the art of cheesemaking and eating. James Rebanks about his life and golf in this beautifully Including interviews with cheesemakers Penguin. PB. $24.99 illustrated memoir which includes and over 60 comprehensive recipes, Available now photos from his own scrapbook and Milk.Made. covers everything you need The first son of a shepherd, who was maps of the greens he played on. to know about buying, storing, serving the first son of a shepherd himself, and cooking with cheese. James Rebanks and his family have lived and worked in and around BOOMER MY YEAR the Lake District for generations. Brent Harvey WITHOUT MEAT In evocative and lucid prose, James Macmillan. PB. $34.99 takes us through a shepherd’s year, Available now Richard Cornish offering a unique account of rural They told Brent Harvey he was too MUP. PB. $29.99 life and a fundamental and intimate small to make the big time – yet Available now connection with the land. in 2016, the pocket rocket known When self-confessed meat addict affectionately as ‘Boomer’ broke the Richard Cornish decided to give up GHOST EMPIRE all-time games record. Over 21 seasons eating meat for a year, he uncovered Richard Fidler with North Melbourne, Boomer has some surprising truths about what seen it all – this autobiography not it means to eat meat today. ABC. HB. Was $39.99 My Year only captures a one-club man and AFL is a fascinating and $34.99 Without Meat legend but also takes us deep inside one hilarious journey that will change the Available now of the oldest footy clubs in Australia. way you see your food and prepare In 2014, Richard Fidler and his son, your evening meal. Joe, made a journey to Istanbul. Fired by Richard’s passion for the rich FIFTEEN YOUNG MEN RECIPES FROM THE history of the dazzling Byzantine Paul Kennedy WOODS Empire, we are swept into some of the Heinemann. PB. $34.99 most extraordinary tales in history. Available 29 August Jean-Francois Mallet Ghost Empire is a beautifully written On a cold, cruelly blustery night in 1892, Phaidon. HB. $59.95 ode to a lost civilisation, and a father– a maritime tragedy meant that fifteen Available 19 September son adventure far from home. young men of the Mornington Football Respected French chef and writer Club would never make it home. Paul Jean-Francois Mallet shares 100 Kennedy reveals the stories behind delicious recipes featuring game and the tragedy and the trauma of families foraged ingredients. From sautéed Sport & Recreation and friends, but also the irrepressible venison with port and chestnuts to optimism, love and resilience that would stuffed partridge with kale, these come to define a budding nation. beautifully illustrated dishes show HOLDEN the pleasures of cooking game and Will Hagon & Toby Hagon wild foods at home. Macmillan. HB. $59.99 BOMBER Available 30 August Mark Thompson, Martin Blake THE GREAT AUSTRALIAN When Holden announced it would Michael Joseph. HB. $45 BEER GUIDE stop building cars in Australia, a four- Available now wheeled heartbeat stopped. Holden James Smith Mark Thompson has had more than was Australia’s car, and there was a his fair share of challenges and dramas Hardie Grant. HB. $29.99 connection to the brand, its cars and its in his career. After 34 years as a player Available now place in shaping our culture. Lavishly and coach, Thompson has taken the No matter how much you know about illustrated with never-before-seen opportunity to reflect on the game that beer or what you like to drink, the photos, artwork, and sketches from the shaped him and to reveal the personal 2017 edition of The Great Australian Holden archive, this book follows the cost of his involvement at the top level. Beer Guide is sure to please your rise and fall of a nation’s car. His legacy is some of the greatest footy palate. Join beer expert James Smith to be played in the modern era. in his never-ending quest to discover Australia’s best breweries and beers. READINGS MONTHLY SEPTEMBER 2016 15

New Nonfiction multinationals and their accounting Kennedy reveals the stories behind the practices. This book was written before the tragedy, capturing the trauma of families release of the Panama papers, however Feil and friends suffering almost unbearable Book of the Month mentions in the preface that these loss, but also the irrepressible optimism, documents exposed tax evasion and love and resilience that would come to GRANT & I avoidance by wealthy individuals and his define a budding nation. Robert Forster book is about the tax minimisation strategies of multinational corporations which he Viking. PB. Was $35 ATOMIC THUNDER: THE argues is a far greater problem. $29.99 MARALINGA STORY One of the main tactics used by Available 24 August Elizabeth Tynan corporations is called ‘transfer pricing’, a NewSouth. PB. $34.99 As Robert Forster tells it near the end of his affecting, up-tempo mechanism that allows parent companies Available 1 September memoir, the decision to write Grant & I was not his. The (who have little responsibility to pay tax In 1950, prime minister morning after his death by heart attack in 2006, aged 48, the voice of anywhere as they are ‘multinational’) to Robert Menzies blithely Grant McLennan – co-founder, with Forster, of the beloved Australian overcharge their subsidiaries (who do have agreed to British atomic rock band The Go-Betweens – rung out in his bandmate’s head, telling him: ‘Put to paper an obligation to pay tax in the country in tests that that wreaked everything that happened to us, write our adventures down’. which they’re operating) for goods and havoc on Indigenous A lyricist par excellence, known for peppering his songs with the fittings of his life, it’s services in order to minimise their profits communities and turned only to be expected that Forster should apply a twist of poetic license to this momentous on paper and therefore reduce their tax bill. the land into a radioactive event; think of it as a final act of self-mythology from a band who put it on almost-equal Feil calls this the ‘global multinational crisis’ wasteland – and left the footing with the crafting of their ingenious, infectious pop and rock and roll songs. (GMC) and he asserts it is having far more public completely in the dark. This book is destructive consequences than the global a comprehensive account of the whole saga, ‘We get Forster as drolly eloquent observer to his own life, financial crisis. from the time that the explosive potential McLennan the unquiet heart of it all.’ This is such an important topic but of splitting uranium atoms was discovered, one that can be difficult for the lay reader to the uncovering of the extensive secrecy Considering the high concentration of red-letter episodes in Forster’s story, he is to be to engage with. I would have liked more regime many years after the British had admired for the way he cuts through much of the lore surrounding himself and the group; anecdotes, Feil’s writing comes alive when departed, leaving an unholy mess behind. nowhere to be found is the po-mo legerdemain of his hero Bob Dylan’s slippery Chronicles. he turns to personal anecdote and I wanted Instead, we get Forster as drolly eloquent observer to his own life, McLennan the unquiet more of these. I would have also liked QUARTERLY ESSAY 63, heart of it all. Even when life sees them pulled in different directions – both artistically and more devil’s advocate arguments, Feil puts geographically – the man he first met at 17 in an undergraduate literary studies classroom everything down to greed and I think many ENEMY WITHIN: is never far from centre frame. would argue that it’s more complicated AMERICAN POLITICS IN The current vogue for all things of 1980s vintage makes Forster’s long-gestating than that. Having said that, the Australian THE TIME OF TRUMP memoir well-timed. Key episodes detail Forster’s time of impoverished squat living in focus of this book is a great help for relating Don Watson ’80s London with then-girlfriend Lindy Morrison, drummer in the band’s classic line- to some of the more difficult economic Black Inc. PB. $22.99 up, as part of the same exodus of Australian post-punk bands that saw The Moodists, concepts, and Feil also explores our trading Available 5 September The Triffids and The Birthday Party all vying to crack the lucrative UK and European history and lays out some solutions for Don Watson takes a markets. The move would briefly position The Go-Betweens as label-mates to a young the future. Ultimately Feil concludes that band on the ascendant named The Smiths, a group whose meteoric success stands in memorable journey into the corporate tax is a social justice issue and heart of the United stark contrast to The Go-Betweens’ career of near misses and thwarted ambitions, ‘transfer pricing has become the global frustrations attended by withering financial implications. States – and the strangest monster that threatens the social fabric of election campaign that It’s startling to read of this now justly revered group hopping embarrassingly from label the entire world’. Scary stuff, but writing a to label through no apparent fault of their own. Of course, due credit caught up with the country has seen. Watson book that shines a light on this hidden world reflects on the rise of The Go-Betweens, slowly accreting both internationally and at home. As Forster outlines is certainly a step in the right direction. amid a fond recollection of the day he pitched the band’s name to McLennan, he attended Donald Trump and finds a deeply fearful Kara Nicholson is from Readings Carlton the opening of Go Between Bridge in their native Brisbane in 2010. and divided culture. He explores alternate As a survey of a sui generis career, as a glimpse into the formation and working methods futures – from Trump-style fascism to of a superlative songwriter, and as an ultimately poignant chronicle of a friendship, Grant & THE 15:17 TO PARIS Sanders-style civic renewal – and suggests a I weaves a memorable story with wit, art and heart. Not unlike a Go-Betweens song. Anthony Sadler, Alek Skarlatos, Clinton presidency might see a new Spencer Stone, & Jeffrey E. Stern American blend of progressivism and Gerard Elson is from Readings St Kilda Text. PB. $32.99 militarism. Enemy Within is an eloquent, Available 29 August barbed look at the state of the union and the resources boom and turn from a nation in On 21 August 2015, an ISIS American malaise. Politics debt to most of Europe to one of Europe’s terrorist boarded a train in creditors within a generation. Brussels bound for Paris THE DEATH OF HOLDEN TRILLION DOLLAR BABY An unexpected pleasure of Trillion with an AK-47, a pistol, a Royce Kurmelovs Dollar Baby is the diversion into the world of box cutter, and enough Hachette. PB. $32.99 Paul Cleary deep sea diving. A thrilling story of human ammunition to obliterate Available 30 August Black Inc. PB. $27.99 adventure in the treacherous North Sea, the 554 passengers on the When Holden announced Available 1 September Cleary evokes the frontier adventure of crowded train. But his the closure of its Adelaide Norway’s discovery individual divers working at the edge of attack was foiled three American friends – factory, it struck at the and development of existing technology and human endurance. Anthony Sadler, Alek Skarlatos and Spencer very heart of Australian huge oil reserves in the This poignant chapter on the human Stone. The 15:17 to Paris is the story of what identity. How could a car North Sea has led to the cost of oil exploration and development compelled three lifelong friends to run that was so beloved – and creation of the largest unexpectedly brought me to tears. towards danger instead of from it – towards so popular – be so sovereign wealth fund in It is in finding this balance of human story humanity, not away from terror. unprofitable to make? The the world. In contrast, and clearly articulated economic and fiscal story of Holden’s collapse is about patriotic Australia’s resource boom description that Cleary succeeds in creating revheads and suburban drivers; it’s about has been met with the growth of national the compelling tale of how Norway beat the Australian Studies sustaining industry in Australia; it’s about debt. While Australia’s growth in debt has oil giants and won a lasting fortune. communities of workers and what happens been the more familiar story among resource- Marie Matteson is from Readings Carlton when the work dries up. It’s about what rich developed countries, in Trillion Dollar FIFTEEN YOUNG MEN: AUSTRALIA’S UNTOLD happens when an icon falls to its knees in Baby, Cleary seeks to elucidate how Norway THE GREAT front of a whole nation. managed to avoid the resource curse. FOOTBALL TRAGEDY MULTINATIONAL TAX Quickly realising that it would have only Paul Kennedy 1787 one chance to gain from this non-renewable RORT: HOW WE’RE ALL Heinemann. PB. $34.99 Nick Brodie bonanza, Norway swung into action with BEING ROBBED Available 29 August Hardie Grant. PB. $29.99 a firm taxation basis and direct investment Martin Feil On a cold, cruelly blustery Available 1 September into all areas of exploration, extraction, and Scribe. PB. $32.99 night in 1892, a maritime 1787 traces just how processing of petroleum. An unshakeable Available 29 August tragedy meant that fifteen public and governmental consensus that the ‘discovered’ the southern Having spent decades young men of the resources of Norway must be managed to the continent was before working for the Mornington Football Club benefit of the nation as a whole underpinned British colonisation – not Australian Taxation Office, would never make it Norwegian resource policy from the first only by the Indigenous the Customs department home. The catastrophe moments of oil exploration. Paul Cleary Australians who had and in private accounting was one of Australia’s energetically lays out the policy decisions and lived and prospered for firms, Martin Feil has a worst – yet somehow, for more than a the subsequent fiscal management decisions thousands of years, but true insider’s insight into century, this calamitous event slipped that enabled Norway to take control of its also the sailors, traders, fishermen and the murky world of from Australia’s consciousness. Paul many others who had visited our shores. 16 READINGS MONTHLY SEPTEMBER 2016

By charting the encounters between the talking about. provides such access, elucidating a world COMEBACK: THE FALL Portuguese, Dutch, Malay, French, and Chris Somerville is from Readings Carlton within the forest, whose social complexity, AND RISE OF GEELONG others with Australia and its original responsiveness and skill surpasses even the James Button people, 1787 shows Australia as a vast and most famously enchanted woods gifted to PLAY ALL: MUP. PB. $29.99 active land participating in a shared us in fiction. A BINGEWATCHER’S Available 29 August global history. With a reverence acquired throughout NOTEBOOK decades of forestry experience, As a boy, James Button fell in WHAT A TIME TO BE Clive James Wohlleben describes how trees keenly love with the Geelong ALIVE Yale. HB. $35.95 work toward the greater good of the Football Club. But as the years Available 15 August wore on and the defeats Mark Di Stefano forest, understanding the value that each Since serving as television mounted, it became clear: his MUP. PB. $27.99 member plays in maintaining an optimal columnist for the London team would never win a flag. Available 1 September environment for a pleasant and prosperous Observer from 1972 to 1982, life. From sharing food and labour, to Comeback tells the story of his This is the ugly and Clive James has witnessed a alerting their kinfolk to potential danger, glorious mistake. James interviews hundreds un-sanitised diary behind radical change in content, The Hidden Life of Trees delivers clear, of people to tell the story of how one footy the curtain of the 2016 format, and programming, substantiated examples of ways trees not club changed its culture, on and off the field, double dissolution and in the very manner in only adapt but teach, learn and help each and why so many of us are gripped by an election campaign – a poll which TV is watched. Here other out. Wohlleben takes pains to make unreasonable passion for the nation’s game. fought between two wildly he examines this unique cultural revolution, clear that the care trees demonstrate ambitious men who want providing a brilliant, eminently entertaining toward one another goes beyond a survival to win their first election, analysis of a television landscape profoundly mechanism. He ventures that trees even Philosophy whatever it takes. Documenting the daily altered by the advent of Netflix, Amazon, and seem to prioritise specific relationships – ride of an historic election campaign and other platforms, that have helped to usher in some of which are less than functional. taking you into the bizarre world of staged ETHICS IN THE REAL a golden age of unabashed binge-watching. Wohlleben’s forest portrait extends photo ops, booze-drenched regrets and WORLD beyond his barky muse, explicating both dirty direct messages, Buzzfeed’s Mark Di Peter Singer the cooperative and parasitic interspecific Stefano reveals how the two campaigns Text. PB. $32.99 History relationships trees share with other forest manufacture, massage and manipulate their Available 19 September inhabitants. From the fungi that help trees parties, policies and principles. In this book of brief essays, Peter HOMO DEUS: A BRIEF communicate (the ‘wood wide web’), to the rogue herds of ranging mammals that Singer applies his controversial HISTORY OF TOMORROW ways of thinking to issues like Cultural Studies can devastate a tree nursery, wiping out an Noah Yuval Harari entire generation in an event possibly akin climate change, sports doping, Harvill Secker. PB. $35 to a natural disaster for a tree community, the sale of kidneys, and the ethics KNOWN AND STRANGE Available 19 September the book provides insight into the intricacy of high-priced art. The collection THINGS Humans are the only species of a forest ecosystem, and a reminder that also includes some more personal reflections, and reiterates his case against the idea that all Teju Cole in Earth’s long history that nature, in her relentless pursuit of balance, has single-handedly changed human life is sacred, applying his arguments to Faber. PB. $29.99 can be a cruel mistress to sentiment. the entire planet, and we no some recent cases in the news. Provocative and Available 1 September By unveiling the potential magnitude longer expect any higher of sentience experienced by trees, the original, these essays will challenge, and The latest book from being to shape our destinies book drags up ‘the hard problem’ – possibly change your beliefs about a wide range Teju Cole is a for us. In this vivid, consciousness. Does personal mawkishness of real-world ethical questions. collection of essays, put out challenging new book, Yuval Noah Harari lead Wohlleben to anthropomorphise the over a number of years, examines the implications of our newly forest, or do the life-experiences of other from various magazines acquired divine capabilities, from our systems and communities often closely Science and loosely arranged into desperate pursuit of happiness to our dogged mirror our own? The rise of post-humanism three categories: reading, quest for immortality. He explores how coupled with a desperate ecological need seeing and travel. While it THE MATHEMATICS BOOK: Homo sapiens conquered the world, our for us to reprioritise the symbioses of would be easy to find the essays disjointed ANYONE CAN DO IT! current predicament and our possible futures. the natural world may find an audience no matter how they’ve been curated, there’s Helen Prochazka increasingly willing to consider that our an incredible amount of insight that builds Zenolith. HB. $59.95 THE BOOK own consciousness is not so exclusive. As and builds, and while they do move from Available now an added bonus for the despondent reader, cultural criticism to travelogue to memoir, Keith Houston seeing your own society reflected in the Finally, a mathematics book Cole’s essays are something much more WW Norton. HB. $42.95 communities of trees can throw a staggering that has been written interesting when they land in-between. Available now curveball at your existential crisis. Because especially for people who Starting off with a meditation on In an invitingly tactile history let’s be honest: who doesn’t see the life of have not found mathematics James Baldwin, Cole moves on to a range of this 2,000 year-old a tree as marvellous and worthy, simply easy. The Mathematics Book is of subjects, such as the collected poems medium, Keith Houston because it is? a unique and beautiful book of Derek Walcott, a visit to grave of WG follows the development of that blends a how-to guide with a lavishly Sebald, the music of Bach and Beyoncé, writing, printing, the art of Leanne Hermosilla is from Readings Carlton illustrated coffee table book created an interview with fellow writer Alexander illustrations, and binding to specifically for those who have not found Hemon, a meeting with VS Naipaul and show how we have moved learning mathematics easy or appealing. It a small consideration of the work of from cuneiform tablets and papyrus scrolls to Sport & Recreation guides through fractions, percentages, Australian composer Peter Sculthorpe. the hardcovers and paperbacks of today. Sure algebra, geometry, metric units and statistics For those familiar with Cole’s work to delight book lovers of all stripes with its PLAY ON! THE HIDDEN helping the student (young or old) develop lush, full-colour illustrations, gives this kind of erraticism is not a surprise. The Book HISTORY OF WOMEN’S confidence and master problems with more His fiction is filled with these kinds of us the momentous and surprising history than 2000 practice problems. diversions and meditations, and while the behind humanity’s most important – and AUSTRALIAN RULES range of subjects is definitely interesting, universal – information technology. FOOTBALL what’s much more illuminating, and to be Brunette Lenkic & Rob Hess Business honest more substantial in this book, is the Echo. PB. $32.95 opportunity to see the unfolding pattern of Natural History Available 1 September WHY THE FUTURE IS Cole’s thoughts. Women have been playing Talk of Derek Walcott’s use of metaphor THE HIDDEN Australian Rules football WORKLESS as a ‘fine surprise’ is later invoked in a book LIFE OF TREES for over a century – but Tim Dunlop review where metaphor is ‘a ferry for the Peter Wohlleben their stories have largely NewSouth. PB. $29.99 Available 1 September uncanny, a deployment of images so exact the Black Inc. PB. $29.99 been sidelined, ignored or ordinary becomes strange and the strange Available 13 September forgotten. Play On! is the The landscape of work is becomes familiar.’ A review of Julius Caesar first comprehensive changing right in front of us, My favourite contains a story about Abraham Lincoln history of women’s from Uber and Airbnb to childhood books predicting his own death in a dream. Australian Rules football and showcases the advanced artificial intelligence. were The Faraway Tree series by Enid When pushed on his own process, athleticism, hard work and resilience that The question isn’t whether Blyton. It was wondrous to imagine the Cole says that he finds the distinction has kept the women’s game alive. Discover robots will take our jobs, but lives of trees being full of feelings, thoughts between non-fiction and fiction ‘odd’ and how competitive women’s football began what we will do when they do? In this timely and relationships. I would trawl my that ‘painters know that everything is a with shop assistants at Perth department and provocative book, Tim Dunlop examines neighbourhood in search of my own combination of what’s observed, what’s stores, how female footballers supported the social and political ramifications of work adventure trees, certain of the mysterious imagined, what’s overheard and what’s soldiers in both world wars, and how a few throughout history and into the future and potentialities waiting in their woody been done before.’ In Known and Strange passionate women helped create leagues argues that by embracing the changes ahead boughs if only I could access them. In The things his gives us a glimmer of what he’s across Australia. we might find ourselves better off. Hidden Life of Trees, Peter Wohlleben READINGS MONTHLY SEPTEMBER 2016 17

Art & Design Food & Gardening

with Margaret Snowdon with Chris Gordon FINE JEWELRY COUTURE NEIGHBOURHOOD Oliver Dupon Hetty McKinnon T&H. HB. $80 Plum. PB. Was $39.99 Available 1 September $32.99 Design expert Oliver Available 30 August Dupon’s latest book has We fell in love with the most appealing cover Hetty McKinnon’s first design of the year, cookbook, Community. featuring a pink I’m not sure if it was cockatoo and matching her luscious salads, or brooch. The book is a the thought of her luxe survey of delivering said salads exquisitely crafted precious jewellery by to customers on her more than thirty-five master craftspeople bike. Perhaps it was simply her attitude of from around the globe. Included is a brief being part of the neighbourhood; of biography highlighting their working listening to her customers and using local practices and key sources of inspiration, ingredients in innovative ways. She called hundreds of illustrations of glorious, wearable her Sydney based business Arthur Street aratah or wattle? art, a glossary and designers’ websites. Kitchen. Things have changed since those WChrysanthemum or rose? colourful salads first hit our consciousness Planting Dreams celebrates the artistry BAD DADS: ART and McKinnon has moved her tribe to and imagination that have shaped INSPIRED BY THE FILMS New York. To commemorate she has Australian gardens. Respected garden OF WES ANDERSON created another stunning, inspiring historian Richard Aitken explores the cookbook called Neighbourhood. This book HQYLURQPHQWDODQGVRFLDOLQÀXHQFHV Spoke Gallery that have helped produce our unique is a true celebration of the diversity of Abrams. HB. Available now. $45 gardening culture – from Indigenous New York. McKinnon says that each This book collects the land management and the earliest ‘neighbourhood’ in the Big Apple is based very best artwork from European garden at Farm Cove, to the potted plants around a food region, be it Italian, Jewish, the first five years of ‘Bad and besser block screens of mid-twentieth century Spanish, Chinese or Mexican. Each Dads’, an annual modernist design and beyond. Planting Dreams chapter is divided into a ‘region’ and has exhibition curated by showcases Australian garden making in all its salads galore, tips for using leftovers and is Spoke Gallery in San richness and diversity through a stunning mix of packed with photos that make each day Francisco of art inspired paintings, sketches, photographs, and prints. look like a glorious tribute to living well. by the films of Wes Anderson. From The last chapter is of course filled with paintings to sculptures to limited edition sweets that seem so wholesome and so screen prints, the artworks vary in style but delicious that each dish could also be share the imagery and beloved characters served at breakfast. Did I mention that this www.newsouthpublishing.com from the mind of one of Hollywood’s most is a vegetarian cook book? You won’t even noteworthy and imaginative filmmakers. notice, trust me. A HISTORY OF PICTURES FERMENT, PICKLE, DRY David Hockney & Martin Gayford Simon Poffley T&H. HB. Available 1 September. $60 & Gaba Smolinska-Poffley Informed and energised by Frances Lincoln. HB. $39.99 a lifetime of painting, Available 1 September drawing and making You do not have to live images with cameras, in a Green belt for this Hockney explores how and book to resonate with why pictures have been you. Ferment, Pickle, made across millennia. Dry teaches you the What makes marks on a flat surface time-honoured interesting? How do you show movement in a methods of preserving still picture, and how, conversely, do films and your food through the television connect with old masters? What do dark art of fermenting, pickling and drying. pictures show – truth or lies? Building on There is also a practical guide to growing Hockney’s groundbreaking book Secret your own bacteria, vinegar, and yoghurts. If Knowledge, the authors argue that film, you dry herbs in your kitchen and grow photography, painting and drawing are your own tomatoes, this beautifully deeply interconnected. photographed guide to making the most of THE HINTERLAND: your produce is essential reading. CABINS, LOVE SHACKS THE BEE FRIENDLY AND OTHER HIDE-OUTS GARDEN Gestalten Doug Purdie Die Gestalten Verlag. HB. $95 Murdoch. PB. $39.99 Available 15 September Available 1 September The cabin has become our Bees are our most hideaway, a place where important pollinators and we can recharge and they are in decline. Bees escape from the restraints love an urban of society and the stress of environment where there the everyday. Located on is a short flight path from mountain tops, nestled in one plant to the next. villages or lush forests, The Hinterland However, if you spray poison pesticides showcases homey hide-outs and charming over flowers, yourself and edible plants, you cabins from shelter to domicile. Thoughtfully are chasing these good, hardworking bees crafted and built, the stories behind these away. We need those bees to keep working structures are just as curious as the walls to keep ourselves healthy. This book is themselves. Through portraits of the loaded with tips to keep your garden inhabitants and their inventive homes, The happily filled with bees: think lavender, Hinterland explores architecture and design basil and rosemary, think roses and daisies, approaches to creating works that refresh and let their blooms be a gift. and revitalise amidst the beauty of nature. 18 READINGS MONTHLY SEPTEMBER 2016

THE ITALIAN WHAT BIRD IS AUSTRALIAN BEST KITCHEN VEGETABLE THAT? HISTORY LIVE! BASICS COOKBOOK Neville Cayley Ian Warden Mark Best Michele Scicolone PB. Was $29.95 PB. Was $39.99 HB. Was $59.99 HB. Was $49.95 Now $13.95 Now $12.95 Now $29.99 Now $15.95 Neville Cayley’s What Bird Australian History Live! is a compelling Award-winning chef In this book, Italian cooking authority is That? is Australia’s most popular bird- look at Australian history using first person and restaurateur Mark Best beats the Michele Scicolone shares recipes that she identification guide. This comprehensive accounts as reported in the press and revolutionary drum in the domestic kitchen, gathered during years of travelling in Italy. and authoritative field guide, now in its in journals and diaries. Included in the breaking down 100 original recipes built Some, like green fettuccine with spring second edition, has been fully revised collection are gripping accounts of occasions around 30 accessible ingredients – from vegetable ragu, and easter swiss chard and and updated by prominent ornithologist both great and minor – from the bush to the eggplant to pumpkin to chocolate and eggs. cheese pie, came from talented home cooks. Terence Lindsey, who has added more than Eureka Stockade to Flemington Racecourse. Step-by-step guides include the art of puff Others, such as stuffed cremini mushrooms, 30 new species and included additional This book is a collection of virtual time- pastry, the perfect consomme, and mastering were passed down through her family. Still information on identification and breeding. travellings back though Australia’s past. sourdough at home. Best also debunks others have been adapted from popular Each bird is illustrated in full colour. myths and kitchen lore surrounding restaurants and the cookbooks she collects SILVER ingredients and cooking (such as searing – all are incredibly flavourful and simple. CITY ON FIRE BUTTONS meat to keep the juices in: don’t do it!). Garth Risk Hallberg Bob Graham ROSE ELLIOT’S PB. Was $32.99 HB. Was $27.99 HEAD CASE 30-MINUTE Now $12.95 Now $12.95 Cole Cohen VEGETARIAN It’s New Year’s Eve, 1976, At 9.59 on Thursday morning, Jodie draws PB. Was $29.99 and New York a duck. Just as she is about to add Now $10 Rose Elliot is a city on one final silver button to the For as long as 26-year-old Cole HB. Was $39.95 the verge. As midnight duck’s boots, her little Cohen could remember, she’d Now $15.95 approaches, a blizzard brother takes his first struggled with a series of learning disabilities Perfect for the busy home cook, Rose Elliot’s sets in – and the step. At this exact same that made it nearly impossible to judge 30-Minute Vegetarian offers delicious quick unmistakable sound moment, a man buys time and space. The summer before leaving meals from Britain’s reigning queen of of gunfire rings out bread, a soldier leaves for university, Cohen received a shocking vegetarian cuisine. Featuring 140 vegetarian across Central Park. home, a baby is born. diagnosis – a large hole in her brain was recipes that take an hour or less to prepare, The search for the From glorious urban responsible for her life-long struggles. Head this beautifully photographed book presents Bargain shooter will bring skyscapes to exquisite Case is ultimately a story of triumph, as this classic meals along with an array of updated together a rich cast small details, Bob remarkable young woman navigates her way and modern dishes. Elliot’s helpful tips, of New Yorkers, all conveys a worldview full through the unique world she lives in. time-tested advice, and failsafe recipes connected to one another, Table of humanity, compassion have delighted fans for 40 years, and this and to the life still clinging and affection. THE CHINESE collection will, too. to that body in the park. ART BOOK A LUCKY CHILD KYLIE / Keith Pratt, Katie SUNDAY’S Hill, Jeffrey Moser Thomas Buergenthal FASHION GARDEN HB. Was $69.95 PB. Was $24.95 Kylie Minogue, Lesley Harding & Now $29.95 Now $10 William Baker Kendrah Morgan The Chinese Art Book is a beautifully Now a judge in the HB. Was $49.99 PB. Was $34.99 presented, authoritative and unprecedented International Court of Now $13.95 Now $12.95 overview of Chinese art, from the Justice, Thomas Buergenthal From the very beginning, fashion has When Sunday and John Reed purchased Neolithic period to the new generation of arrived at Auschwitz at age 10 after surviving been key to Kylie Minogue’s persona Heide, it was a neglected former dairy contemporary artists enlivening the art two ghettos and a labour camp. Separated and performances: her status as style farm. At the end of their lives, it was unique world. Every form of Chinese visual art is from his parents, Buergenthal used his wits icon is unassailable. This dazzling book among Melbourne’s parklands, the result featured, including painting, calligraphy, and some remarkable strokes of luck to celebrates her numerous and ground- of fifty years of vision, dedication and sculpture, jades, bronzes, photography, survive on his own. Now dedicated to helping breaking collaborations with the world’s sheer hard work. Sunday’s Garden explores video, installation and performance art. those subjected to tyranny throughout the great fashion designers. Packed with the growing of the Reeds’ personal Eden, Concise descriptive essays place each work world, Buergenthal’s story highlights the iconic images as well as the very best rare fully restoring the Heide garden into the in context, and cross-references lead the stark details of unimaginable hardship. and unseen archival photography, video literature surrounding this inspiring site, outtakes, fashion sketches, designs and reader on a fascinating journey through SIMPLE its creators and the makers of its myths. ephemera, it will be a collectors’ item for Chinese art history. fans and fashionistas the world over. FRENCH FOOD AUSTRALIA ART DECO Richard Olney 1901–2001 LE CORBUSIER AIRPORTS HB. Was $34.99 Andrew Tink Terry Moyle Now $16.95 LE GRAND PB. Was $34.99 HB. Was $45 Richard Olney was Jean-Louis Cohen & Now $12 Now $19.95 considered a culinary Tim Benton Andrew Tink’s superb With the 100th anniversary of commercial genius for his ability to elevate cooking HB. Was $75 book tells the story of aviation approaching in 2019, Art Deco to a practical art, focusing on preparing Now $39.95 Australia in the 20th century – a century Airports looks at the first airports of the simple foods well. Olney’s 175 recipes are so Drawing on an array of archival material, marked by war and the depression, balanced world, specifically airports of the 1920s and straightforward that cooks will be inspired including sketches, photographs, and by extraordinary achievements in sport, early 1930s, heavily influenced by Art Deco to go right into the kitchen: herb omelettes, correspondences, Le Corbusier Le Grand science and the arts. Tink brings the decades architecture – buildings which underwent fish with zucchini, lamb shanks with garlic, depicts not only the vast and varied output to life, writing with empathy, humour and rapid change as air travel exploded in and many more. Olney’s emphasis on of one of the giants of twentieth-century insight on the people at the centre of it popularity. The combination of these exotic simplicity and improvisation in cooking will architecture and design, but also the major all – from prime ministers, to singers and and iconic buildings, fashion and associated resonate with today’s cooks and food lovers. events, people, and forces that shaped the life shopkeepers – to create a narrative that is as of an artist who continues to fascinate those aircrafts has never been captured in art THE GREAT entertaining as it is illuminating. in and outside the architectural world. before and will fascinate travel lovers and history buffs. DIVIDE A DAY IN SUPERNORMAL Peter Watson MELBOURNE Andrew McConnell HAPPINESS BY PB. Was $29.95 Brady Michaels & HB. Was $60 Now $29.99 DESIGN Now $15.95 Dale Campisi In – the Paul Dolan In this fascinating and Supernormal HB. Was $20 Now $10 cookbook based on the HB. Was $39.99 Now $16.99 erudite history, Peter Watson ponders is a colouring book for eponymous Melbourne Professor Paul Dolan conducts questions central to the human story. A Day in Melbourne everyone from curious kids to culturally- restaurant – Andrew McConnell, owner and original research into the measurement of Why did Asia and Europe develop far minded travellers. Featuring approximately head chef, takes home cooks into the kitchen happiness and its causes and consequences, earlier than the Americas? What were the 20 line drawings of iconic Melbourne of his hugely popular pan-Asian eatery. including the effects of our behaviour. Here factors that accelerated – or impeded – scenes – from the city skyline to street life, Across eight chapters, he shares something he creates a new outlook on the pursuit of development? Exploring the development busy laneways and beautiful buildings – this of the restaurant’s magic, offering a behind- happiness – it’s not just how you feel, it’s how of humankind between the Old World and picture book provides both a stylish keepsake the-scenes take on the restaurant and its you act. Enough has been written on how to the New – from 15,000 BC to AD 1500 – of the city and the perfect art project to keep characters, as well as scenes from Tokyo, a think happy – Happiness by Design is about The Great Divide offers a groundbreaking colourists engaged while reading vignettes long-time source of inspiration for McConnell how to behave happy, and how to incorporate new understanding of human history. that reveal a small story for each scene. and his Flinders Lane eating house. this new research into our everyday lives. READINGS MONTHLY SEPTEMBER 2016 19

New Young Adult Fiction

A heartbreakingly honest and utterly convincing story of YA Book of the Month a Dominican girl, the white woman who introduces her to riding, and the horse who changes everything for her. WORDS IN DEEP BLUE Cath Crowley Th e Mare PanMac. PB. Available 30 August. $18.99 is a profound, important novel about how love A second-hand bookstore, a love story, and a letter-library: all of these and family are shaped by race, class and privilege. It is a things are mentioned on the blurb of Cath Crowley’s new book, devastating portrait of the unbridgeable gaps between Words In Deep Blue. Really, why wouldn’t you want to read something that has these as offerings? I know that I was super keen and my word, it doesn’t people, and the way we long for fairytale endings even disappoint. In fact, I’m calling it my Young Adult book of the year. when we know they don’t exist. ‘I didn’t think Cath Crowley could surpass her last brilliant novel, Graffiti Moon, but she has done it. Words In Deep Blue is a ripper.’

Rachel Sweetie and Henry Jones have been friends for years and for all those years Rachel Sweetie has been in love with Henry Jones. Rachel decides to tell Henry her feelings via letter, the night before she leaves to move to a seaside town. But Henry never acknowledges the letter and as the years tick by Rachel ignores his correspondence. That is until her brother drowns in the sea, her mother falls apart and Rachel fails year 12 – meaning no university, which had always been her dream. Realising that life isn’t going to get better by the ocean, Rachel moves back to her old town and starts a friendship all over again with Henry. I didn’t think Cath Crowley could surpass her last brilliant novel, Graffiti Moon, but she has done it. Words In Deep Blue is a ripper. The letter library is such a wonderful idea I hope it exists somewhere so I can go to visit it (I’m not going to explain what it is, read the book and find out) and the relationship between Rachel and Henry is beautiful, realistic and fun. Cath Crowley is a master at writing well-developed, likeable characters that have you hoping that everything will turn out all right for them and this is yet another perfect example of her brilliance as a writer. I highly recommend this for males and females who enjoy writers such as Fiona Wood and Lili Wilkinson. Go OzYA! Katherine Dretzke is a friend of Readings

THE CALL MY FIRST LESSON Peadar O’Guillin Alice Pung (ed.) David Fickling. PB. Available 1 September. $19.99 Black Inc. PB. Available 25 August. $14.99 It is incredibly Teenagers are often exciting to get your written at by adults, hands on a book that you but My First Lesson is a rare know within the first few opportunity for twenty-five pages is going to be talked teenagers to tell their own about by the global YA stories in their own community and beyond. inimitable ways. Keen young is just such a book. writers were invited to THE FENCE NEIGHBOURHOOD The Call Nessa is at a training college in an alternate respond creatively to the themes in Alice MEREDITH HETTY contemporary Ireland in preparation for Pung’s award-winning YA novel Laurinda, JAFFE MCKINNON ‘The Call’ – an event that will happen to and the results are authentic and varied. every single teenager with no exception. Anthology editor Pung explains in her At some unknown moment after puberty, excellent foreword that her policy was to they will disappear, the clothes left behind select stories that are not only polished and ‘A keenly observed satire on the From the author of Community the only indicator they are gone. They literary, but also those that are raw, genuine, boundaries we set. Good fences make This second delicious collection will reappear in an alternate world, the direct, and inclusive of marginalised writers. good neighbours. Or do they?’ of salads (and sweets!) from Hetty Grey Lands, where they will be hunted for This makes for extremely lively and WENDY HARMER McKinnon is sure to delight friends sport by the fairy folk for 24 hours. This moving reading. The selected writers The battle lines are drawn. and family. These show-stopping yet time represents only three minutes in the have been bold and experimental in their real world. When they return, most are pieces, working with symbolism, fairytale, A white picket fence drama that simple recipes take their inspiration dead, but some are still living and horribly confessional memoir, epistolary stories, explores changing attitudes towards from Brooklyn to the greater Americas, transformed in both body and mind. realism, comedy, science fiction and much community, feminism, working mums, the Mediterranean, Asia, France and Nessa is at more of a disadvantage than more. Some have explored difficult first days stay-at-home dads and parenting. For Australia, all delivered in Hetty’s most kids – she had polio and cannot run at new schools, others have described racist fans of Christos Tsiolkas’ The Slap. signature style. without a limp. But she is determined to jibes, parental neglect, domestic violence survive and won’t allow anyone to pity and jarring migrations. her. She also strives to have no emotions There are common threads running SELECTION EAT CLEAN or attachments whatsoever, although she through My First Lesson, beyond the clearly fancies Anto. What happens to Nessa, desire to experiment: a willingness to DAY LUKE HINES Anto, their friends and enemies before and philosophise and tackle big issues and ideas, ARAVIND during The Call is absolutely compelling an equal willingness to call out injustice ADIGA reading that is already bringing worthy and inequality, and an earnest and heartfelt comparisons to The Hunger Games. depiction of emotion. Several of the writers I loved the life or death narrative, the speak of knowing that they’re young, but ‘Adiga is a real writer – that is to say, From the clean living guru, 100 fresh, flawed but incredibly determined Nessa, and already feeling ‘old’, something I remember someone who forges an original voice ƃCXQWTUQOGCPFHWUUHTGGYJQNGHQQF the play on classic Irish mythology, where from my own cynical and weary teen years. and vision.’ TGEKRGUVQJGNR[QWVJTKXGCPFƃQWTKUJ humans had signed a treaty with the fairy folk Reading My First Lesson was a great SUNDAY TIMES Whether you’re looking for on-the- hundreds of years ago which had banished reminder for me of what it felt like being A moving and beautifully observed new go breakfasts, guilt-free sweets or the fairies to another land, at a terrible cost. a teenager, but also what it was like being novel, of adolescence, ambition and wholefood twists on your favourite I was so immersed in this battle between a teen writer searching for language to self-realisation, of fathers and sons, set takeaway meals, it’s never been easier fairy and human that everything else needed express the many thoughts I had at that in contemporary Bombay, by the Man to Eat Clean. to be put off until I had finished reading. I age. Teen readers will recognise themselves Booker Prize-winning author of strongly recommend you get your hands in the anthology; older readers will gain a The White Tiger. on The Call as soon as you possibly can, put greater understanding of what it’s like to be your phone on silent and hole up in a quiet a modern adolescent. Proceeds of My First room for a few hours to devour it. You will Lesson will go to the literacy organisation www.panmacmillan.com.au not be disappointed! Room to Read. Angela Crocombe is from Readings Carlton Leanne Hall is from Readings Hawthorn 20 READINGS MONTHLY SEPTEMBER 2016

innocent man is unfairly persecuted. Lauren Wolk’s debut novel is a profound work that demonstrates a heightened social conscience. But it is Annabelle’s character that gives this work moral Book of the Month backbone and her defiance against community prejudice demonstrates a humanity and wisdom beyond her years. ADA TWIST, SCIENTIST Natalie Platten is from Readings Malvern Andrea Beaty & David Roberts (illus.) Abrams. HB. Available 6 September. $24.99 THE TWINS OF TINTARFELL James O’Loghlin What a delightful book! The charming author–illustrator team of Iggy Peck, Architect and Rosie Revere, Engineer, brings us another brilliant youngster who happens to be in Macmillan. PB. Available 30 August. $16.99 the same schoolroom: Ava Twist. By not speaking until she is three, Ava echoes that famous Dani and Bart are orphan twins who scientific genius, Einstein, but once she does speak she makes up for lost time by asking serve the bedridden King Corolius question after question. She confounds both her parents and her hapless schoolteacher, Miss the Fifth and his son, the spoiled Prince Greer, but when a terrible stench finds her investigating smells, Ada discovers the importance Edward. When Edward’s father buys him of the scientific method and soon gets her family involved in finding solutions. a magnificent but huge and angry-looking The illustrations by David Roberts, like the other two books in the series, are absolutely horse, Prince Edward must prove himself stunning and filled with mid-century modern design. Ada’s befuddled older brother and by riding it. The prince, who barely feels harried cat are fun to search for in many spreads, and the chaos Ada creates around her is comfortable enough on his current pony a joy to the wandering eye. The rhyming text is just perfect and shows a strong-willed (‘It’s not a pony!’ he would say child following her passion for a scientific career. This is another wonderful must- indignantly. ‘It’s a small horse!’) bullies Bart into riding have addition to the series on the young geniuses in Miss Greer’s classroom and a Midnight for him. When Bart, disguised as the prince on beautiful stand-alone book that will be enjoyed by adults as much as children. the horse, is kidnapped, Dani makes it her mission – with the reluctant help of the sullen prince – to escape the castle Angela Crocombe is from Readings Carlton grounds and find her brother. As with all of James O’Loghlin’s books, The Twins of Picture Books Tintarfell features a sarcastic, talking animal and as one of the characters can talk to animals we get more than A CHILD OF BOOKS the usual single dog or bear and it’s great! It’s also full of little asides to the reader and cartoonishly stupid bad guys, Oliver Jeffers & Sam Winston which make it a really fun book to read aloud. I love all of Walker. HB. Available 1 September. Was $27.99 James O’Loghlin’s books, they’re perfect for young children $24.99 who are ready to read or to be read full chapter books but Oliver Jeffers and Sam who might find Roald Dahl and the like a little too scary. I Winston mellifluously and had high expectations for The Twins of Tintarfell and I have joyously invite us to celebrate The not been let down! Book. The outcome of their New Dani Solomon is from Readings Carlton collaboration is a gorgeous and sensitive exploration of how magical books are and how we should be ELIZABETH AND ZENOBIA inspiring children to not only Jessica Miller encounter the classics but also to find their own narratives. Text. PB. Available 29 August. $16.99 A young girl entices a young boy to sail ‘across a sea of Kids’ Elizabeth and her father are moving to words’ with her because she is a ‘child of books and comes his childhood home after her mother from a world of stories’. As they roam in and around gems leaves them for a more ‘adventure-filled’ life. of children’s literature and the eloquence of the written Zenobia, Elizabeth’s not-an-imaginary best word merges with the dreamlike mastery of the images, friend, obviously goes with them. The two the reader is borne away into a world of enchantment. girls are practically polar opposites and while This is a book for book-lovers and for anyone who wants to Books Elizabeth is desperately creeped out by the encourage a child to love books. So be inspired, bewitched macabre house and the dead garden, Zenobia is entranced by enforcement officer. It’s a full-colour production packed and seduced by one of the masters of picture books in it and convinced that she can sense spirits. This is such a with action, hilarious hijinks, toilet humour and plenty of Jeffers and a newcomer to children’s illustration, Winston, great adventure. It’s funny and interesting but also thrillingly Pilkey’s much-loved Flip-O-Ramas. There are even who is surely on his way to a stellar career. frightening at times. The house is quirky and scary, and instructions on how to draw all your new favourite although this is a perfect standalone, I’m hoping that an Alexa Dretzke is from Readings Hawthorn characters and I especially loved the part where an army of adventure series might be on the cards. walking talking hot-dogs try to take over the town. A truly MR CHICKEN ARRIVA A ROMA riotous read for ages 7 and up. Isobel Moore is from Readings St Kilda Leigh Hobbs Kim Gruschow is from Readings Hawthorn A&U. HB. Available 1 September. $24.99 Stupendo, Mr Chicken (or should that be ‘Señor Pollo’?) Middle Fiction Classic of the Month you big, bold and magnificent chook, JOURNEY TO THE RIVER SEA WOLF HOLLOW we have been waiting for you to take Eva Ibbotson us on another trip. Rome, here we Lauren Wolk Macmillan. PB. Available 13 September. $14.99 come! Arriving incognito, he Corgi. PB. Available now. $19.99 I loved Journey to the River Sea when I positions his grande personage on Growing up on a Pennsylvanian farm read it on publication in 2001 and I his guide’s Vespa and we wonder if in 1940s America is a wholesome life have recommended it ever since, so I re-read Italy is ready for the intimidating Mr Chicken. Whether it’s for eleven-year-old Annabelle. Elder sister it recently with some trepidation – would it bathing in the Trevi Fountain, imagining himself as an to two younger brothers, Annabelle does be as wonderful as I remembered? Well, no. emperor or experiencing the joys of Italian cuisine, it is all not begrudge having to keep a watchful, I love it even more now! magnifico. Grazie, Mr Chicken, for showing us how to protective eye over them. Nor does she experience a Roman holiday. For ages 3 and up. AD This wonderful story, set around 1910, is about mind the many chores she is responsible for Maia, a young orphan living with relatives on the Amazon in on the family farm. Annabelle’s family have Brazil. It’s a young girl’s epic voyage of discovery, and the story Junior Fiction managed the farm for generations and are quiet, hard- of her search for friendship, family and a place to call home. working folk . But when outsider Betty Glengarry moves into Maia is an admirable and lovable protagonist, brave and the area no one could anticipate the havoc and destruction determined in spite of the many obstacles she encounters, DOG MAN one girl will bring to this community. Dav Pilkey and incredibly curious about the exotic world of the Amazon. In predatory and wolf-like ways Betty seeks out She’s surrounded by intriguing people, some humorous and Scholastic. HB. Available 1 September. $15.99 vulnerable targets and finds her perfect victim in Toby, a mysterious, others villainous and downright mean! But what Dog Man is a new and typically reclusive WWI veteran living rough on the land. Annabelle’s makes this marvellous adventure so enduring is masterful unhinged comic by Dav Pilkey, the family treat Toby with kindness and are curious to know the storytelling – a multilayered, moving yet humorous story, author responsible for the infamous backstory that broke the man they have come to respect. But fascinating characters and a highly gratifying ending. Captain Underpants series. This is not for the local community are less trusting and regard Toby with Highly recommended for ages 9 and up and a boring people. It is for people who really wary tolerance. When a local girl is brutally attacked and wonderful read aloud for families; parents will enjoy it as love laughing and want to laugh heaps and another goes missing, the community’s fear and prejudice much as their children. heaps. Dog Man chronicles the bizzare is easily manipulated. As in The Crucible, hysteria and adventures of a bungling canine law false testimony play a destructive part in this story and an Athina Clarke is from Readings Malvern READINGS MONTHLY SEPTEMBER 2016 21

New Film & TV NARCOS: can talk his way out of anything.’ – Sydney SEASON 1 Morning Herald with Lou Fulco DVD of the Month $49.95 Available now WHERE TO ‘Virtually every performance INVADE NEXT BARRACUDA is equal to the quality of the $29.95 $34.95 script, but [Wagner] Moura is especially Available now Available 15 September compelling as he manipulates the seeming ‘Where to Invade Next is A few years ago, I was given a proof copy of what was then incongruities of Escobar’s character to really a fairytale with a moral. As [Michael] Christos Tsiolkas’s latest novel, Barracuda. I found myself so heighten his aura of unpredictable menace.’ Moore visits European schools, workplaces, engrossed in the story that I couldn’t put it down and I ended up – San Francisco Chronicle hospitals and prisons, the movie builds into spending a whole day in front of the fire reading! When I discovered a cri de coeur about America’s weakening the ABC had turned the novel into a miniseries, I was naturally super CLEVERMAN: social contract.’ – The New York Times keen to watch it and I must say I wasn’t disappointed. SEASON 1 Brought to us by the same creative team that adapted Tsiolkas’s award-winning $39.95 novel The Slap, Barracuda is the story of Dan Kelly (Elias Anton). Kelly comes from a Film Available now working class background, but wins a sporting scholarship to a prestigious private school. ‘With its 80 per cent Initially, he is taunted by his peers, but soon wins their respect (and earns the nickname Indigenous cast and a MY MOTHER ‘Barracuda’), by proving himself in the pool. premise drawn from Dreaming stories, the (MIA MADRE) ‘When I discovered the ABC had turned [Barracuda] into a miniseries, story of a vilified superhuman race and $29.95 [an] Aboriginal anti-hero was a massively Available 7 September I was naturally super keen to watch it and I must say I wasn’t overdue new chapter in the history of ‘The film is a warm disappointed … The miniseries manages to capture the essence of Australian genre storytelling. Between the depiction of familial bonds Tsiolkas’s novel and it certainly brings to life the suburban setting.’ charismatic leads and the deft interweaving and the strength of relationships across of ancient stories and a horribly familiar generations … There’s a rich vein of Kelly dreams of winning gold at the 2000 Olympics, encouraged by his coach (Matt Nable) contemporary political climate, it’s unlike expressive anxiety in [Margherita Buy’s] and swimming team mates, especially his friend (and love interest), Taylor (Ben Kindon). anything else on Australian TV.’ – Junkee performance; she’s forceful and vulnerable Kelly has all the arrogance of youth and fails to appreciate the sacrifices his family in the same instant.’ – The Age make in order to support his dreams. Moving in the circles of his privileged friends, Kelly THE AFFAIR: starts to judge the working class life of his parents. It is only when his dreams turn sour SEASON 2 ONLY YESTERDAY that Kelly learns some kind of humility. $44.95 $34.95 While we don’t get the same insight into the main character in the screen adaptation Available now Available 7 September as we do in the written work, I do think the miniseries manages to capture the essence of ‘An ambitious psychological ‘Daisy Ridley and Dev Patel Tsiolkas’s novel and it certainly brings to life the suburban setting. It was great to see the drama about the damage contribute voice work to this trams, the streets and the swimming pools I know so well on the TV screen. If you enjoy caused by an extra-marital relationship … re-release of Studio Ghibli’s gritty Australian drama, then I can highly recommend this DVD. which tackles adult themes in a proudly 1991 animation about an office worker lost Sharon Peterson is the assistant manager at Readings Carlton demanding way. Dominic West and Ruth in childhood memories … This is an utterly Wilson give pitch-perfect performances.’ – beguiling classic: delicate, charming and The Telegraph (UK) tender, an animation that draws on the [Julie Walters] shines brightly.’ – Los ‘family movie’ tradition of Japan’s classic TV Angeles Times live-action cinema.’ – The Guardian Documentary TRAPPED: INDIAN I SAW THE LIGHT SEASON 1 SUMMERS: $34.95 $39.95 WEINER SEASON 2 Available now Available 7 September $24.95 $46.95 ‘Mark Abraham relates the ‘It’s Agatha Christie Available 7 September Available 7 September checkered life of [Hank] meets Nordic noir ... ‘Directors Josh Kriegman ‘Downton Abbey meets Williams in … brief scenes, claustrophobic, horrifically intense and set and Elyse Steinberg have The Jewel in the Crown in another lush images, and edits that relate years or months in a landscape that humans cannot possibly delivered something much and lovely artisanal soap, this one with of misery and triumph. Tom Hiddleston take on and win. The Icelandic thriller richer than the profile of a compulsive top notes of jasmine and waning British puts in a performance as Williams that ranks that’s the unexpected TV hit of the year so sleaze. They’ve put together an exemplary colonialism… set in India 1932. Even amid with that of Joaquin Phoenix as Johnny far.’ – The Guardian study in self-delusion. [Anthony] Weiner is a constellation of strong performances, afflicted with the misapprehension that he Cash in Walk the Line.’ – The Boston Globe 22 READINGS MONTHLY SEPTEMBER 2016

SCHMILCO New Music Jazz & Blues Wilco Album of the Month Available 9 September. $21.95 MUSIC OF WEATHER GOLDEN SINGS Mostly an acoustic REPORT THAT HAVE BEEN SUNG collection, Wilco’s tenth Miroslav Vitous studio album, Schmilco, bears neither the Ryley Walker Available now. $29.95 vicious, fuzz-glam guitars nor dazzling, Available now. $19.95 The great Czech bassist baroque arrangements that Wilco fans returns once more to the Ryley Walker’s Golden Sings That Have Been Sung is the have come to expect. But in their place is music of Weather Report, follow-up album to 2015’s Primrose Green, and his third a spaciousness and chaos, an intentionally the group he co-founded with Joe Zawinul studio album, released at the age of 27, suggests the early loose affair which finds band leader Jeff and Wayne Shorter in 1970. Well-known years of a prolific artist that you want to be on board with Tweedy and his band embracing a state of Report repertoire re-explored includes from the start. alienation. ‘Birdland’, ‘Seventh Arrow’, ‘Scarlet Walker’s youth belies his talent and intuition for a sound that could only be cultivated Woman’, ‘Pinocchio’ and ‘Morning Lake’ in Chicago. He moves between rich folk ballads and a psychedelic affect that borders, at TAASHA COATES & alongside new blues tunes. Revisiting the times, on progressive or that may be the result of his mixing of the familiar with complex HER MELANCHOLY improvisational freedom of the early Weather jazz instrumentation. He walks, unsettled, between genres; a collage artist whose sound SWEETHEARTS Report, Vitous abides by their old rallying call pays many tributes, and yet rises to meet the Chicago rockers who informed his style. ‘everyone solos and no-one solos’. Walker’s music is strong, certain, and wood-rich – and so the duelling cellos and his Taasha Coates & Her strange lyrics, which reminded me of Arlo Guthrie, are welcome departures. Melancholy Sweethearts Available now. NEARNESS ‘As a whole, the album has an expansive quality. Conjuring waves $21.95 Josh Redman breaking, it’s a careful, considered experiment.‘ Written in early 2016, the & Brad Mehldau first solo album from The Audreys’ Taasha Available 9 September. As a whole, the album has an expansive quality. Conjuring waves breaking, it’s a careful, Coates, Taasha Coates & Her Melancholy $24.95 considered experiment. The jewel is the opener, ‘The Half Wit in Me’, which you will listen Sweethearts, is a deeply personal offering Longtime friends to the most not only because it is the first track, but also because it is the most innovative which showcases the songwriter’s saxophonist Joshua Redman and pianist combination of his bluesy-folk-psychedelic-late-sixties-meets-mid-nineties influences. Yet incredible vocals. Working with Shane Brad Mehldau’s first duo album, Nearness, my favourite might be ‘The Roundabout’, and whether that is because it has cloaked itself Nicholson, the album has cheeky songs, showcases a selection of duets recorded so well as a track that it already feels a part of my musical identity, or because it feels like sexy songs and sad songs, more personal live during their recent European tour. an arrival, a proof of Walker’s musical hypothesis, after all of his tinkering and musing, it than her work with The Audreys. Among the most potent and influential doesn’t really matter, I love it. jazz instrumentalists of their generation, It will be a great album to bring in the spring, and a good conversation piece for the MANGY LOVE what the pair refer to as ‘picking up where jazz-inclined who demand a nerdier folk, or for the soulful, romantic type – those who will Cass McCombs they left off’ has resulted in world-class be grateful to pledge themselves to a handsome musician. Available now. improvising before rapt audiences. Jemima Bucknell is the online fulfilment manager $19.95 Cass McCombs’ Mangy HEATHEN SONGBOOK Love sees the singer- Backsliders brings something new and special to Riebl’s songwriter at his most blunt: tackling Available now. $19.95 Pop own performance. sociopolitical issues through his uniquely Backsliders have been SKELETON TREE cracked lens of lyrical wit and singular playing, touring the festival MY WOMAN insight. The severity of his lyrics is circuit and recording for 30 Angel Olsen Nick Cave contrasted by the music, which ventures years. Their 14th album, Heathen Songbook Available 9 September. Available 2 September. into groovy realms of Philly soul, NorCal is a varied and eclectic mix of 21st century $19.95 $21.95 psychedelia and New York paranoia punk, original blues, as well as a number of versions Nick Cave & the Bad Indie-folk star Angel articulating the spontaneity and joy of his of songs by artists as diverse as blues legend Seeds have returned with Olsen’s My Woman swaps live show better than ever before. Robert Johnson, hillbilly banjoist Dock Boggs their sixteenth studio album, Skeleton the crunchier, blown-out production of and swamp-rock icon John Fogerty. Tree, the follow-up to 2013’s critically and her previous work for songs that place her ACOUSTIC RECORDINGS commercially acclaimed Push the Sky Away. disarming, timeless voice is front-and-center. 1998–2016 Released in accompaniment with feature Yet, the strange, raw power and slowly Soul & Funk film One More Time with Feeling, the Jack White unspooling incantations of her previous project is stark, fragile and raw, and a true Available 9 September. efforts remain. An intuitively smart, warmly testament to an artist trying to find his way $26.95 MISS SHARON JONES communicative and fearlessly generous through the darkness. Acoustic Recordings SOUNDTRACK record, My Woman speaks to everyone. 1998–2016 collects 26 Sharon Jones and the WE MOVE acoustic songs from throughout White’s ENCORE Dap-Kings James Vincent wide-ranging musical career, spanning Available now. $25.95 Barbra Streisand album tracks, B-sides, remixes, alternative McMorrow The soundtrack to Barbara Available now. $21.95 versions, and previously unreleased tracks. Available 2 September. Kopple’s film Miss Sharon The album includes songs made famous The greatest star to ever $21.95 Jones!, which follows the Dap-Kings’ dynamic by The White Stripes and features ‘City come out of Broadway, Dublin-born singer and frontwoman through her 2013 battle with Lights’ which was written for Get Behind Streisand returns to her roots songwriter James Vincent McMorrow’s cancer and her triumphant return to the stage, Me Satan but then forgotten until White with Encore: Movie Partners Sing Broadway. remarkable journey continues with We features the exclusive ‘I’m Still Here’ alongside revisited the album in 2015. The track is the The album features 10 new Streisand duets Move. Led by the single ‘Rising Water’, We a selection of tracks ranging from her early first new White Stripes song since 2008. of Broadway classics with some of the biggest Move is remarkably assured collection, singles on Daptone, to tracks from the band’s stars in Hollywood, including Alec Baldwin, informed by the idea that that as you grow 2014 release Give the People What They Want. Anne Hathaway, Hugh Jackman, Seth up, you lose things along the way, and that World MacFarlane, Melissa McCarthy, Chris Pine, it’s possible to keep what you want to keep, Daisy Ridley and a spectacular virtual duet and lose what you want to lose. Kids with Anthony Newley. CRADLE OF HUMANITY LIVE AT THE PAPER DOORS Mulatu Astatke & SNUGGLEPOT & HOLLYWOOD BOWL Black Jesus Felix Riebl CUDDLEPIE: THE MUSICAL The Beatles Experience Available 2 September. Peter Combe Available 9 September. Available now. $19.95 Available now. $19.95 $24.95 $19.95 With words and music by Charismatic Melbourne Live At The Hollywood Cradle of Humanity features Mulatu Peter Combe, this musical singer–songwriter (and Bowl captures the joyous Astatke, the father Of Ethiojazz, in based on May Gibbs’ famous The Cat Empire frontman) Felix Riebl’s exuberance of the Fab Four’s sold-out collaboration with Australian musical Australian children’s book was recorded second solo album, Paper Doors, is a Los Angeles concerts in 1964 and 1965. collective Black Jesus Experience. The live in a 1993 concert with the Adelaide collection of ten elegant and inspiring A companion to Ron Howard’s new product of seven years of performances Symphony Orchestra, Adelaide Chorus and songs that make the rare quiet spaces and documentary Eight Days A Week – The around the world, this album combines the Adelaide Girls’ Choir. In addition to Peter simple still places add up to something Touring Years, that charts the band’s early traditional Ethiopian tonalities with deep Combe himself, the cast features some very rare and special. Featuring three duets career, the original three-track tapes of the grooves and the freedom principle. Cradle special guests including Ruth Cracknell, Eric with Katy Steele, Martha Wainwright and concerts have been expertly remixed and of Humanity is an expression of love, joy Bogle and Jeannie Lewis. Tinpan Orange’s Emily Lubitz, each track mastered at Abbey Road Studios. and artistic dedication. READINGS MONTHLY SEPTEMBER 2016 23

New Classical Music significant in three aspects: repertoire, and confirm Tchaikovsky’s place as one of performance and sound … This set is a music’s melodists and craftsmen.’ – James Classical Album of the Month well-considered collection of close to 100 Jolly, Gramophone works of symphonic music, concertos, chamber music, instrumental solos and THE COMPLETE DECCA FAURE/JC BACH/MOZART/BRITTEN/ vocal music of interest to music lovers RECORDINGS GOUNOD CHAMBER MUSIC and audiophiles alike.’ – Bruce Surtees, Renata Tebaldi Wholenote Magazine Inventi Ensemble Decca. 4781535. 66CDs. Was $189.95 IE001. $21.95 THE CLASSIC ALBUMS On Sunday 6 August, 1933, Benjamin Britten, along with his $109.95 family and friends, gathered to listen to a broadcast of his Kiri Te Kanawa The Complete Decca Phantasy Quartet for oboe and strings. He was none too impressed, noting in his diary that Decca. 4786419. 6CDs. Recordings is a special edition package the string players ‘aren’t really first-class musicians’. Listening to Melbourne’s Inventi Was $63.95 issued to mark the 10th anniversary of Ensemble’s recording of the work, I can’t help but think Britten would be both impressed $29.95 the passing of one of the most beloved and moved. Led by oboist Ben Opie, the ensemble gives a vibrant reading of Britten’s ‘Whilst she would record singers of all time – the incomparable deliciously youthful score. And this seems to be the theme for the whole disc: fresh and for other labels (crossover for EMI for Renata Tebaldi. This set marks the first lively arrangements of well-known works such as Fauré’s Pavane and Gounod’s Ave Maria, example), this set represents the finest ever comprehensive overview of Tebaldi’s alongside the lesser-known pieces such as JC Bach’s Quintet in D Major. work in a long career and showcases important recorded legacy. those composers with which the Dame is ‘ ... it’s brilliant, full of classical grace, and elegant most closely identified and celebrated … JS BACH: GREAT If you’re seeking a set to celebrate this CHORAL MASTERPIECES gorgeous voiced soprano, there is no finer without being stuffy.’ Peter Schreier place to start than here’. – Brett Allen- Decca. 4785564. 12CDs. The final movement of the Bach, described in the liner notes as a ‘raucous, fun folk Bayes, Limelight dance’, is a highlight of the album. Here, the cellist wrests with his strings to produce an Was $86.95 extremely rustic timbre that would not be out of place in a drinking song. More than that, SCRIABIN: $46.95 each musician brings individual finesse to create a finely uniform recording complete with COMPLETE WORKS This superb collection showcases Bach’s Passions and other great light, shade, and many colours in between. Various The Inventi Ensemble describes Mozart’s Flute Quartet in D as a delight, and I would choral works in performances with the Decca. 4788168. 18 CDs. go further to say that it incorporates all that is loved about Mozart’s music: it’s brilliant, Staatskapelle Dresden under the masterly Was $99.95 full of classical grace, and elegant without being stuffy. Flautist Melissa Doecke is the star direction of Peter Schreier. Schreier’s aim $54.95 here: she plays with a superbly clear tone and excellent intonation. Her agile runs and trills in Bach interpretation is to bring new skip effortlessly above the accompanying ensemble – the members of whom occasionally ‘An amazing collection of lightness without following the full dictates fumble over their own notes. But that is merely a minor quibble about what is an otherwise his complete works … The piano works, of authentic performance, and in this he enjoyable performance. which make up the first nine discs, are succeeds superbly. I really enjoyed Inventi Ensemble’s debut recording, particularly for its inventive impressive, and Lisitsa especially is an approach to classical music. especially fine pianist who captures SCHUMANN: the special Scriabin feeling in her Alexandra Mathew is from Readings Carlton THE MASTERWORKS performances … Scriabin is a totally Various fascinating Russian composer and this is DG. 4778816. 35 CDs. probably the definitive collection of his FABULOUS CLASSICAL Goldberg Variations and his revised 1981 Was $169.95 works. Highly recommended!’ – John BOX-SET SALE interpretation. This collection is testament $76.95 to Gould’s unrivalled genius and pianistic Sunier, Audiophile Audition Released to commemorate skill, and is must-have for fans. BEETHOVEN the 200th anniversary of his birth, THE CLASSICAL CELLO MASTERWORKS this mammoth 35 disc box-set offers 111 THE PIANO: a comprehensive picture of Robert COLLECTION LEGENDARY Various Schumann, covering all aspects of the great Yo-Yo Ma RECORDINGS DG. 4791042. 51CDs. Romantic’s output. Was $149.95 Sony. 88875130742. 15CDs. Various $47.95 Was $79.95 DG. 4794351. Was $181.95 RICHARD STRAUSS: THE Beethoven Masterworks $49.95 $92.95 COMPLETE ANALOGUE covers the complete range of Beethoven’s This Box-set was released ‘An amazing treasure RECORDINGS works on 51 CDs. The collection ranges in honour of American Cellist Yo-Yo Ma’s trove … Deutsche from symphonies to folksong settings, Herbert Von Karajan 60th birthday on 7th October 2015. The Grammophon has always attracted the and in between features performances DG. 4792686. 11CDs plus 1 set features great works from the classical finest pianists and many of them are by classical music’s greatest performers Bluray Audio. cello repertoire with compositions by 23 represented with samples of their finest including Abbado, Gardiner, Kleiber, Was $162.95 classical composers and features the great recordings … I can’t cite a single disc in this Bernstein, Karajan, Argerich, Zimerman $76.95 cello concertos by Boccherini, Dvorák, box that doesn’t include some of the most and Pollini to name but a few. Highly To mark the 25th Anniversary of Karajan’s Elgar, Walton, Saint-Saens and more. important piano recordings from the past recommended. death and the 150th anniversary of 65 years.’ – Marius Dawn, pianist, London JOHN WILLIAMS: Richard Strauss, DG combined the great conductor and the great composer in an THE GUITARIST WAGNER: WESTMINSTER LEGACY BOX LP-sized deluxe set that will set future The Complete Columbia THE GREAT OPERAS standards. The set includes Karajan’s Various Album Collection Various complete Strauss analogue recordings DG. 4792343. 40CDs. Sony. 88843092942. Decca. 4780279. 33CDs. (DG/Decca) and his first Strauss digital Was $179.95 Was $249.95 Was $119.95 recording (Eine Alpensinfonie). $92.95 $169.95 $76.95 Westminster Records was The long wait is over for guitar-music All of Wagner’s operas from MOZART: THE PIANO an American classical music record label, aficionados. This is the first-ever Der fliegende Hollander (1841) to his final SONATAS & PIANO founded in 1949. Its trademark was Big Ben complete collection of recordings by the masterpiece Parsifal (1882) in performances and its slogan ‘natural balance’, referring MUSIC FOR FOUR HANDS incomparable John Williams from the CBS/ from the theatre that was created to its single microphone technique in Christoph Eschenbach Sony Classical label. This original jacket specifically for the production of Wagner’s recording music. Its catalogue, recorded DG. 4793622. 8CDs. collection comprises 57 original albums operas, the Bayreuth Festival Theatre. This between 1949 and 1970, is still of the utmost Was $64.95 made over four decades, including his 33CD set is a must for all Wagnerians. style-crossing collaborations and a DVD. significance, technically and artistically. $34.95 THE ORIGINALS BOX: The emotional truths TCHAIKOVSKY: found in Mozart’s sonatas are expressed GLENN GOULD: LEGENDARY THE MASTERWORKS with such subtlety that it takes a truly REMASTERED RECORDINGS Various studied hand to voice them effectively. The Complete Columbia Various Eschenbach’s interpretations are based on Album Collection DG. 4794646. 27CDs. DG. 4793449. 50CDs. a career-long love of Mozart, a youthful Sony 88875032222. 81CDs. Was $104.95 Was $169.95 enthusiasm and a mature appreciation. Was $359.95 $59.95 $94.95 His performances are not the indulgent ‘A very enticing 27-CD box $239.95 interpretations of a proud soloist; they are ‘An exceptional collection set. All the key works are here … it makes a A comprehensive showcase of Gould’s homages by a true devotee. of outstanding performances from the near-ideal introduction to the composer … finest recordings, this set includes both second half of the 20th century that are his groundbreaking 1955 version of Bach’s this set will give a huge amount of pleasure THIS FATHER’S DAY, MAKE IT A BOOK HE’LL RETURN TO

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