FREE AUGUST 2020 Father’s Day gift ideas page 12 New books from Richard Fidler, Ali Smith, Hugh Mackay, Zadie Smith, Masha Gessen and more page 6 BOOKS MUSIC FILM EVENTS PAUL KELLY & PAUL GRABOWSKY page 22 BELGRAVIA : VICTORIA DAVID JOHN JAMIE SEASON ONE HANNAN MITCHELL BLAY OLIVER page 22 page 6 page 8 page 14 page 17 CARLTON 309 LYGON ST 9347 6633 KIDS 315 LYGON ST 9341 7730 DONCASTER WESTFIELD DONCASTER, 619 DONCASTER RD 9810 0891 HAWTHORN 701 GLENFERRIE RD 9819 1917 MALVERN 185 GLENFERRIE RD 9509 1952 ST KILDA 112 ACLAND ST 9525 3852 STATE LIBRARY VICTORIA 285-321 RUSSELL ST 8664 7540 | SEE SHOP OPENING HOURS, BROWSE AND BUY ONLINE AT READINGS.COM.AU NEWS August 2020 READINGS MONTHLY 3 storytelling and identity. First awarded in Kneen (Avid Reader), Anna MacDonald 1957, the Miles Franklin Literary Award is (Paperback Bookshop), and Rachel Readings’ online events August presented annually to a novel of the highest Robson (Berkelouw Books Leichhardt). Our In response to the COVID-19 health crisis, literary merit and presents Australian life congratulations to them once more. Readings has moved its events program in any of its phases. As the 2020 winner, online. Each month, we’re bringing you News Winch will receive $60,000 in prize money. an array of local and international authors You can find out more about the award at Melbourne Writers Festival discussing their books, all accessible and milesfranklin.com.au/news. The 2020 program for Melbourne Writers available to watch right from your home. Readings shops and COVID-19 Festival has been announced. This year’s Highlights this month include writer and festival will be taking place entirely online, broadcaster Richard Fidler joining us for Due to the ongoing public health situation Readings Children’s Book Prize & Young so you can enjoy a stellar range of bookish an evening session on Monday 24 August in Melbourne, our shops are operating a Adult Book Prize winners 2020 conversations with your favourite authors to discuss his new book with Readings’ little diferently. For full information about After a great deal of deliberation, the from the comfort of your own home. This own Marie Matteson. For details on how trading hours, kerbside pickup and special winners of the Readings Children’s Book year’s program features artists including to watch, and to see what’s on ofer conditions for our seven shops, please visit Prize and the Readings Young Adult Kate Grenville, Brit Bennett, Anne Enright, across our whole events program, visit readings.com.au/our-shops. You can also Book Prize have both been decided. We Julia Gillard, Alexis Wright, Christos readings.com.au/events. follow us on social media (@readingsbooks are proud to announce that the winners Tsiolkas, Elizabeth Strout, Kevin Kwan and on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook) are The Girl, The Cat and The Navigator more. For more information, and to see the or sign up to our enews (readings.com. by Matilda Woods, and Ghost Bird by full program, please visit mwf.com.au. au/sign-up) to get the most up-to-date Lisa Fuller, respectively. We’d like to information about any changes to the way extend our congratulations to the other our shops are operating. shortlisted authors for both prizes for ofering such strong competition. More information about the prizes and winners Father’s Day can be found on page 5. Father’s Day is coming up on Sunday 6 September. As well as browsing the many excellent new releases throughout the Alison Huber awarded ABA Text newsletter, you can find some specific Publishing Bookseller of the Year Award Father’s Day gift ideas on pages 12 and 13. Congratulations to Alison Huber, Readings’ If you’re shopping online, we encourage Book Division Manager, who has been you to place your Father’s Day orders of awarded Bookseller of the Year by the in-stock items by 5pm, Friday 14 August, to Australian Booksellers Association (ABA). help ensure your gift will arrive in time. Huber has worked at Readings for seventeen years, and in 2015, took on the role of head book buyer for the bookshop. She has been Miles Franklin Literary Award winner 2020 a positive and ardent advocate for Australian Tara June Winch has been named the literature over the years, with a particular winner of this year’s Miles Franklin emphasis on raising the profile of emerging Literary Award. Her winning book The local voices. Huber was shortlisted alongside Yield is the story of a people and a culture several other passionate booksellers dispossessed, but it also a powerful including Michael Earp (The Little Bookroom), reclaiming of Indigenous language, Kate Horton (Farrells Bookshop), Krissy R E AD I N G S M O N T H LY EDITOR EVENTS & PROGRAMMING PRICES AND AVAILABILITY Free, independent monthly newspaper Elke Power Chris Gordon Please note that all prices and release published by Readings Books, Music & Film [email protected] dates in Readings Monthly are correct ADVERTISING at time of publication, however prices SUBSCRIBE EDITORIAL ASSISTANTS Ellen Cregan and release dates may change without You can subscribe to Readings Monthly Judi Mitchell & Ellen Cregan [email protected] notice. Special price offers apply only for and our e-news by visiting our website: the month in which they are featured in readings.com.au/sign-up PROOFREADERS GRAPHIC DESIGN Readings Monthly. Judi Mitchell, Ellen Cregan & Marie Cat Matteson & Gemma Mahoney DELIVERY CHARGES FOR Matteson COVID19 MAIL-ORDER PURCHASES FRONT COVER While all title release dates were correct $5 flat rate for anywhere in Australia KIDS/YA CURATORS The August Readings Monthly cover features at the time of going to press, due to the Angela Crocombe & Dani Solomon an illustration by Michelle Pereira. Cover ongoing COVID-19 crisis the unexpected DELIVERY CHARGES FOR design by Cat Matteson & Gemma Mahoney. may happen along the supply chain. ONLINE PURCHASES MUSIC CURATOR Please bear with us as we bring you books $5 flat rate for anywhere in Australia for Dave Clarke INTERNAL ILLUSTRATIONS in these rapidly changing circumstances. orders under $60. Free delivery on orders Illustrations by Michelle Pereira are also $60 and over. CLASSICAL MUSIC CURATOR featured on pages 13 and 21. Readings donates 10% of its profits each Phil Richards year to the Readings Foundation: readings.com.au/the-readings-foundation DV D S CU R ATO R Lou Fulco 4 READINGS MONTHLY August 2020 COLUMNS And, are you fully prepped to read Edward Cullen’s half of the story in Mark’s Dear Stephenie Meyer’s hotly anticipated Midnight Sun? (If that description Say Reader doesn’t mean anything to you, don’t ‘Engrossing worry – the Twilight fever of the 2000s fresh, clean air and living in a classless society where everyone was your mate.’ with Mark Rubbo with Alison Huber and heartfelt.’ passed me by too.) In Nonfiction, we have a wonderful Christopher Raja was eleven years old whenMEG his father, MUNDELL David, decided to moveIf you’ve the been family a customer to atAus The award given to an piece of writing about forests and Readings you’ve come Unpublished Manuscript walking by John Blay, Wild Nature, tralia in pursuit of the idyllic lifestyle. They brought their hopes and aspirationsacross to Alison a bungalow Huber, either in at the annual Victorian which our reviewer says is a ‘balm for directly or indirectly. She’s Premier’s Literary the frustrated urge’ to visit nature she Melbourne’s outer suburbs. On the surface, the Rajas appeared to be living a ‘normal’been with us Australian since 2003. life. Awards has developed an feels during our time in lockdown (a For many of those years, she moonlighted excellent track record over the years for feeling I share). Paddy Manning’s Body from her day job as an academic at the uncovering talent (alumni include Jane Count uncovers the human costs of the Throughout his teenage years, Christopher embraces the freedoms ofUniversity his adopted of Melbourne. country, Prior to that, while she his Harper, Christian White, and Melanie climate emergency: increasing mortality worked at the Melbourne University Book Cheng), and so it was with some rates worldwide. Our reviewers also father becomes more and more disenchanted. Just as Christopher isRoom settling and the Dymocksinto university, at Melbourne Central the familyexpectation that I read Kokomo by recommend Christopher Raja’s memoir (now gone). Bookselling just didn’t seem to let Victoria Hannan, 2019’s award recipient. of migration, Into the Suburbs, Merlin is rocked by a tragic and unexpected loss. ‘In Calcutta we were crammedher go. In 2015, in whenamong Readings’ crowds, books trafficI was not disappointed: this impressive Sheldrake’s book about fungi, Entangled manager Martin Shaw announced that he debut is a fnely crafted piece of writing Life, and Philippe Sands’s The Ratline. and his family were decamping to Germany, rich in ideas, and is our Fiction Book of Also out later this month is Pattie Lees’ and pollution. We had visions of breathing fresh, clean air and livingAlison inwas afaced classless with an important society decision where the ev Month. memoir, A Question of Colour, as well as about whether to continue with her academic Speaking of prizes for unpublished new writing from Masha Gessen, Zadie eryone was your mate.’ Christopher Raja was eleven years old whencareer his orfather, put her hand David, up for Martin’s decided job. In to manuscripts, Loner won its author, Smith, Tim Parks, Richard Fidler, Hugh Alison’s words, ‘the planets aligned’ with her Georgina Young, 2019’s Text Prize Mackay, Sam Harris, and Frédéric Gros.