Book Recommendations Archives

As an avid reader with ambitions to one day become a broke writer, you tend look at stories differently. Rather like a butcher eating a steak. The pleasure isn’t only in the meal itself, but the cut and the consistency of the meat. You don’t just appreciate the story, but also the construction, the character development, and the sleight of hand an author might use to explore themes.... Read more

Grab a copy of Slaves of Socorro here Slaves of Socorro Brotherband Series : Book 4 by John Flanagan Return to the seafaring world of Hal and his intrepid ship’s crew in the fourth book of John Flanagan’s epic Brotherband series. When the Heron brotherband become the Skandian duty ship to the Kingdom of Araluen, they’re excited at the challenges ahead. Hal, Stig, Thorn and the... Read more

Around six million Jews died in the Holocaust at the hands of the Nazis. After reading Eva Slonim’s heartbreaking memoir, Gazing at the Stars, to throw a figure like that around seems careless. Europe’s Jewish population, of which two-thirds died in those years, were not just a faceless crowd of statistics. They were mothers, daughters, teachers, doctors, sons, fathers and decorated... Read more

Andrew Solomon’s Far From the Tree: Parents, Children and the Search for Identity is a truly amazing labour of love – and one of my favourite books of the past decade. Over seven years, Solomon has interviewed over 300 families where parents have children who are different from themselves in a defining way, across ten different categories, including deafness, dwarves, autistic and criminal chil... Read more

Inspired by the bohemian art world of 1930s Melbourne The Strays is a marvellously accomplished and assured debut, announcing a major new talent. Rich in atmosphere and beautifully observed, it tells the story of only child Lily who makes friends with Eva at school and then becomes infatuated with her family, particularly larger-than-life painter Evan and his glamorous wife Helena. Lily tells t... Read more

Melbourne writer, historian and broadcaster Clare Wright has won the second annual Stella Prize for her groundbreaking work The Forgotten Rebels of Eureka. The book was previously named as one of Booktopia’s Books of the Year for 2013. Kerryn Goldsworthy, chair of the 2014 Stella Prize judging panel: The Forgotten Rebels of Eureka sheds a bright new light on a dark old Australian story. I... Read more

The 14th Australian Book Industry Awards (ABIAs) shortlists were announced this morning in Sydney, with a raft of new categories and a host of wonderful writers and books. The inaugural International Book of the Year award contains Man Booker winner Eleanor Catton and Pulitzer Prize winner Donna Tartt, while the hotly contested Literary Fiction Book of the Year has some extraordinary authors jo... Read more

René Redzepi has taken the top spot at the World’s 50 Best Restaurant Awards. The Noma chef and A Work In Progress author was the surprise win of the night, taking back his world’s best restaurant crown from last year’s winner El Celler de Can Roca. Noma has now won the award an astonishing four times. How do you achieve greater creativity at the world’s best restaurant? René Redzep... Read more

Grab a copy of Every Parent’s Nightmare here The story of Jock Palfreeman has captivated Australia. Booktopia’s Andrew Cattanach took a look at award-winning journalist Belinda Hawkins’ account of the harrowing story of a young Australian jailed for murder. Wrong place, wrong time. Some phrases are uttered so often in our daily lives that they lose their punch, struggling to convey the re... Read more

Don’t be put off by the apparently obscure subject and considerable heft of Lucy Hughes-Hallet’s wonderful biography of Gabriele D’Annunzio, The Pike. D’Annunzio leaps off the page as a sex-mad spendthrift poet; a crack-pot warrior who led a small army to seize and rule an Istrian port city; and an almost-but-not quite-comic prototype for Mussolini’s Fascism. The Pike is a gripping portra... Read more