Book Recommendations Archives

I’ve loved fairy-tales from as far back as I can remember. Even before I could read, I always begged to be told fairy-tales, and the first book I remember reading for myself in English (I’m of French origin, so my first reading was in French), as a six year old, was a beautifully illustrated Little Golden Book which was a collection of three fairy-tales: Sleeping Beauty, Rapunzel, a... Read more

War was always here. Before man was, war waited for him. The ultimate trade awaiting its ultimate practitioner – Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian.  What does a book do if not evoke feelings you didn’t know you had, bring them to the surface and make you examine them like an errant jigsaw piece? Before the brilliance of the Pulitzer Prize winning The Road, Cormac McCarthy shook the literatu... Read more

To me, the trouble with the vast majority of erotica is twofold: (i) the quality of the writing is far more disturbing than anything the protagonists might do to each other, literary merit not usually being the most lasting effect the author hopes to create; and (ii) there are, to put it bluntly, only so many ways tab A can be inserted into slot B – or even slots B, C and D, simultaneousl... Read more

From The Sydney Morning Herald: Step aside, Fifty Shades of Grey, there’s a new name in steamy fiction. Enter Destined to Play, the first in a three-book series that has seen first-time Australian author Indigo Bloome land herself in the position of a six-figure book deal. The first in the Avalon trilogy may be Australia’s answer to the Anastasia Steele plot that has blown open the ... Read more

Nebraska – and Jack Reacher, huge, hulking and with a freshly busted nose, is still trying to hitch a ride east to Virginia. He’s picked up by three strangers – two men and a woman. Immediately he knows they’re all lying about something – and then they run into a police roadblock on the highway. But they get through. Because the three are innocent? Or because the t... Read more

What was I thinking when I gave a list of some of my favourite authors and left out Wallace Stegner? He must be one of the most under-appreciated writers of the twentieth century, certainly outside his native America. (To digress for a moment: I hate the idea of writers falling out of fashion, but they do – just think of Graham Greene, Somerset Maugham, C.P. Snow, Anthony Powell, Jean Rhy... Read more

1. Blood Red Road The Dustland Series: Book 1 by Moira Young Loved this story! Saba’s world is so compelling, and the action scenes are superbly done. There were some moments (especially when Saba is cagefighting) when I was literally sitting on the edge of my seat, hunched over the book as my eyes scanned the page, almost tripping over words in my head from reading too fast as I hurried to fin... Read more

Serena Frome, the beautiful daughter of an Anglican bishop, has a brief affair with an older man during her final year at Cambridge, and finds herself being groomed for the intelligence service. The year is 1972. Britain, confronting economic disaster, is being torn apart by industrial unrest and terrorism and faces its fifth state of emergency. The Cold War has entered a moribund phase, but th... Read more

Vale Nora. You were one of those writers who sounded so confiding, so intimate that I thought of you as a friend I’d never met- and that was before Facebook exploited and devalued that concept. I loved Heartburn. Think it was the first novel I ever read that interrupted the narrative to give readers a recipe. What a trend that started! Can anyone remember any other novelist doing this before No... Read more

Booktopia is pleased to welcome Caroline Baum to the role of Editorial Director of our monthly newsletter the Booktopia BUZZ. Here is Caroline’s introduction from the BUZZ plus some of this month’s highlights. Some of the most compelling fiction published this month shares a common theme: violence, and its aftermath, the psychological scarring of war and upheaval pushing people to t... Read more