Book Recommendations Archives

Whether you agree with Anthony Burgess  ‘Everybody knows now that Ulysses is the greatest novel of the century’ or feel as Virginia Woolf did ‘I . . . have been amused, stimulated, charmed interested by the first 2 or 3 chapters–to the end of the Cemetery scene; & then puzzled, bored, irritated, & disillusioned as by a queasy undergraduate scratching his pimples.... Read more

The book world sighs in unison. The dark matter of the Fifty Shades of Grey trilogy has filled the void left by the dying star of paranormal teen fiction. Of course, publishers worldwide predicted this would happen. Right? Night always follows twilight. And it doesn’t get any darker than erotica. Makes sense. What we are witnessing is a natural progression from the muted, frustrated desir... Read more

Drip Drip Drop Trickle Splash In reviewing the latest and one of the greatest novels in Pulitzer-Prize winning writer Richard Ford’s literary career Canada, one is reminded of the simple turn of the tap, the water slowly seeping out before a sudden rush of brilliance, albeit the brilliance is also there in the wonderful beginning, only in more hushed tones. It’s been six years since Ford has re... Read more

Ears to the ground. Do you hear the gentle caress of a forearm to the face, the whimsical thud of a scrum engagement, the glorious stroke of leather boot on synthetic rubber? Yes Booktopians, here we are, halfway through another Rugby season, and with it mid-year tests for the Wallabies. Rugby has been a major force in the Australian sporting landscape for over a century with teams now based in... Read more

It has been a bizarre month in politics. We’ve seen a speaker talk (or text) about dud roots, an MP allege union officials used his hotel phone while he was in the shower and an opposition minister for business declare  he had the skin of a rhinoceros, the speed of a gazelle and was watching the opposition like a hawk (yes ladies and gentlemen, a one man menagerie voted in by the people f... Read more

The Orange Prize for Fiction Winner 2012 From the Orange Prize website: 19.15pm, London, 30 May 2012 — American author Madeline Miller has won the 2012 Orange Prize for Fiction with her debut novel The Song of Achilles (Bloomsbury). 2012 marks the seventeenth year of the Orange Prize, which celebrates excellence, originality and accessibility in women’s writing from throughout the world. At an ... Read more

This is the biggest event of the YA year. The two toughest competitors in the YA world will come head to head in a one-off heavy-weight bout on 12th June, 2012. In red corner, Lauren Kate, author of The Fallen Series, one of the highest selling YA series ever, the darling of Random House Australia, and in the white corner, Richelle Mead, author of The Vampire Academy novels, the biggest thing i... Read more

Walker Books Australia is so excited about Broken they have put together a prize pack worth $200 to ensure they have your full attention. I took Broken home and gave it to my tame teen reader who read it in a couple of nights. She absolutely loved it. I tried to get her to do a review for me but she gave me that look, you know the look, and went off to read another book. So how do you win this ... Read more

In Mrs Robinson’s Disgrace: The Private Diary of a Victorian Lady, Kate Summerscale casts a spotlight on a little known chapter in history. This is a very thoroughly researched case study detailing the true story of an unhappily married woman in Victorian Society.  In this, the age of Cougar Town, Sex and the City and Desperate Housewives, when women are applauded for chasing younger men and pr... Read more

HAPPY 100TH BIRTHDAY PATRICK WHITE Patrick White was born on this day in England in 1912. He was then taken to Australia, where his father owned a sheep farm, when he was six months old. He was educated in England at Cheltenham College and King’s College, Cambridge. He settled in London, where he wrote several unpublished novels, then served in the RAF during the war. He returned to Austr... Read more