Book Recommendations Archives

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

Christobel Kent’s latest offering in her Sandro Cellini series, The Dead Season, takes us to Florence during August with its unrelenting stifling heat. The novel is set among those left behind when the more affluent head to the coast for their summer holidays. Those familiar with other crime writers whose stories are based in Italy such as Dibden, Camilleri, Leon, Nabb, Pears and Hewson, will f... Read more

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