The Paperback Bookshop, Melbourne
What’s Good: Notes on Rap and Language by Daniel Levin Becker
A playful and detailed look at the use of language in one of the greatest art forms to emerge from the 20th century. In fifty short chapters, Levin Becker hands over electrifying insights from a lifetime of listening. His sharp observations leave readers excitedly searching for tracks and reaching for records. For the already obsessed listener, curious mind, or lover of language – one of the best books published on the genre.
An Exciting and Vivid Inner Life by Paul Dalla Rosa
Paul Dalla Rosa is the real deal: the stories in this, his debut collection, are dark and sharp, full of satire and wit, and, even better, funny. They present a contemporary world that is weird and wild but disturbingly familiar, peopled with characters who make us cringe but who somehow win us over. A deliciously engrossing experience.
People Who Lunch by Sally Olds
With an insider’s tender attention to detail, Olds’s essays move through the lesser-documented subcultures of today’s urban, post-graduate, non-‘professional’ class. At turns historian, advocate and critic, Olds introduces us to semi-defunct secret societies, professional night-clubbers, Art Basel’s Balenciagia-model-cum-performance artists, polyamory, the writer as click-bait generator and the alternative romantic Crypto investor type. Immensely considered, gently humorous and always illuminating, People Who Lunch is a rewarding read.
Matilda Bookshop, Adelaide Hills
The Colony by Audrey Magee
Two men – a failed artist, and a linguist studying the dying language of a tiny community – travel to a small island off the Irish coast to paint and write. This is merely the leaping off point for the author to perceptively examine colonization, religion, patriarchal societies, love, friendship, art, sex, violence, betrayal and family. Magee's writing is of the highest order and this is a novel, like the very best of them, that seems to be about the entire breadth of human existence. We cannot recommend this book highly enough.
Cold Enough for Snow by Jessica Au
To read this novella is to enter a space of quiet reverence for the beauty of places, both grand and commonplace. On the surface, a mother and daughter travel through Japan but underneath their courteous words are currents of affection and unspoken pain. The writing has a sincerity that is quite unusual and very moving. There is much to admire in the way Au can find profundity in fleeting moments, both beautiful and seemingly banal.
Limberlost by Robbie Arnott
Haunted by the passing of time and the spectre of a great whale, Limberlost is the fable-like story of the summer that gentle Ned West spends waiting for his brothers to return from war, and the ripples it casts across the rest of his life. This is a summer of rabbits and quolls, of trees and rivers, of building and becoming a man. The quiet wisdom Arnott conveys in this potent and exquisitely crafted depiction of the delicate relationship between people and place will stay with us for some time.
The Colony by Audrey Magee, Trespasses by Louise Kennedy and Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan
A beautiful trio of Irish books has been a staff favourite here at Readings over the last few months. We’ve been encouraging these books into as many hands as possible because we’ve loved them so much and want to share them with everyone. The Colony by Audrey Magee, Trespasses by Louise Kennedy and Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan are stunning examples of Irish writing – as in Keegan’s title, small things, and small stories, that leave a huge impact. All are written in the most spare and elegant way; there is not an unnecessary word in these evocative, moving and sometimes funny stories of family, language, history, politics, landscape and love. Stories that can’t escape the context of Irish political history and the layered impacts of it on every Irish life.
This Devastating Fever by Sophie Cunningham
Sophie Cunningham’s novel will delight lovers of smart, boundary-pushing fiction. It follows Alice, an author, as she attempts to write about the lives of Leonard and Virginia Woolf. But when Alice’s long-dead subjects start resisting her efforts to capture them on the page, she is forced to grapple with curly questions about art, life and the very nature of storytelling.
Sydney: A Biography by Louis Nowra
Louis Nowra’s book is a love letter to the city he moved to in 1978. It is a vibrant history of the harbour city woven with anecdotes, interviews and fascinating stories from early settlement to recent times. Nowra never loses sight of Sydney’s indigenous history whilst exploring the architecture, the characters and the cultural evolution of a city. This is a great companion for those visiting and wanting to explore or for those longterm residents who want to discover more about their Sydney. As Nowra says, “Everyone has their own Sydney”.
Iris by Fiona McGregor
Set in the underbelly of 1930s Sydney, Iris is a fictional account of the life of Iris Webber – thief, scammer, schemer, lover and survivor. Iris brings the mean streets of Surry Hills, Darlinghurst and East Sydney to life with this rollicking tale of sly grog, illicit clubs and the notorious gangsters Kate Leigh and Tilly Devine. Read this, then retrace Iris’s steps – stop for a drink at a small bar and revel in the glory of Sydney in summer, both past and present.
Dear Dolly by Dolly Alderton
Dolly for president? I love everything this woman writes and her latest book is no exception. A compilation of her letters and responses from her hugely successful Sunday Times column. A perfect easy, laughable beach read.
The Penguin Book of Spanish Short Stories by Margaret Jull Costa
What feels better than finishing a book? Finishing a book within a book. With over 50 stories, this beautifully translated novel has something for everyone. The stories are organised chronologically, taking you right back 1871. My personal favourite is Summer Orchestra by Esther Tusquets, in which a young woman learns lifelong lessons surrounding certain types of men in society and adulthood.
How to Do Nothing by Jenny Odell
Let that guilt go – doing nothing is the new “I'm so busy”. Jenny Odell sets us with a clear action plan on how to resist capital narratives of productivity and techno-determinism, and to become more meaningfully connected in the process. Make your summer of doing nothing, actually something.
The Book of Goose by Yiyun Li
An intimate story of the friendship between two young girls in postwar France, who together write and publish a collection of macabre short stories that pulls both girls down different paths beyond their control. A wonderfully layered story of fate, creativity and obsession that hovers between reality and fable.
Tell Me Again by Amy Thunig
Amy grew up on the stories told to her by her parents, and the stories that she told herself – about the day she was born, why her legal name is different to her family, what it meant that her father was away for “work”. In her memoir she shares stories of systemic bias and intergenerational trauma, of love and community. Above all, they are stories of how Amy was able to succeed and become who she is today not in spite of her parent's addictions and poverty, but because of their absolute love and support.
The Lovers by Yumna Cassab
This is a character-driven story of two lovers brought together in a Middle Eastern warzone. Jamila is an expat, with money, status and education, and she loves the land and the lifestyle of its inhabitants. Amir is local, still navigating his life after divorce and in a month earns less than Jamila pays for shampoo. Neither is new to love or its challenges but each is confronted by other’s way of loving and sharing. Their love feels easy to read about, taking place on pages driven by pared back dialogue and in chapters that are short and punchy – often less than two pages long. It’s the perfect beach read: easy to get into but also literary, with beautiful writing and a big dose of social commentary.
Foals Bread by Gillian Mears
If you’ve never read Gillian Mears before, start here. She’s one of Australia’s greatest writers but has never got the attention she deserves. This book, originally published in 2012, was recently brought back into publication (probably due to a new biography by Bernadette Brennan). The book follows three generations of an Australian showjumping family, centred around Noah Nancarrow, the daughter of an alcoholic a pig drover. While incredibly beautiful and emotive, the book is anything but a fairytale, drawing on Mears’ own experiences of MS, while also exploring issues of child sexual abuse. Rough as guts and tender everywhere, it is a story as Australian as the Easter Show and filled with a vernacular language that is beautifully absent from our current world. This will be your salve around annoying family members, enrich any summer escapes, and when you finish I’d recommend dipping into her biography – the writer is every bit as fantastic as the story.
QAnon and On: A Short and Shocking History of Internet Conspiracy Cults by Van Badham
The internet has always been a weird place, but some things are more disturbing than others (and the last few years has been particularly dark). The book covers topics from Scott Morrison, Pizzagate, MAGA Trumpists and the impact of COVID on the conspiracy movement. I appreciated the Australian specific perspective that Badham brought and found her style of writing entertaining and compelling. It’s like binging a series of Louis Theroux but in book form.
Looking for more summer reads? Check out our guides from 2021 and 2020 – they're filled with goodies.
