JAMES COVENTRY Time and Space: The tactics that shaped Australian Rules – and the players and coaches who mastered them. Reviewed by Bernard Whimpress
This is one of the most important books yet written on the evolution of Australian Rules football. Australian Rules football is a simple game that perhaps has been made more complicated than it needs to be. James Coventry’s new history of tactics unravels its...
The Godfather: Peter Corris on limericks
I love a good limerick. Recently I cooked up a couple for two of my grandsons: There once was a boy named Vin Who suddenly became very thin His mum said, ‘Eat more ‘Or you’ll feel very sore ‘When your bones start to poke through your skin.’ And: There once was a boy...
Crime Scene: PETER DOYLE The Big Whatever. Reviewed by Karen Chisholm
Music and popular culture provide the backdrop to this long-awaited new Billy Glasheen novel. It’s no surprise that Peter Doyle, authority on popular culture, slide guitarist, university professor and social historian, has written a series of novels that...
JANE SMILEY Early Warning. Reviewed by Robyne Young
Major events in US history provide the backdrop to this continuing family saga. I finished Some Luck, the first instalment in Jane Smiley’s trilogy, The Last Hundred Years, highly anticipating this next volume, Early Warning, that would continue her story of an Iowan...
The Godfather: Peter Corris on skinfolds
AFL players, and footballers in general, are not known for their wit and bons mots. An exception is Chris Judd, recently retired Carlton midfielder and former captain of the West Coast Eagles. Judd won many awards in his 279-game career. An all-rounder in every sense,...
CARMEL BIRD My Hearts Are Your Hearts. Reviewed by Jeannette Delamoir
Love, pain and mortality are intertwined in a collection that also takes us behind the scenes of the writing. Carmel Bird’s new collection promises ‘twenty new stories and their origins’. Most of the stories have been published elsewhere and so are not brand new...
MURRAY MIDDLETON When There’s Nowhere Else to Run. Reviewed by Michael Jongen
This powerful collection dissects love, death, sex and alienation in modern Australia. 2015 Vogel Award winner Murray Middleton has written something close to a great contemporary Australian novel in this terse collection of stories. Losers, victims and spectators...
The Godfather: Peter Corris on history
I wrote in a previous column about my love of historical novels but, while scanning the History channel in search of something to watch, I realised with a new clarity that my passion has always been for the subject of history itself – the events and people of the...
ANN ALLESTREE Barbara Pym: A passionate force. Reviewed by Walter Mason
This biography is a wonderfully eccentric wander through a rediscovered author’s life. Few writers generate a cult following that spans decades, and those who do tend to be the most unlikely suspects. One of the select few to inspire manic enthusiasm on the...
Midwinter Giveaway 2015
This draw is now closed. Congratulations to our winner – Chris Maher from Sydney! . Michael Wilding: Wild Bleak Bohemia: Marcus Clarke, Adam Lindsay Gordon and Henry Kendall Wild Bleak Bohemia revolves around the meeting in Melbourne of Marcus Clarke, Adam...
PAUL MCAULEY Something Coming Through. Reviewed by Keith Stevenson
Which is more dangerous? Aliens bearing gifts? Or human nature? Paul McAuley is a multi-award-winning speculative fiction author whose Quiet War series, which spawned four novels and a collection of short stories, is one of the most enjoyable space-based speculative...
Recent Posts
MARIANA ENRIQUEZ Somebody is Walking on Your Grave. Reviewed by Ann Skea11 November 2025No casual tombstone tourist, Mariana Enriquez details her fascination with [ … ]
DAVID PRICE The Shameful Isles. Reviewed by Braham Dabscheck6 November 2025David Price’s history of Western Australia’s lock hospitals and the [ … ]
BRIAN STODDART Playing the Game: How cricket made Barbados. Reviewed by Bernard Whimpress4 November 2025Brian Stoddart’s multi-faceted account of a small island’s cricket history is a [ … ]
ANDREW PIPPOS The Transformations. Reviewed by Linda Godfrey30 October 2025The second novel from Andrew Pippos draws inspiration from the epics of ancient [ … ]