CRAIG MUNRO Under Cover: Adventures in the art of editing. Reviewed by Bruce Sims
This memoir provides insights into the editor’s world, and winning and losing in the publishing game. Craig Munro poses the central dilemma of this book on the opening page, that author–editor relationships are ‘hidden from public scrutiny by an underworld-style code...
STEPHEN KNIGHT The Politics of Myth. Reviewed by Folly Gleeson
Here is a richly informative, scholarly and entertaining discussion of culture and myth. Our media-doused world is constantly fed stories concerning celebrities and other public figures reflecting various mythic tales and characters; stories of rags to riches,...
MAGDA SZUBANSKI Reckoning. Reviewed by Shelley McInnis
This memoir untangles intergenerational trauma with intelligence and insight. In Magda Szubanski’s memoir, Reckoning, the author outs herself as many things: a secret reader of forbidden books, a one-time sharpie from the wrong side of the tracks in Croydon, Victoria,...
ANNETTE MARFORDING Celebrating Australian Writing: Conversations with Australian authors. Reviewed by Jeannette Delamoir
These interviews construct exciting and substantial explorations of Australian literature. Annette Marfording, lawyer and academic, ‘fell in love’ with Australian literature after moving here from Germany. But she is puzzled. ‘Why is it that Australian writing is...
DEBRA ADELAIDE (ed) The Simple Act of Reading; ANTONIA FRASER (ed) The Pleasure of Reading. Reviewed by Suzanne Marks
These two collections give richly personal insights into how books and reading are critical to a strong and resilient culture. To borrow Giulia Giuffrè’s metaphor for libraries and bookshops, entering the pages of these anthologies is like ‘entering...
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...
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...
EILEEN CHANIN and STEVEN MILLER Awakening: Four lives in art. Reviewed by Annette Hughes
These four Australian women reached out and took what the world had to offer in the new light of modernism. Awakening is a compelling work of cultural history which looks at the lives of four Melbourne women from diverse backgrounds, and follows their respective...
KAREN LAMB Thea Astley: Inventing her own weather. Reviewed by Suzanne Marks
The first full biography of Australian writer Thea Astley is a rollicking read that reveals a complex maverick who pushed against both the limits of her time and her own doubts. ‘There was never a time when multi-award-winning Australian novelist Thea Astley was...
OLIVER SACKS On the Move: A life. Reviewed by Adrian Phoon
This memoir closes the loop on a remarkable life. Oliver Sacks found fame writing case studies of his patients. In Awakenings, he wrote about his post-encephalitic patients’ revival from decades-long catatonia after he prescribed them a drug called L-Dopa. Sacks has...
JANE GLEESON-WHITE Six Capitals: The revolution capitalism has to have – or can accountants save the planet? Reviewed by Yvonne Perkins
In Six Capitals, prize-winning author Jane Gleeson-White puts before the reader an extraordinary proposition: that accountants will transform the capitalist world. Accountants are not known for their revolutionary or idealistic zeal, but, Gleeson-White argues: Because...
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