Patrick Lenton’s playful collection of absurdist, pun-filled, mostly superhero-themed stories and flash fiction is crafted with technicolour vividness. Reading Lenton is like eating a box of chocolates with familiar flavours in unfamiliar...
The Unknown Unknown illuminates the serendipitous pleasures of book buying. Donald Rumsfeld, former US Secretary of Defense, is not one of my heroes. Yet as Mark Forsyth has argued in this exquisite little essay, Rumsfeld’s 2002 phrase ‘unknown...
Recently I was anxious to hear a reading of Morris West’s 1965 novel The Ambassador. I’d been told it was better than Graham Greene’s The Quiet American (1956), which I’d read many years ago and recently heard as an audiobook. I inquired at the...
Do Muslim women need saving by the West? How have attitudes in the West changed towards Muslim women since those planes flew into the Twin Towers? Shakira Hussein’s book opens with a description of a celebrity fundraiser in New York for Afghan...
Why don’t more Australians eat indigenous food? The Oldest Foods on Earth is a passionate and optimistic consideration of food, culture and ecology. John Newton’s long-standing interest in cuisine and culture has resulted in several awards and...
Recently I watched the 1980 film Coal Miner’s Daughter, a biopic about country singer Loretta Lynn. I enjoyed the film, thinking Sissy Spacek deserved her Oscar, and admiring the sprightly performance of Tommy Lee Jones as the singer’s husband and...
