Books

(courtesy Bloomsbury Publishing) The art of reinvention is one many of us practice throughout our lives but it is likely that few have undertaken quite so radical and life transformative a change as that of Mary Read, a real 17th century women who began life raised as a boy after Continue Reading

(courtesy Harper Collins Publishers Australia) Is it possible for a story to be both crushingly hopeless and full of hope all at the same time? They may seem to be diametrically opposed states, but as many of us know, it is possible to feel as if life is slipping through Continue Reading

(courtesy Bloomsbury Publishing) The phrase, “You can never go home again”, lifted from the title of a 1940 novel by Thomas Wolfe, is oft cited as proof that the past is somewhere so heavily coloured by nostalgia that viewing in anything like objective terms is all but impossible. That’s, on Continue Reading

(courtesy Little Brown) People have long debated whether it’s nature or nurture that shapes us and turns out into the human beings we grow to become; but what about robots? Can they ever really change? After all, aren’t they simply programmed Os and 1s working in algorithmic succession according to Continue Reading

(courtesy Penguin Books Australia) This one is. This phrase, which distills into three short but carefully chosen words a centred approach to life that forces, in the best way, to only think and concentrate on the present, repeats over and over in the imaginative joy that is The Last Gifts Continue Reading

(courtesy Allen & Unwin Book Publishers) If you have read any novels featuring a “Chosen One” hero, you will be quite familiar with the idea that someone of great talent and abilities but no real awareness of them will be plucked from anonymity and obscurity to become the saviour of Continue Reading

(courtesy Simon & Schuster Australia) There’s something about a plucky, funny protagonist who won’t take no for an answer that absolutely reels you in. While society as a whole, and indeed their own family, are happy to tow whatever the agreed line of mainstream behaviour has been deemed to be Continue Reading

(courtesy Affirm Press) When you pick up the superlative gem that is The Hitwoman’s Guide to Reducing Household Debt by Mark Mupotsa-Russell, you first think that here is a quirky, whimsical read of a ex-hitwoman, now happily and cosily domiciled in suburban life in the Dandenong Ranges near Melbourne, who Continue Reading