What we're reading
What we're reading: Magee, Myint, St. John Mandel
Each week our wonderful staff share the books that they've been enjoying.
Joanna is reading Close to Home by Michael Magee
A novel from a new Irish novelist always gets my attention and I’m so glad I picked up a copy of Close to Home by Michael Magee. It’s the story of Sean, who returns home to Belfast after attending university in Liverpool. He falls into old habits and a violent act threatens to derail him further. There’s trauma in…
What we're reading: Chang, Ganeshananthan
Each week our wonderful staff share the books that they've been enjoying.
Tracy is reading Hunger by Lan Samantha Chang
Hunger is a collection of one novella (the title story) and five short stories, all centred on the Chinese-American immigrant experience. Because the blurb says it better than I can, I will just steal a line from it: ‘Chang untangles how an immigrant can hunger for love, for acceptance, and for what they have left behind.’
I just finished the…
What we're reading: Patchett, Rushdi
Each week our wonderful staff share the books that they've been enjoying.
Lian is reading These Precious Days by Ann Patchett
Ann Patchett was a guest at this year's Melbourne Writers' Festival, and hearing her speak on a panel with our own Chris Gordon was all the inducement I needed to dive head-first into her delightful collection of essays. These Precious Days is an absolutely charming, desperately relatable, heartfelt and humorous book that provides an insight into the experiences that…
What we're reading: Chenoweth, July
Each week our wonderful staff share the books that they've been enjoying.
Aurelia is reading Maria Petranelli is Prepared for Anything (Except This) by Elisa Chenoweth
I just recently read Maria Petranelli is Prepared for Anything (Except This) and absolutely loved it! This is definitely a Looking for Alibrandi for the next generation, only just slightly more insane.
Maria Petranelli is your average Italian-Australian girl, working at a gelati store, surviving her loving-yet-overprotective Italian family. When she decides to go…
What we're reading: Linde, Roth, Yamazaki
Each week our wonderful staff share the books that they've been enjoying.
Yasmin is reading The Wren in the Holly Library by K.A. Linde
I just finished this recently and let me tell you, reading this one in public was hard. The smut is fantastic, with a great gothic, broody man to swoon over – very much a "I've been alive for 500 years and never let anyone close to me" type personality. I think this would be a…
What we're reading: Bullwinkel, Garden, Enriquez
Each week our wonderful staff share the books that they've been enjoying.
Justin is reading Headshot by Rita Bullwinkel
Headshot is a gripping, powerfully written account of eight young women fighting in the Daughters of America Cup, a fictional boxing tournament held over two days in a gym in Reno, Nevada. Each chapter takes us into successive bouts between two of the fighters. We go inside the ring with them (feeling every blow, every missed shot), but also into their…
What we're reading: Mari, Hession, Tóibín
Each week our wonderful staff share the books that they've been enjoying.
Baz Ozturk is reading Verdigris by Michele Mari, translated by Brian Robert Moore
Michele Mari, recognised in Italy as one of the country’s great living writers, was translated into English for the first time in 2023 with his story collection You, Bleeding Childhood, which I really enjoyed. I was charmed by Mari’s warmth, cleverness and offbeat sensibility, so when his novel Verdigris came out recently, I pounced…
What We're Reading: Ferrante, Li & Craig
Each week our wonderful staff share the books that they've been enjoying.
David Little is reading The Lost Daughter by Elena Ferrante, translated by Ann Goldstein
I’ve recently read and loved The Lost Daughter by Elena Ferrante. This taut psychological drama is impressively dense and layered for such a slim book. the story follows Leda, and as it unfolds past and present brush together to reveal a particularly complex experience of motherhood. So much here turns on the ambiguous meaning…
What We're Reading: Erpenbeck, Darragh & Winans
Each week our wonderful staff share the books and music that they've been enjoying.
Baz Ozturk is reading Kairos by Jenny Erpenbeck, translated by Michael Hofmann
I recently read Kairos by Jenny Erpenbeck, which has just won the International Booker Prize. I loved Erpenbeck’s brilliant, often oblique way of telling the story of life in East Germany in the years before fall of the wall, and the way reunification messed with East Germans in the years after it was quickly…
What We're Reading: Wilkinson, Oliver & Shin
Each week our wonderful staff share the books and music that they've been enjoying.
Alicia Vu, a member of The Readings Teen Advisory Board, is reading Deep Is the Fen by Lili Wilkinson
This is a mysterious, fantastical and haunting tale! Lili Wilkinson weaves a page-turning novel that is a perfect mix of adventure, romance and fantasy.
The main protagonist, Merry, undergoes a bewitching journey to understand magic, witches, love, and the consequences of unchallenged power... Deep Is the…
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