Dear Reader, June 2017
Knowing I am among friends, I can confess to expressing inappropriate book-related outrage on occasion. ‘What do you mean you haven’t read The Handmaid’s Tale?’, I exclaimed to a colleague last year. So strong is my feeling that this book must be read, the words involuntarily escaped my mouth. One must be careful, of course, in casting this kind of judgement, because, let’s face it, we all have our own list of Very Important Books we haven’t read. My list is, like yours, upsettingly long. I don’t mind telling you that it contains Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things. It’s been 20 years since its publication, and Roy has now written a second novel, The Ministry of Utmost Happiness, our Fiction Book of the Month. Our reviewer’s beautiful assessment of this work has utterly convinced me to move Roy out of my ‘yet to be read’ list. Our Nonfiction Book of the Month is the new work from staff favourite, Inga Simpson. Simpson’s writing already has the feel of nature about it, and Understory expands into an experiment in the nature memoir; it will wholly satisfy those who have already read and loved her work, and should bring new attention to her excellent works of fiction.
Make further room next to your bed for new novels from Australian writers, including Wayne Macauley, Eliza Henry-Jones, Melanie Joosten and Anna Spargo-Ryan, and the first novel for adults from prize-winning YA author Felicity Castagna.
Several hotly anticipated books appear on the international front too, including: the third instalment in Kevin Kwan’s Crazy Rich Asians series; a novel from Single, Carefree, Mellow author, Katherine Heiny; and Rachel Khong’s Goodbye, Vitamin, which is as good as our reviewer says it is. Tom Malmquist’s semi-autobiographical novel In Every Moment We Are Still Alive, a prize-winner and bestseller in Sweden, explores loss and parenthood, and should make an equal impact in translation.
Some strong nonfiction titles must join that pile: including Briohny Doyle’s personal exploration of ‘adulthood’, Adult Fantasy; Jenny Valentish’s reflection on addiction, Woman of Substances; Anna Krien’s new Quarterly Essay on climate politics; the timely provocation from the UK, Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People About Race; volume one of humourist David Sedaris’s diaries, Theft By Finding; Client Earth, in which two lawyers who represent the planet explain their case; and a book that provides a plan for resistance and activism in the age of Trump from the incomparable Naomi Klein, No Is Not Enough.
It’s a big month for children’s books, as we announce and celebrate the finalists for the Readings Young Adult Book Prize. We also congratulate two members of our Readings family: Leanne Hall, on winning the Patricia Wrightson Prize for Children’s Literature at the NSW Premier’s Awards (for Iris and the Tiger); and Gabrielle Williams, on the publication of her new YA novel (and, fittingly, our YA Book of the Month), My Life as a Hashtag. #awesome
And finally, dear reader, I feel compelled to return to where I began, to suggest – in the most gentle, non-judgemental terms – that if The Handmaid’s Tale holds a place on your ‘yet to be read’ list, the moment to read it is now. Margaret Atwood has always been ahead of her time.
