The start of a new month means that there's a new issue of Readings Monthly available online and in our shops. Below you can read Alison Huber's column from the latest issue – and keep an eye on the blog for more updates and recommened new releases throughout the month!

There are few moments in the book buying department’s year that feel quiet. I joked to someone earlier this month that it slows down for maybe one or two days in late February (I agree, you had to be there). With the nonstop cascade of new releases to make decisions about, it’s not always possible to think reflectively or actively about what exactly it is that we’re doing: there’s always another order to place, a deal to do, and then comes the next month, and the next, and then it’s Christmas again. This is not a complaint, far from it in fact: it’s one of the reasons I love this job, and the excitement of finding out about forthcoming titles and opening boxes of new releases never changes. But I’ve had more cause to think about these matters recently, largely because of happenings in the industry more broadly (see Joe’s astute remarks here).

In a stroke of good timing, I was fortunate to be in the audience to hear Mark Rubbo being interviewed by journalist and author Jane Sullivan during a session at Melbourne Rare Book Week. Mark talked about the early days of Readings in the 1970s and the emerging local book industry (which, believe it or not, has not always published Australian writers!), and some of the many initiatives Mark established to support and champion Australian authors and their work, and though I know many of these stories as Readings folklore, there’s always more to hear. It was a great reminder (thank you, Mark) of how Melbourne got where it is today as world-renowned City of Literature, of Readings’ and Mark’s roles in that story, the work Australian booksellers and publishers do, and the importance of an industry that foregrounds Australian voices and local creative endeavours. To paraphrase Mark, the book is a wonderful and desirable technology that is resilient, and hearing him talk was a reminder that it’s the hard work of people that continue to make it so. Keep an eye on the Readings Podcast for a recording of the conversation, it’s great!

I remember Mark saying in my earshot once that, ‘when Alison likes a book, she really, really likes it’. I wasn’t really sure what to think about that at the time (i.e., I spiralled: OMG does that mean I am OTT? Is my book love too much? And so on, with other similar anxious thought trajectories of concern). But today, many years down the track, I am of course aware that this was not something to be worried about, Mark was just reading me like the proverbial open book: when I like something, I can’t help myself. So here I am introducing my current rant/obsession: Woo Woo by Ella Baxter (see here for the full blast). Baxter is a rising star of Australian literature and has written a brilliant second novel that is funny, clever and, most importantly, very original. And yes, I really, really like it. She’s in good Australian company this month, with new books from Fiona McFarlane (Highway 13), Evie Wyld (The Echoes), Anita Heiss (Dirrayawadha), and Courtney Collins (Bird), as well as our Crime Book of the Month, the ominously titled The Creeper by Margaret Hickey. Wiradjuri poet and artist Jazz Money’s breakthrough poetry debut, how to make a basket (2021), was widely acclaimed, and our reviewer calls Money’s new collection, mark the dawn, ‘glorious’.

One of my favourite international authors is Willy Vlautin, and his latest book, The Horse, is perhaps his best, though I feel like I think that about every next book he writes! I guess I’m just always hanging out for his next book and am never disappointed. One of Vlautin’s great skills is in pathos: his characters are pretty much irresistible, but The Horse’s Al Ward is one that really gets to you.

There’s been a lot of talk about Honor Levy’s debut short story collection My First Book written about/for those who are, as our reviewer puts it, ‘the terminally online’. Now, that is absolutely, definitely not me, but I’m here for this book! Yoko Ogawa is a staff and customer favourite, and her new book is Mina’s Matchbox, which our reviewer ‘didn’t want to end’. Our staff also recommends Elif Shafak’s There Are Rivers in the Sky, Anna Dorn’s Perfume & Pain, Halle Butler’s Banal Nightmare, Susan Muaddi Darraj’s Behind You Is the Sea, and Rainbow Rowell’s Slow Dance.

Our Nonfiction Book of the Month is Eric Beecher’s The Men Who Killed the News, a juicy no-holds-barred account of the devolution of the news media here and the rest of the world. Our reviewer calls it ‘one of the most important books published here in many years . . . [and] should be read by everyone who is interested in a civil society’. Enough said!

You’ll notice an extract from Fitzroy 1974, a book of photography by Robert Ashton which was first published in that year as Into the Hollow Mountains. Tony Birch and others have written new essays for the new edition, and it feels like a time capsule was just opened with the republication of this visual history of inner-city Melbourne. Our reviewers also point you to Nikos Papastergiardis’s reflective work, John Berger and Me, Olivia Laing’s gorgeous blend of cultural criticism and personal reflection, The Garden Against Time, and Kári Gíslason’s insightful memoir, Running with Pirates. There’s so much nonfiction to explore this month: topics include First Nations languages, Krautrock, the politics of microfinance, gender bias in business leadership, Big Oil, and the first book-length reflective work to be published in the aftermath of the Voice Referendum, Shireen Morris’s Broken Heart. 2024’s big cookbooks are starting to come our way this month too, with key releases from cult Melbourne institutions Tarts Anon, Chae, The Fishmonger’s Son, and Tipo 00, as well as the new book from one of the best friends of vegans and vegetarians everywhere, Meera Sodha (Dinner).

And finally, dear Reader, lots of people (myself included) are raving about Lauren Elkin’s debut novel Scaffolding, which is proving to be a staff favourite and potential book of the year. If you missed her terrific work of feminist art criticism last year (Art Monsters), you can find it in paperback this month.