There’s nothing quite like a controversial blockbusting release – complete with a publisher’s embargo – hitting the shelves in the usually quiet new-release month of January to get a year in books off to a thrilling beginning. Books were (well, a book was) front page news. The royal memoir from Prince Harry, Spare, was always set to capture the collective imagination (though I must admit to being quite perplexed by the actual extent of the media coverage, which at some points felt like it needed the adjective ‘blanket’), but interest ratcheted up impossibly higher when some Spanish bookstores put the book on sale five days before the official release date.

Broken embargo! Leaked extracts! Embargoed content published in news reports! I wondered if this would mean that people’s interest would wane, and the book wouldn’t work quite as well as it might have? The answer was a resounding no, and in fact the opposite seems to have proven true, since Spare has become the fastest selling nonfiction book since records began in the UK and Australia, and has reportedly sold 3.2 million copies worldwide in its first week of release (including ebook and audio formats). I am trying to visualise that stack of cartons.

While that was all going on, I was on holidays, reading my way through Curtis Sittenfeld’s Romantic Comedy, Max Porter’s Shy, and Jente Posthuma’s What I’d Rather Not Think About (all due in April), and André Dao’s Anam (winner of last year’s Victorian Premier’s Literary Award for an Unpublished Manuscript, due in May), while also indulging in an annual treat of reading a couple of books that are not forthcoming (accompanied by the yearly realisation and lament that I don’t have nearly enough holidays available in which I can read all the books I have missed along the way).

I see so many good books on the horizon from debut authors you’re yet to know about, and some of our favourite local and international writers: Christos Tsiolkas, Tony Birch, Stephanie Bishop, Alexis Wright, Anna Funder, Melissa Lucashenko, Trent Dalton, Kate Grenville, Zadie Smith, Jeanette Winterson, Deborah Levy, Colson Whitehead, Eleanor Catton, Han Kang, Richard Ford, Lorrie Moore … the list does, quite literally, go on and on.

Speaking of lists, we recently announced the Top 100 bestsellers at Readings for 2022. It’s always a fascinating exercise to see, with the clarity of numbers, which books our customers have been drawn to. Our Top 10 included the winner of this year’s Readings Prize for New Australian Fiction (Cold Enough for Snow by Jessica Au), which appeared higher in the list than the Stella and Miles Franklin winners (Dropbear by Evelyn Araluen and Bodies of Light by Jennifer Down respectively), a fact that speaks to the esteem in which our customers hold our unique prize. At number two was a December release, Bulldozed by Niki Savva, which in its brief month in the market outsold every single other book in our shops, with the exception of the phenomenon that is Before the Coffee Gets Cold by Toshikazu Kawaguchi (translated by Geoffrey Trousselot), which just pipped it at the post for the number one spot. This book was published in 2019 and its readership continues to build. It popped up at number 66 in the 2019 Readings Top 100 list, but didn’t feature in the Top 100 from 2020 or 2021. Where will it be at the end of 2023?

A Country of Eternal Light by Melbourne author Paul Dalgarno is our first Fiction Book of the Month for the year. This book comes with heady praise from many quarters, including from our reviewer who, so early in the year, is already prepared to say she is ‘quietly confident this wonderful novel might well be [her] favourite read for 2023’. That is a big call! You can read the full review of this buzz-worthy novel on here. Our reviewers also present to you the new books from fellow Australian authors Saman Shad, Catherine Johns, Kate Scott, Kira McPherson, and Laura McPhee-Browne, as well as the work of international writers including Salman Rushdie, Jessica Johns, Hanna Jameson, and Laura Warrell.

Our Crime Book of the Month is a literary thriller and family saga, Age of Vice by Deepti Kapoor, an instant New York Times bestseller set in New Delhi, and our reviewer refers to the author’s ‘formidable talents as a storyteller’. Also out this month is the first novel from Bret Easton Ellis in thirteen years: The Shards is getting some great reviews. I started reading it last night and am somehow 100 pages in and almost missed my tram stop: he’s back.

I recall a lot of interest in the previous novels of Norwegian novelist Vigdis Hjorth and have meant to catch up on them (next holiday!). Her new work translated into English is called Is Mother Dead? Tim Parks, Tiffany McDaniel, Samanta Schweblin and Joseph O’Connor also have new books.

Our Nonfiction Book of the Month is a debut memoir by Brisbane-based writer Sita Walker. The God of No Good is a wonderful breath of fresh air, warmly telling an intergenerational story about faith and matrilineal legacy. Our reviewer says it ‘reads like a novel and is by turns haunting and hilarious’.

Janet Malcolm was one of the writers the world had to farewell in recent times: she died in June of 2021 at the age of 86. She was a prolific contributor to the New Yorker and the New York Review of Books, and her writing was widely acclaimed. Still Pictures: On Photography and Memory, a book of autobiographical essays, is out now.

Hayley Singer’s Abandon Every Hope: Essays for the Dead is a challenging book about capitalism and the industrialised ‘profitable death’ of animals that underpins it, and comes courtesy of rising Australian publishing star, Upswell.

Trade Winds by Christiaan De Beukelaer sounds fascinating: the author embarks on a search for sustainable alternatives to the carbon-heavy shipping industry, which is integral to so much global trade, including in the books and publishing industry.

Jill Stark updates her memoir of sobriety with Higher Sobriety: My Years without Booze, and Stuart Kells has written a history of MUP (Melbourne University Press) which celebrated its centenary in 2021.

And finally, dear reader, you’ll notice that this month we’ve taken the publishing industry’s ‘new year, new you’ adage to heart, with Readings Monthly taking on a refreshed look. This update is thanks to some hard creative work from our designer Natasha Theoharous, under the guidance of our outgoing Readings Monthly editor Jackie Tang and returning editor Elke Power. I hope you’ll agree that the outcome is delightful.

If the lurch into 2023 has you turning your gaze inward, you might also like to take advantage of our 3 for 2 in-store offer on a curated range of titles in the field of Personal Development (broadly conceived) until the end of February.

Wishing you all peace and happiness in 2023, and all the good reading you can possibly fit into its precious days.