As I write this, I’m about to head off to Bali for the 20th Ubud Writers & Readers Festival. It’s a testament to its founders, Melbourne-born Janet DeNeefe and her Indonesian husband Ketut Suardana, that it has become a sought-after gig for writers and book lovers from around the world.

This trip comes on the back of a jaunt around Italy and Greece with my sister, with side trips to New York and Montreal. She’s a researcher at the Columbia Climate School Center for Sustainable Development and wanted to see the Architecture Biennale in Venice. I went along for the ride. After Venice, we travelled to Naples and then drove around Puglia, before heading off for the island of Aegina. A 40-minute ferry ride from Athens, Aegina is home to many cats, and to Yanis Varoufakis – author, economist, and briefly Greece’s finance minister. His latest book is Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism, and in it he argues that capitalism as we know it is dead, and that we have become techno-serfs creating value for tech companies by tweeting, posting, and clicking.

Back in Athens, we went to a symposium to mark the publication of a revised edition of Gail Holst-Warhaft’s musical biography of the renowned Greek composer Mikis Theodorakis: Mikis Theodorakis, His Music and Politics (Cambridge Scholars Publishing). Theodorakis and his music stood up to authority and repression. Delivered mostly in Greek, the presentations went over my head, but a performance by the famous singer Maria Farantouri, a renowned interpreter of Theodorakis’s work, made it all worthwhile.

Our travels were also an opportunity to listen to a couple of audiobooks. If you didn’t know, Readings has partnered with Libro.fm to provide Amazon-free audiobooks; if you buy or subscribe to audiobooks through Libro.fm you can support us and Libro.fm, which is a proud social-purpose corporation. The first audiobook we listened to was the ‘true’ novel The Postcard by French author Anne Berest; it comes out in print format this month from Europa. It tells the story of Berest’s family, many of whom perished in the Holocaust. A postcard arrives addressed to Anne’s deceased grandmother; it bears nothing but the names of four relatives who died at Auschwitz. How Anne unravelled this mystery is one of the best stories I’ve encountered all year. You can read Alison’s review of The Postcard here.

One of my favourite detectives, Adrian McKinty’s Sean Duffy, returns with The Detective Up Late. Sadly, it’s not out in print form yet, but is available through Libro.fm, beautifully read by actor Gerard Doyle. Duffy is a detective in the Royal Ulster Constabulary and in this new book, it’s the beginning of 1990. After surviving an assassination attempt, Duffy decides to retire and migrate to Scotland with his partner and young daughter. But there’s one last case he must finalise before he leaves. There are more twists, turns and surprises in this tale than there are in an Irish country lane. I can’t recommend it more highly.

While I was away, I missed a dinner that Penguin Random House hosted for booksellers to celebrate the publication of Richard Flanagan’s new book, Question 7. By all reports, it was a magical evening. I was lucky to read the manuscript a few months ago and was in awe of Richard and his ability to weave a narrative; it’s not fiction, it’s sort of a rumination on fate, with Richard’s own reflections on parts of his life. Richard’s father was a prisoner of war in Japan, and if the Allies had invaded Japan, it was almost certain that the POWs would have been executed. Instead, Truman decided to drop the bomb and over 100,000 people died directly or subsequently from radiation poisoning, but Arch Flanagan survived, married, and fathered six children. In his 1914 novel, The World Set Free, H.G. Wells predicted the splitting of the atom and the invention of the atom bomb. Was Wells responsible for Arch Flanagan’s survival and the subsequent birth of Richard? Perhaps, that is Question 7.

Late last month we announced the winners of The Readings Prize 2023. You can read all about the prize and the winners here. This year marks our 10th year; judged by Readings booksellers, the aim of The Readings Prize is to support and encourage new and emerging Australian writers, and we hope we’ve done that.

Next month sees the publication of Bob Dylan: Mixing Up the Medicine, edited by Mark Davidson and Parker Fishel. This 608-page monster is the most comprehensive book yet published on Dylan; it includes recently discovered material from the Bob Dylan Archive in Tulsa. The editors asked leading artists and writers to respond to an item in the collection. Australian writer Peter Carey chose the original lyrics to the song ‘Tweedle Dee & Tweedle Dum’; which he described as, ‘a song I had already heard a hundred times, never once being able to stabilise or isolate the source of my own fierce and bitter joy’. When the archivist delivered Dylan’s handwritten sheets, Carey’s attention was grabbed by the notations beside the lyrics, and he found himself looking for the key that he ‘already knew would not be there’. The bard’s lyrics are like 20 armed Hindu gods: ‘They deal a different hand each time you throw the dice’. See here for information about the companion album, and for more about the book see our Summer Reading Guide.

As I have mentioned before in these pages, I have recently retired as managing director of Readings and have moved into the role of chairman. It seems the right time to step back from writing this column regularly. So, while this is far from farewell, it is an opportune moment to thank you all for your ongoing support for books and for Readings over the years.