Round-Up of October New Release Books

27 Sep 2012

Neil Young and Patti Smith in conversation – discussing Neil’s upcoming autobiography, Waging Heavy Peace – was the hottest ticket at the US book convention I attended in June. So, you guessed it, I didn’t get in! But my colleague Robbie did, lucky sod, and he reports as follows:

‘Brilliant. Neil talked about his guitar solos as being an attempt to access his dreams. “There are two kinds of dreams,” he said. “Dreams you have when you’re sleeping, and then there are times when you have some beer and smoke some grass and you get to thinking, and they’re the kind of dreams you have when you’re awake. Those are the dreams I’m looking for when I’m playing live.” Genius. I look forward to reading about those dreams.’

Speaking of genius, the plaudits for Readings St Kilda bookseller A.S. Patrić and his second short-story collection keep rolling in. As Wayne Macauley (rather a master of the genre himself) notes, ‘A.S. Patrić is one of our most daring new writers. Las Vegas for Vegans shows how daring he can be. It is a wonderful book.’ Meanwhile Will Heyward notes that Patrić ‘is one of the most obsessive short story writers on earth’ and ‘a writer on the up’. We will watch his career with interest, and wish him all the very best!

Books of a political flavour are significant this month. Lindsay Tanner follows up last year’s bestselling Sideshow with Politics with Purpose, a collection of pieces from the last 15-odd years of his public and private life. As we head into an election year, I sense reflections like this may have additional gravity: ‘We cannot blame particular individuals for modern Labor’s malaise, because it is part of a systemic global phenomenon. We are all under the sway of politics without purpose. And politics without purpose is pointless.’

Possibly a not-dissimilar take will be provided by Speechless: A Year in My Father’s Business – James Button’s highly personal account of his year as a speechwriter for Kevin Rudd and how far the Labor Party has moved from the idealism and pragmatism of his father John’s generation.

Now the particular boon of October is that, thanks to Jamie Oliver, your evening meal now takes only 15 minutes to prepare, cook and serve (Jamie Oliver’s 15 Minute Meals)! Which gives you so much extra time to dip into some particular delights this month: a new novel by Michelle de Kretser, Questions of Travel, stunning short stories by Bernhard Schlink and Cate Kennedy, or for those so disposed (‘dystopian fiction at its most terrifying’, according to our reviewer), the sequel to Justin Cronin’s The Passage, The Twelve.