Our latest blog posts
Our children's and YA top ten bestsellers of the week
The 5th Wave by Rick Yancey (including the film tie-in edition)
In My Heart: A Book of Feelings by Jo Witek and Christine Roussey
Diary of a Wimpy Kid Book 10: Old School by Jeff Kinney
Laugh Your Head Off: Funny Stories for All Kinds of Kids by various authors
Adam Spencer’s Enormous Book of Numbers by Adam Spencer
The 13-Storey Treehouse by Andy Griffiths and Terry Denton
Our top ten bestsellers of the week
A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara
My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante (translated by Ann Goldstein)
The Story of a New Name by Elena Ferrante (translated by Ann Goldstein)
The Other Side of the World by Stephanie Bishop
The Natural Way of Things by Charlotte Wood
Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay by Elena Ferrante (translated by Ann Goldstein)
All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr
Gut: the Inside Story of Our Body’s Most Under-Rated Organ by…
Our literary resolutions for the new year
Our staff share their literary resolutions for the new year.
Last year I resolved to finish every book that I started, but I didn’t do such a great job with that. So I’m going to have to recycle that resolution! An extension of this would be to finish everything in my pile of books that have been lent to me. There are some gems in that pile, beloved by their respective owners, and I’ve held onto them for far too…
Holiday boredom busters
Christmas is over for another year, and even though the holidays have only just begun, a few of you might have already started to hear the all-too-familiar cries of, ‘I’m boooooored.’ If you’ve got some kids at home who don’t quite know what to do with themselves, keep them entertained with these holiday boredom busters.
Amazing Mazes
For kids who can’t quite seem to navigate their way out of boredom, perhaps a maze book will keep them entertained. Pierre the…
Chilling reads to help you stay cool this summer
Avoid the heat this summer with one of these chilling reads – everything from true crime, to arctic adventure, to classic Japanese literature.
Wolf Winter by Cecilia Ekbäck
Swedish Lapland, 1717: Maj, her husband Jan-Erik and her daughters Frederika and Marit arrive from their native Finland, hoping to forget the traumas of their past and put down new roots in this harsh but beautiful land. Above them looms Blackåsen, a mountain whose foreboding presence looms over the valley and whose…
Our children's and YA top ten bestsellers of the week
Diary of a Wimpy Kid Book 10: Old School by Jeff Kinney
Laugh Your Head Off: Funny Stories for All Kinds of Kids by various authors
The Day the Crayons Came Home by Drew Daywalt and Oliver Jeffers
The Letter for the King by Tonke Dragt (translated by Laura Watkinson)
My Dog Bigsy by Alison Lester
Grandpa’s Great Escape by David Walliams
The Singing Bones by Shaun Tan
The Bad Guys: Episode 1 by Aaron Blabey
Our top ten bestsellers of the week
My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante (translated by Ann Goldstein)
A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara
The Story of a New Name by Elena Ferrante (translated by Ann Goldstein)
Keating by Kerry O'Brien
This Annoying Life: A Mindless Colouring Book for the Highly Stressed by Oslo Davis
All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr
A Brief History of Seven Killings by Marlon James
The Broadsheet Melbourne Cookbook
The Other Side of the World by Stephanie Bishop
What we're reading over summer
Our staff share the books they’re planning to read over summer.
I’m going on a crime binge. My next book club book is I Am Pilgrim by Terry Hayes, a daunting 912 page (hence the summer read) crime thriller which has received a lot of media attention and positive reviews. But I’ve also lined up an award winner (the CWA Gold Dagger 2015) by Australian author Michael Robotham called Life Or Death, which is billed as a fast paced…
A guide to TV shows to watch this summer
Here’s where I’m coming from – I like good comedies, snappy dialogue, family drama, teen angst, action-packed intrigue, survival-against-the-odds stories, anything that will make me cry and legal dramas. I don’t enjoy procedurals, most cop shows, and reality TV.
My summer viewing guide encompasses the shows I have enjoyed this year, the shows I expect to enjoy in the future, and shows I don’t personally enjoy but others will.
Shows I loved
This year had an abundance of terrific new…
Four books that broke my heart in 2015
Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates
No piece of writing has ever made me cry as much as this raging, eloquent letter from Ta-Nehisi Coates to his 14-year-old son, Samori. In my review I wrote, ‘I read with my heart in my throat and for the final 50 or so pages I cried without stopping. Between the World and Me attests to the power of literature.’ Coates writes specifically about the experience of being a black father to…