Chris Dite
Chris Dite is a former Readings Carlton bookseller
Review — 28 Jun 2020
The Trials of Portnoy by Patrick Mullins
In 1969 Philip Roth’s Portnoy’s Complaint – a book so widely accepted now that it is deemed boring – was banned in Australia. Undercover police raided bookstores, charged booksellers and…
Review — 21 May 2020
The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes by Suzanne Collins
Suzanne Collins’ Hunger Games series – a rollicking mishmash of Battle Royale and America’s Got Talent – sparked endless copycats. But the master herself has returned for this bloody, bold…
Review — 25 Jun 2019
A Wunch of Bankers by Daniel Ziffer
You can thank the Trump administration for the rebirth and soaring popularity of the behind-the-scenes political hatchet job. From Bob Woodward’s artful Fear to Michael Wolff’s tawdry Fire and Fury…
Review — 28 May 2019
Superior: The return of race science by Angela Saini
Superior is science journalist Angela Saini’s exploration of the rise, slight fall and second coming of ‘race science’. It’s the perfect antidote to the whirlpool of pseudoscience currently engulfing mainstream…
Review — 24 Jun 2018
Teacher by Gabbie Stroud
Education and teachers are political footballs like no other. Politicians regularly stir up controversy about teachers’ daily working lives: their (excessive) wages; their (generous) holidays; their (misdirected) classroom focus. Parents…
Review — 22 Oct 2017
Gnomon by Nick Harkaway
In the near future Britain has become a place of complete and utter transparency. Every utterance is recorded. Parliament has been disbanded. But this is no hackneyed North Korea. Everyone…
Review — 24 Sep 2017
NK3 by Michael Tolkin
Present-day Los Angeles already feels pretty post-apocalyptic. In NK3 Michael Tolkin takes the inequality, violence, misogyny and horror of contemporary Beverley Hills, Culver City and Skid Row and melds it…
Review — 24 Sep 2017
The Quantum Astrologer's Handbook by Michael Brooks
The philosopher Zeno, of Elia’s arrow paradox, is frustratingly simple. When an archer shoots an arrow we perceive it to move towards the target. But we understand that in its…
Review — 23 Feb 2017
Luna: Wolf Moon by Ian McDonald
Most reviews of Ian McDonald’s Luna: New Moon described it as: ‘Game of Thrones meets Dallas on the moon’. They were all bang on the money.
A hundred or…
Review — 26 Oct 2014
Fargo
Inspired by the 1996 film, this adaptation of the Coen brothers’ fan favourite does its muse proud. A wolf named Lorne Malvo has come to rural Minnesota. The sweeping strings…