Mark Rubbo
Mark Rubbo is chairman of Readings. He is a past president of the Australian Booksellers Association and was founding chair of the Melbourne Writers Festival. In 2006 he was awarded a Medal of the Order of Australia.
Review — 23 Sep 2018
Love is Blind by William Boyd
I have to confess that William Boyd is one of my favourite authors; his Any Human Heart is probably his best but Love is Blind comes close. It’s an exotic…
Blog post — 3 Jun 2019
Mark's Say: June 2019
Not that I take much notice of them, but company mergers have always seemed fraught; the merger of two of the greatest English language publishers, Random House and Penguin, in…
Blog post — 5 May 2019
Mark's Say: The London Book Fair
I hadn’t been to London or the London Book Fair since 2011; that had been a miserable visit. The weather was cold and drizzly; the book industry was going through…
Review — 30 Apr 2018
The Madonna of the Mountains by Elise Valmorbida
Set in the Veneto region of northern Italy, this novel about life in rural Italy between the 1920s and 50s is compulsively beautiful. It opens with a young woman, Maria…
Blog post — 4 Mar 2019
Mark’s Say, 50 Years of Readings
This year marks Readings’ 50th birthday. In his March letter, our managing director Mark Rubbo reflects a career spent championing Australian writers and publishers, and being part of a community…
Review — 1 Mar 2018
The Shepherd's Hut by Tim Winton
Jaxie’s dad ‘wasn’t always a c#%t. Like he was probably decent once and you were happy and so was your mum.’ But he is now, or was; he’s dead now…
Blog post — 4 Feb 2019
Mark’s Say, February 2019
A recent study by the Authors Guild in the United States has shown that the median income for writers in the US dropped 42% between 2009 and 2017. The director…
Review — 26 Mar 2019
Invented Lives by Andrea Goldsmith
I read an early draft of Invented Lives a year or so ago; it was almost wonderful then but now it really is wonderful. What I like most about Andrea…
Review — 25 Feb 2019
The Rip by Mark Brandi
If The Rip has any antecedents it’s probably novels like Helen Garner’s Monkey Grip and the late Andrew McGahan’s Praise; its gritty look at the underbelly of our society…
Blog post — 25 Oct 2018
Mark's Say, November 2018
Not many of you will have heard of Patricia O’Donnell, who sadly passed away last month, and that’s the way she liked it. However, she had a huge impact on…