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 — 22 Oct 2017
A Long Way from Home by Peter Carey
One of my favourite books is Peter Carey’s Illywhacker, with its outrageous narrator Herbert Badgery and the sprawling basalt plains of Bacchus Marsh. It was a riot of fun…
Blog post — 26 Sep 2018
Mark's Say, October 2018
Victoria’s State Library is undergoing a massive transformation with internal spaces being reconfigured and others reopened and repurposed, including the glorious Queens Hall. The design of the refurbishment is a…
Blog post — 23 Aug 2018
Mark's Say, September 2018
The cover of this month’s Readings Monthly features a picture of my son Joe and me in our newly refurbished Carlton shop, which Joe manages. It made me think of…
Review — 24 Jul 2017
On the Java Ridge by Jock Serong
Jock Serong’s books don’t shy away from tackling topics that affect contemporary society and in On the Java Ridge, although this doesn’t dominate the narrative, they are there. In…
Review — 19 Aug 2018
21 Lessons for the 21st Century by Yuval Noah Harari
In the beginning of the twenty-first century all we can seem to see is a world of rapid change and turmoil, with the rise of a destructive right-wing nationalism, and…
Review — 24 Jun 2018
Prize Fighter by Future D. Fidel
Future D. Fidel is a refugee from the Congo. Prize Fighter is based on the acclaimed stage play written by Fidel and it too follows the life of Isa Alaki…
Blog post — 3 Jun 2018
Mark's Say, June 2018
Last month the Wheeler Centre announced a visionary and exciting new initiative supported by the Aesop Foundation. The Next Chapter is a unique three-year program to provide not only monetary…
Review — 28 May 2018
Reading the Landscape: A Celebration of Australian Writing
The University of Queensland Press was established in 1948 (coincidentally, the year I was born). In the mid-sixties, under the stewardship of American expat Frank Thompson, it started to publish…
Blog post — 2 May 2018
Mark's Say, May 2018
It was 20 years ago that Readings Carlton moved from 338 Lygon St to its current location at 309 Lygon Street. It was a big move; Ross Reading, Peter Reid…
Review — 25 Jul 2016
The Hate Race by Maxine Beneba Clarke
Maxine Beneba Clarke’s father was the first in his family to go university. They were working class, from Tottenham, a suburb of London. He’d shown a talent for mathematics and…
