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 — 28 May 2018
Origin Story by David Christian
David Christian coined the phrase ‘Big History’ in reference to a project that aims to tell the story of everything that’s happened from the beginning of the universe until now…
Blog post — 27 Mar 2018
Mark's Say, April 2018
After a hiatus of almost 18 years, this month marks the publication of Issue 66 of the journal Australian Short Stories. The first edition of Australian Short Stories was…
Review — 30 Apr 2018
Marcia Langton: Welcome to Country by Marcia Langton
I sense a growing desire for non-Indigenous Australians to know about our Indigenous culture. The recent successes of Growing Up Aboriginal in Australia (one of our bestsellers last month) and…
Review — 27 Mar 2017
Utopia for Realists by Rutger Bregman
Most of the highly paid jobs in our new economy are bullsh*t jobs. The best and the brightest are paid huge amounts of money, yet they don’t create anything of…
Blog post — 4 Mar 2018
Mark's Say, March 2018
Last year the manager of Readings Kids in Carlton, Angela Crocombe, attended a children’s book conference in the US. Her American colleagues told her about their Teen Advisory Boards –…
Review — 25 Feb 2018
Enlightenment Now by Steven Pinker
In 1784, philosopher Immanuel Kant asked, ‘What is Enlightenment?’ It was, he argued, humankind’s emergence from its submission to the ‘dogmas and formulas’ of religious or political authority. The Enlightenment…
Review — 25 Feb 2018
On Borrowed Time by Robert Manne
The publisher describes this book as a ‘stunning new collection of essays’ and the hyperbole is certainly justified. The essays range over a number of topics that matter to Robert…
Review — 26 Mar 2018
The Death of Noah Glass by Gail Jones
Mattanza is a Sicilian word to describe a seasonal ritual of hunting and killing tuna in the waters around Sicily; it also the term used to describe periodic mafia killings…
Blog post — 1 Feb 2018
Mark's Say, February 2018
Sydney teacher and writer Catherine Walsh caused a bit of a storm when the Fairfax papers published a talk she gave on volunteering and charities, ‘Volunteering doesn’t make the…
Blog post — 27 Nov 2017
Our best bargain picks for Christmas gifts
Over the past few weeks, we’ve been compiling a host of gift guides to help you with your Christmas shopping. Here is a list of great books available at super…