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 — 29 May 2017
Defectors by Joseph Kanon
Simon Weeks and his older brother Frank had promising careers in the United States intelligence services. Members of a respected Boston family, their careers and life trajectories were mapped out…
Blog post — 30 May 2017
Mark's Say, June 2017
A year ago I joined the board of the Indigenous Literacy Foundation. In May, I went with the Foundation on a field trip to Melville Island, the largest of the…
Blog post — 2 May 2017
Mark's Say, May, 2017
Like Australian publishing generally, university publishing in Australia has gone through its ups and downs. Melbourne University Publishing has dominated the sector for the last 30 years or so, but…
Blog post — 4 Apr 2017
Mark's Say, April 2017
Last month I went to the opening of a rather marvellous and moving exhibition at Melbourne’s Immigration Museum. The exhibition, They Cannot Take the Sky is based on the book…
Review — 29 Mar 2016
Everywhere I Look by Helen Garner
We know Helen Garner best for her novels and her harrowing dissections of human dramas. She has a way of describing the world with such wisdom and candour and, sometimes…
Blog post — 1 Mar 2017
Mark's Say, March 2017
The first Taipei International Book Fair (TIBE) was held in 1987 which made this year’s fair the 25th. Spread over six days, it is one of the largest trade book…
Review — 29 Jan 2017
Last Words by Barry Dickins
It is 50 years since Ronald Ryan became the last person to be hanged in Victoria. Ryan was serving an 8-year sentence for breaking and entering and together with another…
Blog post — 6 Feb 2017
Mark's Say, February 2017
The book industry is mourning the end of Barack Obama’s presidency. Obama was a powerful advocate for the importance of books and regularly released lists of books that had influenced…
Review — 27 Mar 2017
A Writing Life by Bernadette Brennan
I have to admit that I loved this book; I’m an unabashed fan of Helen Garner’s work and have been ever since the publication of her first book, Monkey Grip…
Review — 29 Feb 2016
When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi
This is a short but profoundly moving and powerful book. Kalanithi, a young and brilliant neurosurgeon, is confronted by what proves to be his own terminal cancer. In his undergraduate…
