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 — 2 Mar 2021
The Committed by Viet Thanh Nguyen
Viet Thanh Nguyen won the Pulitzer Prize in 2016 for his novel The Sympathizer and the titular character of that book returns here in The Committed. This time the…
Blog post — 10 Nov 2020
Mark's Say, November 2020
Well, Readings and most other Victorian bookshops are open again and it has been wonderful to see real people discovering books in our shops. Sadly, our shop in the State…
Blog post — 5 Oct 2020
Mark's Say, October 2020
You might be surprised to know that year-to-date books sales in Australia are up 7.7% on last year, despite Victorian bookshops being pretty much closed for the last two and…
Review — 8 Nov 2020
One Day I’ll Remember This: Diaries 1987–1995 by Helen Garner
This is the second volume of Helen Garner’s Diaries to be published and covers the years 1987–1995. The Helen in these entries is more mature, more established, and perhaps not…
Blog post — 3 Aug 2020
Mark's Say, August 2020
If you’ve been a customer at Readings you’ve come across Alison Huber, either directly or indirectly. She’s been with us since 2003. For many of those years, she moonlighted from…
Blog post — 2 Jul 2020
Mark's Say, July 2020
You might recall that in my last column I contemplated what the impact of the escalating COVID-19 crisis might be and grappled with how we would cope. As we went…
Review — 1 Oct 2020
The Living Sea of Waking Dreams by Richard Flanagan
Families are funny things; they can be the source of great strength, but also great cruelties, humiliations, and sadness. In a soulless Hobart hospital, Francie’s three adult children gather round…
Review — 6 Sep 2020
The Tolstoy Estate by Steven Conte
It’s 1941, in the depths of the Russian winter, and the beginning of the end of the German advance on Russia. A German medical unit stumbles through the gates of…
Review — 22 Apr 2019
Machines Like Me by Ian McEwan
In Machines Like Me, Ian McEwan imagines a world in the past that is also the future. Britain has lost the Falklands War and driverless cars are the norm…
Review — 28 Jun 2020
A Room Made of Leaves by Kate Grenville
Kate Grenville returns with a much-anticipated fourth novel considering Australia’s colonial past, and interactions between Australia’s First Nations peoples and colonists. Purporting to be the lost manuscript of the memoir…
