Nonfiction
Sleepless by Marie Darrieussecq & Penny Hueston (trans.)
As a night worrier from childhood, I was a little wary of giving my subconscious any further ideas or licence by reading French author Marie Darrieussecq’s new book, Sleepless, but it was too intriguing to resist, and I am…
Ballet Confidential by David McAllister
Ballet and I had a rocky start. After just one lesson at five years old, I apparently informed my mother that I was quitting due to the playing of ‘too much leapfrog’. I then remember a grandparent-initiated excursion to see…
Art Monsters: Unruly Bodies in Feminist Art by Lauren Elkin
When I was an undergraduate in the early 1990s, I took a course in women’s art history that ran over multiple semesters and offered a historical survey. I encountered art made by Artemisia Gentileschi, Leonora Carrington, Alice Neel, Louise Bourgeois…
Many Things Under a Rock: The Mysteries of Octopuses by David Scheel
Early on in Many Things Under a Rock, author and marine biologist David Scheel describes a colleague’s first encounter with a huge and curious octopus, effortlessly conveying the enigmatic beauty and wonder of the event in less than a…
Prudish Nation by Paul Dalgarno
With a title like Prudish Nation, you could be forgiven for thinking that Paul Dalgarno’s latest book is a work of observation coming from a position of judgement. However, you would be wrong. In fact, it could be said…
What’s For Dinner? by Jill Griffiths
This nonfiction account by journalist and self-confessed food-obsessive Jill Griffiths is a deep dive into some of the biggest issues around agriculture, food production and food consumption in our increasingly complex world. Tackling the topic with a journalist’s eye and…
Man-Made: How the Bias of the Past Is Being Built into the Future by Tracey Spicer
Whether AI is something you are not interested in, or if it’s something you want to know more about, Tracey Spicer’s Man-Made is essential reading. I first started to think about the implications of Artificial Intelligence when I heard a…
The Queen Is Dead by Stan Grant
When Queen Elizabeth II died, Stan Grant was asked by the ABC if he would present the coverage that evening. He said no: ‘I cannot mourn the White Queen.’ For Grant, the Queen signified the Whiteness that had justified the…
Personal Score: Sport, Culture, Identity by Ellen van Neerven
This extraordinary blend of cultural studies, memoir and poetry explores a broad spectrum of subjects centred around sport and identity. With their first book of nonfiction, award-winning writer Ellen van Neerven casts a wide net over subjects as varied as…
Australian Abstract by Amber Creswell Bell
The introduction to Amber Creswell Bell’s new survey of Australian abstract art begins by parsing a loose definition of the form. Abstract art is nonrepresentational, nonfigurative, nonobjective, a language for ‘the other’. It is a process that cracks open the…
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