Nonfiction
The Song of the Cell by Siddhartha Mukherjee
Pulitzer Prize-winning author and oncologist Siddhartha Mukherjee returns with The Song of the Cell, his third work on the exploration of medicine and the human body. As Mukherjee states simply in his introduction, it is an attempt to understand…
A Guest at the Feast: Essays by Colm Tóibín
‘It all started with my balls.’ So opens Colm Tóibín’s latest: a collection of essays that are personal, political and poetic. Separated into three sections, part one of this collection is biographical in nature, with the first essay – concerning…
A Kind of Magic by Anna Spargo-Ryan
Anna Spargo-Ryan’s A Kind of Magic is a memoir of a mind and the courage it takes to build a sense of self. Spargo-Ryan has lived with mental illness as a constant in her life. As a child, she was…
Koala: A Life in Trees by Danielle Clode
Koala is more than just a fascinating book about these marsupials, it’s also an enjoyably informative chronicle of this continent from ancient prehuman times to the challenges of the present. By enjoyable, I mean as a reading experience. In fact…
The Bodyline Fix by Marion Stell
If the Federal Government had put a republic referendum to the Australian people at the conclusion of the infamous Ashes Test series of 1932–33, it may well have been successful. Marion Stell’s magnificent new book, The Bodyline Fix, transports…
Childhood by Shannon Burns
Hailing from the Adelaide suburb of Elizabeth North, Shannon Burns’ parents were young and working class; for most of their lives they survived on welfare payments. His mother was the wild daughter of Greek parents; his father was the son…
Time of My Life by Myf Warhurst
Time of My Life is as delightful as you would expect from one of the most charming people to ever grace the television screen in this country. Myf Warhurst begins her story with recollections of growing up in the small…
Emperors in Lilliput: Clem Christesen of Meanjin and Stephen Murray-Smith of Overland by Jim Davidson
This gorgeously titled book delivers the Heroic Age epic of little magazine publishing inAustralia, ‘little magazines’ being a way to describe literary/cultural periodicalsinspired by the avant-garde Chicago journal, The Little Review. Jim Davidson tracks the decades-spanning careers of the two…
People Who Lunch by Sally Olds
People Who Lunch is the debut essay collection by Melbourne- based writer Sally Olds. Each essay takes on its own character, binding together social observations on workand leisure from the past, present and future. Throughout the collection, Olds laces together…
The Last Colony by Philippe Sands
To begin at the end: the poet and politician Aimé Césaire says, ‘a civilisation that plays fast and loose with its principles is a dying civilisation.’ Césaire’s words come at the very end of The Last Colony, a final…
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