Nonfiction

Humanity’s Moment: A Climate Scientist’s Case for Hope by Joëlle Gergis

Reviewed by Kara Nicholson

If there is only one nonfiction book you read this year, it really should be this one. Its author, Joëlle Gergis, is one of Australia’s leading climate scientists and she believes this book is the most important one she will…

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Sundressed by Lucianne Tonti

Reviewed by Natasha Theoharous

With supermarket shelves depleted of loo roll, endless deliverydelays, and a ship grounding that launched a thousand memes, the pandemic brought ‘supply chain’ into the common vernacular. Fashion, with its highly complex, outsourced and opaque supply chains, was one of…

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August in Kabul by Andrew Quilty

Reviewed by Nick Curnow

August of 2021 was a miserable month; maybe the worst one that I had ever had. The last and bleakest of Victoria’s lockdowns had started. Every bitter night on the news, between screaming matches about Australia’s Covid response and the…

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Legitimate Sexpectations: The Power of Sex-ed by Katrina Marson

Reviewed by Chris Gordon

There have been times over the last few years when I have felt gutted and diminished by the public discourse around issues of sexual education and behaviour. I know I am not alone in feeling this way. So it was…

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Motherlands by Amaryllis Gacioppo

Reviewed by Mark Rubbo

There is no word for our English-language notion of home in Italian; the closest is ‘casa’, but that has the more literal meaning as the physical place where one lives. Amaryllis Gacioppo’s parents are Italians from Sicily; they met in…

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Melbourne on Film: Cinema That Defines Our City by Melbourne International Film Festival

Reviewed by Joanna Di Mattia

Cities are central to the history of cinema. New York. Paris. London. Hong Kong. All cities with an identifiable, iconic visual language. Cities are both setting and subject. It’s not a stretch to say that cinema created cities – giving…

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Desire: A Reckoning by Jessie Cole

Reviewed by Gabrielle Williams

A person could be forgiven for assuming a memoir with the title ‘Desire’ would be a no-holds-barred peek behind bedroom doors, especially when the back-cover blurb asks thequestion, ‘What does it mean to be awakened? To want? To love?’ While…

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Words Are Eagles by Gregory Day

Reviewed by Justin Avery

Occasionally I read a book that resonates so powerfully I am lost for words. It resists explication, often because I am still immersed in the writing and wish only to stay there. Words Are Eagles, Gregory Day’s exquisite collection…

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Telltale: Reading, Writing, Remembering by Carmel Bird

Reviewed by Chris Gordon

When I was a child one of my favourite books was titled Help! I’m a Prisoner in the Library. The premise being you are thrillingly stuck, surrounded by bookshelves, where reading is the only option available to you –…

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Eat Weeds by Diego Bonetto

Reviewed by Chris Gordon

I promise this gorgeous book will impart more than just an image of yourself on your footpath foraging weeds for your mealtime. Beautifully bound, this book is a call to eat more greens, create more pickles and observe your surrounds…

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