The Fictional Woman by Tara Moss
Tara Moss has released a memoir, The Fictional Woman. She opens with some frightening facts: Women comprise 50.2 per cent of Australia’s population but as of 2014 they make up less than one-third of all parliamentarians and occupy roughly 5 per cent of all Cabinet positions. About 70 per cent of front-page by-lines in Australian…
Song for a Scarlet Runner
My friend Julie Hunt is the author of the inaugural Readings Children’s Book Prize winner – Song for a Scarlet Runner. I met Julie at Varuna, the Writer’s House and quite frankly she’s the nicest person ever. Good juxtaposition with Readings, the best bookshop ever! * Julie’s had quite a winning 12 months, with her…
The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon
Excellent review of a new biography about Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon, here at the New York Review of Books. The review lucidly explains some of Amazon’s troubling corporate practices, and Amazon’s impact on the publishing industry. He is not an easy man to caricature. In Stone’s portrait, he is nerdy, dreamy, prescient, and…
Bonkers: My Life in Laughs by Jennifer Saunders
Given that I can’t BE Jennifer Saunders, I do wish I were her BFF. Or a meet-occassionally-for-coffee friend. Or even just an acquaintance. Because having read her recently released memoir Bonkers I seem to have fallen just a tiny bit in love. Wonderfully absurd in partnership with Dawn French, absolutely fabulous as Edina Monsoon in…