I would like to be a regular Quarterly Essay reader. Every time I read one, I admire the format and find the content fascinating, challenging or enlightening. It's a fairly quick and easy way to absorb a current topic, yet I rarely prioritise them in my reading schedule. Insert shrug. Although it looks like it … Continue reading Lone Wolf: Albanese and the New Politics: Quarterly Essay 88 | Katharine Murphy
Burning Questions is my third collection of essays and other occasional pieces. The first Second Words, which began in 1960, when I started publishing book reviews, and ended in 1982. The second was Moving Targets, which gathered materials from 1983 to mid-2004. Burning Questions runs from mid-2004 to mid-2021. So, twenty years, give or take, … Continue reading Burning Questions | Margaret Atwood #CANessays
A peculiar aspect of Joan Didion's nonfiction is that a significant portion of it reads like fiction. Or, more specifically, has the metaphorical power of great fiction.Foreword by Hilton Als Last year I had had a copy of Let Me Tell You What I Mean floating around on my TBR pile for a number of … Continue reading Let Me Tell You What I Mean | Joan Didion #USAessays
Committed Writings by Albert Camus contains Letters to a German Friend, Reflections on the Guillotine and The Nobel Speeches (Acceptance Speech and Create Dangerously) with a Foreword by Alice Kaplan. Books come into my life for all sorts of reasons. Before working in a bookshop, I bought books for myself very deliberately and carefully. I … Continue reading Committed Writings | Albert Camus #FRAnonfiction
I am standing next to Bridie and she is singing too loudly. Amanda Lohrey recently won her first Miles Franklin Award for her novel, The Labyrinth. Ever since the announcement, her short story essay in Secrets (1997) has been on my mind. Last weekend, I sat down to reread it. Secrets came into my possession … Continue reading The Clear Voice Suddenly Singing | Amanda Lohrey #AWWessay
'Whither, O splendid ship' the poet asked as he lay on the shore and watched the great sailing ship pass away on the horizon. The six essays in The London Scene were first written by Woolf in late 1931 and then published in Good Housekeeping between December 1931 to December 1932. This edition includes a … Continue reading The London Scene | Virginia Woolf #GBRnonfiction
A new series from Europa Editions, The Passenger collects the best new writing, photography, art and reportage from around the world. There are five books in The Passenger series to date - Japan, Greece, Brazil, Turkey and India. Two more are imminent - Berlin and Paris. I'm often a sucker for good packaging, and these books are … Continue reading The Passenger: Japan #travelwriting
There are few things as startling as encountering an unearthly glow in the wild. Confession one: this book was a chore to read. Confession two: for the past week I have been trying to read three books that were a chore to read. Why, I hear you ask? Confession three: I made myself finish one, … Continue reading Phosphorescence | Julia Baird #AWWessays
I missed out on reading Helen Macdonald's H is for Hawk a few years ago when it first came out to great acclaim. No good reason, just one of those things, so I was determined not to miss out on Vesper Flights. Especially since Macdonald was fortunate enough to get Chris Wormell to once again … Continue reading Vesper Flights | Helen Macdonald #GBRnonfiction
This slim volume of essays grabbed my attention thanks to it's Covid-related lockdown content. Lately, I've been reading a number of fiction titles about plagues and epidemics (see below). This was the first one, however, that considered our current Covid situation. I've been meaning to read something by Zadie Smith, ever since 2000 and White Teeth, … Continue reading Intimations: Six Essays | Zadie Smith #USANonFiction
It seemed like it was the right time to finally read this book. The Fire This Time was first published in 2016, but my edition is a 2019 Bloomsbury publication. The collection of essays and poems is edited and introduced by Jesmyn Ward. I like to give space to every essay or article in a … Continue reading The Fire This Time | Jesmyn Ward #USAnonfiction
Sometimes you read a book, or discover an author, that opens up a new world to you. Or a world that you knew existed, but one that doesn't really intersect very often with your own every day, ordinary life. A Month in Siena by Hisham Matar was one such book and one such author. It's … Continue reading A Month in Siena | Hisham Matar #NonFiction
Recently I read something or saw something about the Ranger program in the Northern Territory, which led me to Billy Griffiths report in the Griffith Review Edition 56 | Millennials Strike Back | April 2017, Caring for country: The place where the Dreaming changed shape.It's fascinating and encouraging to see the various ways that Indigenous peoples … Continue reading Caring For Country by Billy Griffiths
Image: James Tylor, Turralyendi Yerta (Womma) 2017 Photograph with ochre & charcoal.Place. Land. Country. Home. These words frame the settings of our stories. Griffith Review 63: Writing the Country focuses on Australia’s vast raft of environments to investigate how these places are changing and what they might become; what is flourishing and what is at … Continue reading Griffith Review 63: Writing the Country edited by Julianne Schultz & Ashley Hay
I plan to read Alice Gorman's Dr Space Junk vs the Universe (2019) in the very near future. Knowing I wouldn't have time to feature it during this year's #AusReadingMonth, I decided to search for any other examples of her essay writing instead, to give us all a taste of what's to come.Trace Fossils: The Silence … Continue reading Trace Fossils by Alice Gorman
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