Book launches everywhere so set aside some time to read! Food, social media, grief and more

It's book launchin' season - books are being launched willy-nilly with Father's Day closing in and Christmas only 123 sleeps away - so here's a few to look out for.
MasterChef 2011 contestant Billy Law has – would you believe – written a cookbook. Have You Eaten? will hit book stores on September 1. Billy is a food-blogger at atablefortwo.com, where he details a competition and a couple of events surrounding the book's launch. Check it out at A Table for Two .

Mistaken Identity: The Trials of Joe Windred by Stephen Dando-Collins launches tomorrow. The book details the adventures of bush identity Joe Windred, from twice being mistaken for a bushranger to becoming Orange City mayor while technically still a fugitive from American justice. The book is being launched at Orange Library tomorrow.

Herman and Rosie by Gus Gordon became available yesterday. “Set in New York, this gorgeous picture book by Gus Gordon is a story about friendship, life in the big city, and following your dreams” (as Penguin puts it). Gus Gordon will be launching Herman and Roise with a reading and discussion of its art and inspiration at his favourite bookshops in Brisbane, Melbourne and Sydney, starting with Riverbend Books in Brisbane on August 28.

The Rise of the Fifth Estate: Social Media and Blogging in Australian Politics by Greg Jericho will be launched in Canberra on August 30. Supposedly this is the first book to examine social media as a force in Aussie politics. Click here for more information on the book and launch.

Last week Shearer's Bookshop, Leichhardt hosted a book launch for the children's book The Wattle Tree written by John Bell and illustrated by Ben Wood. These two young blokes both recently lost grandparents, and John, who remembers fondly the enormous frangipani in his grandfather's front garden, thought to write a story around a tree. In this way the children's book deals with the grieving process.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Book review: The life to come by Michelle de Krester

Image
One of the characters I most enjoyed in Michelle de Krester's The life to come is Sydney's inner west. I arrived in Newtown on a yellowy January morning in the early 1980s and lived above King St near the start of Erskinville Rd for six months before a succession of terrace houses across Newtown, Emmore and Macdonaldtown. Coming from the country to study 'Communications' I could easily have been minor character fodder for the author, momentarily shuffling by in ill-fitting jeans alongside the ubiquitous Pippa and George (that is, they are the only characters appearing in all five sections of what is an artfully decentralised narrative). I might not have done too well descriptively from de Krester's pen. She finds a way to poke holes in all of her characters, perhaps with the exception of expat Christabel who is the most downtrodden of characters, but not by the author, who otherwise sustains a mildly scornful, disapproving or comedic tone. For example, Geo
Read more + comment »

Book review: The Nowhere Child by Christian White

Image
Little Sammy Went is gone, and while The Nowhere Child tells us where fairly quickly - who, how, why and at what cost takes the rest of this fast-paced book to uncover. I use the cliche 'fast-paced' on purpose because like most genre books, except for the exceptional few, the 'fast-pace' does rely on cliches to a fair degree. Which is not to say The Nowhere Child is a poor novel. Rather it is a clever book, with more than enough periods of real tension and surprise to keep the reader turning pages (or flicking them as the case may be). Clever because it embeds just enough themes that are deemed praiseworthy and admirable in the subjective group-think world that is publishing. (That is not a criticism of the book or publishing, just a reality in these days of thought-fear.) Of course there is the obligatory references to reading and authors - we must worship at the the book altar of course. Being set in both Australia and the US may explain why at times Matth
Read more + comment »

Author Richard Flanagan's speech to the Garma Festival 2018: full transcript

Image
When my father died at the age of 98 he had largely divested himself of possessions. Among what little remained was an old desk in which he had collected various writings precious to him over the years: poems, sayings, quotes, a few pieces he had written, some correspondence.  Photo: From Garma Festival 2017 Among them my elder sister found a letter written by one of my father’s cousins many years before. In it she told my father that his mother, my grandmother, was of Aboriginal descent, and that in her family she had been brought up to never mention this fact outside of the home. My father loved discussing interesting letters with his family. He never discussed this letter. Yet he kept it. The story of covering up Indigenous pasts was a common one in Tasmania, where such behaviour was for some a form of survival. There is no documentation to prove my father’s cousin’s story is true, but that doesn’t make it untrue. It leaves the story as an unanswerable question mark over my
Read more + comment »