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Keywords: Books

  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    True friendship

    • Barry Gittins
    • 04 February 2021
    2 Comments

    All three of us are parents, we’ve all been adversely impacted by COVID-19, and prior to that we’ve shared the usual rough and tumble dynamics of male friendships and bridal party affiliations. We have been in and out of each other’s good books, hard conversations, interpersonal dynamics and orbits. We’ve been through a lot as mates. COVID-wise, though, that affinity has been at a remove.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Friends and Rivals and the ocean in the shell

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 01 May 2020
    1 Comment

    In Friends and Rivals Brenda Niall brings together four significant Australian women writers. Between them they published works from the 1890s to the 1950s. Ethel Turner and Barbara Baynton were from NSW. Nettie Palmer and Henry Handel Richardson were from Victoria, both schooled at Presbyterian Ladies College.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Look to Finland for housing solutions

    • Dustin Halse
    • 07 August 2019
    7 Comments

    Robert Harris' The Gang of One ranges through Harris' five published books and a number of uncollected poems. Early work grows from his occasionally lonely, knockabout life and reveals not only a talent for catching the essence of fleeting memories and perceptions but also a mordant touch that gives edge to memory.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    The sometimes ironic perception of 'things'

    • Brian Matthews
    • 02 August 2019
    4 Comments

    Robert Harris' The Gang of One ranges through Harris' five published books and a number of uncollected poems. Early work grows from his occasionally lonely, knockabout life and reveals not only a talent for catching the essence of fleeting memories and perceptions but also a mordant touch that gives edge to memory.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Kindness stories that are good for the spirit

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 15 July 2019
    10 Comments

    Among writers familiar in Australia who write in this vein are Michael McGirr, Terry Monagle and the much missed Brian Doyle. Their writing does not merely describe but evokes and creates a world, and shapes a human response that respects its variety and mystery. These qualities are evident in Julie Perrin's Tender.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Gaetano decided to leave

    • Aaron Lembo
    • 24 June 2019
    4 Comments

    A student of Ethics and Philosophy, aspiring librettist, Gaetano Leigh read dusty books on the 16th century Jesuit priest Matteo Ricci in the basement of the Central Library ... Daily Gaetano imagined sailing the South China Sea re-reading catholic theology written to entice the scholarly Confucians ...

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Undeterred by Kondo, let your library overflow

    • Philip Harvey
    • 08 February 2019
    8 Comments

    It's all very well to remove excess furniture, but furniture is not books. How many chairs does one need? Chairs are not books. To reduce a library as a household expedience is to objectify the books. Their contents are emptied of value, their history relegated to out-of-date. They have no more meaning than books in an Ikea display room.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    How I stopped worrying and read what I liked

    • Neve Mahoney
    • 24 January 2019
    5 Comments

    I realised my own definition of what was challenging was based on a lifetime of hate-reading books I thought I should like, while the romance books that I was reading were often dealing with heavy topics like colonisation, racism, trauma and mental illness from perspectives different to my own.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    We still need libraries and book stores

    • Mary Dalmau
    • 07 December 2018
    16 Comments

    While it is said we read to know we are not alone, it is also true that libraries and bookstores are communal places, providing a safe environment for all and filling vital, societal roles. Of all my interactions over the years with readers, customers and library patrons, two instances remain strong in my memory.

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  • RELIGION

    Christianity tells stories; Islam finds designs

    • Michael McGirr
    • 31 October 2018
    21 Comments

    My year ten class studies Islam, one of the most formative influences in the world that my students will inhabit and hopefully improve. I have a profound respect for Islam. Westerners often fail to acknowledge the debt they owe to Islam, a tradition that had a huge role in bringing Europe through the Dark Ages and into the Renaissance.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Stories that can save your life

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 31 October 2018
    5 Comments

    McGirr's reflection on the callowness of racist attitudes in Australia is deepened by Conrad's novel, which describes a white man's journey into the centre of black Africa to search for an acquaintance. But it also explores the river of exploitation that connects the Nile to the Thames, and situates the heart of darkness in Europe.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    A love letter to libraries

    • Sheila Ngoc Pham
    • 10 August 2018
    12 Comments

    We had some books at home so I wasn't wholly deprived but I did have to discover reading without any real parental guidance; English wasn't even our home language. But when I started working at my local public library, it became clear that while I might have been the child of refugees, for many, libraries themselves were a refuge.

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