Raising Readers, by Megan Daley, is the book I wish I’d been able to read before I had kids. Not because I need tips on how to interest my boys in books – they’re both voracious readers and my youngest takes books to bed as though they’re teddies – but because it would have helped […]
non fiction
Review: The Revolution of Man, by Phil Barker
One woman is killed every week in Australia by her current or former partner. Every day in Australia six men are killed, by themselves. The number of men who die by suicide each year is double the national road toll. I say this not to try to convince you that male suicide is a more […]
Review: Unfettered and Alive, A Memoir by Anne Summers
Unfettered and Alive follows Anne Summers’ professional career, starting in 1975 when she’d just published Damned Whores and God’s Police. The book would become a seminal feminist text but at the time it was a liability for Summers, who was trying to convince newspaper editors that she wasn’t really an academic and she really wanted to be […]
Review: I Can’t Remember The Title But The Cover Is Blue, by Elias Greig
I Can’t Remember The Title But The Cover Is Blue is the perfect book for anyone who has ever worked in customer service and had to deal with the general public. It’s also for anyone who has dreamed of working in a bookshop: welcome to the reality! People are strange and wonderful beasts. I use […]
Book gifts for the lovely intellectual snob in your life
We all know one. They refuse to watch anything not on the ABC or SBS, they roll their eyes at the very mention of Netflix and the word ‘popular’ is synonymous with ‘cultural desert’. They are the intellectual snob we know and love (to tease gently when their attention is elsewhere – probably on the […]
French horses hennir, English ones whinny – Words That Go ‘Ping’
Horses go ‘neigh’ and pigs go ‘oink’. What does the rooster do? Cock-a-doodle-do! Any self-respecting toddler knows this. Well, English speaking ones do, anyway. But what do French horses say? Do they go ‘neigh’? No, French horses say ‘hennir’. If you’re in Denmark they ‘vrinsken’ and if you speak Latin they go ‘hinnìre’ (which, just […]