From the category archives:

Book News

The Rest Is Noise by Alex Ross

May 19, 2009
The Rest Is Noise by Alex Ross

Writing about music isn’t always easy. Writing about “difficult” abstract modern music may be even harder. And weaving a book about it together in such a way as to retain the interest of the common man, the musical luddite, for well over 600 pages might appear a Herculean task indeed. But Alex Ross seems to [...]

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Stiff – The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers by Mary Roach

May 9, 2009
stiff by mary roach

If you’ve ever wondered what happens to you after you die (and to be honest, if you haven’t then you’re a bit odd) then Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers by Mary Roach is the book with the answers you need. Well, some of them. Stiff examines quite specifically at what happens to your [...]

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The Accidental Guerrilla by David Kilcullen

May 5, 2009

Former Australia army officer, anthropologist and all-round sharp mind David Kilcullen is an interesting fellow. Bestride the worlds of government, military and academia and equally at home in each, he is one of the world’s foremost experts on counter-insurgency, was a rare dissenting voice within the 2nd Bush administration, one of the architects of The [...]

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Art Without Borders by Ben-Ami Scharfstein

April 28, 2009

Another delve into ABC Radio National’s Late Night Live archives, this time for a fairly heavyweight talk with author and distinguished philosopher Ben-Ami Scharfstein about his latest book “Art Without Borders: A Philosophical Exploration of Art and Humanity“. One of the most engaging things about this elightening interview is how pleasingly lively this 90 year [...]

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The Book Thief by Markus Zusak

April 22, 2009

Picked as a rank outsider dark-horse not least because it had nothing to do with our stated aims of either classics or science fiction, the next book you will be reading is The Book Thief by Markus Zusak. According to our good friends at wikipedia, Markus Zusak is the son of an Austrian father (who [...]

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Arnold Zable on the wonders of Story-Telling

March 27, 2009

Arnold Zable, in his career as a writer, journalist, novelist, essayist, educator, advocate and globe-trotter, and in his life as an author and human being, has always been passionate about the human story. Arnold has carefully listened to and faithfully retold countless stories from a full spectrum of humanity: friends, family, survivors, asylum seekers, refugees, journeymen [...]

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Gabriel Garcia Marquez – A Life by Gerald Martin

March 13, 2009

This is our first encounter with ABC radio national’s The Book Show – a truly prolific arts show that manages an impressive amount of content every day from Monday to Friday. Of course it is also available as a podcast via iTunes Back on the 18th February 2009, the show met the author of Gabriel [...]

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The Well Dressed Ape by Hannah Holmes

March 13, 2009

Another nice little Late Night Live interview, this time with Hannah Homes who discusses her latest book “The Well-Dressed Ape: A Natural History of Myself“. As its starting point the author of the book takes a long hard look at herself – quite literally, naked in the mirror over the cause of an entire year [...]

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The Digested Read

March 13, 2009

For folks unsure about their next literary dalliance,  John Crace of the UK’s Guardian newspaper, puts his own unique, if cynical, spin on the canons of modern text for a series called The Digested Read The idea is simple: condense an entire book into 5 mins of audio, and if possible, into a single short [...]

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Stephan Faris talks about Forecast on LNL

February 20, 2009

In our first book club encounter with the venerable Phillip Adams & Late Night Live, I’d like to share with you an interesting interview with Stephan Faris, in which he discusses his latest book Forecast: The Consequences of Climate Change, from the Amazon to the Arctic, from Darfur to Napa Valley. Forecast examines the cultural [...]

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