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What I Ate in One Year (and related thoughts) – Stanley Tucci
Penguin Australia October 2024 I have loved Stanley in every role in which I’ve seen him from Caesar/Lucky Flickerman (Hunger Games/Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes) to Muertes (Undercover Blues), from Nigel (The Devil Wears Prada) to Mr Stringer (The Witches – and everything inbetween. I think the only film I’ve eschewed was The Lovely Bones…
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The Outside – Larry Blair and Jeremy Goring
Cheating death, chasing waves and growing up in one of Australia’s most notorious crime families Penguin Books This isn’t really a review – but a recommendation. A few weeks ago the lovely Dot Tonkin from Penguin gave this one a book talk and on the strength of that, plus the fact that it was related…
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The Grown-up’s Guide to Picture Books – Lara Cain Gray. Illustrated by Timothy Ide & Lorena Carrington
Midnight Sun Publishing July 2024 ISBN: 9781922858504 | $34.99 When I was a kid I didn’t really know picture books, in the way we see them today. I did have a few illustrated books – my two favourites, well-worn and much-loved, are still with me today and pictured below. I’m guessing that because I read…
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The Cubbies: the battle for Australia’s first adventure playground – Joan Healey
Monash University Publishing Publication Date: Aug 2024 RRP: $36.99 ISBN: 9781922979698 Sometimes it is really marvellous how things come your way. Just over a week ago I was writing some teaching notes for a forthcoming JF in which a cubby is featured, and, as is my wont, I was rootling around for info or inspo…
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Buckham’s Bombers: the Australian airmen who hunted Hitler’s deadliest battleship – Mark Baker
Allen & Unwin July 2024 ISBN:9781761471186 RRP: $34.99 First of all, I want to especially thank Allen & Unwin for giving me the opportunity to review this. Although my Father Bear’s squadron was the 514, it was still a Lancaster outfit with an almost entirely Australian crew – one of many who were the workhorses…
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Everything Anxiety Ever Told You is a Lie
*Well, almost everything! Exisle Publishing June 2024 ISBN: 9781922539991 RRP: $37.99 Just a week or so ago, we went to see Inside Out 2. We loved the first one and had been waiting on this one even more, especially The Kid because she was keen to see how Anxiety was handled. We are a family to…
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A Very Secret Trade
Allen & Unwin April 2024 ISBN:9781761066344 Imprint: Allen & Unwin RRP: $34.99 The great Australian silence In 1968, anthropologist W.E.H. Stanner talked in his Boyer lecture After the Dreaming about the “cult of forgetfulness” practiced on a national scale in Australia, which he termed “the Great Australian Silence”– where Australians do not just fail to acknowledge the atrocities of the past,…
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Pox Romana: the Plague that Shook the Roman World – Colin Elliott
New South Publishing Princeton University Press 9780691219158 / 1 May 2024 AUD$59.99, NZD$69.99 I have long had a fascination with Ancient Rome and the Romans (completely aside from any Monty Python references!) and this has been an ongoing read for the past month, as I dip in and out of what may very well be not only the…
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Now More Than Ever
Gaywambana! And thank you to Kim, my Wiradjuri daughter, for teaching me the word for welcome. If you wander over to my other page, you’ll see my beautiful girls and grandchildren. I’ve saved some lovely new books for this year’s Sorry Day/Reconciliation Week event, and I hope you will enjoy seeing them and getting my…
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