AbeBooks' Reading Copy

The Miles Franklin Award is considered by many to be the most prestigious literary prize in Australia, it is given for the “novel which is of the highest literary merit and presents Australian life in any of its phases.”  The shortlist for the 2013 award have just been announced and this year five women are [...]

April 25th is ANZAC Day in Australia and New Zealand, it is the anniversary of the start of the battle of Gallipoli in which French and British Empire forces (led by mainly by troops of Australia and New Zealand) attacked the Ottoman capital of Constantinople.  The campaign was the first major battle undertaken in WWI [...]

As of now in 2013, Doris Lessing is 93. She was born in 1919 and her second novel, published in 1956, was titled Retreat to Innocence. All of this, coupled with her round, sweetly wrinkled face and penchant for wearing her white hair parted at the middle and pulled back into a bun, might give [...]

Australian author Bryce Courtenay has died from stomach cancer at the age of 79, as reported on The Big Story yesterday. He was best known for The Power of One, which, despite it being Courtenay’s debut novel, garnered much critical acclaim and made a name for Courtenay among Australia’s most respected writers. Throughout his career, Courtenay [...]

I know it’s impolite to openly salivate, but I’m only human, and a book nerd can only take so much and keep her cool! Wouldn’t these bricks painted to resemble books make the greatest bookends ever? My shelves have been crying out for these and I didn’t even know. They are the brain-child of an [...]

Anna Funder’s debut novel All That I Am is the 2012 winner of the Miles Franklin Award. Presented annually since 1957, it is Australia’s most coveted literary prize, recognising excellence in big names and fresh faces alike. And to those of us in the Northern Hemisphere, it’s an excellent starting point to delve into a [...]

The Sydney Morning Herald pulled together a pannel of the best known foodies to nominate a list of the ten most influential cookbooks. 1. The Margaret Fulton Cookbook 2. The Cook’s Companion by Stephanie Alexander 3. The Complete Asian Cookbook by Charmaine Solomon 4. The Australian Women’s Weekly Cookbook by Ellen Sinclair 5. Sydney Food [...]

The next J.K. Rowling is an Australian kitchen saleswoman says the Wall Street Journal. C’mon, journalists should know better than this. How many next J.K. Rowlings have we seen over the past five years?

The Age has done an interview with 16 Australian Football League players on their reading habits. I hardly expected to see recomendations for Chomsky in a footballers list; the world proves that I should quit trying to judge a book by it’s cover. JOEL BOWDEN – RICHMOND Understanding Power, a collection of talks by Noam [...]

Congratulations to Tim Winton, whose novel Breath is the winner of this year’s Miles Franklin Literary Award.