How his love of the water inspired a new career
Russell Ord has always loved to meet people whose daily lives revolve around the ocean. After 19 years with the fire service he became one of them himself.
Books
‘Biographers have a particular bile reserved for them – I’m used to it’
How has Anne Sebba – the bestselling British author of The Women’s Orchestra of Auschwitz- overcome the notion that she is a ‘vulture who exploits other people’s lives’?
Recognising the heroes who fought fascism
A new book honours Jim McNeill and a handful of fellow Australians who travelled to Spain to fight in the Spanish Civil War in the 1930s to stop the spread of fascism.
Davis has room to shine on stage
Judy Davis returns to the stage for the Belvoir’s adaptation of Helen Garner’s The Spare Room, and other news from the book world
Smithsonian a focus of Trump’s cultural purge
US President Donald Trump and his vice president JD Vance want to eliminate ‘improper, divisive or anti-American ideology’ from the Smithsonian museum.
Honouring Hong Kong’s ‘little devils’
Women – including girls as young as six or seven – were key to the resistance during the Japanese occupation of Hong Kong.
I recommend Christie Brinkley’s memoir … with one proviso
Christie Brinkley’s memoir begins with a horrific helicopter crash and it’s hardly a spoiler to tell that Christie survives, going on to write this book which in America has sold 1.2 million copies. Which is the greater miracle?
Mystery of the writer who stopped
Helen Trinca’s new book about Elizabeth Harrower; the Peter Blazey fellowship opens, and other news from the book world
So, you want to buy a bookshop?
Lyn Brown book a bookshop on a whim. Then she bought another one. And another one. Now she’s retired, and remembering how much she loved it.
Does a river have rights?
Would it be all that weird to assign human-style rights to rivers? They seem alive to Robert Macfarlane.
Boy’s own writer inspired a coup
Frederick Forsyth wrote meticulously researched spy novels, including The Odessa File and The Dogs of War, but his own life was as full of derring-do.
Original sin: How Biden’s decline was deliberately hidden
Joe Biden hadn’t been up past 9pm for months when he was asked to shuffle into a TV studio to debate a surging Donald Trump.
Day of The Jackal author Frederick Forsyth dies aged 86
The prolific British thriller writer died on Monday, surrounded by family after a brief illness, his literary agents said.
Dazzling author lets his writing do the talking
Nobel laureate for literature JM Coetzee has been described as reclusive. Friends say it isn’t so; in person, he’s kind, and interested, but shy.
How music helped an autistic child tune into the world
Can music assist children with autism? In this memoir, a father describes the songs that allowed his son to communicate with the outside world.
Charles Darwin’s Australian adventure
Charles Darwin could not get over Australian marsupials, or Sydney property prices, when he dropped in on the colonies during his vogage around the world on the Beagle.
Rough with the smooth
King Of Dirt is a gritty new novel from West Australian writer Holden Sheppard.
How US comedians are taking back comedy from the left
In the age of Trump, social media and podcasts, right-leaning comedians are finding mass audiences in the US. Interestingly, this shift has yet to take root in Australia.
Secret orgasms and lots of swearing: Cheng Lei’s survival secrets | LISTEN
Warm, sweary, courageous Australian journalist Cheng Lei reflects on the philosophies that saved her sanity in prison, starting with BTFI: ‘Beyond the F … It’.
Cheng Lei: The books that saved me during my imprisonment
Australian journalist Cheng Lei’s torment was made bearable through the escapism of the written word: ‘My world had nothing but nothingness. Books were everything.’
This is the best literary seafood chowder I’ve read in years
The actual opening words of Matt Riordan’s novel, The North Line, are as ominous as any Herman Melville scene setter, warning the reader that we are in for a hell of a time.
What to read this week
A memoir, a crime thriller, and the red sweater shared by four courageous women are all in this week’s list of new and notable books
This study into a notorious cultist leader misses the mark
Georgia Rose Phillips’s The Bearcat is a novel inspired by the life of cult leader Anne Hamilton-Byrne.
Stella winner adds to Miles Franklins
News from the book world from literary editor Caroline Overington.
Naming your child and how it may shape them
Look out world, one of the most anticipated books of the year has arrived, and everyone’s book club is reading it.
Waves of gore on the high seas
The Empress Murders is a new novel by a talented young actor, Toby Schmitz
Museum boss raps ‘forgetfulness’ over First Nations stories
National Museum of Australia Council chair Clare Wright has challenged the status of Gallipoli in our history, arguing Indigenous history has been unfairly marginalised in favour of the Anzac legend.
Putting the cult in Cultural Revolution
Linda Jaivin’s new book about China includes a chapter on the devotion encouraged by Mao.
The little romance books reviving readers’ sex drives
The founders of 831 Stories believe that anyone can write romance, that great love stories should never end and that even the genre’s sceptics want a ‘happily ever after’.
A very personal odyssey
Kate Grenville’s new book, Unsettled, takes the reader back through lands taken, not taken up.
Original URL: https://www.theaustralian.com.au/arts/books