So Sad Today is a book of personal essays by Melissa Broder, detailing her struggles with addiction, anxiety, panic disorder, relationships and an overwhelming fear of death. The book originated from an anonymous Twitter account of the same name in 2012, tweeting about the human condition in catchy one-sentence bites that were in equal parts…
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Lip Reading is a column about the books in our lives. Each month, Lip staff and writers share what books have obsessed, delighted, or even saddened them. What have you been reading? We’d love to hear your recommendations. — Donna Lu, Books & Literature Editor * Amy Nicholls-Diver I recently finished The Vegetarian, by Han Kang (translated…
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This is a review of a session held at the 2016 Sydney Writers’ Festival. * Annabel Crabb and Leigh Sales’ Sydney Writers’ Festival event Our Reading Year was a delightful charm offensive from beginning to end. The two stalwarts of Australian political media had the sold-out crowd barking with laughter within minutes, and their meandering…
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Ask Me Anything is acclaimed writer Rebecca Sparrow’s endeavour to answer a tangled and awkward mess of questions posed to her by teenagers. On the surface Ask Me Anything sounds like the kind of book that worried parents might buy their teenage daughter for Christmas, a remedy for unwanted pregnancies and a clever way to avoid…
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For all the many thousands of words that make up the twelfth volume of :etchingsmelb, there is one word that perfectly sums it up: eclectic. The latest iteration of the literary journal skips merrily from the collage of Australiana that is the opening short story by Simonne Michelle-Wells, ‘Under a Dreaming Sky’, all the way…
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Oh, AA Gill. My feelings about him are mixed. On the one hand, he is mordantly witty, and utterly bereft of filter or bullshit – my kind of writer. On the other hand, he can be brutal and acidic and so proud and self-satisfied that it’s incredibly off-putting. AA Gill is away is his first…
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Fifty years ago, Betty Friedan explained to the world ‘the problem with no name’ in The Feminine Mystique. The problem was a general ennui and a lack of direction many women felt. These women were smart – often college educated – and capable of performing any job a man could do. Yet, they felt stuck…
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Katherine Boo’s book, Behind the Beautiful Forevers, is a devastating and important investigation of slum life in India. Stylistically, it’s near perfect: the writing is erudite, informative, intimate, and accessible. It is narrative non-fiction in the best possible sense: it reads like a novel, but avoids the trap of over-interpretation. Boo expertly balances an objective…
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Picking up a memoir about the porn industry, Not Your Ordinary Housewife, I didn’t expect the story Nikki Stern offered. I expected Stern to be a disadvantaged woman, struggling to make ends meet for the sake of her children. Instead, I found that Stern was involved in the adult industry in many different and varied…
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Martin Amis is the Mick Jagger of the literary world. His leathery skin and faint monobrow would normally be viewed as unattractive qualities if taken individually but when paired with a defiant gaze and a freshly rolled cigarette Amis exudes charisma. It’s hard not to stare. It’s hard not to want to be him. It’s…
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Charlotte Dawson, Charlotte Dawson…it took me a minute to place the name on the cover of the book. Puzzled, I turned the book over and the blurb informed me she was a judge on Australia’s Next Top Model. That was the one! Yes, I’d heard of her before, but having never had Foxtel and only…
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And the Heart Says Whatever is a lightening rod of a book. Emily Gould’s life has been the stuff of cult films and teenage daydreams. She has beautiful tattoos snaking all over her upper torso and a don’t-give-a-fuck sensibility that, combined with her personal and professional experiences, make her an easy, lazy target for mockery and hipster-bashing….
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Joumana Haddad is a truly a remarkable woman. Born in Beirut in 1970, she speaks and writes in several different languages, is an advocate for women’s rights, is studying for her doctorate on the Marquis de Sade and also teaches Italian at the Lebanese-American University in Beirut. I was so inspired after I read and…
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I’d never really thought about it before, until I started reading Joumana Haddad’s Superman is an Arab, but Superman really is a disastrous invention. I’ve never been drawn to the character or the stories surrounding him and have never seen the movies, but still, why doesn’t it raise more eyebrows that Clark Kent is only…
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