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…
Read more
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…
Read more
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….
Read more
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…
Read more
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…
Read more
What could be more exciting, exhilarating and adventurous than committing to working on every continent in the world before your thirtieth birthday? This is the goal New Zealander Hap Cameron set himself when he was twenty-one, after graduating from a marketing degree at university. He wanted life experiences, and to avoid the trap of falling…
Read more
In Year 12, my English teacher set Bernhard Schlink’s The Reader as one of our texts. The Reader is set after World War II and a major part of the novel is a trial of an SS officer who is being tried for war crimes. Schlink is a crafty writer. He neither wanted to condemn…
Read more
With her recent release of “Amanda Palmer Goes Down Under”, Amanda Fucking Palmer admits to loving our country (just like Oprah Winfrey). Originally beginning her music fame with the Dresden Dolls and now a solo artist in her own right, I’ve always seen Amanda as a strong woman who has an open philosophy to life,…
Read more
