Summer book club at the Library
Is there any better time than summer to get lost in a good book? Make the most out of the season with these eight extraordinary reads – from a football odyssey from one of Australia’s best-loved authors, to a Guggenheim fellow’s biography of a trailblazing female scientist and the women she inspired.
Curate your summer reading list now, then join us as we welcome the authors to the Library to speak about their books and answer all your burning questions.
The Elements of Marie Curie by Dava Sobel
Author and journalist Dava Sobel illuminates the story of Marie Curie, intercutting the famous physicist’s biography with untold stories of the young women who trained in her laboratory and went on to launch extraordinary scientific careers of their own. A lucid and deeply researched work that highlights women’s hidden contributions to history and offers a fascinating group portrait of scientific endeavour.
The Time of the Child by Niall Williams
A small Irish town where everyone knows each other’s business. An ageing father and his unmarried daughter, both of whom feel as though they are missing something in their life. An abandoned baby girl left in the cemetery on the night of the Christmas fair – and who will transform their lives forever. Booker Prize-nominated author Niall Williams tells a story of family, community and redemption in this lyrical and life-affirming book.
Murriyang: Song of Time by Stan Grant
In this intimate and heartful work of non-fiction, theologian and writer Stan Grant explores themes of identity, colonisation and belonging through the intersections of Wiradjuri tradition and Christian faith. Encompassing reflections across history, literature, theology, music and art, this book offers a meditation on language and Country, magic and mysticism, time and memory. A deeply personal work that invites readers to reach past the secular to find grace, the sacred and the transcendent.
My Country by David Marr
Curiosity, mischief and exasperation: these are the qualities that inspired David Marr to devote his life of journalism. In this updated and expanded edition of My Country, Marr brings these qualities to bear through his powerful writing on the nation and its people, and the ideas and political and cultural transactions that set it whirring. This updated edition includes reflections on his award-winning history Killing for Country and his explosive investigation of George Pell. An erudite and illuminating work that peers deep into the nation’s soul.
Purchase My Country at Readings State Library and enjoy 10% RRP when you show your event tickets in-store.
The Season by Helen Garner
For Helen Garner, football is a kind of poetry – a common language between strangers, born of shared hopes and shared rules. Taking the quotidian story of her grandson’s under-16s football club, Garner crafts an engrossing story of youth and age, tenderness and aggression, burgeoning masculinity and familial love, infused with her signature directness and a journalistic eye for detail. A lyrical meeting of literature and sport told through a deeply personal lens – this is Garner at her finest.
Purchase The Season at Readings State Library and enjoy 10% RRP when you show your event tickets in-store.
Black Convicts by Santilla Chingaipe
The impact of the transatlantic slave trade on Australia is a story that hasn’t been widely told. In Black Convicts, writer and filmmaker Santilla Chingaipe illuminates the histories of convicts of African descent, who arrived with the First Fleet and after, to tell a broader story about the legacies of the global slave trade on Australian politics and culture. Traversing varied histories such as children who were transported, the experiences of female convicts, and how Black convicts interacted with First Nations people, this book offers a complex picture of Black experience across diverse contexts and moments.
Purchase Black Convicts at Readings State Library and enjoy 10% RRP when you show your event tickets in-store.
Working for the Brand by Josh Bornstein
The limits of free speech come into sharp focus in lawyer Josh Bornstein’s latest book, which considers the vexed relationship between people and the brands they work for. Weaving together global case studies, personal experience and astute political analysis, Bornstein illustrates the chilling effect that corporate cancel culture has on workers’ civil liberties. A startling and provocative look at how corporate censorship threatens both individual rights and democratic principles at large.
Purchase Working for the Brand at Readings State Library and enjoy 10% RRP when you show your event tickets in-store.
Cactus Pear for My Beloved by Samah Sabawi
The story of a Palestinian family that unspools over generations and continents, Cactus Pear for My Beloved is a moving narrative memoir by author, playwright and poet Samah Sabawi. It’s a work anchored in personal history that connects to wider historical and political contexts, interweaving the life of Sabawi’s father with larger stories of Palestinian dispossession and loss. In spite of the challenging history it covers, this is a book filled with courage, warmth and love.
Purchase Cactus Pear for My Beloved at Readings State Library and enjoy 10% RRP when you show your event tickets in-store.