Summer Reading Guide_V08_FA_WEB_Spreads_Antipodes

AUSTRALIAN STORIES
BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR
Tell Me Why
Archie Roach
Simon & Schuster
AUS | HB $49.99
Archie Roach took
almost a lifetime to find
out who he really was.
In this intimate and
moving memoir, Roach’s
story is an extraordinary odyssey through love
and heartbreak, family and community, survival
and renewal and the healing power of music.
Overcoming enormous odds to find his story and
his people, Roach voices the joy, pain and hope
he found on his path through song to become
the legendary singer-songwriter and storyteller
that he is today.
The Accidental
Tour Guide
Mary Moody
Simon & Schuster
AUS | PB $35.00
Mary Moody has
designed and lead
a full and busy life;
journalist, author,
presenter, gardener, wife, mother. Along the
way she inspired many with her bestselling
memoirs including Au Revoir and Last Tango
in Toulouse. Five years ago, Mary’s life was
turned upside down when her beloved
husband passed away. Mary’s story of what
comes next is full of honesty and inspiration,
a third act in an extraordinary story.
Tea and Scotch
with Bradman
Roland Perry
ABC
HB $39.99
For many years, Roland
Perry regularly met with
Don Bradman to discuss
his career and life, and
in 2014 published his definitive biography on
the great sportsman. This companion volume
reveals the man behind the myth, what made
him tick, who and what inspired him, his
great sense of humour – and his affection for
tea and Scotch. An intimate portrait of the
man many regard as the greatest Australian
cricketer of all time.
Penny Wong
Margaret Simons
Black Inc
PB $34.99
Penny Wong is one of
Australia’s first openly
gay politicians and
one of the few Senate
representations of
Asian Australians. She
is highly respected by her staff, the public and
by people from opposing political parties. But
she is also intensely private and seldom gives
interviews. This biography is a rare insight
into a person who faced marginalisation and
bullying but fought to have her voice, and
others like it, heard.
Tall Tales and
Wee Stories
Billy Connolly
Two Roads
HB $45.00
When he announced his
retirement in December
2018, Billy Connolly had
had a fifty-year career
as one of the world’s most famous comedians.
This book brings together some of the very best
of Billy’s stories and monologues and reveals his
true talent in the craft of storytelling, pointing out
the absurd, and exposing the hypocrisy of human
endeavours, and all with his inimitable voice and
sense of humanity.
The Man in the
Red Coat
Julian Barnes
Jonathan Cape
HB $39.99
The Man Booker Prizewinning
author of The
Sense of an Ending takes us on a rich, witty
tour of Belle Epoque Paris, via the life story
of the pioneering surgeon Samuel Pozzi – a
rational and scientific man with a famously
complicated private life. A fresh and original
portrait of the Belle Epoque, its heroes and
villains, writers, artists and thinkers, and a life
of a man ahead of his time.
Gulpilil
Derek Rielly
Macmillan
Australia
HB $29.99
Fifty years ago, Yolngu
man David Gulpilil, a
sixteen-year-old dancer,
appeared in the film
Walkabout, forever changing Australia’s
relationship with Indigenous Australia.
Balancing a subsequent roll call of influential
film appearances with his ancient and remote
Arnhem cultural heritage often sat uneasily.
Derek Rielly, author of Wednesdays with Bob
offers a beguiling portrait of the enigmatic
David Gulpilil.
Yellow
Notebook
Helen Garner
Text Publishing
HB $29.99
Helen Garner has kept
a diary for almost all
her life, which until
now have been locked
away, out of bounds in
a laundry cupboard. Now, Garner has opened
her diaries and invited her readers into the
world behind her novels and works of nonfiction.
Recorded with frankness, humour and
steel-sharp wit, these accounts of her everyday
life provide an intimate insight into the work of
one of Australia’s greatest living writers.
Buckley’s Chance
Garry Linnell
Michael Joseph
PB $34.99
A surviving soldier from
Napoleon’s army William
Buckley escaped the gallows
for convict chains and
on arriving in Australia took his chances again.
Adopted by an Aboriginal tribe he was initiated
into their rich and complex culture to famously
emerge 32 years later carrying a spear and no
longer speaking the English language. Mythical,
due to the famous phrase about chances, this is
his fascinating story.
Bob Hawke
Blanche d’Alpuget
Simon & Schuster
AUS | HB $59.99
D’Alpuget presents a
definitive biography of
Bob Hawke, detailing
his life after the prime
ministership, alongside
never-before-published photos. This is
combined with updated and revised editions
of her award-winning book from 1982, Robert
J. Hawke: A Biography, and her 2010 Hawke:
The Prime Minister, bringing these works
together for the first time.
Your Own
Kind of Girl
Clare Bowditch
Allen & Unwin
PB $29.99
ARIA Award-winning
singer and actress Clare
Bowditch confronts her
inner critic in this noholds-barred
memoir. She reveals a childhood
punctuated by grief, anxiety and compulsion,
and tells how these forces shaped her life for
better and for worse. This is a heartbreaking,
wise and at times playful book, a reminder that
even on the darkest of nights, victory is closer
than it seems.
The Education
of an Idealist
Samantha Power
William Collins UK
PB $32.99
Samantha Power is a
former US Ambassador
to the United Nations, the
youngest person to ever
hold that position. She began her illustrious career
as a war correspondent covering the Yugoslav
Wars, before becoming an activist, academic,
presidential advisor, and Pulitzer Prize-winning
author. Power reflects on the forces that have
shaped her both personally and professionally,
saying that, “...even in troubled times, we can
each do our part to shape a more humane future.”
Finding the Heart of the Nation
Thomas Mayor
Hardie Grant | HB $39.99
The Devil’s Grip
Neal Drinnan
Simon & Schuster AUS | PB $32.99
Me
Elton John
Macmillan
HB $44.99
Face It
Debbie Harry
HarperCollins UK
HB $45.00
Janis
Holly George-Warren
Simon & Schuster UK
PB $32.99
After the Uluru Statement from the Heart was
formed in May 2017 signatory and campaigner
Thomas Mayor travelled with the sacred canvas to
communities across Australia. This special book
details his journey and through 20 key interviews makes clear what the
Uluru Statement is and why it is so important. The book is his gift to the
campaign for Voice, Treaty and Truth and like the Uluru Statement he
hopes that all Australians will accept it.
The Western District was one of the wealthiest
regions on earth at one time, with wool incomes
making it the seat of power in Australia. The
Wettenhall family were world renown for their
sheep but met with generational tragedy in a
gruesome triple murder in 1992. Neil Drinnan
tells the story of the incident with a depth of
insight that recalls Truman Capote’s best, examining rural life, cultural
shame, and the corrosive effects of secrets held in fear and repression.
Long awaited and eagerly
anticipated this is Elton
John’s no-holds-barred
own account of his
amazing life. No one is more grateful than
Elton for all he has achieved and experienced,
and true to his living legend stature this is
a heartfelt, funny, outrageous and openly
humble memoir. Beautifully written and full
of Elton’s music, relationships, passions and
mistakes, this is a story that will stay with you.
Deborah Harry is arguably
the coolest female rock
star ever. This is a visceral
mix of soulful storytelling
and stunning visuals that
include never-before seen photographs, bespoke
illustrations and highlights from Deborah’s private
collection. Add to that the grit, grime, and glory
of downtown 1970’s New York recounted in
intimate detail; Face It delivers a truly prismatic
portrait well beyond the standard music memoir.
Janis Joplin was a white girl
from Texas who didn’t fit the
mould in her conservative
oil town. Artistic by nature,
her passion and perfectionism honed one of
rock history’s great voices. She was provocative,
pushing gender boundaries and women’s place in
rock and roll, and her tragic death robbed us too
soon of an artist in ascension.
Sand Talk: How Indigenous
Thinking Can Save the World
Tyson Yunkaporta
Text Publishing | PB $32.99
Tyson Yunkaporta’s Sand Talk is an indigenous
interpretation of our world that sees the patterns
of creation as central to understanding our place in
nature. Nature, Yunkaporta says, is not something
separate from us, and that construct trades away our connection and
responsibility to the earth. We must learn to live in proper relation to the
planet if we are to escape the idea of saving the environment, in order to
embrace our part in this system and ultimately save ourselves.
Life: Selected Writings
Tim Flannery
Text Publishing | HB $39.99
By the 2007 Australian of the Year,
palaeontologist, explorer and conservationist,
Tim Flannery, Life: Selected Writing is his
definitive collection of work bringing together
thirty years of essays, speeches and writings as
one of the world’s greatest thinkers and environmental scientists.
The perfect book to read as we reflect on society’s past mistakes,
and work towards a cleaner, more sustainable future.
Year of the Monkey
Patti Smith
Bloomsbury | HB $29.99
From the celebrated performer, artist and
award-winning author of Just Kids and M Train,
this is a profound, beautifully realised memoir of
one transformative year. For Patti Smith, writing the
year evolves as one of reckoning with the changes
in life: with loss, aging, and a dramatic shift in the
political landscape of America. Illustrated with Smith’s
signature Polaroids, this is a moving and original work.
Also available is Just Kids Illustrated, RRP $59.99.
Acid for the Children
Flea
Headline | PB $32.99
Michael Peter Balzary, better known as Flea,
was born in Melbourne but as a kid moved to
the USA. When his parents split, Flea and his
sister moved in with their mother’s jazz musician
boyfriend, and a life of music, booze and drugs
revealed itself. At Fairfax High School in LA, Flea
fell in with Anthony Kiedis, a friendship that launched the Red Hot
Chili Peppers. This is a coming of age story of one of rock’s finest bass
players, and a tribute to the redemptive power of music.
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