It’s an unforgivable ‘if not for…’, but here goes: if not for Vietnam, Lyndon Johnson would have been one of the greatest American presidents of all time. But Vietnam happened, and Johnson’s pride and warped view of what ‘defeat’ would mean for America’s international standing and relations meant tens of thousands of appallingly unnecessary deaths. His greatness though is powerfully on view in The Presidential Recordings: Lyndon Johnson—Passing of the Civil Rights Act (June 23 to July 4 1964) the eighth volume of transcripts of Johnson’s Oval Office conversations. The indefatigable seduction, bullying and cajoling, his tremendously affectionate nature (readily… [Read more]

I’m one of those readers who always keep a stack of books by me; my bedside table pile has an accompanying bedside floor mountain next to it. My handbag inevitably holds three or more books that I’m reading simultaneously. Perhaps chief among the books I’ve got going are a stack of books by the American poet and essayist Dan Beachy-Quick. A youngish poet (born in 1973), he has been prolific (five full collections of poetry, two books of essays with another due soon, one collection of verse written in collaboration with Srikanth Reddy—plus a number of chapbooks), though he says… [Read more]

The two books I just finished could not be more different; May We Be Forgiven by A. M. Homes and The End of Your Life Book Club by Will Schwalbe. I happily finished the latter during an unexpected bout of insomnia, but reading the last hundred or so pages in the early hours of the morning only heightened the experience. Will Schwalbe’s elderly mother Mary Anne is dying of pancreatic cancer and during the last years of her life, between chemo, over dinner and while waiting for endless doctors’ appointments, mother and son form a book club of two by… [Read more]

I have been delinquent in the reading department since 1) leaving the 2012 Melbourne Writers’ Festival (where books were flung at us regularly from every publisher in the land) and 2) finishing selection for Going Down Swinging #33. You would think that being out of work for a few weeks would mean more time for books, but it never works like that, does it? Partly I blame The Man Who Loved Children by Christina Stead, which as it turns out is not a Lolita-esque diary of a paedophile. I had such a violent admiration for what little of this book… [Read more]

Elyse Wurm We all have gaps in our literary knowledge: novels we never got around to reading and that continue to slip through our rigorous book selection process. My literary gap is more embarrassing than most and so it is in this safe space that I confess that I am one of the very few who has overlooked Harper Lee’s classic, To Kill a Mockingbird. Increasingly ashamed of this oversight, I vowed to resurrect it once the stress of exams had passed. The novel now has me firmly within its grasp and refuses to let go. I am unravelling the… [Read more]

The answer to, ‘What are you reading?’ isn’t the same as, ‘What’s on your bedside table?’ when you’re caught in the thrall of Homeland. Yes, despite the average dialogue and Clare Danes’ histrionics, my boyfriend and I are addicted. It’s 1:00am midweek. We turn to each other pleadingly, ‘Another one?’ So as the episodes roll on, my pile of books increases. And I kid myself: at least the intention is there. There’s Joan Didion’s Slouching Towards Bethlehem and short stories by Hemingway—both of which I’ve been reading erratically—Oriana Fallaci’s The Rage and The Pride, The Remains of The Day by… [Read more]