The romance and horror of the navigable world I amuse myself by finding patterns in and between the books I tumble into, or stumble over, or on occasion drag myself through, grumbling. Lately, I have been able to gather many of them loosely with a theme I think of as the romance of the navigable world. These books do not shatter or rebuild the world; instead, they share the pleasant and dangerous fiction that the rules of the world can be learned. It is a dream that unites aviation histories and Regency romances, crime fiction, and business development guides. I […]

During my adolescence I read almost nothing. I lived on farms. When I was 19 someone gave me a copy of Patrick White’s novel The Vivisector and it blew my head off. White’s style captured me, his acerbic poetry and mordant (almost cruel) representations of art and artists and society people in Sydney. Characters come and go in vivid takes and take-downs (by the author) in what I later realised was White’s typical satire and grotesquerie—the latter as a kind of gothic lightning. I had realised the style of authorial narration. I woke as a reader … Recently, I fell […]

The Queer Reader 101 booklist started as a joke between my girlfriend and me. I say started, because now there’s an actual stack on my bedside table: The Price of Salt (Patricia Highsmith), Valencia (Michelle Tea), Written on the Body (Jeanette Winterson) and Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl (Andrea Lawlor). I’ve added some Eileen Myles and Ivan Coyote, and Angela Steidele’s Gentleman Jack. But since I’m a slow and distracted novel reader, so far I have only begun each of these, dipping in and out, taking breaks. I spent one of those breaks replaying the video game […]

When my eldest child was ten, he liked to read multiple books at once, arranged in a circle around him on his bed like a giant book buffet. He would pick one up, read a few pages, sometimes even just a paragraph or two, then put it down and move onto another. As a serial monogamist when it came to books, I was horrified. For me, reading had always been an act of immersion. Surely, he was just skimming along the surface of these books, barely getting his mind wet. I remember asking his teacher if I should encourage him […]

‘Warm-ups’ by Abigail Ulman In the first week of lockdown in Brisbane, my friend texted me three words: GET DISNEY PLUS. She has a 5-year-old. I have two little kids. GET DISNEY PLUS, she yelled at me again, even though I had not replied the first time. So I did. Then I bought Stan as well, to watch Normal People, certain that I’d remember to cancel my subscription as soon as I finished it. Or the next month, or the one after that, but here we are in November. Eventually, of course I will cancel my Stan subscription. In short: […]

Since getting the job as Emerging Book Critic a few months ago, I’ve had to be very intentional about what I read because I realised I take much longer to get through a book than I used to. Working with deadlines is great in making sure I am deliberate and strategic about my reading. I finished Rachel Kushner’s The Mars Room recently, which was sensational. I felt really ashamed that I’d never read anything by her before. She has an extremely well-adjusted tenor for pacing and speech. By this, I mean the narrator’s speech—not the characters’ dialogue. The best line in the […]

Back in early June, as Black Lives Matter activists took to the streets worldwide, I set myself a reading project: to avoid white writers for the rest of the year. For my standard ten or so books a month, I’d seek out authors who were anything but white. This resolution was an effort to de-centre whiteness in my cultural diet. After a lifetime of consuming stories authored by white people, it was time to listen to different voices. It was time to listen to colonised peoples instead of colonisers. It was time to listen to Indigenous voices instead of the […]

Note: this piece contains extensive spoilers for both The Last of Us (2013) and The Last of Us Part II (2020).   I’m reading a slick of blood on a staircase. I’m reading the slow embering of realisation in a person’s eyes. I’m reading The Last of Us Part II—a video game that makes ‘playing’ really not feel like the appropriate word. Video games always involve a strange blend of interactivity and restriction: they allow the player to make choices, but only within certain bounds. Lots of big-budget modern titles have tried to make those bounds as invisible as possible, […]

On reading Ali Smith’s Summer When a continent burned and another melted I’m reading Ali Smith’s Summer and I want to not believe her. I want to deny and scoff at that part where the English character Sacha is outraged by the deniers and dismissers of the Australian bushfires. Not even when they see pictures of Australia burning do they admit it. Not even when half a billion dead creatures—meaning 500000000 individual living things dead—is only the death toll from one area. What does Ali Smith’s Sacha know? She’s only a Greta-aged girl on the other side of the world. It […]

The first time Victoria goes into lockdown, our house is taken over by a person-like creature that is halfway hatched from what seems to be a chicken egg. It has a peach-and-cream skin tone and bright blue eyes. It yells things like ‘whey-hey-hey!’ and ‘niiiiiiiiiice work!’ over the pokies-esque sound of virtual coin-eggs accruing in a virtual money bag. As part of learning from home, my six-year-old child, who is in Prep, has been given an account for the online literacy program ABC Reading Eggs. I’m reading the website homepage: Learning to read can be easy and fun! … Children […]

The New Yorker They arrive in whacking great bundles. Each time, I think I should have remembered this from the last time I subscribed. A weekly magazine, coming from the other side of the world in a time of crippled supply lines and bigger priorities. Of course they won’t arrive in an orderly procession on a Tuesday, or a Friday, or whatever. I only read magazines over breakfast, and no, there is no good reason for this. But it means they lie about the kitchen in various stages of digestion, from unmarked, to folded-over, to coffee-stained and crumpled. If one […]

‘Isabelle is medically well and there are no concerns regarding her plans to conceive.’ ‘Isabelle is yet to experience any significant pain or bleeding.’ ‘I am still very optimistic for Isabelle’s chances of having a healthy pregnancy given that she and her partner have one live-born child.’ ‘Just a quick note to update you that Isy’s NIPT returned a high-risk result for T21.’ ‘It’s certainly pleasing to see her again so soon after her previous miscarriage.’ ‘She had an ultrasound that demonstrated the miscarriage was complete.’ ‘Suction curettage for missed abortion.’ ‘I’ll see mum and baby at the six-week postnatal […]