What I’m Reading

I recently devoured an eggs benedict with an author who wrote an erotic Ancient Mayan masterpiece. Monica Byrne was surprisingly accessible for someone who spent her leisurely time and a solid chunk of her thirties embedded in the Belizean jungle ...

There’s a package the size of a manuscript on my doorstep. I’m not expecting any packages, or manuscripts. I’ve been away on a family camping trip to the Snowys where I read Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca. (I’ll often bring a ...

One of my favourite authors is asleep on the bed beside me. As I write this, she is sleeping off her jetlag from the trip between New York and Sydney. When she wakes, I will ask her to her sign ...

It’s early November and I’m sitting at my desk looking out the window… again. I’ve sat here every day since December 15th 2021—the day Tasmania’s borders opened—and at this point I’m seriously considering screwing a mailbox to the corner of ...

This year is the year I rediscovered my love of reading. What I'm reading this year began with me stumbling across Fence by CS Pacat in my university library, a lighthearted graphic novel about a high school fencing team filled ...

October 26 I’m sitting on a bench in New Farm Park reading Northanger Abbey on my phone. The jacarandas are in bloom and a breeze cools my face, which is red from running. I finish Chapter 17 and uncross my ...

For the past year, I’ve been buying most of my books from a second-hand bookstore above a wine cellar on Sydney Road. When open, they line the street below with a small sampling of stock, a taster to beckon passers-by ...

not much! two little kids and working in a bookshop an abundance of books to read not much clear air tho not many stretches at the desk fall asleep the minute i get into bed just pockets of time to ...

My relationship with speculative fiction has the flavour of an intimate romance. To be captivated by a mind-bending short story; to guiltily bookmark your intergalactic saga so you can spend a delightful evening with a horror novella. There is something ...

It’s summer and I’m reading Jennifer Down’s Bodies of Light while at the beach with friends. We eat sandwiches and do quizzes from the newspaper. I think about whether the book matches my Speedos and painted nails. The text is ...

As I write these words, I am alternating between my word processor and my browser, where I’m obsessively reading and re-reading the treatment and recurrence profile of pericarditis. I recently had a booster dose of an mRNA COVID-19 vaccine, and ...

Every weekday, at about 7am, subscribers to the Meanjin Daily Reading Newsletter are greeted by email with a piece from the quarterly’s 82-year history. It could be a provocative essay, a sobering memoir or an interview that elicits a chuckle ...

My relationship with reading has always been fraught. Like most writers I know, I often feel overwhelmed, even affronted, by the stacks of books that, despite my best efforts, steadily grow by the side of my bed. Like most writers ...

I’m sure there’s a parable about a man who visits a spectacular art gallery and finds the artwork he’s most enamoured with to be a mirror. The lesson is something about self-absorption and it’s territory I feel I’m straying dangerously ...

I recently submitted my doctoral thesis about the intersection of masculinities, shame and suburbia in Christos Tsiolkas’ The Jesus Man and Peter Polites’ The Pillars. The research was mainly around how that intersection may lead to violence and the loss ...