November 2011
21 posts
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Book of the day: 100 Gardens by Jamie Durie
Cover blurb:
From the luxurious to the accessible, the sustainable and the edible, Jamie Durie’s innovative garden designs have changed the way we look at gardens. A pioneer of the Outdoor Room concept, Durie’s designs are as much about the humans who live in them as they are about the concepts. This philosophy-communicated through his award-winning designs, ...
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Book of the day: Double Entry by Jane...
On 18 March 1968, three months before an assassin’s bullet cut short his life, Senator Robert F. Kennedy made an impassioned speech at the University of Kansas. He spoke about the health of his nation, the economic powerhouse that is the United States of America, and the way we measure national wealth using figures such as the Gross National Product (GNP). Kennedy said:
Too much and for too...
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Classic book of the day: The Mint Lawn by Gillian...
I’m telling him about drug squad Alsatians when he begins to cry. He’s quite far away, curled like a puppy on the collapsing curve of futon that was a wedding present from his parents. A sheet has rucked to reveal the beginning of a mildew problem on the mattress. Condensation dribbles down the inside of the coffee plunger until I push the grounds down hard. Outside, although it’s nearly spring,...
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Book of the day: Darius Bell and the Crystal Bees...
Darius Bell walked up the drive. The gravel crunched under his feet, and Darius smiled as he heard it, feeling like an explorer crunching his way across a dry, rocky desert. But if he was an explorer, he didn’t have far to go. At the end of the drive ahead of him was Bell House, with its clock tower rising above it.
The clock in the tower showed eighteen minutes past eleven. Whether it was...
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First covers of classic novels
Flavorwire has an interesting round-up of the very first covers used on a bunch of classic novels. The usual suspects are all included - you know: Mrs Dalloway, A Clockwork Orange, Ulysses, The Hobbit - but there are a couple of less well-known examples too:
This post has inspired us! Keep an eye out for our own ‘First covers of classic Allen & Unwin books’ round-up, coming...
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Book of the day: Outlaws by Adam Shand
The driver hears the threat long before the infernal rumble takes ghastly form in his mirrors.
A biker is snaking his way through the cars at the traffic lights. The handlebars of his chopped Harley all but graze the paintwork of the cars as he glides to the front of the queue.
He stops, the bike straddling the pedestrian crossing.
Behind reflective sunglasses, the biker’s expression is...
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The many covers of a classic: Lolita by Vladimir...
An ‘online exhibition’ of Lolita covers through the years makes fascinating browsing:
Fabulous stuff. Browse them all here
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Book of the day: Death Comes to Pemberley by P.D....
It was generally agreed by the female residents of Meryton that Mr and Mrs Bennet of Longbourn had been fortunate in the disposal in marriage of four of their five daughters. Meryton, a small market town in Hertfordshire, is not on the route of any tours of pleasure, having neither beauty of setting nor a distinguished history, while its only great house, Netherfield Park, although impressive,...
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Book of the day: Kitchen Coquette by Katrina...
Cover blurb
Kitchen Coquette is a cookbook that will make you smile. It will feed ten hungry friends, the man of your dreams, your lovely gran; even providing a bite to eat for all those inspired in-between moments.
Katrina Meynink knows that sometimes food is the only answer so Kitchen Coquette provides the recipes with the context. It is important to know why you are cooking -...
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Book of the day: The Little Refugee by Anh Do,...
Cover blurb
Giant waves crashed down on our little boat. I was terrified but my mum hugged me tight and told me, ‘Everything will be okay. Don’t worry, it will be okay.’
Anh Do nearly didn’t make it to Australia. His entire family came close to losing their lives as they escaped from war-torn Vietnam in an overcrowded boat. It was a dangerous journey, ...
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Book of the day: Daylight on Iron Mountain by...
It was the summer of 2067, that bright, hot summer before the beginning of the American campaign. And it was there, in the green shadow of Li Mountain, in that most ancient of places, Hua Ch’ing Hot Springs, sixty li east of China’s ancient capital, Xi’an, that they met. Hua Ch’ing was an ancient place, even by Han standards. A sprawling summer palace, built into the green of the mountainside....
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Book of the day: Australians Volume II by Thomas...
Conviction was at an end in Eastern Australia, but because of its shame it had induced in the white community a tendency to pretend that all convicts ceased breathing and vanished utterly at the date of the abolition of transportation. Much later in the nineteenth century, the Bulletin wrote that the day ‘among all others which has been forced upon us as the natal-day of Australia is that which...
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Book of the day: Parrot Carrot by Jol & Kate...
Cover blurb
This book will make you giggle every time you read it! It takes a very simple concept - what would happen if you mixed an animal with an object? - adds some kooky illustrations and a strong design sense to create a book with lots of mixed-up animals and quirky visual humour. Try to make up your own animal pairs! Addictively good fun. Find the app at parrotcarrot.com
...
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Book of the day: The Distant Hours by Kate Morton
Hush … Can you hear him?
The trees can. They are the first to know that he is coming.
Listen! The trees of the deep, dark wood, shivering and jittering their leaves like papery hulls of beaten silver; the sly wind, snaking through their tops, whispering that soon it will begin.
The trees know, for they are old and they have seen it all before.
Cover blurb
‘The suspense will have...
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Book of the day: Bondi Republic by Andrew Hoyne &...
Cover blurb
An international celebrity, a national icon, a tourist haven or simply home. Bondi means different things to different people. In Bondi Republic photographer Ali Nasseri gives us a peek at the free-spirited, larger-than-life Sydney suburb that lies behind the designer shades and ripped abs.
Gaze into the true heart of Bondi, where it’s kinda edgy, sorta...
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Book of the day: Shatter Me by Tahereh Mafi
I’ve been locked up for 264 days.
I have nothing but a small notebook and a broken pen and the numbers in my head to keep me company. 1 window. 4 walls. 144 square feet of space. 26 letters in an alphabet.
I haven’t spoken in 264 days of isolation.
6,336 hours since I’ve touched another human being.
“You’re getting a cellmate roommate,” they said to me.
“We hope you rot to death in this...
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Book of the day: The Drop by Michael Connelly
Christmas came once a month in the Open-Unsolved Unit. That was when the lieutenant made her way around the squad room like Santa Claus, parceling out the assignments like presents to the squad’s six detective teams. The cold hits were the lifeblood of the unit. The teams didn’t wait for call outs and fresh kills in ...
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Book of the day: After Words by P.J. Keating
Whatever was pedestrian about Sydney, and God knows so much has always been, we have always rejoiced in the extraordinary natural beauty of its harbour and its maritime environs.
The high points of its built form—the colonial ones such as Greenway’s St James’ Church and environs, Barnet’s monumental Bridge Street, St Mary’s Cathedral and Sydney University—as well as the twentieth-century...
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Hot covers from cool Swedes
While being led down the internet rabbit-hole this morning we stumbled across this fab blog of Swedish book cover design:
Gorgeous stuff!
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Book of the day: The Coming of the Whirlpool by...
Later, when he was the greatest mariner of his day and famous throughout the Four Isles, he was to be known by many names. He would be called the Last of the Ship Kings, even though he was nothing of the sort. He would be called the Young Admiral, and the Scapegoat’s Captain. He would be called The Man Who Sailed Off The Edge Of The World, and a good many other things besides; a traitor and...
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Book of the day: Foal's Bread by Gillian Mears
The sound of horses’ hooves turns hollow on the farms west of Wirri. If a man can still ride, if he hasn’t totally lost the use of his legs, if he hasn’t died to the part of his heart that understands such things, then he should go for a gallop. At the very least he should stand at the road by the river imagining that he’s pushing a horse up the steep hill that leads to the house on the farm...