December 2007 - January 2008

Peter Craven's Best Books for Summer 2007-08

By Peter Craven

Kylie Minogue & Michael Hutchence

By Shane Maloney

It was great while it lasted, according to Kylie. "I learnt a lot."They met at a bash after the Countdown Awards, the program's final show, in July 1987. He was brooding, lascivious and charismatic, the rock-god frontman of INXS, a band whose name said it all. She was eight years younger, a girl-next-door soapie starlet whose pop debut, a bop-along cover version, had unexpectedly topped the c

‘How to Talk about Books You Haven’t Read’ by Pierre Bayard

By Zora Simic

According to Pierre Bayard, a professor of literature at the University of Paris, you do not have to read books to be able to speak about them with confidence - even when standing at the lectern. What allows this subterfuge to continue is mutual complicity. Still, Bayard does not want to make readers feel ashamed of that pile of untouched volumes by the bed. Instead he demonstrates that not reading need not compromise intelligence. It m

Genealogy

By Craig Sherborne

The Usual

By Craig Sherborne

Delta Goodrem’s ‘Delta’

Confession & Hits (Hits & Confession)

By Robert Forster

Alan Greenspan’s ‘The Age of Turbulence’

Reigning Bull

By Gideon Haigh

Oliver Sacks’s ‘Musicophilia’

Wunderbar

By Anna Goldsworthy

The best books for summer

Sixty of the Best

By Peter Craven

Christmas is one of those times when the world gives books, almost as if a nostalgia for filling the mind with images suggested by words has as deep a pull on our unconscious mind as the birth in the manger of that Jewish preacher who said we should love the next person

Todd Haynes’s ‘I’m Not There’

Let the Bird Sing, Let the Bird Fly

By Luke Davies

In No Direction Home, Martin Scorsese's 2005 documentary about Bob Dylan, Allen Ginsberg speaks of that time in the early '60s when he first sat up and took notice of Dylan as a cultural and spiritual phenomenon. "What struck me," says Ginsberg, "was that he w

How Do Creatures Think?

Toots's Kismet

By Robyn Davidson

As I do. And have always done.I have studied them in the wild, worked with them, shared my homes with them. Though ‘pets' seems too diminished a term to give to those aliens who have, throughout my life, kept me company, amused me, amazed me. Dogs, cats, par

A Report From Afghanistan

Mission Drift

By Chris Masters

Reinvigorating the National Broadcaster

New Teeth for Aunty

By Robert Manne

This outline of my daily routine should at least make one thing clear: the ABC plays a very important part in my life. As it does for very many Australians. There is almost no institution in Australia that is more generally trusted, valued and loved than the ABC, as survey after survey shows. There is probably no other that has so loyal and attentive and pos

Dogs of War

By Charles Firth

In the advertising business, there is a phenomenon called the Puppy Dog Effect. When a firm is pitching several different concepts for a television commercial, they will often slip footage of a puppy dog into the mock-up of their favourite idea, even if the product being advertised has nothing to do with puppy dogs. The ad with the dog invariably receives the most positive response from focus grou

Buyer’s Market

By Gay Bilson

Tasting Australia, a biennial event in Adelaide, is aptly named, for although it delivers a dizzying series of culinary entertainments for local audiences eager to get close to their favourite cookbook writer, who usually has a show on pay-TV which spawns coll

What a Pratt

By James Kirby

The woman on the radio had called to complain. "I want to talk about Richard Pratt," she said. "I don't really understand what he did. But I don't like it." Nobody, it seems, likes to see very rich people behaving badly - like a double-parked Porsche, it rankl

The Sense of Danger

By Ann-Marie Priest

In an early episode of The Sopranos, the young gangster Christopher Moltisanti decides to take an acting-for-writers course to help him with his screenplay. He wants to write the next Goodfellas (hey, even bully boys need creative fulfilment), but he's suffering from wr

Society of Birds

By Don Watson

EE Cummings prayed that his heart would always be open to little birds. My family, the maternal side especially, has always shared some of his sentiment. It goes back to the clearing of the forest. As the trees went, the little birds came and dwelt in the hydrangeas under the window. Fantails, wagtails, blue wrens, scrubwrens, honeyeaters, eastern rosellas, finches, silvereyes, robins, thornbills,