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What I Am Reading

March 2023

Chethams Library is steeped with age and the aroma of the many animal-skin covers on the shelves – everything from lowly pig to goat, buffalo and deerskin.

Inside the library where Marx and Engels wrote ‘The Communist Manifesto’

In continuous use for more than 350 years, Chetham’s is the oldest public library in the English-speaking world and includes books pre-dating the use of paper.

  • Sue Bennett

October 2021

The big-impact books that matter most to this NGO founder

Sometimes Adara Group founder and chair Audette Exel reads all night, and often all weekend – especially in lockdown.

  • Luke Slattery

June 2021

Cookbooks are said to be more pleasurable than searching for  recipes online.

Why the internet won’t kill your new adventure read, the cookbook

Melbourne Food & Wine Festival creative director Pat Nourse on the appeal of the traditional recipe tome, plus his favourite food writers and best booze reads.

  • Luke Slattery

April 2021

How rereading can be ‘discovering a different book’

Educator, manager and writer Glyn Davis talks about the tomes by his bedside and the title that brings people to tears.

  • Luke Slattery

February 2021

You may worry you have already lost your momentum.

What books does a book editor read?

For a book editor, is a day job also a night job? The line can definitely blur, says Hachette Australia’s Emma Rafferty in our regular What I Am Reading column.

  • Luke Slattery
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November 2020

Let’s talk about sex – and philosophy

Why don't philosophers talk about sex? Author Damon Young is changing the conversation and talks to AFR Magazine in this month's What I Am Reading column.

  • Luke Slattery

October 2020

What this IT entrepreneur and peace crusader is reading

Steve Killelea is the author of 'Peace in the Age of Chaos: The Best Solution for a Sustainable Future'. Here's the book that's commanding his attention now.

  • Luke Slattery

August 2020

Megan Park.

How India and its literature won an Aussie fashion designer’s heart

Megan Park, who is also an author, opens the book for AFR Magazine in this month’s What I Am Reading column.

  • Luke Slattery

July 2020

Madeleine Albright.

Madeleine Albright talks books, Aussie friends, China, Trump and more

Is the author and former US secretary of state a one-book-at-a-time person? On the eve of her new book release, she sits down with AFR Magazine for a Q&A.

  • Updated
  • Luke Slattery

June 2020

Matthew Evans: "Reading is travel, and time travel."

This chef and TV host has an unusual way to share his love of books

These days Gourmet Farmer's Matthew Evans has added another string to his bow – becoming his household's resident 'audiobook'.

  • Luke Slattery

May 2020

Of the six books he has written since 2005, Peter Doherty is most proud of The Knowledge Wars (2015).

Nobel Prize winner Peter Doherty reveals his pandemic page-turners

When COVID-19 hit, books about living through perilous times captivated the medical researcher and author.

  • Luke Slattery

March 2020

Lisa Taddeo found herself reflecting on her own experiences as she was researching and writing Three Women.

Why women should talk about desire, according to an author who knows

For her debut, Lisa Taddeo wrote one of 2019’s most talked-about books, blurring the line between fiction and non-fiction and examining female desire.

  • Nicole Abadee

February 2020

Gina Rippon.

Gina Rippon: The brains behind the book choices

As a reader, this neuroscientist likes to see how other people convey complicated scientific concepts.

  • Nicole Abadee

January 2020

Why author Sisonke Msimang writes in the margins of books

Perth Festival's curator of Literature and Ideas believes much of what influences the way we read is who we are at the time.

  • Nicole Abadee

October 2019

David Caon

High-flying designer David Caon on the books that keep him grounded

At work, the creative mind behind the Qantas Dreamliner cabin refit has his head in the clouds. But when reading, he connects with the mundanities of life.

  • Nicole Abadee
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August 2019

James B. Young likes to read about central Australia because of the mythology projected onto it.

James B. Young reveals the best books on central Australia

For AFR Magazine's regular What I Am Reading column, the Alice Springs-based shoemaker and outfitter talks about the stories that inspire his work.

  • Nicole Abadee

July 2019

Author Blanche d'Alpuget in her Northbridge home. "You have to keep wrestling with the angel, your spiritual nature, until it reveals the higher truths."

Blanche d'Alpuget on a life in books after Bob Hawke

The author of Winter in Jerusalem, and widow of Bob Hawke, on digesting the Bible and her latest instalment in the Birth of the Plantagenets series.

  • Nicole Abadee
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