I Was the President’s Mistress!!

Miguel Syjuco     Recommended by    

From the author of Ilustrado, winner of the Man Asian Literary Prize, comes an unflinching satire about power, corruption, sex, and all the other topics you were told never to discuss in polite company.

First came the Sexy-Sexygate scandal. Then an impeachment trial. Finally, a battle royale for the presidency. At the center of this political typhoon is Vita Nova, the most famous movie star in the Phillippines and a former paramour of the country’s most powerful man.

Now, for the first time ever, she bares herself completely in a tell-all memoir that puts the sensational in sensationalistic. The setting: a sweating, heaving country. The time: right now. The plot: a drug war rages, an assassin brandishes a pistol, a damsel rises from ashes to power, and a government teeters on the brink. Among the players: a dreamer who boxed and acted his way to the presidency, his Koran-toting nemesis in the senate, a horny bishop, a cowboy turned warlord, a poor little rich boy dying with his dynasty, a washed-up reporter redeemed by one last scoop, a high-school sweetheart driven mad by decades of disappointment, and an American naval officer tempting our heroine with a way out.

As Vita warns, viewer discretion is advised.

In this masterful and audacious novel, Miguel Syjuco’s signature style—hilarious, insightful, playful, provocative—animates thirteen indelible voices whose stories present a cross-section of a complicated society. I Was the President’s Mistress!! hurtles headlong into love, politics, faith, history, memory, and the ongoing war over who will tell the stories the world shall know as truth.

Miguel Syjuco is a Filipino author, journalist, civil society advocate, and professor at New York University Abu Dhabi. His debut novel, Ilustrado, was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year and won both the Man Asian Literary Prize and the Grand Prize at the Palanca Awards, his country’s top literary honor. He has worked as a contributing opinion writer for The International New York Times, written for many of the world’s most respected publications, and spoken on Philippine politics and culture at the World Forum for Democracy and the World Economic Forum. He serves on the advisory council for the Resilience Fund, a project by the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime to empower communities most threatened by criminality.

Bodies: Life and Death in Music

Ian Winwood     Recommended by    

 ‘Finally, a book about the music industry that tells the truth. Anyone with any interest in the real stories behind the music they love should devour this visceral examination of art, drugs, mental health and music.’ – Frank Turner

Money, freedom, adoring fans: professional musicians seem to have it all. But beneath the surface lies a frightening truth: for years the music industry has tolerated death, addiction and exploitation in the name of entertainment.

In Bodies, Ian Winwood explores the industry’s reluctance to confront its many failures in a far-reaching story which features first-hand access to artists such as Foo Fighters, Green Day, Trent Reznor, Biffy Clyro, Kings of Leon, Chris Cornell, Mark Lanegan, Pearl Jam. Much more than a touchline reporter, Winwood also tells the tale of his own mental-health collapse following the shocking death of his father. Written with warmth, humour and bracing honesty, Bodies is a deeply personal story and essential reading for musicians and fans alike.

Ian Winwood is a music journalist whose work has appeared in the Telegraph, the Guardian, Kerrang!, Rolling Stone, Mojo, NME, Q and the BBC. His most recent book, Smash!, was published in 2019.

Enclave

Claire G. Coleman     Recommended by    

‘These are troubling times. The world is a dangerous place,’ the voice of the Chairman said. ‘I can continue to assure you of this: within the Wall you are perfectly safe.’

Christine could not sleep, she could not wake, she could not think. She stared, half-blind, at the cold screen of her smartphone. She was told the Agency was keeping them safe from the dangers outside, an outside world she would never see. She never imagined questioning what she was told, what she was allowed to know, what she was permitted to think. She never even thought there were questions to ask. The enclave was the only world she knew, the world outside was not safe. Staying or leaving was not a choice she had the power to make. But then Christine dared start thinking . . . and from that moment, danger was everywhere.

In our turbulent times, Claire G. Coleman’s Enclave is a powerful dystopian allegory that confronts the ugly realities of racism, homophobia, surveillance, greed and privilege and the self-destructive distortions that occur when we ignore our shared humanity.

Coleman is a Noongar writer, born in Western Australia, and now based in Naarm. Her family have been from the area around Ravensthorpe and Hopetoun on the south coast of WA since before time started being recorded. Claire wrote her black&write! Fellowship-winning book Terra Nullius while travelling around Australia in a caravan. The Old Lie (2019) was her second novel and in 2021 her acclaimed non-fiction book, Lies Damned Lies was published by Ultimo Press. Enclave is her third novel.

My Shadow is Purple

Scott Stuart     Recommended by    

My Dad has a shadow that’s blue as a berry, and my Mum’s is as pink as a blossoming cherry. There’s only those choices, a 2 or a 1. But mine is quite different, it’s both and it’s none.

A heartwarming and inspiring book about being true to yourself, by best-selling children’s book creator Scott Stuart. This story considers gender beyond binary in a vibrant spectrum of colour!

Age range 6+

Manhunt

Gretchen Felker-Martin     Recommended by    

“A modern horror masterpiece.” —Carmen Maria Machado, bestselling author of In the Dream House

“Keeps up a relentless velocity while just being plain fun as hell.” —Torrey Peters, author of Detransition, Baby

Beth and Fran spend their days traveling the ravaged New England coast, hunting feral men and harvesting their organs in a gruesome effort to ensure they’ll never face the same fate. Robbie lives by his gun and one hard-learned motto: other people aren’t safe.

After a brutal accident entwines the three of them, this found family of survivors must navigate murderous TERFs, a sociopathic billionaire bunker brat, and awkward relationship dynamics—all while outrunning packs of feral men, and their own demons.

Manhunt is a timely, powerful response to every gender-based apocalypse story that failed to consider the existence of transgender and non-binary people, from a powerful new voice in horror.

Indelible City: Dispossession and Defiance in Hong Kong

Louisa Lim     Recommended by    

The story of Hong Kong has long been obscured by competing myths – to Britain, a ‘barren rock’ with no appreciable history; to China, a part of Chinese soil from time immemorial that had at last returned to the ancestral fold. To its inhabitants, the city was a place of refuge and rebellion, whose own history was so little taught that they began mythmaking their own past.

When protests erupted in 2019 and were met with escalating suppression from Beijing, Louisa Lim – raised in Hong Kong as a half-Chinese, half-English child, and now a reporter who had covered the region for a decade – realised that she was uniquely positioned to unearth Hong Kong’s untold stories.

Lim’s deeply researched and personal account is startling, casting new light on key moments: the British takeover in 1842, the negotiations over the 1997 return to China, and the future Beijing seeks to impose. Indelible City features guerrilla calligraphers, amateur historians and archaeologists who, like Lim, aim to put Hong Kongers at the centre of their own story.

Wending through it all is the King of Kowloon, whose iconic street art both embodied and inspired the identity of Hong Kong-a site of disappearance and reappearance, power and powerlessness, loss and reclamation.

Moonage Daydream: The Life & Times of Ziggy Stardust

David Bowie & Mick Rock     Recommended by    

 ‘The closest we’ll ever get to a straight up Bowie autobiography — but who’d ever want anything straight-up from Bowie?’ – Rolling Stone

In 2002, David Bowie and Mick Rock created Moonage Daydream, the defining document of the life and times of Ziggy Stardust. Twenty years later, it remains the closest readers will get to understanding Bowie through his own words. Alongside over 600 photographs taken by Mick Rock, Bowie’s personal and often humorous commentary gives unprecedented insight into his work and the creation of his most memorable persona. Readers can see how Bowie singlehandedly challenged and elevated 1970s culture through his style, his inspirations ranging from Kubrick to Kabuki, and his creative spirit, which endures through the decades.

Moonage Daydream is the essential David Bowie book. First published as a signed limited edition, Moonage Daydream sold out in a matter of months and became lore among David Bowie fans. Now, on the 50th anniversary of Bowie’s acclaimed album, The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars, the book is available again. Published in a new larger format, this uncut edition keeps to Bowie and Rock’s original vision, allowing us to explore Moonage Daydream the way the authors intended.

‘This is a book of extraordinary photographs. Ziggy Stardust blazed briefly but intensely, and I am delighted to see his life and times as a rock’n’roll star immortalised in this book.’ – David Bowie

 

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The Books of Jacob

Olga Tokarczuk     Recommended by Shannon, Brock, & Julia    

Earlier this year, Shannon, Brock, and Julia all tackled this tome, and everyone LOVED it. Here’s what Shannon had to say about it:

To put it simply, this book chronicles the rise and fall of messianic figure Jacob Frank. It also explores the lives of everyone in his periphery, and anyone instrumental in that rise and fall. It is set in the mid-17th – 18th century Poland (and surrounding countries) and was meticulously researched by Torkarczuk.

The prose was perfect. It read ironic at times, but always sincere, somehow. It was funny, sad, beautiful, and breathtaking! I believed every single character was real, and there were hundreds (probably literally). I got lost in this world, so deeply that I missed it after I had finished.

Jennifer Croft’s translation into English was phenomenal – I can’t even imagine how much care went into honouring Torkaczuk’s language puns, with references to Polish, Yiddish, French, Latin, German, among others! The power of language and words is a huge theme in this text, as well as religion (of course – with crossovers of the Frankists [the novel’s inspiration], Jewish, Christian, and Islamic faiths).

This book doesn’t feel like it’s 900 pages, aside from its weight. I sped through this with delight. -Shannon

A History of Masculinity: From Patriarchy to Gender Justice

Ivan Jablonka     Recommended by    

A highly acclaimed, bestselling work from one of France’s preeminent historians

What does it mean to be a good man? To be a good father, or a good partner? A good brother, or a good friend?

In this clear-sighted analysis, social historian Ivan Jablonka offers a re-examination of the patriarchy and its impact on men. Ranging widely across cultures, from Mesopotamia to Confucianism to Christianity to the revolutions of the eighteenth century, Jablonka uncovers the origins of our patriarchal societies. He then offers an updated model of masculinity based on a theory of gender justice which aims for a redistribution of gender, just as social justice demands the redistribution of wealth.

Arguing that it is high time for men to be as involved in gender justice as women, Jablonka shows that in order to build a more equal and respectful society, we must gain a deeper understanding of the structure of patriarchy – and reframe the conversation so that men define themselves by the rights of women. Widely acclaimed in France, this is an important work from a major thinker.

Ivan Jablonka is a French historian. His work focuses on the Holocaust, gender violence, masculinity and new forms of historiography. In 2016, he received the prestigious Prix Medicis. He is currently Professor of Contemporary History at Universite Paris XIII.

Dropbear

Evelyn Araluen     Recommended by    

Winner of the 2022 Stella Prize

An innovative collection of poetry and prose from a vibrant new Indigenous voice on the Australian literary scene.

I told you this was a thirst so great it could carve rivers.

This fierce debut from award-winning writer Evelyn Araluen confronts the tropes and iconography of an unreconciled nation with biting satire and lyrical fury. Dropbear interrogates the complexities of colonial and personal history with an alternately playful, tender and mournful intertextual voice, deftly navigating the responsibilities that gather from sovereign country, the spectres of memory and the debris of settler-coloniality. This innovative mix of poetry and essay offers an eloquent witness to the entangled present, an uncompromising provocation of history, and an embattled but redemptive hope for a decolonial future.

Evelyn Araluen is a poet, researcher and co-editor of Overland Literary Journal. Her widely published criticism, fiction and poetry has been awarded the Nakata Brophy Prize for Young Indigenous Writers, the Judith Wright Poetry Prize, a Wheeler Centre Next Chapter Fellowship, and a Neilma Sidney Literary Travel Fund grant. Born and raised on Dharug country, she is a descendant of the Bundjalung Nation.

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