Phallic Panic: Film, Horror and the Primal Uncanny by Barbara Creed
16 October, 2005
We all fear—the things that go bump in the night, what might be lurking in the shadows, the stuff of our dreams and nightmares. Cinema abounds with such terrors in the guise of monsters, vampires, werewolves, aliens and ghosts … and audiences just love it!

Women’s Health: A Handbook (Susan McDonald & Christine Thompson, Elsevier)
4 October, 2005
Women’s Health: A Handbook is a clinician’s reference that makes accessible considerations specific to women’s health from social determinants of health to disease aetiology, investigations and management. The specificity of the content to Australia and New Zealand sets this text apart from references aimed at general or international markets. Local practitioners and students, in urban or rural settings, will appreciate the applicability of the statistics, legal considerations and resources offered.

Studying the Novel 5e (Jeremy Hawthorn, Hodder Arnold)
3 October, 2005
Studying the Novel is, I think, a useful text for first-year English students. (And I think that I can claim that perhaps I am not the only person to think so as it is in its fifth edition, so it must be doing something right.) It is set up very much like a course of study, with questions for discussion at the end of each chapter, and hints on essay writing, and so on, but I wasn’t convinced that its true usefulness would be exposed from using it in that way.

Bill of fare
24 September, 2005
Bill Granger’s cookbooks are like a dose of Sydney sunshine, packed with glossy photos of Bill and photogenic children frolicking in the sun. The recipes match the visual vibe being largely of the fish, vegies, salad, summer-days style. So in the depths of a Melbourne July it was a little tricky trying to decide on a recipe to trial. But Bill came through for this cold weather cook with a spicy chicken, paprika and chorizo stew and a warming banana and butterscotch pudding.

Away with Words by Ruth Wajnryb
22 August, 2005
Ruth Wajnryb is an applied linguist with many years experience teaching and writing about English as a second language and also has a weekly language column in the Sydney Morning Herald. Away with Words combines the erudition and knowledge of her Herald column along with a sense of fun and continuing wonder at the English language.

Fat, Forty and Fired by Nigel Marsh
22 August, 2005
The blurb to Fat Forty and Fired says it all—‘One man’s frank, funny and inspiring account of losing his job and finding his life.’ Enter Nigel Marsh, a middle-aged Englishman living in Sydney, slave to his advertising job and stranger to his wife and four children under eight. But then he loses his job and decides on having a productive (as opposed to destructive) midlife crisis. ‘I wanted to look beyond my one-dimensional male world and be slightly less useless as a partner.’

Sing, and Don't Cry by Cate Kennedy
22 August, 2005
Armed with a willingness to help, a tiny bit of Spanish and a deep inhale, Cate Kennedy starts her story as she embarks on a two-year-stay in Mexico, through Australian Volunteers International. She spends her days working in a credit cooperative to help local communities raise and distribute wealth more efficiently, but even so, many of her stories are very much out-of-office ones.

Thunder from the Silent Zone: Rethinking China by Paul Monk
22 August, 2005
Paul Monk is the former head of China analysis at the Defense Intelligence Organisation and chairman of the inter-agency working group on China. Thunder from the Silent Zone is part political history of China in the 20th century and part polemic. Monk argues that Chinese leaders since Chiang Kai-shek and including the current Communist regime have attempted to legitimise their authoritarian rule with the argument that the Chinese people are not ready for democracy.

Think it, feel it, live it, read it
21 July, 2005
It may be old news that ‘new age’ books are taking up a heap of mainstream space but do we realise just how comfortable they are on prominent bookshop shelves? Erin O’Brien gets the lowdown from booksellers, librarians, publishers and distributors on why mind/body/spirit (MBS) books still turn a pretty penny and what we’ve got to look forward to in forthcoming releases.

Beyond Bad by Sandra Lee
19 July, 2005
The subject matter—a horrific true crime; the place—Aberdeen, New South Wales; the killer—a woman whose history of violence was accepted as ‘Kath just being Kath’ by the inhabitants of the small country town. Sandra Lee’s slow exposition of the murder explores the family, neighbourhood, background and past relationships of both killer and victim, and shows considerable sympathy for John Price (‘Pricey’), whose six-year relationship with Katherine Knight was scarcely love’s true dream, and culminated in his grisly murder.

Troubled Waters by Ruth Balint
11 July, 2005
Ruth Balint’s seamless translation of her documentary film Troubled Waters into this book of the same name won her a Vogel literary award. Through her extensive interviews, research and time spent in key fishing areas in Indonesia, Balint tells the story of the battle over Australia’s northern waters from the political leaders who pass down our maritime laws to the very people they affect.

Following Them Home: The Fate of the Returned Asylum Seekers by David Corlett
7 July, 2005
David Corlett has visited asylum seekers rejected by Australia in the countries to which they have been returned. Many of the returnees were forcibly repatriated by the Australian government. Others simply gave up and accepted the Australian government’s offer of an assisted return when it became obvious that they would be denied any opportunity to enter Australia. Corlett describes the physical and mental conditions in which these returnees now live with compassion and brutal honesty.

Gun Alley by Kevin Morgan
7 July, 2005
In 1921 a 12-year-old girl was brutally raped and murdered in central Melbourne. Her body was discovered on New Year’s Eve in Gun Alley, a narrow alleyway behind the Eastern Market, a shopping arcade that used to run between Bourke and Little Collins St. Colin Ross, the licensee of a recently closed pub in the arcade, was arrested, tried and hanged for the murder, his conviction the first in Australia to hinge on forensic evidence—but did he do it?

Making 'Black Harvest' by Bob Connelly
7 July, 2005
Connolly’s documentary Black Harvest came out in 1992 to soaring praise and deservedly so. This book is a retrospective account of the making of the documentary Connolly and his late partner Robin Anderson made 13 years ago. This amazing story brings the Highlands of Papua New Guinea to life. The tribal warfare, destruction and grief the Ganiga tribespeople endure are deftly sketched by Connolly in this tremendously tragic tale.

Balanda: My Year in Arnhem Land by Mary Ellen Jordan
20 June, 2005
Jordan walks a tightrope with this book, a record of her year spent in an isolated Aboriginal community in the Northern Territory, as she did during her time there. Her language is direct, her approach candid, her confessions honest and as a result Balanda is an enjoyable, engaging and surprisingly easy read. It is perfectly placed to appeal to those ‘southern intellectuals’—like she says she was—who care about Indigenous issues but whose opinions may be naïvely uninformed and whose compassion might be unconsciously patronising.

Banned: Tales from the Bizarre History of Australian Obscenity by James Cockington
20 June, 2005
Looking back from a 21st-century perspective, the things that Australians have got themselves het up over in the past seem incredibly trivial: the times at which bathing could occur at public beaches; appropriate attire for said bathing; films and still photos depicting nudity and sex. In these days of g-strings on display in the street and Anatomie de l’enfer available for rent at Blockbuster, the drama all comes across as comical. It is with a tone of gentle mocking that Cockington approaches his subject.

Beyond Belief by Roger Cross
20 June, 2005
The authors of this book, Roger Cross, a senior fellow at Melbourne University, and Avon Hudson, a campaigner for victims of British atomic tests in Australia, argue that because Australia was such an eagerly subservient ally, it was kept in the dark about the real extent of the 12 atomic tests carried out at Maralinga in the years 1952–1957, and the minor trials that continued until 1962.

The Country Undertaker by Jim Eames
20 June, 2005
The Country Undertaker is the story of Mick Eames, Jim’s father. It takes place in Holbrook on the Hume Highway from the 1940s when Mick became the town taxi driver and the undertaker. I almost feel like writing two reviews for this book, one for the first three quarters and one for the end. It is mostly yarns; the time Uncle George fought the Alabama Kid; the time Dad chased armed robbers up the highway until the sump plug fell out of the A70 and he had to stop.

Tread Lightly by Robin Stewart
20 June, 2005
It’s not easy to put together a series of lists, separated only by a few paragraphs and short creative pieces, and still create an enjoyable, engaging read—but Robin Stewart has done a pretty good job of it. As the title suggests, Tread Lightly is a gentle (but thorough) guide to sustainable travel in Australia.

Left Right Left by Robert Manne
20 June, 2005
I’ll start by saying that I am, from experience, exceedingly cautious about ‘published works’ collections by notable writers, particularly when they include excerpts from published books (as does this one). Too often, they feel like a lazy way of making a quick buck without having to produce anything new. However, Left Right Left is an exception. For one thing, it’s clearly marketed as a collection of writings rather than a new work.

Spirit Orb Phenomena: Fact or Fiction? by Anthony Kevan Sercombe
20 May, 2005
Ghosts have always fascinated humans if only because they have offered the possibility of finding out more about life on the other side. Spirit Orbs, though are less known, Anthony Kevan Sercombe’s "Spirit Orb Phenomena: Fact or Fiction?" is a pioneering work in this field and has been rated 93% at Amazon.

The no-nerd zone: Computer book writer David Nettelbeck
13 May, 2005
David Nettelbeck may be an experienced teacher, but as his first full-length book, Computers, Thinking and Learning: Inspiring Students with Technology (ACER), hits the shelves, he admits to being ‘just a bit nervous!’

An Australian connection: Robert Ryan's new book, After Midnight
13 May, 2005
Robert Ryan is a pretty big deal sales-wise in the UK, where his books are regular features of the Top 10 lists. Here in Australia, his fans are not quite so legion, but that may all be set to change with the Australian connection in his latest novel, After Midnight, he told Eliza Metcalfe.

Food to love: Neil Perry's new book, 'The Food I Love'
13 May, 2005
Unless you’ve been hiding under a rock, you’ve probably heard of Neil Perry. Manager of a number of Sydney restaurants, the man behind Qantas’ menu revamp and producer of a range of fresh food products, he is a big cheese in the Australian food world.

Vegelicious
13 May, 2005
Have you ever seen a coy-looking cauliflower? What about a brazen beetroot? Well then pick up a copy of Wild Sides (Vicki Wild, HarperCollins) when it hits stores this month for some of the most seductive shots of vegetables known to man.