New ‘Books+Publishing’ reviews out now

Books+Publishing’s latest reviews newsletter contains 20 reviews of books publishing in June to August.

The highest-scoring books were Brigid Delaney’s nonfiction title Wellmania: Misadventures in the Search for Wellness (Nero, July) and Tim Flannery’s nonfiction title Sunlight and Seaweed
(Text, August).

Reviewer Jenni Kauppi said Delaney is ‘unflinching in her examination of the darker side of the wellness industry: the tendency to swing between hedonism and contrition, which she sees reflected in society at large; the environmental, cultural and moral quagmire that the West’s wellness industry leaves in its wake; and its attendant narcissism and body-image obsession’.

Reviewer Max Oliver said of Sunlight and Seaweed: ‘Every one of this slim treatise’s 127 pages packs a punch, and its timely content deserves to be read by all of us’.

Also reviewed are:

Fiction:

The Art of Navigation (Rose Michael, UWAP, August), Common People (Tony Birch, UQP, August), The Enlightenment of the Greengage Tree (Shokoofeh Azar, Wild Dog Books, August), Gravity Well (Melanie Joosten, Scribe, June), Her (Garry Disher, Hachette, August), The Inaugural Meeting of the Fairvale Ladies Book Club (Sophie Green, Hachette, August), Lady of the Realm (Hoa Pham, Spinifex Press, June), The Lone Child (Anna George, Viking, August), Lovesick (Jean Flynn, XO Romance, August), On the Java Ridge (Jock Serong, Text, August),  Pulse Points (Jennifer Down, Text, August), Taboo (Kim Scott, Picador, August), The Town (Shaun Prescott, The Lifted Brow, August) and Whipbird (Robert Drewe, Viking, August).

Nonfiction:
It’s Alive!: Artificial Intelligence from the Logic Piano to Killer Robots (Toby Walsh, LTUP, August), Aussie, Aussie, Aussie: Questionable Histories of Great Australians (Ben Pobjie, Affirm Press, August), Cold War Games (Harry Blutstein, Echo, August) and Watching Out (Julian Burnside, Scribe, August).

This month’s newsletter also features interviews with Jennifer Down, Jean Flynn and Sulari Gentill.

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Category: Recently published by B+P