Book club

Is there anything better fun at Christmas than a light read about dysfunctional rich people? Look no further than Revenge, Tom Bower’s new book about ‘Meghan, Harry and the war between the Windsors’.

Looking for a cracker of a non-fiction Christmas read for yourself or that difficult-to-buy-for in-law? We’d heartily recommend this one.

Beyond tells the tale of Yuri Gagarin and the race between the USSR and United States (US) to be first to put a man in space – a feat that was finally achieved in 1961 at the height of the then Cold War between the superpowers.

If you’re looking for a fast-paced chronological history of books, this isn’t it. Instead, Papyrus unravels as a series of literary essays that meander through time, gradually revealing the emergence of books as we know them.

This is a bold and surprisingly entertaining book about the future of the world that you really hope is outright wrong – or at least, mostly wrong.

Life under communism in Albania – boring, right? Couldn’t be more wrong. Leah Ypi’s biography of growing up in the small Balkan country is riveting. Using rich descriptions, humour and great intelligence, she draws an intricate portrait of herself, her family, her neighbours and her country before and after the end of communism.

Writing from the office of the Greek Ministry of Finance in 2013, economist Yanis Varoufakis turned his knowledge and expertise towards a challenging new audience: his teenage daughter.

Varoufakis’s book presents a brief history of capitalism, written in simple prose and littered with anecdotes and pop culture references that render complex ideas and theories comprehensible.

What revolution promises to be bigger – and potentially more important to us and the lives of future generations – than computers or the discovery of the atom?

This great book argues that it will be gene editing – the ability to change our DNA in targeted ways using CRISPR technology to transform our health and characteristics.

The headline from Britain’s The Independent reads, “Barack Obama’s A Promised Land review: An elegant, thoughtful memoir from the coolest president America ever had.”

I couldn’t put it better myself and would highly recommend paddling your way through the 700-odd pages of Obama’s latest bestseller. Even if you think you have a good idea about how he became president and what happened while he was in the White House, Obama’s book offers a unique firsthand account and is simply a delight to read.

Although I bought Ibram X. Kendi’s How to be an Antiracist when it came out in late 2019, it took me another year to actually pick it up. As well as the book’s obviously confronting subject matter, I worried that Kendi’s prose would be academic and inaccessible. After all, as head of the Center for Antiracist Research at Boston University, Kendi is a distinguished professor.

But on reading the first page I was hooked.

Singapore might seem an unlikely subject for an anthology of essays on environmental conservation. After all, this is one of the most densely populated regions on the planet, with only 0.28 per cent of primary forest cover still intact. But as the essays in Eating Chilli Crab in the Anthropocene argue, that’s precisely the point. Singapore’s rapid drive towards urbanisation is what makes it so rich in stories about the hidden costs of modern development.

If you’d rather struggle through Italian alps on a bike rather than as a Carthaginian foot soldier (see previous review), then this history of the world’s second most famous cycling race could be just for you.

If you think 2020 has been tumultuous, thank your lucky stars you weren’t a Roman solider in 200 B.C. In The Ghosts of Cannae, the American military historian Robert L. O’Connell provides an easy-to-read and detailed account of how the Carthaginian general Hannibal went on his extraordinary – and extraordinarily destructive – decades-long trip around the ancient Mediterranean.

If you’re a fan of 99% Invisible and Stuff You Should Know, this book will scratch that ‘deeper than trivia’ itch to know more about how the world works. If you’re a user interface or user experience professional, it might also make you better at your job, which is a handy windfall gain. Either way, it provides a highly polished lens through which to view the designed world we encounter every day.

In a year that has been sadly lacking in red carpet events, André Leon Talley’s candid account of life in the fashion ‘trenches’ offers some much-needed glamour.

It’s not every day one encounters the word ‘sprachgefühl’ – that gut feeling for language that fuels editors and spurs proofreaders to action – let alone in two books back to back. Granted, these two books about the English language deal with similar topics: words and punctuation.

This short book provides a helpful and downright pleasant walk through the main punctuation marks of the English language. It combines succinct discussions of each punctuation mark with whimsical illustrations into a very digestible package.

It covers 21 marks. These include the big ones you’d expect such as the apostrophe, comma, exclamation mark, full stop and semicolon. It also covers those you might not expect …

The good thing about the global virus lockdown has been more time to read. The bad thing has been all the uncertainty about pretty much everything, from one’s health to the economy and world peace. All of which has made it a perfect time to pick up the new, 528-page Radical Uncertainty: Decision-making for an unknowable future, by Professor John Kay and Lord Mervyn King.

I’m only half-way through Radical Uncertainty. But I think the Financial Times has nailed it from what I’ve read so far in describing the book as “an eloquent rant against the faux-precision of mathematical models”.

Malcolm Gladwell has a new obsession: why do we get each other so wrong, so often? In the pages of Talking to Strangers, The New Yorker staff writer and internationally bestselling author of Outliers tries to figure it out.

Talking to Strangers opens with the case of Sandra Bland. A young African-American vlogger from Chicago, Bland was driving …

Any marketer who’s found themselves working in a law firm will know they can be confusing and often downright difficult places to work – even as the professionals therein desperately need their help to get new work in the door by describing their services, articulating their value and points of difference, and simply being noticed.

Australian marketers Genevieve Burnett and Sally King have done all marketers a favour by explaining how law firms work, where marketers fit in and how they can get things done …

Banking Bad is one of those books you might buy for a father or brother for Christmas when you want to venture beyond socks and undies. That’s not to say it’s a bad book. In fact, it’s a pretty good read if you like a bit of corporate history and intrigue.

The book recounts the lead up to Australia’s Royal Commission into Misconduct in the Banking, Superannuation and Financial Services. It then gives a summary of the outcomes from the inquiry, few of which reflect well on the banks and other financial institutions. One reason to forgo the socks and undies, and perhaps even chocolate-coated sultanas …

Single, childless and over 40, former Good Weekend magazine journalist Stephanie Wood is open to the idea of finding a partner when she is matched with “Joe” on a dating app.

Despite having early reservations, there’s something about the former Sydney architect turned sheep farmer that quickly wins her over. As their relationship unfolds, Joe proves to be sweet and romantic. He talks about their future together. He can put apostrophes in the right place …

If you’re like me, you probably feel like you have a pretty good understanding of what happened when the Chernobyl nuclear power plant blew up in 1986. But Adam Higginbotham’s beautifully written and detailed account of the disaster and its aftermath is both an enjoyable read (give or take the nuclear disaster ruining half of Europe part) and a revelation when it comes to the specifics.

It’s also fairly terrifying in that it certainly doesn’t leave you with the impression that there could never be a similar accident …

We all know that myths are old. All that talk of locust plagues, oracles and cousins getting married clues us in pretty fast. But if you’ve ever wondered just how old some of the world’s legends are, you’ll want to read Patrick Nunn’s engaging, authoritative and often astonishing book.

In one of the many stories in his book, Nunn introduces us to the Klamath, a tribe indigenous to western Oregon …

Speechwriting is something of a black art, so I always leap at the chance to read any book that sheds light on the topic and might help us at Editor Group, as humble practitioners.

Leading Lines is a new book by the appropriately named Lucinda Holdforth, who teaches at the University of Sydney and University of Technology Sydney. She also has extensive experience writing for politicians, including former Deputy Prime Minister Kim Beazley, and the likes of former Qantas CEO Geoff Dixon …