Cirrus@Austlit

'Barabara Blackman, with her first husband Charles, experienced Australian modernism from the inside. In this episodic combination of memoir, essay and meditation she recalls, for example, living in Melbourne in the company of the Boyds and John Percival, amusingly describing the non-appearance of the Christmas turkey usually provided by Sunday Reed, but withheld one year because Arthur Boyd had forgotten Sunday's birthday. ...'

'Rather than the "collected letters", the collected faxes. Bruce Beresford, known for films such as Breaker Morant and Driving Miss Daisy, and producer Sue Milliken worked on various projects and these edited exchanges provide a sobering window onto the world of filmmaking: confirming the view it's a miracle films ever get up. ...'

'When Cass and Jason met in their early teens at a Friday night basketball match, they could never have imagined what lay in store for them over the next few years. Cass, at 16, was diagnosed with a brain tumour – and Jason, at 18, was diagnosed with testicular cancer. ...'

'On Christmas Day 1918, a young orphan, with disarming self-assurance and speaking perfect English, walked into an Australian Flying Corp mess in Germany and, in a very short time, became their mascot. When pressed, he answered to the name Henri. He was French, his parents were dead and he came from somewhere near Lille. But his memories were fragmented, and his origins have remained hazy. ...'

'There is something magical about Anna Spargo-Ryan's debut, The Paper House. In a novel singularly about loss, The Paper House dances through its subject, dealing intelligently with tragedy without becoming grim itself. ...'

'Alan Brough is chuffed when I tell him that my 13-year-old son, my reluctant reader, loved his new book Charlie and the War Against the Grannies. It might have had something to do with the title; my son had something of a run in with one of his grannies in recent times; but it was high praise indeed when he deemed the book "not boring". ...'

'Bernard Smith is the greatest art historian Australia has ever produced. He is also the man whose magnum opus, European Vision and the South Pacific, is still regarded as a major turning point in the study of colonial exploration in the Pacific, its seminal influence acknowledged by no less an authority than Edward Said, who can seem to have originated our current post colonial perspectives. ...'

'In writing her debut novel Kelly Doust has employed her occupation as a craft and fashion writer to enrich the texture of her narrative. The connecting motif of Precious Things is an exquisite, antique beaded collar that has been discovered by a London auctioneer, Maggie, who is determined to explore the collar's provenance. ...'