Good Things I’ve Read updated weekly, or so
August 2023
The Late Americans by Brandon Taylor
July 2023
Violeta by Isabel Allende
June 2023
May 2023
The Spy and the Traitor by Ben Macintyre
The Secret Cold War : the Official History of ASIO, 1975-1989 by John Blaxland and Rhys Crawley
The Protest Years: The Official History of ASIO 1963-1975 by John Blaxland
The Spy Catchers: The Official History of ASIO, 1949-1963 by David Horner
April 2023
Anam by André Dao
“Inside Rupert Murdoch’s succession drama” by Gabriel Sherman, Vanity Fair
The Journalist and the Murderer by Janet Malcolm
“The art of fiction” by Henry James, Longman's Magazine
“Clarence Thomas and the billionaire” by Joshua Kaplan, Justin Elliott and Alex Mierjeski, ProPublica
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead by Tom Stoppard
“A perfect day for bananafish” by JD Salinger
March 2023
Roman Fever by Edith Wharton (inspired by this incredible op-ed no editor should’ve published)
“What plants are saying about us” by Amanda Gefter, Nautilus
In the Gutter, Looking at the Stars, Louis Nowra and Mandy Sayer (eds.)
“Big blonde” by Dorothy Parker
Ninth Life of a Diamond Miner by Grace Tame
I’m Glad My Mom Died by Jeanette McCurdy
“Scenes from a crisis” by Oscar Schwartz, The Drift
“Forty-one false starts” by Janet Malcolm, The New Yorker
February 2023
“A conversation with Bing’s chatbot left me deeply unsettled” by Kevin Roose, The New York Times
Cult Classic by Sloane Crosley
The Fact of a Doorframe by Adrienne Rich
Roadside Picnic by Boris and Arkady Strugatsky
The One Thing We’ve Never Spoken About by Elfy Scott
January 2023
Chokepoint Capitalism by Cory Doctorow and Rebecca Giblin
Redfern: Aboriginal Activism in the 1970s by Johanna Perheentupa
“A reckoning” by Rachel Aviv, The New Yorker
December 2022
A Thousand Mornings by Mary Oliver
My People by Oodgeroo Noonuccal
The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox by Maggie O’Farrell
“‘I went cross-eyed’: Australia’s former deputy PM taken to hospital after drinking entire bowl of kava” by Amy Remeikis, The Guardian
“‘Luddite’ teens don’t want your likes” by Alex Vadukul, The New York Times
“I like to creep around my home and act like a goblin” by Sasuke-in-SSBU, Reddit (“goblin mode” being named Word of the Year 2022 reminded me of this pure poetry)
“The case against the trauma plot” by Parul Sehgal, The New Yorker
Anna by Amy O’Dell
November 2022
“Twitter king Dril on Musk’s chaotic reign” by Taylor Lorenz, Washington Post
The Bear Came Over the Mountain by Alice Munro
Less by Andrew Sean Greer
“Sarah Polley’s journey from child star to feminist auteur” by Rebecca Mead, The New Yorker
Seeing Other People by Diana Reid
“John’s 90. Yanying’s 34. When they married, he was bankrupt” by Dani Valent, Good Weekend
“Infamy is kind of fun”: Grimes on music, Mars, and her secret new baby with Elon Musk” by Devin Gordon, Vanity Fair
October 2022
The Trees by Percival Everett
“Charmian Clift and Kalymnos” by Nadia Wheatley, Good Weekend
“Two Weeks in Tehran” by Azadeh Moaveni, London Review of Books
Shirley by Ronnie Scott (out Feb 2023)
“My eight deranged days on the Gone Girl cruise” by Imogen West-Knights, Slate
“The steepest places” by Ben Mauk, Granta
How Many More Women? by Jennifer Robinson and Keina Yoshida
Reasons Not to Worry by Brigid Delaney
“Elon Musk has the world’s strangest social calendar” by Joseph Bernstein, The New York Times
“How Coleen Hoover rose to rule the bestseller list” by Alexandra Alter, The New York Times
“Michaela Coel on creativity, romance, and the path to Wakanda Forever” by Chioma Nnadi, Vogue
“Wolves I Have Known” by Marilyn Monroe, Motion Picture and Television Magazine
September 2022
“Some girls want out” by Hilary Mantel, London Review of Books
“Hilary Mantel, The Art of Fiction No. 226” by Mona Simpson, Paris Review
“Royal Bodies” by Hilary Mantel, London Review of Books
“How the government is using the monarchy to bury bad news” by Chris Stokel-Walker, GQ (every country needs a tracker for these stories)
“The search for dirt on the Twitter whistle-blower” by Ronan Farrow, The New Yorker
“Our sorry business is without end” by Stan Grant, ABC
Nightcrawling by Leila Mottley
Against Disappearance, Leah Jing McIntosh & Adolfo Aranjuez (eds.)
“Everyone is beautiful and no one is horny” by RS Benedict, Bloody Knife (a Gina Rushton recommendation)
August 2022
“I was ashamed that I couldn’t swim. Learning in my 20s saved me” by Sarah Malik, Sunday Life
“Blood gold” by by Eryk Bagshaw and Edward Adeti, Sydney Morning Herald
The Last White Man by Mohsin Hamid
How to be Both by Ali Smith
Simple Passion by Annie Ernaux
“Nobel lecture” by Olga Tokarczuk
July 2022
“How organized attacks on Amber Heard and other women thrive on Twitter”, Bot Sentinel report
“Mohsin Hamid is working through literature, from the top”, The New York Times
“Bohemian tragedy: Leonard Cohen and the curse of Hydra” by Polly Sampson, The Guardian
“Remembering Charmian Clift” by Nadia Wheatley
Either/Or by Elif Batuman (but only if you really liked its prequel, The Idiot)
Vladimir by Julia May Jonas
June 2022
The Washington Post’s school shootings database by John Woodrow Cox, Steven Rich, Allyson Chiu, Hannah Thacker, Linda Chong, John Muyskens and Monica Ulmanu
Young Mungo by Douglas Stuart
“The Depp-Heard trial was the voice in every victim’s ear” by Jacqueline Maley, Sydney Morning Herald
An Exciting and Vivid Inner Life by Paul Dalla Rosa
“The power of the First Nations Matriarchy” by Teela Reid, Griffith Review
“‘London Bridge is down’: the secret plan for the days after the Queen’s death” by Sam Knight, The Guardian
May 2022
“When we were 13, Jeff’s father left the needle down on a Journey record before leaving the house one morning and never coming back” by Hanif Abdurraqib
“What school shootings do to the kids who survive them” by John Woodrow Cox, The Washington Post
“Whose Feelings Matter in Literature?” by Alice Pung, Meanjin
“The End and the Beginning” by Wisława Szymborska, the Poetry Foundation
“How the Long Recovery From Bush Fires Could Decide Australia’s Election” by Kieran Pender, The New York Times
“Pity Australia’s voters: awful leaders’ debate cursed by absurd format and incoherent hectoring” by Katharine Murphy, The Guardian
“Morrison rarely stumbles over words and messages but the prime minister, held captive by the absurd format, was about as coherent and clear as a person trying to deliver a monologue while falling down a flight of stairs.”
“How primate research was hijacked by sexist ideologues” by Rebecca Giggs, The Atlantic
“Inside ‘Corporate Memphis’” by Sam Wallman, Overland
“Can Motherhood Be a Mode of Rebellion?” by Jia Tolentino, The New Yorker
“Inside Elon Musk’s big plans for Twitter” by Mike Isaac, Lauren Hirsch and Anupreeta Das, The New York Times
“The man who built the button that ruined the internet” by Alex Kantrowitz, BuzzFeed News
The Candy House by Jennifer Egan (I’m very excited to interview Egan live on May 19 at Sydney Writers’ Festival)
“Supreme moment: an interview with lawyer Sarah Weddington” by Pamela Coloff, Texas Monthly (from 2003, but feels as though it could’ve been written yesterday)
“I thought, over a period of time, that the right of a woman to make a decision about what she would do in a particular pregnancy would be accepted—that by this time, the thirtieth anniversary of Roe v Wade, the controversy over abortion would have gradually faded away like the closing scenes of a movie and we could go on to other issues. I was wrong.”
“Supreme Court Justice Alito’s leaked draft overturning Roe v Wade”, published by Politico
“Special stuff” by Josephine Rowe, from Heat, Series 3, Number 1
April 2022
Killernova by Omar Musa
“How democracies spy on their citizens” by Ronan Farrow, The New Yorker (plus: a good interview with Farrow)
“The Indonesian children Australia sent to adult jails for years” by Christopher Knaus and Ben Doherty, The Guardian
“Running Twitter Is Going to Disappoint Elon Musk” by Evelyn Douek, The Atlantic
“The Solomons security shambles, and what it says about us” by Terence Wood, DevPolicy
The Power by Naomi Alderman
“That Anatomy of a Scandal scene: is this the silliest TV moment ever?” by Stuart Hermitage, The Guardian (note: I’ve never before laughed so hard while reading TV review that I had to stop and take a breath)
“Cold justice: The tragedy at Yuendumu” by Zach Hope, Good Weekend
“How Two Ex-Cops Cracked a $100 Million Maritime Mystery” by Matthew Campbell and Kit Chellel, Bloomberg
“The Twitter Account That Collects Awkward, Amusing Writing” by Naaman Zhou, The New Yorker
The Sentence by Louise Erlich
“The Girlboss Era is Over. Welcome to the Age of the Girlloser” by Gabrielle Moss, Medium
The Most Important Job in the World by Gina Rushton