Some Memories Never Die by Jeff Lang

$24.95 AUD

Category: MUSIC/MUSICIANS

Some Memories Never Die contains 22 chapters linked to 22 songs, each chapter a vignette drawn from author Jeff Lang's 30-plus years of experience as a touring musician. By turn hilarious, poignant, irreverent and haunting, Lang's writing takes you inside the life of an artist who has travelled the less -trodden path. The book will include a download for brand new recordings of all 22 songs included. ...Show more

DAAS: Their Part in My Downfall: On the Road with the Doug Anthony All Stars by Paul Livingston

$32.99 AUD

Category: BIOGRAPHY/MEMOIR

Under the guise of his alter ego Flacco, Paul Livingston basked in the reflected glory of Tim Ferguson, Paul McDermott and Richard Fidler and their anarchic comedy incarnation the Doug Anthony All Stars throughout the heady years of the late 80's and into the early 90's. Flacco and Paul now find themsel ves wrenched out of comfortable obscure retirement and treading the boards once more with Timothy Ferguson and Paul McDermott, two of the original members of D.A.A.S., on a sell-out reunion tour that the Sydney Morning Herald last year announced as the most important comedy event since 1995. D.A.A.S. fans old and new have flocked to see the shows and DAAS - Their Part in my Downfall documents the horror, the glory, the egos and the strife of life on the road, then and now. At their peak D.A.A.S teetered on greatness, and Paul teetered with them, until that teeter was sabotaged by an illness known primarily by its initials, M.S., Multiple Sclerosis. But M.S. has proved no match for Timothy Ferguson, who refuses to take sitting down lying down...As a fly on the pungent walls of D.A.A.S. dressing rooms across the globe, Paul and Flacco have kept tabs and probed the depths and the shallows of these men. All is revealed in this tell-all account of their rise, disappearance and rebirth, along with interviews with their fans, colleagues and famous peers and admirers, as well as the legion of Australian comedians influenced by early D.A.A.S. As the bad old men of Australian comedy go back to where it all began in 1989, the Edinburgh Comedy Festival, can they recapture the magic? Will Hollywood still be waiting? Will anyone remember them?..'There is...a ruthless tenderness about the Doug Anthony All Stars that makes them more scathingly funny than ever.' Libbi Gorr..'I am laughing at death. Laughing at the loss of my parents. Laughing at all my weaknesses and dumb mistakes. I resolve to phone my sister with whom I've been estranged. I privately forgive my ex. I wipe away tears. It's not fair. Comedy isn't supposed to get to these places. But they are DAAS. More than comics. Less than gods. Hmph. I hate them more than ever. But I will see them again'. Zac Berger ...Show more

How to Write an Autobiographical Novel by Alexander Chee

$22.99 AUD

Category: BIOGRAPHY/MEMOIR

Shortlisted for the PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the EssayNamed a Best Book of 2018 by TIME, Washington Post, Entertainment Weekly, Wired, Esquire, Buzzfeed, Paste, Bitch, Bustle, The Chicago Review of Books and iBooksAs a novelist, Alexander Chee has been described as 'masterful' by Roxane Gay, 'incendiary' by the New York Times, and 'brilliant' by the Washington Post. With How to Write an Autobiographical Novel, his first collection of nonfiction, he secures his place as one of the finest essayists of his generation. How to Write an Autobiographical Novel is the author's exploration of the entangling of life, literature and politics, and how the lessons learned from a life spent reading and writing fiction have changed him. In these interconnected essays he constructs a self, growing from student to teacher, reader to writer, and reckoning with his identities as a son, a gay man, a Korean American, an artist, an activist, a lover and a friend. He examines some of the most formative experiences of his life and America's history, including his father's death, the AIDS crisis, 9/11, the jobs that supported his writing – Tarot-reading, bookselling, cater-waiting for William F. Buckley – the writing of his first novel, Edinburgh, and the election of Donald Trump. By turns commanding, heartbreaking and wry, How to Write an Autobiographical Novel asks questions about how we create ourselves in life and in art, and how to fight when our dearest truths are under attack. ...Show more

About a Girl: A Mother's Powerful Story of Raising her Transgender Child by Rebekah Robertson

$34.99 AUD

Category: BIOGRAPHY/MEMOIR | Reading Level: 3 Biography

In 2000, Rebekah Robertson gave birth to twin boys, George and Harry. But as they grew older, their preferences began to show, and by the age of three it was clear Georgie was drawn to anything that was pretty or had a skirt that could swirl. Before long Georgie began to insist that she was a girl and b ecame distressed that she had to hide who she really was when she started school. Soon the bullying started and she would come home in floods of tears, begging her mother to help her. Rebekah and her husband, conflicted about how to proceed and overwhelmed by fear, united in their determination to help her live freely and fearlessly. To ensure Georgie had access to medical support they sought permission for her to begin puberty-blocking medication. Their case was the start of the long road to justice for transgender children in Australia and became the basis of the 2013 landmark decision to remove the Family Court's jurisdiction. Georgie would go on to become one of the brightest stars of the Australian youth leadership landscape through her advocacy work. And Rebekah would found Transcend, a support network for transgender kids and their families in Australia. Part memoir and part inspirational message of hope for those navigating a similar path, About a Girl is a thought-provoking and profoundly moving true story. Above all, it is a celebration of family and the values that unite us all. ...Show more

Tell Me Why: The Story of My Life and My Music (HB) by Archie Roach

$49.99 AUD

Category: INDIGENOUS | Reading Level: 3 Biography

INDIE AWARD WINNER 2020A powerful memoir of a true Australian legend: stolen child, musical and lyrical genius, and leader. No one has lived as many lives as Archie Roach - stolen child, seeker, teenage alcoholic, lover, father, musical and lyrical genius, and leader - but it took him almost a lifetime to find out who he really was. Roach was only a few years old when he was forcibly removed from his family. Brought up by a series of foster parents until his early teens, his world imploded when he received a letter that spoke of a life he had no memory of. In this intimate, moving and often shocking memoir, Roach's story is an extraordinary odyssey through love and heartbreak, family and community, survival and renewal - and the healing power of music. Overcoming enormous odds to find his story and his people, Roach voices the joy, pain and hope he found on his path through song to become the legendary singer-songwriter and storyteller that he is today - beloved by fans worldwide. Tell Me Why is a stunning account of resilience and the strength of spirit - and of a great love story. ...Show more

The Further Tales of a Country Doctor by Paul Carter

$29.99 AUD

Category: BIOGRAPHY/MEMOIR

There are no secrets in a small country town but if you open your mind as well as your heart, who knows what's around the corner. Twenty five years ago Paul Carter moved from inner city Melbourne to regional Victoria on a tree-changing whim. But in a country town you are not just simply the family docto r, you are also a confidante, advocate, priest, batsman, bowler, banker, topic of gossip and even best man. In the spirit of James Herriot and Whitney Otto, the Further Tales of a Country Doctor are Paul's stories of the tapestries of life overseeing a country practice. Rich, spirited, irresistible, sombre but overwhelmingly uplifting, the humanity of these stories will stay with you for a long time. ...Show more

Giving Up the Ghost : A Memoir by Hilary Mantel

$25.00 AUD

Category: BIOGRAPHY/MEMOIR | Reading Level: very good

From the double Man Booker Prize-winning author of 'Wolf Hall', a wry, shocking and beautiful memoir of childhood, ghosts, hauntings, illness and family. At no. 58 the top of my head comes to the outermost curve of my great-aunt, Annie Connor. Her shape is like the full moon, her smile is beaming; the o uter rim of her is covered by her pinny, woven with tiny flowers. It is soft from washing; her hands are hard and chapped; it is barely ten o'clock and she is getting the cabbage on. 'Hello, Our Ilary,' she says; my family has named me aspirationally, but aspiration doesn't stretch to the 'H'. Giving Up the Ghost is award-winning novelist Hilary Mantel's wry, shocking and uniquely unusual five-part autobiography of childhood, ghosts, illness and family. It opens in 1995 with 'A Second Home', in which Mantel describes the death of her stepfather, a death which leaves her deeply troubled by the unresolved events of childhood. 'Now Geoffrey Don't Torment Her' begins in typical, gripping Mantel fashion: 'Two of my relatives have died by fire.' Set during the 1950s, it takes the reader into the muffled consciousness of her early childhood, culminating with the birth of a younger brother and the strange candlelit ceremony of her mother's 'churching'. In 'The Secret Garden' Mantel moves to a haunted house and mysteriously gains a stepfather. When she is almost eleven, her family flee the gossips and the ghosts, and resolve to start a new life. 'Smile' is an account of teenage perplexity, in a household where the keeping of secrets has become a way of life. Convent school provides a certain sanctuary, with tacit assistance from the fearsome 'Top Nun.' In the final section, the author tells how, through medical misunderstandings and neglect, she came to be childless, and how the ghosts of the unborn, like chances missed or pages unturned, have come to haunt her life as a writer. ...Show more

Backyard to Backpack: A solo mum, a six year old and a life-changing adventure by Evie Farrell

$32.99 AUD

Category: ADVENTUROUS

Inspiring true story of a single mum and daughter who traded a conventional life in the suburbs for a life lived fully together travelling the world. What if you followed your heart to a life that made you truly happy? When her daughter Emmie was 6 years old, Evie Farrell left her corporate career, sol d or donated almost everything she owned, rented out her house and, hand-in-hand with Emmie, began an epic two-and-a-half-year backpacking adventure that would change their lives forever. Evie farewelled a nasty break-up, long hours in a demanding job, a hefty mortgage and snatched hours with her daughter for a new life lived outside the lines, spending every day with Emmie exploring the world beyond the suburbs. They camped on the Great Wall of China, hung in train doorways in Sri Lanka, swam with mantas in Indonesia, donated much-needed blood in Cambodia, spotted wild orangutans and pygmy elephants in Malaysian Borneo, prayed in Buddhist temples in Taiwan and were chased by monkeys everywhere. In their journey toward happiness and self-acceptance, they learnt more about each other and the beautiful world around them than Evie ever expected. Backyard to Backpack is the inspirational true story that will have you asking yourself, what might be if you took a chance, stepped off the path of expectation and created your own adventure? ...Show more

Yellow Notebook: Diaries, 1978-1986 (HB) by Helen Garner

$34.99 AUD

Category: BIOGRAPHY/MEMOIR | Reading Level: 3 Biography

Leigh Sales: "An incredible insight into the thinking and writing processes of one of the greatest writers in Australian history." Helen Garner has kept a diary for almost all her life. But until now, those exercise books filled with her thoughts, observations, frustrations and joys have been locked awa y, out of bounds, in a laundry cupboard. Finally, Garner has opened her diaries and invited readers into the world behind her novels and works of non-fiction. Recorded with frankness, humour and steel-sharp wit, these accounts of her everyday life provide an intimate insight into the work of one of Australia's greatest living writers. Yellow Notebook, Diaries Volume One, in this elegant hardback edition, spans about a decade beginning in the late 1970s just after the publication of her first novel, Monkey Grip. It will delight Garner fans and those new to her work alike.     ...Show more

Hale and Hardy: Tales and Recollections from a Country Practice by Paul Carter

$34.99 AUD

Category: BIOGRAPHY/MEMOIR

The Argonauts by Maggie Nelson

$19.99 AUD

Category: BIOGRAPHY/MEMOIR

An intrepid voyage out to the frontiers of the latest thinking about love, language, and family Maggie Nelson's The Argonauts is a genre-bending memoir, a work of "autotheory" offering fresh, fierce, and timely thinking about desire, identity, and the limitations and possibilities of love and language. At its center is a romance: the story of the author's relationship with the artist Harry Dodge. This story, which includes Nelson's account of falling in love with Dodge, who is fluidly gendered, as well as her journey to and through a pregnancy, is an intimate portrayal of the complexities and joys of (queer) family-making. Writing in the spirit of public intellectuals such as Susan Sontag and Roland Barthes, Nelson binds her personal experience to a rigorous exploration of what iconic theorists have said about sexuality, gender, and the vexed institutions of marriage and child-rearing. Nelson's insistence on radical individual freedom and the value of caretaking becomes the rallying cry of this thoughtful, unabashed, uncompromising book. ...Show more

Shout: The True Story of a Survivor Who Refused to Be Silenced by Laurie Halse Anderson

$24.99 AUD

Category: BIOGRAPHY/MEMOIR

Bestselling author Laurie Halse Anderson is known for the unflinching way she writes about, and advocates for, survivors of sexual assault.Now, inspired by her fans and enraged by how little in our culture has changed since her groundbreaking novel Speak was first published twenty years ago, she has wri tten a poetry memoir that is as vulnerable as it is rallying, as timely as it is timeless. In free verse, Anderson shares her life and calls women to action through deeply personal stories from her life that she?s never written about before.Searing and soul-searching, this important memoir is a denouncement of our society?s failures and a love letter to all the people with the courage to say #MeToo and #TimesUp, whether aloud, online, or only in their own hearts. Shout speaks truth to power in a loud, clear voice-and once you hear it, it is impossible to ignore. ...Show more