Books On The Go

Anna and Annie announce yet more award nominations, with the shortlist for the NSW Premier's Literary Award being released this week as well as the winners of the Windham Campbell Prize, including podcast favourites Maria Tumarkin and Yiyun Li. 

Our book of the week is Weather by Jenny Offill, whose previous novels-in-fragments Dept of Speculation and Last Things have been much loved by Books on the Go hosts. This latest book makes for unsettlingly apt reading amidst the COVID-19 pandemic, as anxious librarian Lizzie grapples with the looming climate disaster alongside her complicated personal life. Darkly funny, perceptive and with "deftly curated silences" (Ben Lerner), Weather is the perfect book for our unsettled times. 

Next week, Anna and Amanda will be reading Underland by Robert Macfarlane.

Follow us!

Email: [email protected]

Facebook: Books On The Go

Instagram: @abailliekaras and @mr_annie

Twitter: @abailliekaras and @mister_annie

Litsy: @abailliekaras and @mr_annie

Credits

Artwork: Sascha Wilkosz

Anna and Amanda discuss how you can support your local bookstores during the COVID-19 shutdown - including Annie's store Mostly Books and ordering online via Hive in the UK.

Our book of the week is You Will Be Safe Here by Damian Barr, host of the fabulous Literary Salon  and The Big Scottish Book Club.  This is a novel set in South Africa during the Second Boer War and modern times, when Willem aged 16 is sent to a training camp to 'turn boys into men'. An Observer, Guardian and Financial Times book of the year and a BBC Radio 4 Book at Bedtime, we loved this one. 

Next week, Anna and Annie will be reading Weather by Jenny Offill.

Follow us!

Email: [email protected]

Facebook: Books On The Go

Instagram: @abailliekaras and @amandalhayes99

Twitter: @abailliekaras

LItsy: @abailliekaras

Credits

Artwork: Sascha Wilkosz

Anna and Annie discuss the 2020 Stella Prize shortlist and the Walter Scott Prize longlist.

Our book of the week is Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead by Olga Tokarczuk, translated by Antonia Lloyd-Jones. Olga Tokarczuk won the Man Booker International Prize in 2018 for Flights and the 2018 Nobel Prize for Literature.  This novel has been described as "thriller, comedy and political treatise" (Economist), and "a barbed, shrewd, parodic eco-noir" (Times Literary Supplement).  

Coming up: You Will Be Safe Here by Damien Barr.

Follow us!

Email: [email protected]

Facebook: Books On The Go

Instagram: @abailliekaras and @mr_annie

Twitter: @abailliekaras and @mister_annie

Litsy: @abailliekaras 

Happy International Women's Day!

Anna and Annie discuss the 2020 Women's Prize Longlist.

Our book of the week is Girl, Woman, Other by Bernardine Evaristo. Joint winner of the 2019 Booker Prize with Margaret Atwood and now long-listed for the Women's Prize, this novel about 12 British women has had rave reviews. What did Anna and Annie think?

Coming up: Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead by Olga Tokarczuk translated by Antonia Lloyd-Jones, and Weather by Jenny Offill.

Follow us!

Facebook: Books On The Go

Email: [email protected]

Instagram: @abailliekaras and @mr_annie

Twitter: @abailliekaras and @mister_annie

Litsy: @abailliekaras 

Credits

Artwork: Sascha Wilkosz

Anna and Amanda discuss the Booker International Longlist.

Our book of the week is City of Trees by Australian writer Sophie Cunningham.  We loved this beautiful collection of essays. 

Next week, Anna and Annie will be reading Girl, Woman, Other by Bernardine Evaristo (recently longlisted for the Women's Prize).

Follow us!

Facebook: Books On The Go

Email: [email protected]

Instagram: @abailliekaras and @amandalhayes99

Twitter: @abailliekaras

Litsy: @abailliekaras

Credits

Artwork: Sascha Wilkosz

Anna and Amanda discuss the screen adaptation of No Friend But The Mountains by Behrouz Boochani, and books inspired by the film Parasite.

Our book of the week is The Man Who Saw Everything by Deborah Levy.  This novel about a man who travels to East Berlin was long-listed for the 2019 Booker Prize and was a best book of 2019 in the New York Times Review of Books, the Washington Post and Time, among others.  But what did Anna and Amanda think?

Next week, Anna and Annie will be back with Girl, Woman, Other by Bernardine Evaristo.

Follow us!

Facebook: Books On The Go

Email: [email protected]

Instagram: @abailliekaras and @amandalhayes99

Twitter: @abailliekaras

Litsy: @abailliekaras

Credits

Artwork: Sascha Wilkosz

Anna and Amanda discuss Black History Month and how Barnes and Noble got it wrong.  

Our book of the week is A Moth to a Flame by Stig Dagerman, translated by Benjamin Miers Cruz with an introduction by Siri Hustvedt. We love the Penguin Writers Series but this one was not for us.  

Coming up, Girl, Woman, Other by Bernardine Evaristo and The Man Who Saw Everything by Deborah Levy.

Follow us!

Facebook: Books On The Go

Email: [email protected]

Instagram: @abailliekaras and @amandalhayes99

Litsy: @abailliekaras

Twitter: @abailliekaras

Credits

Artwork: Sascha Wilkosz

Anna and Annie discuss the Stella Prize longlist. 

Our book of the week is The Pine Islands by Marion Poschman translated by Jen Calleja.  We admit we bought this one for the cover; it was also shortlisted for the 2019 Man Booker International Prize. A novel about two men who travel through Japan as they trace the footsteps of the poet Basho, Anna and Annie disagreed about this one!

Next week, Anna and Amanda will be reading A Moth to a Flame by Stig Dagerman translated by Benjamin Miers Cruz.

Follow us!

Facebook: Books On The Go

Email: [email protected]

Instagram: @abailliekaras and @mr_annie

Twitter: @abailliekaras and @mister_annie

Litsy: @abailliekaras

Credits

Artwork: Sascha Wilkosz

Anna and Annie discuss the Edgar Allen Poe Awards shortlists and make our predictions for the Stella Prize Longlist, to be announced on 6 February 2020.

Our book of the week is The Yield by Tara June Winch. The story of an Aboriginal woman who returns to Australia when her grandfather dies, it has had rave reviews and is tipped to be on the Stella Prize longlist.  It was Annie's favourite book of 2019, but what did Anna think? 

Coming up: A Moth to a Flame by Stig Dagerman and The Pine Islands by Marion Poschman translated by Jen Calleja.

Follow us!

Facebook: Books On The Go

Email: [email protected]

Instagram: @abailliekaras and @mr_annie

Twitter: @abailliekaras and @mister_annie

Litsy: @abailliekaras

Credits:

Artwork: Sascha Wilkosz

Anna and Annie discuss the American Dirt controversy.  Here are 17 books on the US-American border by Latinx authors you can read instead of American Dirt.

Our book of the week is Dark Emu by Bruce Pascoe.  Winner of Book of the Year in the 2016 NSW Premier's Book Awards, it has been chosen as the first Parliamentary Book Club book.  Pascoe explores the pre-colonial Aboriginal history of agriculture and the future of land management in Australia.  A timely read after the bushfires sweeping the nation.

Next week, we will be reading The Yield by Tara June Winch.

Follow us!

Facebook: Books On The Go

Email: [email protected]

Instagram: @abailliekaras

Twitter: @abailliekaras

Litsy: @abailliekaras

Credits

Artwork: Sascha Wilkosz