November 05, 2025

This month we are reading Post Office by Charles Bukowski. Grab a copy and get reading!

October 01, 2025

This month we are reading The Knockout Artist by Harry Crews. Grab a copy and get reading.

September 05, 2025

Our review of The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet by Becky Chambers will be up soon.

August 06, 2025

Our review of this book will be up shortly. If you missed it Grab a copy.

July 03, 2025

Our review of this book will be up shortly. If you missed it Grab a copy.

June 04, 2025

I kept asking myself as I read the book when will Solomon, an ancient king, will start playing into this story about an African American man, Macon ‘Milkman’ Dead III,...

May 07, 2025

As cliché as it sounds, I don’t even know where to begin with this review of the literary triumph that is ‘Reaper Man’ by Terry Pratchett. The eleventh book in...

April 02, 2025

Our review will be up soon. If you missed it, grab a copy and get reading.

March 05, 2025

Aah, judging books by their covers. It should not be entertained but I came alert when I saw the copies of Still Life being pulled out of our chapter president’s...

March 05, 2025

March 05, 2025

February 05, 2025

Grab a copy and get reading. We have all had the experience. Imagine you are on holiday. You find an inviting, secluded spot: a corner of a park, a hilltop...

December 04, 2024

How does a small group of college students get drawn into seeking the ecstasy and divine madness of the ancient Greek cult of Dionysus, with all its chaotic consequences? What...

November 06, 2024

Just kids being kids, isn’t it? You know, the weekend rolls around and in the absence of any kind of moral authority, what will your crew get up to? Well,...

November 01, 2024

October 02, 2024

Dysphoria sucks. Unlike euphoria, dysphoria is often a pervasive and persistent state of mind, particularly when the cause of the dysphoria is something physical like a part of your body...

September 04, 2024

Clearly this is a work of fiction, after all monsters aren’t made in secluded, upstairs rooms at the university of Ingolstadt; more likely they are what men uncover about themselves...

August 07, 2024

In August we're reading The Riders by Tim Winton (1994). Grab a copy and get reading!

July 06, 2024

The story begins with a seemingly well-planned prison breakout on the day of the annual softball competition between the inmates and the officers. The families of the correctional officers are...

June 05, 2024

Stanley Kubrik was a filmmaker who knew a thing or two about man’s predilection for a bit of the ultraviolence. His sci-fi epic “2001: A Space Odyssey” begins with a...

May 01, 2024

 The Promise by David Galgut promises a lot to the reader. Critically acclaimed, man booker prized winning and very ambitious in scope. It’s a family drama set against the back...

April 03, 2024

Sometimes, the TGBC crew give you just the kick in your pants you need to read something that’s been on your list for ages. For me, that was ‘We Have...

March 06, 2024

I like Margaret Atwood. She has remarkable ideas and a clarity of style that makes reading most things she writes quite pleasurable to read. She has been around a long...

March 06, 2024

February 09, 2024

Black Tide is the second book of a series of four by Miles Franklin Award winner, Peter Temple. These books are about Jack Irish, a suburban Melbourne solicitor, who is...

December 06, 2023

For the 2023-2024 summer holiday break we read World War Z by Max Brooks. A review by one of our members will be up soon.

November 01, 2023

November 01, 2023

Howard Phillips Lovecraft is, like S&M, Morris Dancing and Death Metal, not for everybody. As a writer he was not successful in life, he suffered personal tragedies, had some wacky...

October 04, 2023

Open Water is an ambitious and at times confronting novel that contrasts a modern story of young love against a broader social commentary on racial prejudice and masculinity. The book...

September 06, 2023

Steppenwolf takes us on a profound exploration of the human psyche, offering a lens through which we can examine the inner struggles faced by men in the modern age. While...

August 02, 2023

What a curious mixture of a novel is this book. At once a page turner and at some junctures, a must put down book. If I may be permitted a...

July 05, 2023

*“If you are lucky enough to have lived in Paris as a young man, then wherever you go for the rest of your life, it stays with you, for Paris...

June 07, 2023

The trouble with Tony Birch’s semi-autobiographical first book, Shadowboxing, a linked group of short stories set in the pre gentrified Fitzroy working class slums of the late 60s and early...

May 03, 2023

The book is a cohesive compilation of beautifully written and astutely observed short stories. The thread running through the book is the is the exploration of the complexities of human...

April 01, 2023

At first glance Scoop is s novel of chance, coincidence, and manipulation…. but only at first glance. For inside the cover of SCOOP lies the semi-autobiographical confession of a man...

March 01, 2023

I approached Kafka with some trepidation, having been amused, but largely confounded by The Metamorphosis many years ago. I am naturally an empirical (some would say concrete) thinker. I like...

February 01, 2023

I went into the outsiders with no prior knowledge of the book, author or movie and found myself quickly drawn in, finishing the whole book over two days. I can’t...

December 07, 2022

The Magician by Colm Toibin is a dramatised biography of the life of German author Thomas Mann, his relationships with family, his writing career from early success to Nobel Prize...

November 22, 2022

November 02, 2022

Wolf in White Van by John Darnielle is a thought-provoking novel that explores the nature of reality, the power of imagination, and the devastating consequences of loneliness. I thought the...

October 05, 2022

Somewhere in the inner western suburbs. Thursday afternoon. February 2023. “I don’t go in for that craft shit. Two schooners of Resch’s love.” The barmaid with the undercut and Nirvana...

September 07, 2022

Scott F. Fitzgerald’s story takes place between Long Island and New York in the early 1920s, the time of prohibition in America. The story is narrated by Nick Carraway, a...

August 03, 2022

There was a cartoon published recently on the web depicting an image of author Chetan Bhagat speaking to a reader. Bhagat’s script balloon says “On a scale of 1 to...

July 07, 2022

One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest tells the story of Randle Patrick McMurphy, a convicted criminal who fakes being insane so can serve his sentence for battery and gambling in...

June 01, 2022

This book was acclaimed by Barack Obama as one of his books of the year, but without his unique cultural connection to the material, us mere mortals were left with...

May 04, 2022

Last month’s TGBC Book to was C. S. Forester’s The Gun. Published in 1933 it preceded Forester's well known Hornblower series. Like the Hornblower novels, it is set during a...

April 06, 2022

All Systems Red is an exploration of what it is to be human. The dystopian view of the future challenges the idea that sentience and humanity are binary concepts of...

March 02, 2022

Cormac McCarthy’s novel, The Road, is a harrowing novel that details the journey of a nameless father and son through a post-apocalyptic wasteland. In a month that has seen both...

February 02, 2022

Even Michael Caine read Farewell, My Lovely. Check the opening shot in Get Carter from 1971. This is the second of Chandler’s Philip Marlowe books, following The Big Sleep. It...

December 01, 2021

In The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, Joe Kavalier a young jewish artist escapes from the Nazis in Prague using techniques based on a knowledge of Houdini’s escape exploits....

November 21, 2021

November 03, 2021

I’ve been attracted to existentialism ever since I was expressing my personality via Radiohead lyrics on my pencil case and Evangelion posters on my wall. So, I was interested to...

October 06, 2021

Last orders is the story of 4 men taking the ashes of their friend Jack Dodds through to Margate, save for his wife who refuses to abandon her duties. Spanning...

September 01, 2021

One of the founding, though little remarked upon premises of Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel, is the idea that, regardless of what fate may befall humankind, the works...

August 04, 2021

"Like nothing you've ever read before (TM)". What happens when you mix a car salesman who is losing his mind, a released convict with no place in society, and a...

July 07, 2021

No one wants long short stories. That’s just false advertising, like popping into a fast food restaurant and joining a queue. And so it’s with both a tip of the...

June 02, 2021

Note: This review contains spoilers!!! The Talented Mr Ripley is literally a story about a guy who gets away with murder. Two in fact. Set in the exotic past of...

May 05, 2021

This is probably the most influential book you have never read. You will be amazed at the movies, music, theatre, dance, graphic novels, books, tv and radio, all influenced by...

April 07, 2021

The Hawkline Monster is a Gothic Western. Indeed, this book was the first to have Gothic Western in its subtitle. What exactly is Gothic Western? Well, generally the story of...

March 03, 2021

I tend to read the books at club from an entirely ignorant standpoint. I don't read the blurb, I don't research the author, and I try to avoid any running...

February 03, 2021

‘When you make it, when you’re still alive and standin at the end. You get this tingly-electric rush. You feel alive, completely awake and in your body. Man, it’s like...

December 02, 2020

"Stories are a communal currency of humanity." --Tahir Shah, In Arabian Nights This is a story of doors and those who dare to seek those doors which open to things...

November 20, 2020

November 04, 2020

Frankenstein in Baghdad (FIB) is at its core a commentary on sin. How do we countenance our actions as moral, when the longer we live, the more these values are...

October 07, 2020

“You don’t have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them.” Fahrenheit 451 is a passionate book about the importance of books. It is...

September 02, 2020

‘What’s past is prologue’. Zadie Smith clearly chose Shakespeare’s words carefully when looking for a preface to a novel that is rooted firmly in the past. This quote has also...

August 05, 2020

Top 5 things about this book It is beautifully written. Nick Hornby writes with such restraint that the reader is left with ample room to fill in the detail of...

July 01, 2020

Approach this book like you would a winter swim at the beach. Just dive in. It will slap you and disorient you straight away, turning your world upside down. Then...

June 03, 2020

It's easy to be swept up in the reputation, celebrity, and strength of Steinbeck synonymous with Of Mice and Men, East of Eden and The Grapes of Wrath. Perfectly explained...

May 06, 2020

A boys own adventure set on the big red planet, The Martian sets up our ‘hero’ biologist/astronaut Mark Watney as a McGuyver type character who can solve almost any problem...

April 01, 2020

Ed Kennedy is a out on his luck taxi driver, with friends he doesn’t particularly like, a job that’s going nowhere and a family that either dislikes or is disappointed...

March 04, 2020

In the first few pages it's clear Ove is the archetypal curmudgeon and he's going to spend the entirety of the book coming good. Roll out the supporting cast of...

February 05, 2020

Hubert Selby jnr’s controversial first novel set in post war Brooklyn and describes a world a far cry from the gentrified borough that exists today. The characters that populate this...

December 04, 2019

Avast there me hearties ! Now there are no actual skull and crossbones bearing pirates in this book, the 3rd of the popular series about our early 19th C Napoleonic...

November 06, 2019

[The Soul] exists, it has a reality, it is produced permanently around, on, within the body by the functioning of a power that is exercised on those punished - and,...

October 11, 2019

It’s no easy thing to write simply yet evocatively. Hemingway aspired to do it and yet often, I would argue, failed, The Old Man and the Sea being the clearest...

October 02, 2019

I promised to write a review of this before starting, and maybe I shouldn’t have. I found it impossible to get far through the book, and discussion with my fellow...

September 04, 2019

Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead, the thirteenth novel of acclaimed Polish author Olga Tokarczuk, follows Duszejko (emphatically not to be called by her given name), as...

August 07, 2019

In “A Visit To The Goon Squad” Jennifer Egan, over the space of thirteen chapters, gives us thirteen different viewpoints with sometimes only most tenuous of links between characters to...

July 02, 2019

I am a big fan of Hemingway’s writing - the man not so much. His ability to evoke a particular time and place is what has drawn me to his...

June 04, 2019

“Praise” is essentially a fairly dark romp through the early twenties life of Gordon, a young man who has left the family farm in regional Queensland for a non-life in...

April 30, 2019

It’s Harlem, it’s 1930-something, and it’s Johnny’s birthday. But there will be no celebration today. No candles and cake, soda and dancing. Rather, there will be blood, fire, darkness and...

April 02, 2019

If I had been asked to recommend a book to begin exploring Terry Pratchett’s ‘Discworld’ or to come to grips with why he was such a popular writer, Small Gods...

March 05, 2019

WARNING: BE ADVISED THE FOLLOWING NOVEL STONER FEATURES NEITHER HABITUAL MARIJUANA USERS, NOR REFERENCES TO CANNABIS OF ANY KIND. First published in 1965, ‘Stoner’ is author John Williams’ second novel....

February 06, 2019

Ask the Dust opens with a brief introduction by Charles Bukowski who describes John Fante’s 1939 novel as “my first discovery of the magic.” If you, like me, discovered the...

December 04, 2018

Rastas in space – who wouldn’t love a book that features dreadlocked Rastafarians flying space tugs. I must admit this came as a surprise in a novel about a dystopian...

November 06, 2018

Rightly lauded as being among the most important literary narratives concerned with representing – and reflecting upon – the experience and legacy of America’s Vietnam War, Tim O’Brien’s The Things...

October 02, 2018

Men without women is a collection of short stories the common thread being the title of the book. However it’s almost without saying that each story revolves around women or...

September 29, 2018

‘A mirage of landscape, memory, love, and literature itself’- Murray Bail, author of Eucalyptus As I kayaked up the Wye river, blissfully enjoying the smooth paddling stylings of my partner,...

September 06, 2018

Bleak, pointless, dull, brutal, frustrating. These words summarise the world of espionage and counter-intelligence depicted in John le Carré’s The Spy Who Came in From the Cold. It’s difficult to...

August 01, 2018

A book that’s reputation certainly precedes it. I think my preconceptions made me anticipate that this book was more “important” than it was “great”. But I was totally wrong. Sure,...

July 04, 2018

First published in 1927, Men Without Women is a collection of short stories by Ernest Hemingway. This collection offers vignettes of life, snippets fleetingly seen as though we were travelling...

June 05, 2018

If someone was to ask me if I wished to read a story about the cycle of domestic violence through the eyes of a young family member further stigmatised by...

May 01, 2018

An over the top, ridiculous, million mile an hour adventure with surprising glimpses of deep philosophical musings on the profound and the everyday. The first installation in Douglas Adams Trilogy...

April 03, 2018

Noongar writer Kim Scott conjures an unwritten history. Set in the years following white settlement in Western Australia, our narrator Bobby Wabalanginy nails it when he realises of his new...

March 08, 2018

As I Lay Dying – Southern Gothic or Hillbilly Vaudeville? I loved this book! My chapter (Williamstown) discussed it at length, but it wasn’t till I reread it at home...

February 06, 2018

The trouble is… it isn’t very good. Really? But it’s immensely famous! A classic! What sacrilege is this? What was the problem? Was there something wrong with the story, the...

December 06, 2017

It is without doubt that John Steinbeck’s East of Eden is a daunting novel to undertake simply due to its sheer size. Weighing in at just over 700 pages, Steinbeck’s...

October 31, 2017

**A sprawling riverside elegy Full disclosure: I am a Queensland expatriate.** Like most expats abroad I exhibit the tell-tale signs: bad news from home is met with a contemptuous snort...

October 04, 2017

Ham on Rye, a semi-autobiographical account of Charles Bukowski’s coming of age, begins with his earliest memory. Under a table staring at the legs of adults in Germany in 1922....