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“Until I feared I would lose it, I never loved to read.
One does not love breathing.”
- Harper Lee
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The Booker Prize shortlist has been announced, including the much-anticipated The Testaments by Margaret Atwood. The Davitt Awards, awarded for the best crime novels by Australian women, have also been presented. Winners include new Dialogue addition Dervla McTiernan’s The Ruin [B2305] and Chloe Hooper’s The Arsonist [B2291]. The Ruin also won best first fiction in the 2019 Ned Kelly Awards.
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Our 2020 issue of Dialogue is now available online – hard copies will also be available in book boxes from mid-October. If your group is not meeting over this time, we will post the copies to you. If you require an extra copy, please feel free to let us know.
The Seniors Festival Celebration Day is coming up at Fed Square on the 6th of October. Our Book Groups team will be at the CAE tent, selling books from our backlist for a gold coin donation. Come down and see us, have a chat with the staff and grab a bargain.
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CAE Book Groups is also pleased to announce that from the 7th October 2019, we will be dispatching our books from a new warehouse. Yooralla is a socially responsible company with a long history of giving back to the community. We are delighted to partner with them in our continued efforts to provide excellent service to our book groups. All Book Group secretaries should have received correspondence regarding the warehouse transition, but please contact us with any questions you may have.
And don’t forget, you can stay up to date with what we’re reading at @caebookgroups on Instagram.
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2019 Reading Year in Review
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The CAE Book Groups team take a look at what 2019 has brought us so far in the way of reading. We discuss our 2019 reading goals and if we’ve achieved them, why we read the way we do, memorable books, and if we’ve discovered any new favourites.
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Authors who have won the most literary prizes
We love literary awards at Book Groups, mostly because they bring to our attention potential books to add to our list. We wondered, who are the most awarded authors? For the purposes of our list, we only looked at major literary awards for fiction. It was great to see many of our Dialogue authors ranking highly!
- Philip Roth – 9 major prizes, for a variety of titles. Book Groups titles include The Human Stain [B1618]
- John Updike – 8 major prizes, mostly for Rabbit is Rich
- E.L. Doctorow – 7 major prizes, mostly for Billy Bathgate and The March
- Colson Whitehead – 7 major prizes, mostly for The Underground Railroad [B2270]
- Saul Bellow – 6 prizes, for a variety of titles
- Lois McMaster Bujold – 6 prizes, mainly Hugo Awards for her fantasy and sci-fi novels
- William Faulkner – 6 prizes, for a variety of titles
- Ursula K. Le Guin – 6 prizes, mostly Hugo and Nebula Awards for her speculative fiction. Book Groups titles include The Left Hand of Darkness [B1064] and The Telling [1461]
- Marilynne Robinson – 6 prizes, for a variety of titles. Book Groups titles include Gilead [1963] and Housekeeping [B1206]
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A bittersweet novel of love, loss and survival from the author of such modern classics as Red Dog and Captain Corelli’s Mandolin [B1472].
The story follows two groups of people as they navigate the period between the First and Second World Wars. Rosie and Daniel have moved to a tea plantation in Ceylon with their little daughter, hoping to start a new life and put the trauma of the Western Front behind them. Back in England, Rosie’s three sisters are dealing with impossible challenges in their search for family, purpose and happiness. But times are precarious,
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and using unconventional means may be the only way to get what they want.
Humorous and tragic, gripping and touching, So Much Life Left Over follows a cast of unique and captivating characters as the world changes around them.
Courtesy of Penguin
Anyone is welcome to enter! Simply email us at competition@cae.edu.au and tell us what new release you are most looking forward to in 2020. Use the name of the book as the subject. Include your name and postal address. Entries close Wednesday, 2 October 2019. Winners will be notified.
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Kurt Stocker’s Swiss childhood is dominated by strict and god-fearing parents. He enters a seminary with the intent of becoming a priest and making his parents proud of him but struggles to adapt. Leaving his vocation, he marries Liesl and they eventually emigrate to Australia.
Decades later in small town Australia, Terry Riley feels drawn to convent life, despite her family’s objections. At the convent, she is haunted by a strange sickness. It is then she begins a relationship with the now divorced Kurt, who was once her high school teacher.
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This is the story of an odd couple in love with each other, but so damaged by their past lives that a relationship seems impossible. Beautiful in its frankness but disturbing in its examination of faith and human existence, this is a novel that is affectionate, haunting and ultimately unforgettable.
Courtesy of Transit Lounge
Anyone is welcome to enter! Simply email us at competition@cae.edu.au and tell us what new release you are most looking forward to in 2020. Use the name of the book as the subject. Include your name and postal address. Entries close Wednesday, 2 October 2019. Winners will be notified.
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Painting with Diane Hamilton
7 sessions
Saturday, 12:30pm-2:30pm, 19 October
$359/$341 (conc)
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Beginning Creative Writing
6 sessions
Tuesday, 6pm-8pm, 8 October
$320/$304 (conc)
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Literature and the First World War
3 Sessions
Thursday, 11:30am-1pm, 17 October
$145/$109 (conc)
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