Entertaining smart people since 2009
Contentious French thinkers Michel Houellebecq and Bernard-Henri Lévy fight back-to-back against their critics, mediocrity, and those not learned enough to understand all the footnotes.
While Gregory Maguire’s revisionist tales of Oz are witty, inventive and detailed, the dreary ending of his Wicked Years quadrilogy left us heavy-hearted.
Much more than a double-dip of previous publications, veteran journalist David Marr has revised and recontextualised his essays to map an alarming tendency in Australian culture.
You’d have to be high to deny that we need to discuss drug reform in this country. If only Lisa Pryor can get the hand-wringers to read a book with a baggie on the cover.
Esteemed UK critic Simon Reynolds shows off his record collection in this deep and sometimes murky reflection on five decades of retro-obsession in music.
At long last (and at 1040 pages long), this fifth novel in Martin’s epic medieval fantasy series A Song of Ice and Fire isn’t the best yet, but rewardingly re-immerses readers in a richly evocative world.
Max Barry is known for his corporate satire, but this novel about a scientist who rebuilds himself is much more of a disquieting horror story.
Smarty-pants science geeks demonstrate that we’re literally born to get our freak on anywhere and everywhere. It’s a revelation in guilt-free sexual freedom. Scientifically speaking, of course.
In making over Strunk and White’s The Elements of Style for the 21st century, Chris Baker and Jacob Hansen’s parody has revivified an important literary classic – without adding a single zombie, vampire or werewolf.
In cartoons, alum puckered Sylvester The Cat’s mouth into a cat’s arse. Will this chemical compound do the same to your natural predators?
Critics revelled in spewing venom across the Linsday Lohan-helmed flop biopic Liz & Dick. But how did her Aussie (enough) co-star Grant Bowler fare?
Even the Olympics has indie cred: “I’m so cool I qualified for the Olympics before my nation’s sovereignty was even recognised, man”.
Fresh New York writing outlet n+1 ably (but irregularly) blows the cobwebs out of the stuffy lit-mag genre. Here’s a cheat sheet for the anti-literary magazine literary magazine.
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