Speaking Volumes: Conversations with remarkable writers
Ramona Koval
ISBN: 9781921640612
$35 417 pp
Scribe 2010

The name and voice of Ramona Koval are well known to many Australians as the presenter of the long-running ABC Radio National program The Book Show, where she interviews many writers and talks about their work and about writing generally.  She is passionate about what she does and adds to this an intelligence and compassion that makes listening to her and her guests a pleasure.  She is so good at what she does that she is frequently invited to moderate discussions and conduct interviews with writers around the world. (more…)

The Vitamin D Solution
Michael F Holick
Scribe 2010
ISBN: 9781921640520
$35
336 pp including bibliography and index

At the outset I need to declare a possible conflict of interest: I work part-time for a company in Melbourne that manufactures vitamin D supplements in oral and injectable form.  However, that, and my sixteen years working for the Australasian College of Nutritional and Environmental Medicine, gives me the knowledge and insight to read this book intelligently and review it. (more…)

How many people occupy themselves with activity that does nothing to further the overall wellbeing of the human race or the planet as a whole?  How many get paid for such activity and call it work?  How many people do work that is demoralising? (more…)

Stories are powerful vehicles.  They can entertain, they can inform, they can educate and they can instruct.  They can also confuse, obfuscate, hide the truth, mislead and derail.  It is the stories we tell ourselves that are the most important stories of all. (more…)

When travelling, borders can magically dissolve as can the boundaries we put around ourselves.  I am in Queenstown [map], in the southern depths of the New Zealand south island.  It sits on the edge of a large lake surrounded by majestic, snow-capped mountains. (more…)

The experiences had by any one individual enhance the experience of the entire human race. It is, therefore, pointless to decry the inability of one person to have the same experience as another. Women can experience pregnancy, childbirth and breastfeeding. That men cannot does not diminish them as people. (more…)