Better Read Than Dead Bookstore Newtown

March ILF Book of the Month

Drop Bear

by Evelyn Araluen

Poetry, essay, satire, history, identity, decoloniality, sovereignty – Dharug-born Bundjalung writer Araluen has tackled a lot in her debut collection – and it’s brilliant! Through its unique genre, vivid emotion and intertextuality, this collection will disrupt your thinking and grasp your attention. – Steph

$24.99

This is our ILF (Indigenous Literacy Foundation) Book of the Month, which means 10% of the profits from this month's sales of this book will be donated to the Indigenous Literacy Foundation.

March Book of the Month

Klara and the Sun

By Kazuo Ishiguro

What a fascinating read. When a winner of the Nobel Peace Prize for literature starts thinking, it reaches the zone of thinking like no other. And now I can’t stop thinking about his clever speculative fiction. Far from the reaches of McEwan’s AI sex-bot romp (although I liked this one too) Ishiguro’s thoughts on AI in the landscape of a teenage friend takes to the depths of what it is to be human and to have heart. This is spectacular, thought-provoking and deeply philosophical writing set in a climate affected and technologically advanced future where the essence of life – the sun and the heart – rise through to the essence of this story. I’ll be thinking of this for days to come. Absolutely brilliant. – Dean

You’d expect a novel about artificial intelligence (or, in this case, “Artificial Friends”), “lifted” children and an all-powerful sun to fit snugly in the SCF genre, yet this subtle, heartfelt novel is extremely real, completely plausible and very human at heart. A stunning work of speculative fiction, Ishiguro returns to the tropes that defined my favourite of his works; Klara and the Sun is the perfect combination of Never Let Me Go and The Remains of the Day, with unique characters and a fascinating premise entirely its own. – Steph

$32.99

Australian Fiction