The Bookshelf

Kate and Cassie read award-winning Australian author Michael Mohammed Ahmad’s bold new novel Bugger, while reviewers Hannah Kent and Tom Wright take on Jennette McCurdy’s provocative new book Half His Age — from the former child actor whose memoir I'm Glad My Mom Died shook readers worldwide — and Nina McConigley’s How to Commit a Postcolonial Murder...does it live up to the name?
BOOKS 
Michael Mohammed Ahmad, Bugger, Hachette 
Jennette McCurdy, Half His Age, Fourth Estate 
Nina McConigley, How to Commit a Postcolonial Murder, Fleet 
GUESTS 
Hannah Kent, novelist, screenwriter, and memoirist, whose books include Burial Rites, The Good People, Devotion, and Always Home, Always Homesick 
Tom Wright, Artistic Associate at Belvoir St.Theatre 
OTHER BOOKS MENTIONED
Jim Butcher, Twelve Months: The Dresden Files 
Sita Walker, In a Common Hour 
Jonas Jonasson, The Distinctly Competent District Councillor  
Catherine Newman, Wreck 
India-Rose Bower, We Call Them Witches 
Amie Kaufman, Red Star Rebels 
Yxavel Magno Diňo, The Firefly Crown 
Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita
Kiran Desai, The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny
Olga Ravn, The Wax Child 
Patrick Rothfuss, The Name of the Wind
Travis Baldree, Brigands and Breadknives 
Jorge Luis Borges, Labyrinths
CREDITS
Presenter, Kate Evans and Cassie McCullagh
Producer, Kate Evans and Sarah Corbett
Sound engineer, Micky Grossman and Ann Marie Debettencor
Arts editor, Rhiannon Brown

Kate and Cassie are back for a big year of books, beginning with Booker-Prize winner Julian Barnes' Departures, a novel about looking back, facing the future, and coming to the end of life. Plus, regular reviewers Tony Birch and Beejay Silcox join us for discussions on This, My Second Life by British novelist Patrick Charnley, and Iluka, by Australian author Cassie Stroud.
BOOKS
Julian Barnes, Departure(s), Jonathan Cape
Cassie Stroud, Iluka, HQ Books
Patrick Charnley, This, My Second Life, Hutchinson Heinemann
GUESTS
Tony Birch, poet, novelist and short story writer whose books include Dark as Last Night, Shadow Boxing, Women and Children and The White Girl. His latest is Pictures of You. He is also a Professor of Australian literature at the University of Melbourne
Beejay Silcox, critic, writer and regular interviewer at writers festivals.
OTHER BOOKS MENTIONED
Lily King, Heart the Lover
Anne Enright, Attention
Melissa Lucashenko, Not Quite White in the Head
Bryan Washington, Palaver; Family Meal
Souvankham Thammavongsa, Pick the Colour
Charlotte Wood, The Weekend
Ann Patchett, Tom Lake
Jonathan Tropper, And Then We Came To the End
Maggie Shipstead, Seating Arrangements
Emily O'Grady, Feast
Hayle Felicity, Our Brother Nick and the Tolling Bell
Elizabeth Strout, My Name is Lucy Barton
Joe Hill, King Sorrow
Haldor Laxness, Independent People
Dani Netherclift The Shape of Absent Bodies
George Eliot, Middlemarch
Alexandre Dumas, The Count of Monte Cristo
Eric Puchner, Dream State
CREDITS
Presenter, Kate Evans and Cassie McCullagh
Producer, Kate Evans and Sarah Corbett
Sound engineer, Roi Hubermann and Ann Marie Debettencor
Arts editor, Rhiannon Brown

Novelist and memoirist Maggie O'Farrell in conversation with Kate Evans at the 2025 Sydney Writers Festival. Her nine novels include After You'd Gone, the Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox, This Must be the Place, Hamnet and the Marriage Portrait . . . and her extraordinary memoir is I Am I Am I Am: Seventeen Brushes with Death.

Kate and Cassie on stage at the 2025 Brisbane Writers Festival with authors Eric Puchner, Toni Jordan, Patrick Holland, and Zeynab Gamieldien, discussing their most recent novels and the books and writers who inspire them. This discussion was recorded in front of a live audience, just ahead of our Top 100 Books of the Century.
It was first broadcast on Friday 17 October 2025
GUESTS
Eric Puchner, novelist, academic, and short story writer, whose books include the collections Last Day on Earth and Music Through the Floor, and the novels Model Home and (his latest) Dream State
Toni Jordan, a writer whose novels include Nine Days, Our Tiny, Useless Hearts, Prettier If She Smiles More, Dinner with the Schnabels . . . and her latest, Tenderfoot
Patrick Holland is a writer and academic, and author of eight books, including the novel The Mary Smokes Boys and — his latest — Oblivion. He lives between Hong Kong and Brisbane
Zeynab Gamieldien is a writer whose first novel, The Scope of Permissibility, won the inaugural WestWords/Ultimo Prize (for emerging writers from Western Sydney); and her second novel, Learned Behaviours, has just been published
BOOKS MENTIONED BY ERIC PUCHNER
•    James Salter, Light Years
•    Jennifer Egan, A Visit from the Goon Squad
•    Joy Williams, works
•    Willa Cather, My Ántonia
•    Jhumpa Lahiri, A Temporary Matter
•    Marilynne Robinson, Housekeeping
•    Evan S. Connell, Mrs. Bridge
•    César Aira, An Episode in the Life of a Landscape Painter
BOOKS MENTIONED BY TONI JORDAN
•    Craig Silvey, Jasper Jones
•    Trent Dalton, Boy Swallows Universe
•    Hilary Mantel, Wolf Hall
•    Zadie Smith, White Teeth
•    Alexis Wright, Carpentaria
•    Maggie O'Farrell, Hamnet
•    Richard Ford, Canada
BOOKS MENTIONED BY PATRICK HOLLAND
•    Yasunari Kawabata, Snow Country
•    Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights
•    Ernest Hemingway, 88 Poems
•    Leah Swann, Bearings
•    Felix Calvino, works
•    Brian Castro, works
•    Françoise Sagan, Bonjour Tristesse
•    Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian; All the Pretty Horses
•    Murasaki Shikibu, The Tale of Genji
BOOKS MENTIONED BY ZEYNAB GAMIELDIEN
•    Jhumpa Lahiri, The Namesake
•    Tara June Winch, The Yield
•    Hisham Matar, The Return; My Friends
•    Anne Enright, The Gathering
•    Colm Tóibín, Brooklyn; Long Island
•    Claire Keegan, Small Things Like These
•    Sally Rooney, Intermezzo
OTHER BOOKS AND WRITERS MENTIONED
•    J.G. Ballard, works
•    Graham Greene, The Quiet American
•    David Malouf, works
•    Patrick White, works
•    Curtis Sittenfeld, Show Don't Tell
•    David Mitchell, works
CREDITS
•    Presenter, Kate Evans and Cassie McCullagh
•    Producer, Kate Evans + Sarah Corbett
•    Sound engineer, Steve Fieldhouse + Harvey O'Sullivan
•    Arts editor, Rhiannon Brown

The Bookshelf's Kate Evans and the Book Show's Claire Nichols joined forces onstage at the 2025 Sydney Writers Festival — with a panel of international writers — to talk favourite and influential books from the 21st century, in the lead up to the inaugural Top 100 Books countdown of the twenty-first century. This live broadcast happened in May 2025 — with Emirati poet Afra Atiq, English chronicler of gay lives, Alan Hollinghurst, Argentinian purveyor of all things dark and surprising, Mariana Enriquez, and New Zealand novelist with a dystopian edge, Catherine Chidgey.
This discussion was first broadcast live on Friday 23 May 2025
For more details of the final Top 100 Books of the 21st Century countdown, follow the link here
BOOKS MENTIONED in this program
ALAN HOLLINGHURST
Alice Munro, Runaway
David Szalay, All That Man Is
Peter Carey, True History of the Kelly Gang
Bryan Washington, Lot
Claire Keegan, Small Things Like These; Foster
MARIANA ENRIQUEZ
Cormac McCarthy, The Road
Dennis Cooper, The Sluts
Jorge Luis Borges, works
Horacio Castellanos Moya, Senselessness
CATHERINE CHIDGEY
Joan Didion, The Year of Magical Thinking
John D'Agata and Jim Fingal, The Lifespan of a Fact
Melissa Lucashenko, Edenglassie
Anna Smaill, The Chime
OTHERS
Paul Lynch, Prophet Song
Kate Grenville, The Secret River
Sarah Winman, Still Life
Markus Zusak, The Book Thief
Melissa Lucashenko, Too Much Lip
Donna Tartt, The Goldfinch
Ann Patchett, Bel Canto
Hilary Mantel, Wolf Hall
Pip Williams, The Dictionary of Lost Words
Trent Dalton, Lola in the Mirror
Robbie Arnott, Limberlost
Amor Towles, A Gentleman in Moscow
Geraldine Brooks, Year of Wonder
Min Jin Lee, Pachinko
Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse
CREDITS
•    Presenter: Kate Evans, Claire Nichols
•    Producer: Kate Evans, Sarah Corbett
•    Sound engineer: Emrys Cronin, Hamish Camilleri, Harvey O'Sullivan
•    Executive producer, Rhiannon Brown