For this week’s #ThursdayBooksandBeer I’m reading the second novel by Swiss prodigy Nelio Biedermann, Lázár. It’s one thing to have a second novel published at the age of 22, but to get front cover blurbs from Patti Smith and Daniel Kehlmann calling you “masterly” and “truly great”, surely some Faustian bargain with the devil has been struck. The beer match is therefore a “Faust” Märzen from Working Title. “He read it for the first time in the night of that day, which later would weigh as heavily and imposingly in his life as a large, lichen-covered boulder that diverts the stream of time in a different direction.” #reading #literature #craftbeer

For this week’s #ThursdayBooksandBeer I’m exploring more of Patrick White, the only Australian winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature (Coetzee became an Australian citizen three years after winning). A Fringe of Leaves was White’s first novel published after he won the Nobel and is inspired by the story of Eliza Fraser, who was shipwrecked at K'gari, off the coast of Queensland, in 1836 and lived with the Butchulla people there. White was inspired as much by Sidney Nolan’s paintings of her as by the actual historical details (which are contested anyway). The beer match is a ‘Where the Wild Things Are’ Giraween native ale from Working Title. “Since settling down to life at sea, lulled by air and motion and the mystical permutations of canvas, there was little to convince the passengers that the days had not been created by men for their own convenience.” #reading #literature #nobelprize #craftbeer

For this week’s #ThursdayBooksandBeer I’m indulging in the pure pleasure of the new Elizabeth Strout novel, The Things We Never Say. I’ll be teaching her classic Olive Kitteridge soon for the first time and this new book is an apt reminder of her carefully crafted prose. I’ve paired it with a Luminosa double IPA from the team at Inner North Brewing, also carefully crafted. “So blind we humans are—so blind. To each other and to ourselves, moving through life as though through shadows, putting out a hand in the dark and thinking we have touched someone.” #reading #literature #elizabethstrout #craftbeer

I’m back in Melbourne for this week’s #ThursdayBooksandBeer but I’m mentally travelling via Taiwan Travelogue, the International Booker Prize shortlisted novel by Yáng Shuāng-Zi. It’s a metafictional exploration of 1930s Taiwan from the perspective of an imaginary Japanese author. It’s accompanied by a 2026 Dark Harvest fresh hop IPA that’s a collaboration between Bridge Road and Stone Breweries. #reading #literature #taiwan #craftbeer

It’s another #ThursdayBooksandBeer from Indonesia, back in Jakarta at the end of my trip before flying home tomorrow. I just finished the second novel in the ‘Buru Quartet’, so called because Toer was imprisoned on Buru Island when he composed them in the mid 1970s. Child of All Nations continues the story of Minke, a seemingly well-educated young Javanese man at the turn of the twentieth century who is coming to realise he doesn’t fully understand the mechanisms of colonialism (and capitalism) and the misery it is responsible for. It’s accompanied by the IPA from Bali’s Black Sand Brewery. “So this is what the real Europe is like, the Europe without rival that has been stuffed into my head for so long.” #reading #literature #Indonesia #craftbeer

Okay, admittedly this week’s #ThursdayBooksandBeer is arriving on a Friday, but it’s also a special edition, coming from Sakapatat Beer House and Resto in Yogyakarta, so that’s forgivable, right? My Indonesian location demands an Indonesian novel, and I just finished reading perhaps the most acclaimed of them all: This Earth of Mankind by Pramoedya Ananta Toer, composed initially orally while he was imprisoned on Buru Island and eventually published in 1979 before it was then banned. It’s a historical novel, set just before the turn of the 20th century, and is part love story and part rage against the injustices of the Dutch colonisers. Of course I’ve accompanied it with an Indonesian beer and I managed to find one that wasn’t Bintang: a Small Hazy from Island Brewing in Bali. #reading #literature #Indonesia #postcolonial #craftbeer

When I write, I see the movie in my head first. #filmMastodon #film #movieReference #movie #movieOrPlayParodies #moviereview #filmsky #thursday #thursdaybooksandBeer #mastodon #writing #writingCommunity #writer #writers #authors #authorLife #author #plot #scene #MyWork #worldBuilding #words #mastodon #scribesAndMakers #writersCoffeeClub #pennedpossibilities #screenwriting #hollywood #beer #beerpour #OriginalCharacter #character #process #fiction #storytelling #story

For this week’s #ThursdayBooksandBeer I’m revisiting Childhood, the new book by Brendan James Murray, whose previous book, The School, I admired. It’s a memoir that is simultaneously a reflection on teaching and parenthood and the importance of the imagination for children. It’s accompanied by a ‘Sweet Dreamzzz III’ oat cream IPA with Terpenes from Bacchus Brewery, which is sparking my imagination in all sorts of ways. “Talking to my friend on the telephone, the thing that I couldn’t yet verbalise was that I felt that we—teachers, school leaders, policy makers, parents—were missing something important, something we all probably understood instinctively, but hadn’t yet linked with the lives of our children.” #reading #literature #memoir #imagination #craftbeer

For this week’s #ThursdayBooksandBeer I’m reading Department of the Vanishing by Johanna Bell, a unique assemblage of archival images, documentary poetry and narrative. It’s accompanied by a ‘Summer Breeze’ Hazy Pale Ale from the team at Gales, because you need something to stave off the despair in this time of extinction. “On my first day / they gave me a list / 24 species / their Latin names / descending the page / I saw the mark / they made / for all the birds / already / gone” #reading #literature #poetry #extinction #craftbeer

It’s the last day of Term One, and I’m taking off the first two weeks of next term, so it’s a very sweet #ThursdayBooksandBeer. I’m reading this rollicking take of the 15th century from Jo Harkin, The Pretender, set at the time of King Richard III, with which I’m somewhat familiar, having taught Shakespeare’s play about him. The beer is Port Phillip Hazy IPA, which I’m in no position to connect to the novel. “Dear God, please, if it isn’t forbidden to ask, what exactly do You want?“ #reading #literature #craftbeer