Mark Rubbo
Mark Rubbo is chairman of Readings. He is a past president of the Australian Booksellers Association and was founding chair of the Melbourne Writers Festival. In 2006 he was awarded a Medal of the Order of Australia.
Blog post — 21 Nov 2023
Mark's Say, November 2023
As I write this, I’m about to head off to Bali for the 20th Ubud Writers & Readers Festival. It’s a testament to its founders, Melbourne-born Janet DeNeefe and her…
Review — 1 Sep 2023
Doll's Eye by Leah Kaminsky
Karin Magnussen was a Nazi scientist who was complicit in research into the pigmentation of irises to provide scientific proof of Nazi racial theories. Originally, her research was done on…
Review — 31 Aug 2023
The Visitors by Jane Harrison
On the 26th of January 1788, a fleet of 11 British ships sailed into Sydney Harbour. From the British side, the arrival is well documented. What we don’t really know…
Blog post — 7 Aug 2023
Mark's Say, August 2023
The horror of the Holocaust has been the topic of many thousands of books; the scale of the savagery wrought by a sophisticated Western society is something that people struggle…
Blog post — 7 Jul 2023
Mark's Say, July 2023
Next month we’ll be partnering with Libro.fm to offer our customers access to audiobooks. Up until now, subscriptions or purchases of audiobooks has been limited to Apple or Amazon’s Audible…
Review — 3 Jul 2023
After the Funeral: Stories by Tessa Hadley
I mentioned to a writer friend that I was reading this collection and she reminded me that I’d recommended Tessa Hadley’s novel Late in the Day to her some years…
Review — 30 Jun 2023
Southern Aurora by Mark Brandi
Jimmy likes to take his little brother Sam down to the railway cutting to watch the trains. If the time is right, they’ll see the silver cars of the Southern…
Blog post — 8 Jun 2023
Mark's Say, June 2023
We’ve moved our offices to West Melbourne and now that my bike commute is a little longer, I’ve taken to listening to podcasts, many of them produced by Readings. I…
Review — 24 May 2023
This Book Thinks Ya Deadly! by Corey Tutt
Corey Tutt is the founder of DeadlyScience, a not-for-profit organisation that provides STEM resources to regional and remote schools in Australia and facilitates mentoring of First Nations students by STEM…
Blog post — 3 May 2023
Mark's Say, May 2023
I’m pretty proud of the bookshops we’ve created over the years. With the help of some very talented architects, we’ve created some beautiful spaces, and our buyers and booksellers have…