Kisses, chaos and Dustin Hoffman’s memoir: The 15 must-reads of this month

We’re slap bang in the middle of the crucial Christmas season for bookshops and there are still loads of books being published. Here is a selection of some of the new ones out this month.Illuminated RuinsMiriam SvedUltimo, $34.99Miriam Sved’s third novel, after the acclaimed A Universe of Sufficient Size and Game Day, is set in Hong Kong in the mid ’50s as doctors Uri and Lujza Weiss make a new life after fleeing war-torn Europe, avoiding the fate of millions of their fellow Jews, and surviving the Japanese occupation. New friends Hugh and Nancy Mackay bring fresh zest into their lives, but Hugh has connections that could spell trouble for them. As our review says, Sved writes in careful, measured prose “about universal themes of migration: of dislocation and upheaval, and of having to hide aspects of one’s identity and background to start anew”.Becoming a ManEds., Julia Baird & Sam Baird SparksFourth Estate, $34.99Julia Baird was concerned about the influence of “the manosphere” on her 16-year-old son Sam so she asked men in her family and friends to write him a letter “reflecting on what it means to be a good bloke”. She realised “you don’t need to go far to find men committed to empathy, honour service and decency”. So mother and son have teamed up to edit this collection of new, short pieces from various people to help others to become those good blokes. Letter writers include Christos Tsiolkas, Richard Tognetti, Thomas Mayo, Kon Karapanagiotidis and many more, some famous and some not so well known, but all with valuable contributions. As Lincoln Tarrow-Lynch puts it, “you are never expected to be the ‘perfect man’ but rather strive to be the best person you can be”.Julia Baird and her son Sam edited a collection of letters offering advice about how to be a good man.James BrickwoodDark Days HotelAnna DownesAffirm Press, $34.99When “resus nurse” Liv Cotton is confronted by a desperate and bedraggled woman outside her hospital, she is puzzled by the significance of the wooden disc pressed into her hand. It’s the start of a journey that leads to the mystery at the dark heart of Tasmania’s Aonarian health resort. But Liv isn’t the only one disturbed by the unidentified woman’s fate. Little is as it first seems in this fourth thriller by Anna Downes, who ratchets up the tension and delves into conflicting areas of health, ageing, dodgy science and the power of wealth.Art ManiaKitty HauserGiramondo, $32.95Geoffrey Bardon has long been hailed as the man behind the emergence of the Aboriginal painting movement after his spell teaching art in Papunya in the 1970s. Art historian Kitty Hauser has written a scrupulously researched life of Bardon, whose role as an “intercultural mediator” has long been interrogated. Art Mania reveals much about this troubled man who underwent the controversial Deep Sleep Therapy at Chelmsford Hospital after leaving Papunya. Hauser has delved into Bardon’s archives and “found a phantasmic version of Papunya that filtered into his films and published writings” and makes the analogy between assimilationist settlement and Chelmsford as institutions that sought “a whitewashing of minds, in one case, and of entire cultures in the other”.Mr Badger and the Boubles Grand HotelLeigh HobbsAllen & Unwin, $26.99As Boubles (pronounced Boublay) Grand Hotel prepares to celebrate its 175th anniversary, there is a pest on the loose. The day before, all was spick and span, but when events manager Mr Badger turns up for the big day he finds the hotel in pandemonium – burnt biscuits, cold tea, missing uniforms and strange creatures in guests’ beds. The owners, Sir Cecil and Lady Celia, leave Mr B and his trusty assistant, Miss Pim, to find out what’s going on. Leigh Hobbs, former Australian Children’s Laureate and the creator of Old Tom, Horrible Harriet and other deliciously reprehensible characters, is on top form in his latest picture book, one that will delight readers of all ages.The KissKatie BarclayReaktion, $39.99In that wonderful film Casablanca, Dooley Wilson sang “you must remember this, a kiss is just a kiss”. But according to Macquarie University professor Katie Barclay, it’s so much more. “The kiss,” she writes, “is not just important to lovers but supports the functioning of social and political life for Europeans and their descendants.” Central to the book is the idea that the kiss is “inherited, that how we think, feel and experience the kiss is shaped by cultural knowledge passed down across generations”. Scholarly, absorbing and enlightening, Barclay’s book benefits from illustrations ranging from religious iconography, film and that extraordinary image of a worker delivering the kiss of life to an unconscious colleague.Dooley Wilson sang the song and Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman did the kissing in Casablanca.AlamyÉlisabethEric RohmerMcNally Editions, $32.99As a young man and long before he turned into one of the greatest French New Wave film directors, Eric Rohmer – not his real name – published in 1946 (and under another pseudonym) his only novel. Published in English for the first time, it’s set in 1939 on the cusp of war – although you’d hardly know it – like several of his films, the book tackles the lives of teenagers on summer holiday. In his foreword, André Aciman points out that Rohmer’s discerning insights into conflicting emotions and psychology “will end up appearing in all his films”. There is characteristically plenty of dialogue and attention to detail, but Rohmer later turned away from literature, explaining in an interview that he no longer believed in it: “I felt that its time had passed, that cinema had supplanted it.”StorytellingIsabel AllendeBloomsbury, $34.99Only a couple of weeks ago, the Chilean novelist somewhat controversially won the Spanish Planeta prize for an unpublished sequel to her best-known novel, The House of the Spirits. She entered the prize, worth €1 million, under the name Luz Ventura. No need for that in this short book about her views on writing and the role it has played for her – it “gives meaning to my life”. Her mother told her that when something didn’t work, to eliminate it without regret. “She was referring to clothes and toxic friendships. I apply that to my writing and my husband’s.” She offers advice on character, plot, structure, magical realism, and much more.Isabel Allende gives tips about writing in her latest book.Eric RisbergOne For SorrowFavel ParrettLetterwing, $34.99If you’re at school and lucky, something might click with a particular teacher. For Einar Halvorsen it’s just before the Second World War in Trondheim, Norway when that “bastard Berg” is replaced by Johan Kristiansen, younger than other teachers and away from his Oslo home. When Johan reads Hemingway’s In Another Country to Einar it has an impact that lingers for the rest of his life; his teacher was “the man who taught me about the power of stories and words”. But Parrett’s fourth novel shifts into darker territory when the Nazis invade and make demands on teachers, and Johan’s relationship with Einar’s mother develops into something new.Reasoning With ChaosWaleed AlyAllen & Unwin, $34.99Regular readers of The Age and Sydney Morning Herald will be familiar with the Friday columns of former Project presenter Waleed Aly. They are written with care as he grapples with issues and finds more to say, invariably with greater nuance than many other writers. This is more than a simple collection of pieces starting in late 2024. While resisting the urge to edit them, he identifies new connections and positions them thematically. Writing a column is “to come to grips with things. If so, this is a time to write … If journalism is the first draft of history, commentary is a first grasp at meaning.”Waleed Aly writes columns of great nuance.Jarvis McManusJust DessertsKerry GreenwoodAllen & Unwin, $34.99What a treat for fans of the creator of Phryne Fisher and Corinna Chapman. The prolific Kerry Greenwood died last year and readers assumed that Murder in the Cathedral would be her final offering. But she had finished a first draft of this latest adventure featuring the proprietor of the Earthly Delights bakery, and it was edited by her publisher with Greenwood’s “long-term beloved”. From the first sentence – “I love the smell of sourdough in the morning” – the reader can bask in the warmth of the world Greenwood creates, her characters and her wit as Corinna faces the latest disruptions to her tranquility, not least a threat to her home, dodgy deals and kidnappers, before the next batch of bread can rise.Going DigitalMargaret SimonsLa Trobe University Press, $39.99Margaret Simons was commissioned to write about the ABC in 2016. OK, she had other writing to do, but you have to admire her stamina and commitment to tell the story of Australia’s “most important cultural institution” during a period of change. As she puts it, “at the ABC, for something new to start, something old must come to an end”. Ken Inglis’ two-volume history concluded in 2006; Simons’ own second volume will follow in due course. She likens the ABC to a cruise ship, “a floating city that is a community in itself, and also impacts every community it touches”, and recounts its story in fascinating detail.After The Graduate, Dustin Hoffman starred with Jon Voight in Midnight Cowboy.Look At MeDustin HoffmanGallery, $49.99, November 10The American actor, now 89, has starred in some of the great Hollywood films of the past 60 years, but initially wanted little more than to be on the stage: “To be honest, I looked down on American movies, compared with theatre,” he writes in this wide-ranging memoir written with New Yorker journalist Ariel Levy. His breakout role was as the all-American Benjamin Braddock in The Graduate and “everyone thought I was wrong for the part”. How wrong they were. He never wanted to be typecast and followed up with the very different Midnight’s Cowboy. But he hasn’t lost any of his on-screen charisma judging by this year’s Tuner, and some of that transfers to the page.I Give You My SilenceMario Vargas Llosa; trans., Adrian Nathan WestFaber & Faber, $34.99, November 17The great Peruvian Nobel Prize winner finished this novel three years before his death in April 2025, knowing it would be his last after a 2020 diagnosis of a terminal illness. Now published in Australia – it was first available in English in the US earlier this year – it is the story of a music journalist commissioned to write a life of the master of the Creole waltz, who promptly ups and dies. As Peter Craven said in his review, I Give You My Silence is “a book that is, yes, manifestly flawed but one that nevertheless demonstrates the touch of a master at every turn”.OriginsJames BoyceBlack Inc., $39.99, November 17James Boyce is an unusual historian: self-employed to the extent that he took a job in a bookshop during the seven years he spent on this account of the first 37 years of colonial settlement in Australia and has long had a stall in Salamanca market at which he sells his books. The former Age book of the year winner (for 1835: The Founding of Melbourne and the Conquest of Australia) says his book “dares to imagine a new origin story for the nation”, acknowledging the “earth-shattering” impact on the Indigenous population, but also the impact of those people and the environment on the first settlers, particularly the convicts. As he puts it in his characteristically clear prose, “from this mutually transformative encounter that distinctive new culture emerged that can legitimately be called Australian”.The Booklist is a weekly newsletter for book lovers from Jason Steger. Get it delivered every Friday.