‘At the Byron Bay Writers’ Festival, a friend recommended Ian McEwan, and they were spot on. His latest book Sweet Tooth is a clever and intelligent work by one of England’s Top 50 post-war authors. Although it is partly a spy book about MI5, it’s also about literature and relationships. Perhaps because it is set in the early 70s – a time of miners’ strikes, power cuts, IRA bombings and general questioning of England’s postwar relevance – it left me with a very depressed feeling, a view apparently not shared by other readers.’ – Simon
‘Bill Hicks died in 1994 just 32 years old. He was a comedian in the tradition of Lenny Bruce – dark, self-destructive, acidly honest and unable to look away from the abyss. His book, Love All the People (Constable), is a mixture of press articles, letters and standup routines that gives a glimpse of his genius.’ – David
The Family Law by Benjamin Law. ‘I rarely laugh when I’m reading a book but this book was laugh-out-loud funny. Really touching in parts. Great portrait of an Aussie family who just happen to be Chinese, living in Caloundra.’ – Mandy
The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle. ‘Despite this being “Echo Drudges Recommend”, I hated this book with a fiery passion. It did not make me feel at peace. Rather, it made me want to chew my arm off. This is poorly written metaphysics repackaged for those who are ill-educated and cloistered in a materialistic Judeo-Christian mindset. Tolle has bastardised and made utterly toxic one of the central themes of Buddhism. What an arsehole.’ – Hans
Winter’s Bone by Daniel Woodrell. ‘A hauntingly bleak story of a dysfunctional Ozark family. Woodrell’s sentence construction is second to none and the story’s characters are so real that the reader connects with their desperation, particularly the plight of the 16-year-old who heads the family. Not a long read, so a difficult book to put down till the final page.’ – Pete
For four decades The Echo has printed the stories some people loved, some people hated, and some pretended not to read. If you want us to keep telling the truth, the real truth, not the sugar-coated version. We’ll need your support to keep the presses rolling. 
