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Books Once again, I did not read many books this year, but the ones I read were nearly all very good science-fiction. As two books were from the same series, you would expect one of them to be my favourite book, and it was: Wool by Hugh Howey. This is the first time a self-published ebook has been my favourite book of the year. I also read Wools’ prequel, Shift, published by Random House. As I noted in my review of Shift , I thought it better written than Wool . I wonder if this is due to the input of an editor at Random House or just Hugh Howey becoming a better writer, or a combination of both. Wool and Shift are both a series of novellas set in a huge underground silo. Wool is the better due to its introducing the claustrophobic and paranoid world of the silo, and its stories are slightly more interesting than Shifts. I loved the tension and flawed characters in both books. The equally brilliant The Twelve , by Justin Cronin, is thus relegated to the third ...

Shift is great apocalyptic science-fiction. It is a prequel to the also excellent Wool . I reviewed Wool earlier this year. To fully appreciate Shift , you need to first read Wool. Anyone who reads Shift without first reading Wool risks missing out on the fun of discovering answers in Shift to questions posed in Wool . Perhaps this is why Shift received only a lukewarm response when reviewed as a standalone book on the Book Club. Wool was originally written as a collection of novellas telling three distinct stories, all set in an underground silo. The silo is huge, with over 130 levels and thousands of people living in it. Inside the silo are farms, schools, power generators and manufacturing plants. The silo’s are very low-tech. Access to computers is limited to a core group of information specialists who are all located on one level of the silo. The general population has no access to phones or other communication devices. There are no television or radio broadca...

 A new Australian newspaper called Saturday is set to come onto the market next year. I hope it does well, we need a lot more diversity in the Australian market. The newspaper will review books, nothing unusual there. What is unusual is the book reviewers will be anonymous, with the by-line for each review just containing made-up initials. In a discussion on the Sunday Extra program on Radio National Erik Jensen, the editor of the newspaper, said that anonymity should lead to more fearless reviews. He said many book reviewers were prone to timid reviews as they did not want to offend writers they knew in the small Australian literary scene. This argument is frequently used to criticise the standard of literary criticism in Australia. Whether it is true, can only really be answered by each individual reviewer. Jensen feels that giving reviewers anonymity will make them more fearless in their reviews, and result in better reviews. Stephen Romei, the literary editor o...