Book picks similar to
Velocity: A Memoir by Mandy Sayer


non-fiction
biography
australian-author
love

Made in Reality


Stephanie Pratt - 2015
    In Made in Reality, Stephanie gives an exclusive insight into the trials and tribulations of life on reality TV, taking us behind the scenes of The Hills, Made in Chelsea and even the Big Brother House. Nothing is off-limits, from the drama of her relationship with Spencer Matthews, to her issues with her brother Spencer Pratt. But there is more to Stephanie than the glamour of Beverly Hills and the Kings Road. For the first time, she shares her struggles with drug addiction, eating disorders, and the pressures of fame in the internet age.Inspiring, fascinating, and insightful throughout, this is an honest account of the truth behind reality.

Boomer and Me: A Memoir of Motherhood, and Asperger's


Jo Case - 2012
    Like Helen Garner, she has a steady, careful eye, and uses it to bring back news of glorious, rackety life.’Susan JohnsonMe: ‘Are you going to be a good boy this year?’Boomer: ‘Uh huh. I have no interest in toilet humour.’Me: ‘You don’t?’Boomer: ‘No. No interest at all. I mean, I think “it’s funny”when, in The Bad Book, Terence takes off all his clothes.And when Horrid Henry shows his undies. But I wouldthink to myself, “That is something I should not do”.’Between juggling work, joint custody and the ordinary demands of motherhood, Jo tries to work out why her son Leo (aka Boomer) is finding it hard to fit in. His wit wins him friends, but the rituals of friendship—like learning to compromise—are proving challenging. Is it because he’s an only child? Could he be gifted?When Leo is diagnosed with Asperger’s Syndrome, Jo fears what it means—and sees herself, and her family, through new eyes. Trapped in a cycle of doubt and discovery, she wonders how you can stay true to who you are and fit in. What the hell is ‘normal’ anyway?This is the bittersweet story of a twenty-first-century family, and why being different isn’t a disability—it just takes some getting used to.

Flesh Wounds


Richard Glover - 2015
    It's a game he always thinks he'll win. There was his mother, a deluded snob, who made up large swathes of her past and who ran away with Richard's English teacher, a Tolkien devotee, nudist and stuffed-toy collector. There was his father, a distant alcoholic, who ran through a gamut of wives, yachts and failed dreams. And there was Richard himself, a confused teenager, vulnerable to strange men, trying to find a family he could belong to. As he eventually accepted, the only way to make sense of the present was to go back to the past - but beware of what you might find there. Truth can leave wounds - even if they are only flesh wounds.Part poignant family memoir, part rollicking venture into a 1970s Australia, this is a book for anyone who's wondered if their family is the oddest one on the planet. The answer: 'No'. There is always something stranger out there.'Sad, funny, revealing, optimistic and hopeful.' Jeanette Winterson

Jerilderie Letter


Ned Kelly - 1930
    This is the reverbative document which inspired novelist Peter Carey's highly praised reinvention of the Kelly tale, True History of the Kelly Gang.

Wasted: A Story of Alcohol, Grief and a Death in Brisbane


Elspeth Muir - 2016
    Later that night he wandered to the Story Bridge. He put his phone, wallet, T-shirt and thongs on the walkway, climbed over the railing, and jumped thirty metres into the Brisbane River below.Three days passed before police divers pulled his body out of the water. When Alexander had drowned, his blood-alcohol reading was almost five times the legal limit for driving.Why do some of us drink so much, and what happens when we do? Fewer young Australians are drinking heavily, but the rates of alcohol abuse and associated problems—from blackouts to sexual assaults and one-punch killings—are undiminished.Intimate and beautifully told, Wasted illuminates the sorrows, and the joys, of drinking.

A Sunburnt Childhood


Toni Tapp Coutts - 2016
    But there was no 'big house' here - Toni did not grow up in a large homestead. She lived in a shack that had no electricity and no running water. The oppressive climate of the Territory - either wet or dry - tested everyone. Fish were known to rain from the sky and sometimes good men drank too much and drowned trying to cross swollen rivers.Toni grew up with the Aboriginal people who lived and worked on the station, and got into scrapes with her ever-increasing number of siblings. She loved where she grew up - she was happy on the land with her friends and family, observing the many characters who made up the community on Killarney. When she was sent to boarding school all she wanted to do was go back to the land she loved, despite the fact that her parents' marriage was struggling as Bill Tapp succumbed to drink and June Tapp refused to go under with him.Toni's love of the natural world and of people alike has resulted in a tender portrait of a life that many people would consider tough. She brings vividly to the page a story seldom seen: a Territory childhood, with all its colour, characters and contradictions.

Poum and Alexandre: A Paris Memoir


Catherine de Saint Phalle - 2016
    Everything they do subverts their firm intention of keeping up appearances. They meet just after the war in liberated Paris but they cannot quite free themselves from the many strings attached to them - the old aunts, the sisters, the cousins, the nuns and the ominous concierges who dog their footsteps.Alexandre is a banker and a Resistant and lives in a world of numbers and Roman emperors. Poum resides in the Odyssey and in her bed, hiding from the mysterious disapproval of their relatives, for they both seem to persist in some irreparable faux pas which has them wading through a lifetime pickle. Their daughter, Catherine, would like to help but she seems to be part of the problem.This is no ordinary childhood, and Catherine de Saint Phalle’s acceptance of her parents, despite their flaws, shines through, propelling us head first into their strange, yet beautiful, Parisian world.Poum and Alexandre is a searingly honest, humorous and moving elegy to family and place, and a meditation on the ways they ultimately define us.

The Family Law


Benjamin Law - 2010
    It’s impossible not to let oneself go along for the ride and emerge at the book’s end enlightened, touched, thrilling with laughter.’ – Marieke HardyMeet the Law family – eccentric, endearing and hard to resist. Your guide: Benjamin, the third of five children and a born humorist. Join him as he tries to answer some puzzling questions: Why won’t his Chinese dad wear made-in-China underpants? Why was most of his extended family deported in the 1980s? Will his childhood dreams of Home and Away stardom come to nothing? What are his chances of finding love?Hilarious and moving, The Family Law is a linked series of tales from a wonderful new Australian talent.

Head Over Heels: A Story Of Tragedy, Triumph and Romance in the Australian Bush


Sam Bailey - 2006
    After months of struggle, he learned how to resume his life as a farmer, running a sheep and cattle property in northwest New South Wales. then he met and fell in love with Jenny Black, an ABC Rural journalist, proposed to her on air, and the rest is history. Jenny tells Sam's story in his own laconic, wry style. By turns romantic, funny and moving, it affirms the strength of iron-willed determination and the power of love.

The Anti-Cool Girl


Rosie Waterland - 2015
    Rosie Waterland has never been cool. Growing up in housing commission, Rosie was cursed with a near perfect, beautiful older sister who dressed like Mariah Carey on a Best & Less budget while Rosie was still struggling with various toilet mishaps. She soon realised that she was the Doug Pitt to her sister's Brad, and that cool was not going to be her currency in this life. But that was only one of the problems Rosie faced. With two addicts for parents, she grew up amidst rehab stays, AA meetings, overdoses, narrow escapes from drug dealers and a merry-go-round of dodgy boyfriends in her mother's life. Rosie watched as her dad passed out/was arrested/vomited, and had to talk her mum out of killing herself. As an adult, trying to come to grips with her less than conventional childhood, Rosie navigated her way through eating disorders, nude acting roles, mental health issues and awkward Tinder dates. Then she had an epiphany: to stop pretending to be who she wasn't and embrace her true self - a girl who loved drinking wine in her underpants on Sunday nights - and become an Anti-Cool Girl. An irrepressible, blackly comic memoir, Rosie Waterland's story is a clarion call for Anti-Cool Girls everywhere. 'If Augusten Burroughs and Lena Dunham abandoned their child in an Australian housing estate, she'd write this heartbreaking, hilarious book. It made me laugh uproariously, then feel terrible for her, then laugh all over again. Sorry, Rosie.' Dominic Knight, The Chaser 'Hilarious, wise, gutsy, clear-eyed, devastating and uplifting. It's a marvel.' Richard Glover

Mao's Last Dancer


Li Cunxin - 2003
    In 1979, the young dancer arrived in Texas as part of a cultural exchange, only to fall in love with America-and with an American woman. Two years later, through a series of events worthy of the most exciting cloak-and-dagger fiction, he defected to the United States, where he quickly became known as one of the greatest ballet dancers in the world. This is his story, told in his own inimitable voice.THE BASIS FOR A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE

Her Husband: Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath - A Marriage


Diane Wood Middlebrook - 2003
    In this stunning new account of their marriage, Diane Middlebrook draws on a trove of newly available papers to craft a beautifully written portrait of Hughes as a man, as a poet, and as a husband haunted?and nourished?his entire life by his relationship to Sylvia Plath. Her Husband is a triumph of the biographer?s art and an up-close look at a couple who saw each other as the means to becoming who they wanted to be: writers and mythic representations of a whole generation.

One Hundred Years of Dirt


Rick Morton - 2018
    A horrific accident thrusts his mother and siblings into a world impossible for them to navigate, a life of poverty and drug addictionOne Hundred Years of Dirt is an unflinching memoir in which the mother is a hero who is never rewarded. It is a meditation on the anger, fear of others and an obsession with real and imagined borders. Yet it is also a testimony to the strength of familial love and endurance.

The Most Beautiful: My Life with Prince


Mayte Garcia - 2017
    In The Most Beautiful, a title inspired by the hit song Prince wrote about their legendary love story, Mayte Garcia for the first time shares the deeply personal story of their relationship and offers a singular perspective on the music icon and their world together: from their unconventional meeting backstage at a concert (and the long-distance romance that followed), to their fairy-tale wedding (and their groundbreaking artistic partnership), to the devastating losses that ultimately dissolved their romantic relationship for good. Throughout it all, they shared a bond more intimate than any other in Prince's life. No one else can tell this story or can provide a deeper, more nuanced portrait of Prince - both the famously private man and the pioneering, beloved artist - than Mayte, his partner during some of the most pivotal personal and professional years of his career. The Most Beautiful is a book that will be returned to for decades, as Prince's music lives on with generations to come.

Back, After the Break


Osher Günsberg - 2018
    It's hard to remember a time when Osher Gunsberg (or Andrew G as he was then) wasn't on TV - he's just always been there, looking at ease in the spotlight, beaming a big smile, with a questionable haircut. He was there hanging out with The Offspring backstage at the Warped Tour on Channel V; announcing to a national audience of three million people that Guy Sebastian was our first Australian Idol; and later capturing the heart of the nation by hosting every season of The Bachelor, The Bachelorette and now Bachelor in Paradise. But while everything looks great from the outside, the real picture has not always been quite so rosy. Osher has always known he's different to most other people. Struggling with anxiety, panic attacks and weight issues since he was young, he tried for years to drink away the anxiety and depression. He ended up unemployed, divorced, suicidal and certifiable on the other side of the world, yet somehow he managed to put the broken pieces of his mind back together and make a life for himself again. He lives with a mental illness - and he's come to terms with it to live an authentic, rich and fulfilling life.A revealing, raw, funny and heartfelt memoir from one of Australia's most well-known and well-liked celebrities.