Concrete Playground’s Melbourne Writers Festival 2015 Reading List

Public shaming, climate change, 'wife droughts', WWI love stories; they’re all on the programme for this year's Melbourne Writers Festival.

Coming to the Wheeler Centre over August 20-30, this year’s event will be bringing us provocative authors and controversial intellectuals from all over the world, including Jon Ronson, Naomi Klein, Will Self, Louis de Bernieres — and that’s just a smattering.

The festival's a few weeks away, you still have plenty of time to arm yourself with knowledge. Many of MWF’s 2015 guests have launched some pretty brave, important and confrontational books during the past few years. Get through these five between now and the 20th and you’ll be racing to the mic with your questions.

SO YOU'VE BEEN PUBLICLY SHAMED BY JON RONSON

Another day, another weird or ill-informed or not-clearly-ironic-enough or plain-stupid tweet, another social media frenzy, another sacking, another life in tatters. Welsh journo, author, filmmaker and radio presenter Jon Ronson has delved into the phenomenon of cybershaming and come up with the insightful, honest, hilarious yet frightening book, So You've Been Publicly Shamed. He travels around the world, interviewing high-profile shamees, and exploring the dangers of the democratisation of judgement and justice.

@ MWF: Jon Ronson's 'Shame Culture' is on September 5 at 3.30pm. 

THIS CHANGES EVERYTHING: CAPITALISM VERSUS THE CLIMATE BY NAOMI KLEIN

Reckon you've heard everything there is to know about climate change? Let's face it, it's not until Naomi Klein has put her pen to a topic that we can really say it's had a thorough going-over. In 1999, she gave globalisation a serious shake-up with No Logo, and in 2007, challenged the so-called success of the 'free market' with The Shock Doctrine. In This Changes Everything, Klein argues that climate change isn't so much about carbon as it is about capitalism. If we're planning on the market saving us, we'd better make new plans quicksmart.

@ MYF: Naomi Klein's 'Capitalism and the Climate' is on August 30 at 4pm, while 'An Audience with Naomi Klein' is happening on August 29 at 6pm.

THE DUST THAT FALLS FROM DREAMS BY LOUIS DE BERNIERES

Louis de Bernieres’ ninth novel, The Dust That Falls From Dreams, is an epic love story set against the background of the First World War. Rosie McCosh, a fiery, religious girl is in the middle of sparking a poetry-fuelled romance with her neighbour when he, his brothers and their 'Pals' are sent to various fronts. Their experiences are delivered through a patchwork of letters, journal entries and poems, as they struggle to come to terms with a brutally altered world.

@ MWF: Louis de Bernieres will deliver the festival opening address on 20 August at 6.30pm.

SECOND LIFE BY SJ WATSON

Following up a debut novel that's sold more than four million copies, been translated into 40 languages and successfully tells the story of someone whose memories are erased every night is no easy feat. But SJ Watson's given it a good go with his sophomore work, Second Life. Like Before I Go To Sleep, this novel deals with a troubled protagonist, Julia, whose past is revealed to us bit by nail-biting bit. But her burden is tracking down the murderer of her sister, Kate. In doing so, she's drawn into the dark, dangerous side of online dating.

@ MWF: SJ Watson will speak at Wicked Games on 22 August at 2pm, the Ned Kelly Awards on 22 August at 6.30pm and Dubious Consent on 23 August at 4pm.

THE WIFE DROUGHT BY ANNABEL CRABB

Annabel Crabb's The Wife Drought isn't simply a plea for a lightening of the working, parenting, house-keeping woman's load. It's also a call to widen the debate — to consider why a more flexible approach to employment and the division of duties isn't always readily available to men either. Crabb combines funny anecdotes and personal insights about the media, politics and her working life with some rather revelatory statistics.

@MWF: Annabel Crabb will speak with Kate Grenville at Wives and Mothers on 21 August at 7.30pm.

Melbourne Writers Festival runs August 20-30, head over here for the full program.