Andrew Ford—writer, composer and ABC radio broadcaster—spent five years scrutinising 400 films, as well as interviewing film directors and composers, in the creation of this book. The undertaking has proved worthwhile. Ford vows upfront to avoid obfuscating academic jargon, along with the peddling of any grand theoretical paradigms. He opts instead for an accessible, erudite narration in what is a considered exploration of the multifarious uses of music and sound editing throughout the history of cinema. Wisely, Ford acknowledges that even lousy films can generate interesting discussion, and so The Scent of Green Papaya is devoted no more exegesis than, say, Sliding Doors. Indeed, Ford is refreshingly egalitarian, surveying not only the classy (Les Enfants Du Paradis, Fanny and Alexander) and classic (Citizen Kane, Psycho), but also the popular (The Bodyguard, Die Hard), the recent (In Bruges, Samson & Delilah), the lurid (Suspiria) and the downright dire (Mamma Mia!). Of his interview subjects, of which there are 10, Ennio Morricone, Sally Potter and Peter Greenaway offer most food for thought. While there might inevitably be blind spots, Ford’s roving curiosity and inclusive prose ensure The Sound of Pictures holds premium interest for all movie enthusiasts, casual and committed.
Gerard Elson is a writer, film blogger and DVD buyer for Readings St Kilda. This review first appeared in the Summer 2010/11 issue of Bookseller+Publisher magazine.
Authors of the top-five books on 
Topping the 
When the goanna family is driven out of its ancestral stomping ground in Sydney’s botanic gardens, they must find a new home. While this requires some searching, Go-Pa finally finds the perfect quarters at the top of the GPO clock tower. As Go-Ma, Go-Pa and Moreton adjust to life in their new neighbourhood, and the newly arrived baby Martin adjusts to life in general, adventures are had and acquaintances are made. Plop becomes a valuable friend, as does Oris from the Laughing Prawn cafe. But not all is well because the Pitt Street Cat is on a rampage. Even more dangerous, Moreton has discovered a human is watching them. I love an animal story with a difference, and 
Ambassador for the Indigenous Literacy Project (ILP) and bestselling children’s author Andy Griffiths writes about his field trip to Warburton, WA in November 2010.
It took five hours to travel from Alice Springs to Uluru on bitumen, and then another seven hours by dirt road from Uluru to Warburton. Trip leaders Deb Dank and Maddy Bower were expecting the road to be a lot worse and had packed not one but two spare tyres in anticipation. As it turned out the road was better than it had been when they’d last visited in June and, fortunately, neither spare was needed. As an added bonus—at least for us wimpy white-skinned Southerners—the weather for this time of the year was unusually mild, hovering around a relatively balmy 25 to 29 degrees. (Deb, however, was wishing she’d brought a coat!)
Travelling through the unusually green desert was continually amazing. We saw camels, kangaroos, goannas, thorny devils, pink galahs, falcons and seemingly endless rivers of fast-moving ants flowing in all directions across the fine red sand, but the highlight for me—apart from the bizarre sight of a tree festooned with old tyres—was the silence. Like a sort of effortless meditation, all we had to do was to get out of the car, listen and there it was. Or perhaps more accurately, there it wasn’t. (At the Uluru visitors centre I’d been struck by the following piece of Anangu advice about not climbing the rock: ‘That’s a really important sacred thing that you are climbing. You shouldn’t climb. It’s not the real thing about this place. The real thing is listening to everything. Listening and understanding everything.’ I don’t know about understanding everything, well, not yet anyway, but I’m starting to get the hang of listening.) 
As newspapers prepare their summer reading lists, Jonathan Franzen’s 
