In a collection like this, which features contributions by many of Australia's best writers of fiction, poetry, criticism, essays, and memoir, it is not surprising that there are many delights. At the age of eight, Luke Davies writes to Hergé, not doubting for a minute that his letter will be answered – and so it is. Tegan Bennett Daylight writes an excellent love letter to Helen Garner. Joan London's discovery of Elizabeth Harrower's The Watch Tower (1966) is recounted briefly, with urgent power. Malcolm Knox rails against e-books, comically, for preventing him from assessing strangers on the basis of their literary tastes. Carrie Tiffany finds out the hard way that you can't get to Wessex via British Rail. Sunil Badami reflects on how little we remember of what we read, even when 'the books I love are still a part of me'. Geordie Williamson's disillusioned adult return to Arthur Ransome's Swallows and Amazons (1930) mirrors my own. Gail Jones reads Eleanor Marx reading Emma Bovary. And David Malouf on Jane Eyre (1847) is one of the most sublime pieces of literary appreciation that I have encountered.