AustLit

'Heartfelt and hilarious, this is a book for anyone who has tried to imagine what their dog was thinking.

'Human beings often write about their dogs, but the dogs don't usually get a right of reply. In Love, Clancy, Richard Glover has collated the letters sent by Clancy to his parents in the bush. They are full of a young dog's musings about the oddities of human behaviour, life in the big city, and his own attempts to fit in. You'll meet Clancy as a puppy, making his first attempt to train his humans, then see him grow into a mature activist, demanding more attention be paid to a dog's view of the world. Along the way, there are adventures aplenty, involving robotic vacuum cleaners, songs about cheese, trips to the country and stolen legs of ham - all told with a dog's deep wisdom when it comes to what's important in life.

'With delightful illustrations by cartoonist Cathy Wilcox.' (Publication summary)

'Richard Glover's favourite dinner-party game is called 'Who's Got the Weirdest Parents?'. 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.' (Publication summary)

'Richard Glover′s deeply skewed stories of everyday life are heard each week on ABC radio′s ′Thank God It′s Friday′. He creates a world which is both weird and wry–a world in which Henry VIII provides marriage advice, JD Salinger celebrates tap-water and naked French women bring forth a medical miracle. It′s also a world in which shampoo is eschewed, the second-rate is praised and George Clooney′s haircut can help save a relationship. Bizarre yet commonplace, funny yet relatable, absurd yet oddly warm-hearted, in Richard Glover′s hands you′ll experience the true strangeness of the life you are living right now. INCLUDES: The Bin-It List: 25 things to avoid before you die.' (Publisher's blurb)

'"One day," Philip said, "I'd like to build something bigger ... Like a house. We could just buy a block of land, you know, the four of us, and have a go."

'It was just an idea. Then it started to take shape. In this frank, funny and thought-provoking memoir, Richard Glover describes how he and his friend Philip and their partners built a house in the bush on weekends. It was a huge and exhausting undertaking ... not least because they decided to use mudbricks.

'"Imagine this -- with mudbrick you have a building that is made out of the very earth it stands on ... There is another thing: the stuff is free. Once we buy the land we'll have no money left. This way we can get started as soon as we have the block."

'In the end it took three years simply to make the bricks. As for the house itself ...

'But the process gave Richard the opportunity to examine things he had never quite reconciled to himself - big things like what it means to be a man, the nature of male relationships, fatherhood - and to challenge himself in the kind of blokey environment he had rejected.

'Above all, the mud house proved that even if it "wasn't the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel" there is nothing like the satisfaction of making something with your own hands.' (From the publisher's website.)