Every shopping centre needs a newsagent. Where else do you pick up the weekend paper, test your…read moreluck with a lotto ticket or scratchie, or grab that last minute birthday card? News on Newmarket is a nice little newsagent in the Reading Newmarket Shopping Centre. It does not have the biggest range of greeting cards, magazines and stationary but it does have all the basics. It is the place I go to pick up the Weekend Australian and the staff are always happy and chipper. The store is fairly small and when there are a lot of people checking their lotto tickets there can be a little bit of a line but this only rarely happens. On a whole, News on Newmarket is your fairly average newsagent but definitely a necessary addition to the shopping centre.

All the cliches about Sunday newspapers being a waste of time are true of The Sunday Mail, the…read morelightweight Sunday edition of The Courier Mail. Reviewing The Sunday Mail can be done via a Simpsons quote. (I love it when life can be thus conveyed.) In the episode 'Guess Who's Coming to Criticize Dinner?' Homer is a food critic for the local Sunday newspaper and gets into an argument with his editor: "Editor: Listen, you've got to shape up. Next week is the Taste of Springfield festival. You'll be reviewing every restaurant in town. Remember, people have certain expectations about the LifeWays section. Homer: Really, like what? Editor: Oh, I don't know. Astrology, "Brunhilda," vacation horror stories, articles about chronic fatigue syndrome. You know, chick crap." Blunt and crude but basically true of The Sunday Mail. Male crap comes in the form of stuff about cars and fishing. Unisex crap is supplied via the weddings pages, where you can look at photos of people you don't know doing what literally hundreds of Australians do every day. Unfortunately the lifestyle section spills far outside of its designated lines into what is supposed to be serious news sections. If you want to read a newspaper that has fluff and serious local news stories in equal amounts, pick up mX Magazine, the free daily rag available in the CBD. It's more fun, it involves amusing reader input and it will ink up your fingers just as well as The Sunday Mail does.

I'd probably give another half star if I could because I don't mind the old Sunday Mail. After…read moreyears of seeing it every Sunday morning we decided we could do without it and got divorced without a qualm some months ago when I cancelled my subscription at the local newsagent. I didn't have time in my life for it any more; it often went only half read, or would get a quick flick through on Sunday night, to check out the first few pages of hard-ish news, the recipes, then the lifestyle fitness pages (priorities, right?) and of course the stars. Yep, I could do without it. But I do miss it, especially on a rainy Sunday morning like this one. Think I might just wander up to the corner and get me one.