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Alas, this is the final part to the three-part interview featuring Nicole Murphy, author of Secret Ones and Power Unbound. If you’d like to learn more about the author or the series, she’s also got a featured website and a regularly updated blog which you can access here. But before you do that, check out [...]

There’s a long tradition of doctors turning their hands to writing, either concurrently or after they hang up their stethoscopes. I think (and here I go making sweeping generalisations) this is in part because many of them always wanted to write but ended up in medicine because they were clever and had a solid way [...]

Aaaaand we’re back, like I promised, with the second of a three-part interview with Aussie author Nicole Murphy! 4. What can fans of Secret Ones expect from Power Unbound? The same mix of magic, romance, adventure and mystery but this time focussing on Maggie’s best friend Ione and her new love, Stephen. Oh, and by [...]

50 Steps to Lose 50kg and Keep it Off by Sally Symonds Reviewed by AliceE At last, a weight loss book that doesn’t tell you to give up an entire food group or live entirely on protein. Sally’s book is based on personal experience, so all of the steps she gives here are actually achievable [...]

I’ve been delaying this for a little while, reviewing books is delicate business, and well, Gab Williams is a friend, but I guess I’m gunna have to suck it up and just come out with it: Beatle Meets Destiny is all kinds of fantastic. I first read Beatle last year, and loved it. But that was after [...]

This woman is fabulous, fabulous, fabulous. Nicole Murphy hails from a location close to me (Queanbeyan) and her hubby is – get this, you fellow Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland fans – one of the top croquet players in Oz. Well, get your flamingo mallets ready, cos we’re lucky enough to have Nicole Murphy on the [...]

Some blogs back I wrote of how bewildered I was that there were people who didn’t read for pleasure. I’d made the awful discovery courtesy of a now ex-boyfriend who didn’t/doesn’t—gasp, swoon—read. The relationship didn’t go or end well although, in retrospect, a writer and rapacious reader trying to find common ground with a non-writer [...]

Last week, author Kate Forsyth blogged her Best Books of 2010 list. Kate reads A LOT and she reads widely. So much so, that her list is broken up into ten categories covering everything from fantasy to historical to memoir to non-fiction. It made me think about my best books of 2010 list, which I [...]

Mr Tripp Smells a Rat is a hilarious Walker Story from Sandy McKay and Ruth Paul. Walker Stories are great for newly independent readers because they comprise three short and entertaining stories, offering reading in manageable bites. This means a new reader can enjoy the satisfaction of reading an entire story on their own from [...]

Today’s special guest on the blog is Brisbane author Will Elliott. He’s stopped by to have a quick chat – his Pendulum trilogy is a creepalicious brand of fantasy, beginning with Pilgrims and continuing with the recent release of Shadow. Now Will, I read somewhere online that you’re not into “genre labels”…how would you then [...]

I’ve talked about ebooks in the cloud on this blog before, but with the launch of Booki.sh (partnered with Readings) and the imminent arrival of Google eBooks, we have two very viable cloud ebook systems setting up shop in Australia. Despite very different backing and support, these two platforms share a similar philosophy – ownership [...]

In 2007, when a 12-year-old child successfully applied for hormonal treatment to prevent their female puberty because they wanted to live as a boy, it got Australian writer Jane McCredie wondering, what is it that makes us a boy or a girl? From cradle to grave, our perceived gender has a fundamental affect on what [...]

TITLE: Proust’s Overcoat AUTHOR: Lorenza Foschini TRANSLATOR: Eric Karpeles PUBLISHER: Portobello Books. (Allen & Unwin, PO Box 8500, 83 Alexander St. NSW 2065, Australia. January 2011) ISBN: 9781846272714   128 pages. This is a curious little book. It is not so much about Proust’s overcoat or about Marcel Proust himself but about a collector, a bibliophile, Jacques [...]

Charlie and the Red Hot Chilli Pepper is a hilarious chapter book from Australian children’s author, Sheryl Gwyther. It’s the story of a very determined girl, Charlie who  loves growing and eating chillies and this year she has a very good chance of winning the Flaming Hot Chilli Competition. Nobody else in Charlie’s family even [...]

We resume discussion of The Woman in White by the indomitable Wilkie Collins today, specifically the second half of the book. If you happened to miss the first part of my discussion (detailing the story/characters up to page 309 in my edition of the book), you can access that discussion post first, by clicking here. [...]

Are you YEARNing for some spice in your life (see what I did there) ? We have a fantastic Boomerang Blogs giveaway over at the main page which I think would float the boat of some of you readers. So I thought I’d just let you know, because I’m kinda cool like that. Tobsha Learner’s [...]

“It’s Monday! What are you reading?” is a weekly event hosted by Sheila at Bookjourney to share with others what you’ve read the past week and planning to read next. Finished The Woman in White, by Wilkie Collins Immortal Beloved, by Cate Tiernan Plugging Along The Magician, by Raymond E. Feist Beatrice and Virgil, by [...]

I’m back in my apartment and online after—to use the most overused term in Brisbane these days—surreal turn of events: the 2011 Brisbane flood, which kicked off on 11/1/11 and blurred the next week or so’s worth of sleepless, stressful days. My much-loved apartment was in one of the suburbs that was in the firing [...]

All the iPad/Kindle/e-book debates in the world can rage however much they want. I’ve come to realise that as much as I love paper-based books, they’re impractical for two of my main past times: eating and exercising. I’m someone who can’t read enough at any time, whose web browser homepage is a newspaper, who can’t [...]

Last week I posted part 1 of my interview with anthologist, Tony Bradman. But there is more to Tony than anthologies. He is also an accomplished writer with dozen of books to his credit. Today, Tony is back at Literary Clutter answering my questions about writing. You are a writer as well as an anthologist. [...]

Author, Bill Condon always manages to get right to the heart of young adults and the issues they face. His book Give Me Truth, a story about family breakdown is no exception. Teens, Caitlin and David have a lot more in common than they realise. Aside from attending the same school and being involved in [...]

The following is the second part of a two-part post. To read Part 1, click here. With the advent of digital entertainment, there’s a whole new set of metadata that can be collected about a book, and there’s no doubt that publishers would like to get hold of this information. But it doesn’t, I would [...]

Another week, another ex-publisher announcing the death of publishers. This time around it’s Matt Shatz, erstwhile Vice President of Digital for Random House in the US, now Head of Strategic Content Relations for Nokia … whatever that means. Shatz’s argument is simple: the role of publishing as a middle man between authors and retailers is [...]

One day in Melbourne three years ago, Jay Kristoff decided to write a down a scene that was niggling him. Three years later, he’s about to become a published author. His first book, Stormdancer, which he describes as being set in a feudal steampunk Japan to a Rage Against the Machine soundtrack, is currently in [...]

I intended to review Girl Saves Boy at Kids’ Book Capers last year, but before I knew it 2010 was over and I’d run out of time. I sat on this book for a while because I was savouring it. Every time I picked it up I found something different to like about it – [...]

When I first read Prophecy of the Sisters (oh gosh, has it really been two years?) I fell completely in love with the story Michelle Zink had created. Then I began to pursue the Young Adult Gothic/Victorian genre further, and while it left my feelings on the story generally well in the positive, I also [...]

There’s nothing quite like finding a publication that not only ‘gets’ what you go through daily, it both teaches you something and makes you laugh. That’s what I found when I stumbled across first the blog and then the book by ‘The Subversive Editor’ Carol Fisher Saller (AKA a senior manuscript editor at the University [...]

Get out your ballet shoes and dust off childhood dreams of dancing, ballet is back in fashion. Black Swan, a psychological horror movie  starring Natalie Portman as a technically talented but passionless ballet performer, is hitting the cinemas on Thursday. The movie has attracted a lot of attention, including picking up a Golden Globe for [...]

Over Christmas there was a lot of coverage in the media about overseas online retailers and the fact that they don’t have to pay Good and Services Tax (GST) on goods supplied to Australian customers. In response to perceived Australian Government inaction on this issue, domestic retailers Gerry Harvey, Myer et al. have threatened to [...]

TITLE:  A Small Furry Hope: Dog Rescue and the Meaning of Life AUTHOR: Steven Kotler PUBLISHER:      Bloomsbury (December 2010) ISBN: 9781408817344        307 pages. Reviewed by Ann Skea (ann@skea.com). Never judge a book by its cover. Especially this one! When the Australian edition arrived on my doorstep and I saw the title and the cute sleeping [...]

“It’s Monday! What are you reading?” is a weekly event hosted by Sheila at Bookjourney to share with others what you’ve read the past week and planning to read next. I thought this might be a new ritual to start in 2011, and it’ll help me to keep track of what I’m supposed to be [...]

Last week I discussed, among other things, the rise and rise of Amazon’s Kindle in the ebook space over the past few months, and how difficult it is going to be for other retailers to get into this space. Despite this, I’ve been happy with my choice to buy a Kindle, and still think that [...]

The following is the second part of a two-part post. Click here for Part 1. More amazing to me is the co-op payments involved in Amazon’s recommendation engine. If you’ve ever bought anything from Amazon, you’ll have seen the panel at the bottom of every screen telling you what other products people who liked this [...]

The first image from the film adaptation of Breaking Dawn has been released, and it’s certainly going to whet fans’ appetites. Sourced from a new issue of Entertainment Weekly in the States, the pic shows Robert Pattinson and Kristen Stewart in a bed, presumably, doing it. I’m sure the wait for the film just became that much more excruciating for [...]

The first pictures have surfaced of Rooney Mara as Lisbeth Salander in David Fincher’s adaptation of the massively successful The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo. The pictures come via W magazine (via Collider). The biggest (and most controversial) news to come out of the project recently is that the film will differ from the book in some [...]

The 2011 Australia Day Ambassadors have been announced, and it’s great to see so many authors on the list. There’s Bruce Venables, Catherine De Vrye, Jacinta Tynan, Jill B Bruce, Jonathan King, Libby Hathorn, Susanne Gervay and Valerie Parv. Australia Day Ambassadors are invited as guests of honour at celebrations around the state and are often [...]

This read-along discussion, as suggested by host Allie, will be in two parts. The first 300 or so pages are to be discussed between 14th and the 17th January on the participating blogs, and then we reconvene between 24th – 27th January for the remaining 300 or so pages of Wilkie Collins’ classic The Woman [...]

Good Oil by Laura Buzo Reviewed by peacelove They say ‘age is just a number’ – but when you’re at the tender age of 15 and he’s 21, the difference can be worlds apart. This isn’t an action packed story nor is it wrought with twists and turns and revelations in every second chapter. It’s [...]