CATEGORIES

The All Blacks’ triumphant coach Graham Henry may have retired,  but he’s got one team talk still to deliver — to rugby followers worldwide. The success of his team would send a nation into raptures. After 24 years and five abortive World Cup campaigns, finally a coach had restored the All Blacks to the top of the [...]

I’m pretty much standing alone among writers in saying that the Fifty Shades of Grey phenomenon is a good thing. The general stance is that it’s poorly written commercial drivel leading the reading (and non-reading) masses astray. Me? I think the issues and opportunities are—please excuse the pun—a little more grey. First and foremost, there’s [...]

Some will know of the Irishman, Roger Casement, because of the infamous ‘Black Diaries’ in which he reputedly detailed his homosexual relationships, and which were published in the British press at the time of his imprisonment in Pentonville Prison in 1916. Some will also know that he was stripped of his Knighthood and hanged as [...]

I totally empathise with the characters in this book by well-loved author Libby Hathorn. Yes, I too love the paper smell and consistently fight the desire to take a bite from a book I truly adore. Yes books are delicious. And yes, they are lovable. The rustle of the pages. The sound as the book [...]

The very hour that I was born I rode upon a unicorn, When boys put tadpoles in their jars I overflowed my tin with stars . Because I sing to see the sun The little children point and run. Because I set the caged birds free The people close their doors to me. Goodbye, goodbye, [...]

Wayne Bartholomew, manager of Damson Dene Hotel, Crosthwaite, has upped the eternal damnation ante considerably by replacing the Gideon Bibles in his rooms with copies of Fifty Shades of Grey as reported in the Westmorland Gazette. “I thought it would be a special treat for our guests to find it in their bedside cabinet and that [...]

“Now he was Dr Norman Wilfred, Oliver had discovered, once the security guard had unlocked his room and broken the padlock off his suitcase for him, he had an unexpected taste for pure silk underpants and pure silk pyjamas” But Oliver was not Dr Norman Wilfred, however much he had convinced himself and guests at [...]

From: http://www.themanbookerprize.com The longlist for the Man Booker Prize for 2012 has been announced. The 12 books were chosen by a panel of judges chaired by Sir Peter Stothard, Editor of the Times Literary Supplement. The longlisted books were selected from a total of 145 titles, 11 of which were called in by the judges The [...]

From: http://johnbuttonprize.org.au Works on Australia’s relations with Asia and on the stalling of important reform over recent years in Australia have dominated the shortlist of the 2011 John Button Prize. The four contenders for this year’s Prize are: Gary Banks AO, Chair, Productivity Commission for his speech ‘Successful Reform: Past Lessons, Future Challenges’ George Megalogenis, journalist [...]

The winner of the 2012 Text Prize for Young Adult and Children’s Writing is A.J. Betts, for her tender and funny young adult novel Zac and Mia. Zac and Mia is the story of two teens who meet and form a relationship on a cancer ward, but who find life outside the hospital much more complicated. An [...]

“Finn fell. I don’t  think, if I used a million words, I could call up the horror. It isn’t a matter of words.” Finn is Martha’s five-year-old son and she sees him fall from the balcony of their home. But there is more to this terrible event than Martha is willing to tell us or [...]

Can a suitcase can be terrible? What could be so terrible about it? Could it be the way it looks, the way it drags on the ground, its awfully bad manners? Or is it what’s contained inside? I must admit I was little nervous about this and was intrigued to find out, but I should [...]

There are few better things to come home to on a Friday night than a just-released book whose arrival you’ve been highly anticipating. Especially when what stretches before you is a rare weekend relatively free of work or social commitments. Suffice to say I did a H&R Block-style celebratory fist pump when I found Richelle [...]

The commendation by Christos Tsiolkas on the cover was perhaps the early warning that I wasn’t going to be a huge fan of Herman Koch’s The Dinner, an internationally bestselling book about a sticky moral and ethical dilemma. My loathing and despising of Tsiolkas’ The Slap is well documented and hasn’t in any way since [...]

I generally have a rough plan of what I’ll be blogging about and when, but every so often I stumble across something that’s so good it bumps itself up to the top of the must-feature list. That happened to me this morning when The American Bookstore posted—are you ready to cack yourself?—the 10 Most Bizarre [...]

1. Which genre of children’s books do you like most and why? Can you name a book or two in this genre that you particularly love? Recently I’ve written quite a few picture book texts and have become very interested in this form. The interplay between text and image, the impactof rhythm, the importance of [...]

I was issued explicit instructions by my friend Carly that if Charlaine Harris released any more Sookie Stackhouse books, she didn’t want to know. Not because Carly hadn’t enjoyed them, but precisely because she had. I’d loaned her the first book as part of my regular book-loaning efforts. She thought it was a standalone title [...]

Selena’s mother died some time ago. She lives with her father, a nobleman of deep emotional weakness, in a grand old house with her wicked stepmother and two self-absorbed stepsisters. She is virtually enslaved to her stepmother, spending her days cleaning, sewing, running errands and copping the humiliation of a life bound with emotional and [...]

This month saw the release of Ford Street Publishing’s massive new anthology Trust Me Too, edited by Paul Collins. Among the 50 plus stories, poems and illustrations in this collection is my little contribution, “Gamers’ Inferno”. I’m rather excited by its publication, so I’m gonna tell you a little about it. You may know that [...]

I spoke recently at the Australian Booksellers Association Conference in Sydney on blogging and social reading and have been meaning to share my presentation more widely ever since. Below is an outline of my tips for booksellers on writing blog posts. You can check out my social reading presentation (think Readmill, GoodReads etc) on Prezi [...]

Just in case you read my last post and thought I’d lost touch with developments in the ebook world while reading Game of Thrones, here are my thoughts on some recent happenings. 1. Opening of OverDrive’s Australian office Earlier this month US-based ebook distributor to Booku.com OverDrive announced it is opening an Australian office (in [...]

The other night, around 10pm, my iPad nearly broke my nose. I was lying in bed watching a Cherry Healey doco about freegans on ABC iView (taking a break from my pilgrimage through the five existing Game of Thrones books, but that’s another blog post). The iPad was sitting on its folded over cover on [...]

One of the cruellest parts of being a writer is that inspiration only strikes when you’re completely and utterly prevented from acting on it. Say because you’re in the shower or you’re driving or because you’re on deadline and under pressure in an open-plan office pen where you’re doing some form of work to fund [...]

Tessa and Zachary have a cruisy, comfy, clean and calm machine. They use it to ride to school each day. It is climate-controlled, quiet and smooth. When it’s hot, they put on the aircon, when it’s cold, they put on the heat. It’s comfort personified. No effort required. A lot like modern life in the [...]

Home to the Yawuru people, Broome was heavily populated in the 1880s by pearl-hunters, keen to snaffle their share in the rich waters around this far north-western town. People from all over the world inhabited Broome, and indeed, its population is as still as much a cultural melting pot as ever. This glorious tour around [...]

Lane Smith was born in Oklahoma but moved to California as a child. He studied art at Art Center, College of Design in Pasadena, California, and helped pay his tuition by working as a janitor at Disneyland. Graduating with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in illustration, he moved to New York where he began his [...]

Back in 2010 I reviewed a novel called Fury by a new author named Shirley Marr (see: “Contemporary fury and historical shadows”). I liked Fury a great deal, so I was very eager to see what Marr would come up with next. Well, it’s finally out — Preloved. Mixing Chinese superstitions, a teenaged ghost and [...]

Stargirl is one of the strangest and most memorable fiction novels I’ve read in a long time. Aimed roughly at 11 – 15 year olds, it has enormous crossover appeal – and would readily be enjoyed by younger readers and adult readers. Author Jerry Spinelli has created a bizarre, romantic and fanciful character in Stargirl [...]

Things It Would Be Helpful To Remember Before The Fact #147 was, for me, that I’m monumentally allergic to codeine. Recalling that at the crucial, pill-swallowing moment would have saved me a not-fun night of vomiting so regularly and with such force that I’m no longer sure there’s any enamel left on either my teeth [...]

Small press publishing is an important part of Australia’s literary landscape and is well deserving of some attention. So every now and then, I like to devote a blog post to a particular small press publisher or publication. As well as having released two books, Melbourne-based Busybird Publishing also holds the reins on two magazines [...]

To celebrate the 70th anniversary of Enid Blyton’s much-loved Famous Five series, five of the world’s most illustrious children’s illustrators have teamed up with Hodder Children’s Books to present new special anniversary covers for the first five adventures in the series. Quentin Blake, Oliver Jeffers, Helen Oxenbury, Emma Chichester Clark and Chris Riddell have all [...]

In the Beech Forest is a new picture book for older readers, written by Gary Crew and illustrated by newcomer Den Scheer. It is a fascinating and haunting read, with moody illustrations that are not married to the text. Master story teller Gary Crew has hit the nail on the head yet again, with a [...]

I’m totally obsessed with Cheryl Orsini’s work, and I’m yet to encounter a Penny Matthews book I didn’t like, so Look, Baby! seemed a winner to me. And I wasn’t disappointed. This simple and sweet toddler book follows the travails of a wee baby as he navigates his day – from waking in his cot, [...]

It’s hard (no pun intended—and none intended for the ones that also appear later in this blog because the more you try to avoid euphemisms and innuendo, the more doggedly they appear) to know what to write about a book that everyone’s surreptitiously reading and talking and writing about. What more can I possibly add [...]

In March I wrote about Kerry Greenwood’s first Phryne Fisher novel, Cocaine Blues (see “Phryne’s cocaine blues”), originally published back in 1989. I enjoyed it a great deal and wanted to read a second novel before I started watching the television series. And so here I am, to tell you about Flying Too High. Originally [...]

Which genre of children’s books do you like most and why? I love verse novels, poetry, fantasy and historical narrative.  Ooh sorry for liking so many – I’m sure there are more also. There are so many enthralling genres for children’s books now and I love verse novels and poetry for the concentrated does of [...]

History is written by the victors, or so the saying goes, so it’s rare but eye-opening to read the version written by those not celebrating the spoils. And none are more eye-opening than the memoir of convicted people smuggler Ali Al Jenabi, the ‘Oskar Schindler of Asia’, which shows ‘queue-jumping boat people’ and the people [...]

Zac and Zeb are good friends. They love to paint, dance, cheer and have proper adventures together. They also love to celebrate together. It’s Zac’s birthday. There are friends and food and games and fabulous things that go pop! Zac has a wonderful time but at the end of the party, his friend Zeb is [...]

Had you written a book detailing how you were negotiating with wanted military leader Joseph Kony to rescue endangered rhinos prior to a few months ago, most of the developed world would have asked, ‘Joseph who?’ But thanks to Invisible Children’s awareness-raising campaign that went so gangbusters that the term ‘viral’ doesn’t do it justice, [...]