Month: December 2010

#11 – Puberty Blues by Kathy Lette and Gabrielle Carey

#20 – For the Term of His Natural Life by Marcus Clarke

Merry Christmas

‘Twas the day before Christmas and all through the house, not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse. Well, actually… No! There is stirring happening. I’ve just been making the egg nog, so definitely lots of stirring. And more to come, as I make the last lot of fudge. And as for mice — my computer mouse is getting a workout today as I get in a last pre-Christmas burst of writing.

Each Christmas, I watch at least one film adaptation of Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol. This time around I ended up reviewing DVDs of two versions — the Muppets version and the new Robert Zemeckis motion-capture, animated one. Feel free to check out my 2-in-1 review. But if you haven’t got the inclination, let me give you a quick summary — the Muppets film is BRILLIANT; the Zemeckis film is CRAP.

Despite having seen many versions of A Christmas Carol over the years, I am sad to report that I have never actually read the book. Each year I think to myself that I really should get a copy and read it. And each year, as the lead up to Christmas gets more and more frantic, I run out of time. But I plan on engaging in a big post-Christmas book buying frenzy during Boomerang’s upcoming 20% off sale, so I have vowed to buy a copy. I figure that if I buy it now and put it on my must-read-soon pile, I may actually get around to it just before next Christmas.

And speaking of A Christmas Carol… I am VERY excited (in a nerdy fanboyish way) about the upcoming Doctor Who Christmas Special. Aside from the fact that the ABC is screening it here in Australia on Boxing Day (mere hours after it’s UK showing), this year’s special is called “A Christmas Carol” and the trailer certainly makes it look like it is, at least in part, based on the Dickens novel. I am intrigued by the idea of a Doctor Who Christmas Carol. Can’t wait!

Now, as Literary Clutter is a bookish blog, I feel I should bring the conversation back to books…

There is one Christmas book that I have read, which I would really like to mention — Olivia Helps with Christmas by Ian Falconer. I love Falconer’s Olivia picture books, about a family of anthropomorphised pigs, and particularly about the daughter, Olivia. They are filled with a gentle humour and a surprising feel of reality. And if you’ve seen the television series, take note — the books are way better. The series loses the lovely, hand illustrated style of the books, and doesn’t quite get the humour right. My eldest daughter has all of the books. And this year, she’s been able to read Olivia Helps with Christmas to her younger sister. Magic!

Well, that’s it from me for today. As I said, I still have a batch of fudge to make before the extended family begin to arrive this afternoon. So, allow me to raise a figurative glass and wish you all, dear readers, a very merry Christmas.

And don’t forget to tune in next time for an end of year wrap-up.

Catch ya later, George

PS Follow me on Twitter… Ho, ho ho! Or is it bad form to use the word ‘ho’ these days? 😉

Seasons Greetings From Kid’s Book Capers

HOLIDAY READING – TWO TALES FROM NEW FRONTIER

LAST TREE IN THE CITY

Last Tree in the City is Peter Carnavas at his best. It’s a poignant tale about a boy finding beauty in his overcrowded and colourless city environment.

Every day, Edward rides to the end of his street to visit the last tree left in the city. Here he sits and pretends that his world is a completely different place.

Edward would forget the concrete and the cars. He would forget the city altogether.

Edward is devastated when the inevitable happens and that tree is chopped down to make room for even more buildings. For a time he is rendered powerless.

Without the tree, Edward’s days were empty. He had nowhere to go

But one day, Edward gets back on his bike and pedals towards new hope.

As usual, Peter Carnavas’s illustrations are full of colour, gentle humour and powerful emotions.

The illustrations and the text work in perfect harmony, but for me, the power in this story is in the tale itself, in the ability of one child to change the world just by doing something small.

Last Tree in the City is a book that will bring enjoyment and meaning to young readers of all ages.

ROW ROW ROW YOUR BOAT

WHAT CAN YOU SEE?

This book from New Frontier is a variation on an old favourite.

Row, Row, Row Your Boat is a song that would be familiar to most children.

In this lift-the-flap book, Angie Lionetto-Civa has transformed this song into a tale of surprise and adventure.

Two boys journey down the river and come across an assortment of animals. Young readers will enjoy ‘searching and finding’ them. The animals hop into the boat and help them find other animals, who are soon added to their overcrowded boat.

As the boat becomes fuller, there’s a sense of anticipation that something is going to happen.

The reader goes on an adventure too, discovering the animals at the same time as the young boys in the story. The repetition and rhyme are something young children will be comfortable with.

Row, Row, Row Your Boat rises to a climax with the appearance of a crocodile and I’m not going to spoil the story by saying what happens next.

Serena Geddes’ playful illustrations help create the atmosphere of merriment as the boys row “merrily, merrily, merrily”.

Row, Row, Row Your Boat is a colourful, vibrant interactive story that will be enjoyed by young readers.

No. 2 – Most Popular Aussie Novels of All Time

We surveyed our customers to discover the Most Popular Aussie Novels of all time – we’re counting down the Top 24 Novels between now and Christmas Eve…

At #2 – The Power of One by Bryce Courtenay

46.5% of all respondents have read this book

Synopsis for The Power of One by Bryce Courtenay

The Power of One is a novel by Bryce Courtenay, first published in 1989. Set in South Africa during the 1930s and 1940s, it tells the story of an Anglo-African boy who, through the course of the story, acquires the nickname of Peekay.

It is written from the first person perspective, with Peekay narrating (as an adult, looking back) and trusting the reader with his thoughts and feelings, as opposed to a detailed description of places and account of actions.

When his mother suffers from a nervous breakdown, five-year-old Peekay is sent to a tiny rural Afrikaans boarding school. He is severely bullied and teased for being English (anti-English sentiment was widespread amongst Afrikaners following their defeat in the Boer war). Peekay is especially bullied by “the Judge”, a cruel, avid Nazi supporter and the oldest student.

At the end of the year, traumatized from his experiences, Peekay is informed that he will not be returning to the farm, rather, he will be going to the East Transvaal town of Barberton, where his grandfather lives after the outbreak of Newcastle disease on his previous home.

On the train to Barberton, Peekay befriends Hoppie Groenewald, a guard. Groenewald shares his love of boxing with Peekay. After seeing him win a boxing match, Peekay is mesmerised with the sport and vows to become the welterweight champion of the world. However, the next day Hoppie departs to fight in a war, and Hoppie’s friend Hetty dies on the train Peekay is travelling on.

When Peekay arrives in Barberton, he realises both his academic and physical potential. He excels in his grades and fights the children of the school. He becomes a frequent winner, never having lost a match.

Peekay encounters numerous friends in Barberton, including a professor of music, Prof. Karl von Vollesteen, and a coloured prisoner, Geel Piet, who coaches him in boxing. They form alliances, and each believe that all humans have equal rights. Along with the librarian, Mrs. Boxall, they establish the ‘Sandwich Fund’, which helps to supply the families of people in the Barberton prison.

Over the course of his childhood and young adulthood, Peekay builds confidence in his boxing. He also learns that racism is the primary force of evil and builds compassion and empathy for the mistreated blacks and coloureds of apartheid South Africa. Geel Piet, who has a white parent and a black parent, is constantly the target of racism and has perfected taking more than he is entitled to from the prison system.

Source: Wikipedia

About Bryce Courtenay (Books by Bryce Courtenay…)

Arthur Bryce Courtenay AM (born 14 August 1933) is a South-African-born naturalised Australian novelist and one of Australia’s most commercially successful authors.

Born in Johannesburg, Courtenay spent most of his early years in a small village in the Lebombo Mountains in South Africa’s Limpopo province. In 1955, while studying journalism in London, Courtenay met his future wife, Benita, and eventually emigrated to Australia. They married in 1959 and had three sons, Brett, Adam and Damon.

Courtenay now lives in Bowral, New South Wales, with his partner, Christine Gee.

His novels are primarily set in either Australia, his adopted country, or South Africa, the country of his birth. His first book, The Power of One, was published in 1989 and, despite Courtenay’s fears that it would never sell, quickly became one of Australia’s best-selling books by any living author. The story has since been made into a film—as well as being re-released in an edition for children.

Courtenay is one of Australia’s most commercially successful authors. He has built up this success over the long-term by promoting himself and developing a relationship with readers as much as marketing his books; for instance, he gives away up to 2,500 books free each year to readers he meets in the street.

Despite his success in Australia, only The Power of One has been published in the United States. Courtenay claims that this is because “American publishers for the most part have difficulties about Australia, they are interested in books in their own country first and foremost”.

Source: Wikipedia

The List so far…

#2 – The Power of One by Bryce Courtenay

#3 – Storm Boy by Colin Thiele

#11 – Puberty Blues by Kathy Lette and Gabrielle Carey

#20 – For the Term of His Natural Life by Marcus Clarke

VIDEO POST: Kiss of Death by P.D.Martin

Spoiler Alert

I’m spoiler-proof. I can reread books and rewatch movies and still get caught up in the drama all over again. This is a good thing as I am also incurably nosey. I google movie endings, peek at my presents and occasionally flick ahead in books. To me, this is no big deal but to many people – including my partner – these are acts as deviant as those partaken in by the average NRL player and their dog.

I am aware that some people hate spoilers with the level of passion that Andrew Bolt reserves for the Greens. When Order of the Phoenix book was released in the Harry Potter series, many of my friends filled the internet with pleading not to be told which characted suffered a much pre-publicised death. (Thanks for telling everyone about that in advance, J.K. Way to ruin my internet for a month.) I’m not sure how we were meant to accomplish this. Some sort of collar pin to identify people who had actually finished the book, or perhaps nifty tattoos reading, “Damn you, foul drapery”? Still, we did our best not. Some of the same spoiler-hating friends avoided the internet for weeks in advance of the final book being released to avoid being spoiled.

Hell, some of them avoided the news and the internet to avoid being spoiled on the result of the Eurovision. (When is Australia finally going to get a team in there, by the way? With Azerbaijan and Israel getting their song on in recent years, surely it’s only a matter of time before the EBU expands far enough to let us in.)

I do try to respect my spoiler-hating friends’ wishes and not accidently yell out pivotal plot points three seconds before they happen, or to peer into a future they would rather keep under wraps. But this Christmas is testing that resolve. My present is wrapped and waiting in the living room and I am currently engaged in a mighty struggle with my conscience not to peek at it.

This is not my choice – I would have happily seen it as soon as it was bought and still enjoyed the unwrapping on the day. Not so for my partner, who insists the surprise is part of the fun. Desperate to wrap my gift without me seeing it, last night he locked me out of the bedroom and set to rendering it unspoilable, accompanied by rustling noises, the schwip of Sellotape and no small amount of banging.

Now, for someone as nosey as me, this is a form of torture even if he was clearly doing it for my benefit. Obviously the only mature response was to grab the last bottle of ginger beer from the fridge and swig it at the door, all the while shouting, “Mmm, yummy cold ginger beer. NONE FOR YOU THIS CHRISTMAS.” in at him.

Let no one say I don’t get into the Christmas spirit

But my partner dislikes spoilers – he wants to get to the ending and find out what happens then, or unwrap the gift and be surprised. My habit of present-peeping is as deranged to him as flicking ahead while reading a book.

Which I also do.

To his books.

When he hasn’t finished them yet.

…maybe he has a point on that one.

So, I’m sitting here trying to ignore the present in the corner. To peep or not to peep? To spoil or leave until the day? What would you do?

The Novels that were LEAST POPULAR in our Most Popular Aussie Novels Survey

We’ve only got a few novels to go in our Top 24 Most Popular Aussie Novels survey….

We thought we’d publish a list of the novels that came in last 20 places on the survey – these were the least popular novels on our original list of 124 books.

And here they are:

105 – DREWE, Robert – Our Sunshine – read by 2.5% of all respondents
106 – STEAD, Christina – For Love Alone – 2.4%
107 – CARROLL, Steve – The Time We Have Taken – 2.3%
108 – HARTNETT, Sonya – Surrender – 2.3%
109 – HYLAND, M.J. – Carry Me Down – 2.2%
110 – KOCH, Christopher – Highways to a War – 2.1%
111 – CAREY, Peter – Parrot and Olivier in America – 2.0%
112 – STOW, Randolph – To the Islands – 2.0%
113 – HYLAND, M.J. – How the Light Gets In – 1.9%
114 – COETZEE, J.M. – Life and Times of Michael K – 1.8%
115 – MOORHOUSE, Frank – Dark Palace – 1.6%
116 – ASTLEY, Thea – The Slow Natives – 1.6%
117 – KOCH, Christopher – The Doubleman – 1.1%
118 – MCDONALD, Roger – The Ballad of Desmond Kale – 1.0%
119 – ASTLEY, Thea – The Acolyte – 0.9%
120 – ASTLEY, Thea – The Well Dressed Explorer – 0.7%
121 – SCOTT, Kim – Benang: From the Heart – 0.7%
122 – HAZZARD, Shirley – The Bay of Noon – 0.6%
123 – KENEALLY, Thomas – People’s Train – 0.6%
124 – FOSTER, David – Glade within the Grove – 0.6%

No. 3 – Most Popular Aussie Novels of All Time

We surveyed our customers to discover the Most Popular Aussie Novels of all time – we’re counting down the Top 24 Novels between now and Christmas Eve…

At #3 – Storm Boy by Colin Thiele

45.2% of all respondents have read this book

Synopsis for Storm Boy by Colin Thiele

Storm Boy is a 1964 Australian children’s book by Colin Thiele and a 1976 film about a boy and his pelican. The book concentrates on the relationships he has with his father, the pelican, and an outcast Aboriginal man called Fingerbone.

The film adaptation Storm Boy won the Jury and best Film prizes at the 1977 AFI Awards. The film starred Australian Aboriginal actor David Gulpilil in the role of Fingerbone.

Storm Boy likes to wander alone along the fierce deserted coast among the dunes that face out into the Southern Ocean. After a pelican mother is shot, Storm Boy rescues the 3 chicks, Mr Proud, Mr Ponder and Mr Percival and nurses them back to health. He releases them and his favourite one returns after being released and he names it “Mr Percival”. The story then concentrates on the conflict between his lifestyle and the externally imposed requirement for him to attend a school, and the fate of the pelican.

Source: Wikipedia

About Colin Thiele (Books by Colin Thiele…)

Colin Milton Thiele, AC (16 November 1920 – 5 September 2006) was an Australian author and educator. He was renowned for his award-winning children’s fiction, most notably the novels Storm Boy, Blue Fin, the Sun on the Stubble series, and February Dragon.

Thiele was born in Eudunda in South Australia to a Barossa German family. The young Colin only spoke German until he went to school in Julia Creek. He was educated at several country schools including Kapunda High School before studying at the University of Adelaide, graduating in 1941. He served with the Australian Army and RAAF attaining the rank of corporal during World War II and later taught in high schools and colleges.

Thiele wrote more than 100 books, which often described life in rural Australia, particularly the Eudunda, Barossa Valley, and Murray River/Coorong regions of South Australia. Several of his books have been made into films or television series, including Sun on the Stubble, The Fire in the Stone, Blue Fin and Storm Boy.

In 1977 he was made a Companion of the Order of Australia, the second highest level of the order, for his services to literature and education.

Thiele suffered from severe arthritis from 1955 and in his later years left South Australia to settle in warmer conditions near Dayboro, Queensland.

On 4 September 2006 Thiele died from heart failure in a Brisbane hospital, aged 85. He was survived by his wife, Rhonda, two children, seven grandchildren and one great-grandchild. Media coverage of his death was minimal, as he had died on the same day as Australian media personality Steve Irwin.

Source: Wikipedia

The List so far…

#3 – Storm Boy by Colin Thiele

#11 – Puberty Blues by Kathy Lette and Gabrielle Carey

#20 – For the Term of His Natural Life by Marcus Clarke

HOLIDAY READING – A SCHOLASTIC PICTURE BOOK SELECTION

It’s school holidays here in Australia and a great time for readers of all ages to explore the wonderful world of books during the break.

In today’s post I’m looking at three quite different books from Scholastic that are all standouts in their own right.

The Farmer’s Hat

The Farmer’s Hat is a uniquely Australian picture book with a text that’s ideal for reading aloud.

‘What happened to my hat?’ asked the farmer. ‘I had a fine hat, a well-worn hat, that smelled of hay and grass and sweat. it was full of dreams and schemes, that hat. What happened to my hat?”

There are lots of active words to carry the text along, following the hat as it whooshes and whirls and floats and wafts around the farm.

Author, Kim L Barnes lives on beef-cattle farm, which is probably why this story is so authentic.

There are hilarious illustrations by CBCA-shortlisted illustrator, Andrew Joyner. I particularly enjoyed the humorous pics of the Australian bush animals in The Farmer’s Hat, and I’m sure that kids will too.

This book is an example of where a simple idea like a missing hat can be turned into a funny and entertaining story for young children.

The Farmer’s Hat is published in soft cover format by Omnibus Books and is for children aged four years and older.

Monster Book of Drawing

The Monster Book of Drawing is an amazing book by Marc McBride for kids who love to draw – especially those who love to create pictures from the fantasy realm.

There are 192 pages of great examples from this master illustrator who created the covers for Emily Rodda’s Deltora Quest books and more recently, J E Fison’s Hazard River series.

Marc takes kids through step-by-step from basic outline to black and white sketches and full colour illustrations.

The book comes in a hardback binder and is divided into three sections – Monster Battles, Mythical Creatures and Dangerous Beasts.

This book is for fans of all things dangerous, including vampires, werewolves, monsters and sharp-clawed beasts.

It is recommended for young artists aged 8 and over.

I don’t believe in dragons

I don’t believe in dragons is the first full-size picture book from bestselling and award-winning author/illustrator, Anna Walker.

This quirky, beautifully illustrated book is full of gentle humour as we follow the story of Jack who is the only one in his class who doesn’t believe in dragons.

The dragon in this book is so cute and not at all scary, but will it be able to convince Jack to play along with the game?

I don’t believe in dragons is a 32 page hardback picture book for children aged four and onwards.

Shrieking Violet

This book is cleverly written and illustrated by Emma Quay.

It’s ideal for children aged 4+ who are an older sibling and have been feeling a bit left out since their younger brother or sister arrived.

When you have the noisiest, loudest, messiest sister, it can be hard to be noticed. But in spite of all this, the big sister in Shrieking Violet finds a way to be the star of the show.

This is a very realistic portrayal of sibling relationships at this age and the personal battles that small children go through trying to assert their own identity.

In her endearing, colourful illustrations, Emma Quay brings to life the fun, silliness and occasional frustration of life with a younger sibling.

Emma Quay is the acclaimed author/illustrator of Reggie and Lu and has also been a shortlisted and notable illustrator in the CBCA awards.

Shrieking Violet comes in a robust, hard cover and easy to handle format.

No. 4 – Most Popular Aussie Novels of All Time

We surveyed our customers to discover the Most Popular Aussie Novels of all time – we’re counting down the Top 24 Novels between now and Christmas Eve…

At #4 – Picnic at Hanging Rock by Joan Lindsay

38.5% of all respondents have read this book

Synopsis for Picnic at Hanging Rock by Joan Lindsay

Picnic at Hanging Rock is Joan Lindsay’s best known work. It was made into a 1975 feature film by producers Patricia Lovell, Hal and Jim McElroy, and director Peter Weir. The story is fiction, though Lindsay dropped hints that it was based on an actual event.

Picnic at Hanging Rock centres around a trip by a party of girls from Appleyard College, a fictitious upper class private boarding school, who travel to Hanging Rock in the Mount Macedon area, Victoria, for a picnic on Valentine’s Day 1900. The excursion ends in tragedy when three of the girls, and later one their teachers, mysteriously vanish while climbing the rock. No reason for their disappearance is ever given, and one of the missing girls who is later found has no memory of what has happened to her companions. A fourth girl who also climbed the rock with the group is of little help in solving the mystery, having returned in hysterics for reasons she cannot explain.

The disappearances provoke much local concern and international sensation with sexual molestation, abduction and murder being high on the list of possibile outcomes. Several organized searches of the picnic grounds and the area surrounding the rock itself turn up nothing. Meanwhile the students, teachers and staff of the college, as well as members of the community, grapple with the riddle-like events. A young man on a private search locates one of the missing girls, but is himself found in an unexplained daze – yet another victim of the rock. Concerned parents begin withdrawing their daughters from the formerly prestigious college and several of the staff, including the headmistress, either resign or meet with tragic ends. We are told that both the College, and the Woodend Police Station where records of the investigation were kept, are destroyed by fire shortly afterwards.

Lindsay based Appleyard College, the setting for the novel, on the school she attended, Clyde Girls Grammar School at East St Kilda, Melbourne, which incidentally in 1919 was transferred to Woodend, Victoria, in the immediate vicinity of Hanging Rock itself.

Source: Wikipedia

About Joan Lindsay

Joan Lindsay, Lady Lindsay (16 November 1896 – 23 December 1984) was an Australian author, best known for her “ambiguous and intriguing” novel Picnic at Hanging Rock.

Joan à Beckett Weigall was born in St Kilda East, Victoria, Australia, the third daughter of Theyre à Beckett Weigall, a prominent judge who was related to the Boyd family, perhaps Australia’s most famous and prolific artistic dynasty. Her mother was Ann Sophie Weigall née Hamilton.

From 1916 to 1919 Joan studied painting at the National Gallery School, Melbourne. In 1920 she began sharing a Melbourne studio with Maie Ryan (later Lady Casey). Joan exhibited her watercolours and oils at two Melbourne exhibitions and also exhibited with the Victorian Artists Society.

Joan Weigall married Daryl Lindsay in London, on St. Valentine’s Day 1922. The day was always a special occasion for her, and she set her most famous work, Picnic at Hanging Rock, on St. Valentine’s Day. Daryl was the youngest of a noted family of artists and writers, the most famous of whom was Norman Lindsay.

Daryl later abandoned painting to become Director of the National Gallery of Victoria. Daryl was knighted in 1956, thus Joan became Lady Lindsay.

The Lindsays had no children. They donated their Mulberry Hill house to the National Trust upon her death. It is open to the public on weekends and some weekdays. Lady Lindsay died in Melbourne in 1984 of natural causes.

Source: Wikipedia

The List so far…

#11 – Puberty Blues by Kathy Lette and Gabrielle Carey

#20 – For the Term of His Natural Life by Marcus Clarke

Christmas shopping can get wrapped

I finished the hard bit of my Christmas shopping two weeks ago. Or so I thought.

This is down to two things – a lucky location and books. First, as an Irishwoman, most of my family and friends live in Europe. If you want to send a package from Australia you need to allow for at least a month in transit so Christmas shopping for them tends to start in October or – more often – tends to consist of buying items online and having them shipped within Europe to save on the prohibitive postage.

Second, as it is my firm belief that absolutely everyone loves books in their various guises (may I suggest short story anthologies and graphic novels for the swing voters on this one?) presents from me are likely to be uniformly rectangular, easy to wrap and all bought in the same place in a bulk purchase to save on shipping. Friends of mine who don’t love books often get a charitable donation made on their behalf instead giving them more of a reason to love books next year.

Smugness, thy name is Booklover.

Well, it’s not just about feeling smug, I genuinely dislike Christmas shopping. Some people thrive on the shopping excesses of the season and to them I say you’re welcome to it. I am not one of nature’s bargain hunters and hate being swirled along in the Brownian motion of massive crowds. Mariah Carey’s Christmas album tends to inspire me more with thoughts of homicide than seasonal cheer. Santa can get stuffed and you know where you can stick your holly.

So, sitting in the living room surrounded by books, books and more books (and also some chocolate so people could nibble as they curled up with a book) I felt quite proud of myself for having the whole thing in hand and avoiding the Christmas crush.

Then I realised I had nothing to wrap the darn things in. Not a scrap of bright paper in the house, and even the sellotape was more of the gaffa tape variety. I seriously considered wrapping the gifts in bin liners and duct tape. (This is not, oddly enought, a method recommended by a book I found on the matter, called “Gifted Wrapping”. I tried looking for a book called “Getting Some Other Bugger To Do It For You Wrapping” but unaccountably failed to find it. Publishers, take note.)

I would have to brave the shops to grab some wrapping paper. As it was a Monday morning, I figured that Sydney CBD would be reasonably quiet so I hopped on a train to pick up some wrapping paper.

My mistake. When the doors opened I was whisked out the doors into a teeming mass of frantic humanity. It was like the apocalypse had arrived and it turned out you needed red and green knickknacks instead of food and water. Carol singers on every corner. Shop doors impassable with people.

The stationary shops were thronged. Trapped in between two prams, three mothers and a panicked looking middle aged man who had “I have forgotten to get my wife a gift” written all over his terrified face, I got my taste of the Christmas spirit when he wheeled around and hit me smack in the face with his bag before trampling over me to get to the till.

Toes crushed and nose bleeding, now that I’m safely home I can see that it’s not all bad. My sore nose is a timely reminder of the importance of getting all aspects of the seasonal shop well out of the way while the shops are still promoting Halloween. And, it must be said, few presents look as lovely as books when wrapped – rectangular and shiny and perfect for a ribbon and a bow. Under the tree, the gifts look fantastic. You can hardly even see the bloodstains.

And for those of you will stockings left to stuff who’d prefer to keep your nose unbroken, consider a voucher. A happy holiday to you all, and may the New Year bring you lots of books from all your favourite authors and new wonderful authors to read.

For Those Who Find Being Clubbed Over the Head ‘Romantic’

There is something so strange about the fact that we were once “primitive” beings; without internet, without known written word. I put the word “primitive” in inverted commas because of course they were no such thing: the more we dig up about our ancestors the more we begin to realise how similar we are. And as we speculate and deliberate over the scant evidence of this earlier human-ish race, what better platform to mix fact with fantasy than through story?

Prehistoric fiction is often lost in the fray of historical fiction – wrongly so, I feel. If they can’t be classified as a genre all of their own, then perhaps they’d be better labelled as science fiction. Indeed, it takes an imagination to believe in a distant past with no recorded history, just as much as it takes an imagination to create a future through a projection of current day.

The Clan of the Cave Bear by Jean M. Auel, began the uber-popular Earth’s Children series set in prehistoric Europe, following Ayla, a female of the Cro-Magnon species (earliest modern humans), and her attempted integration into a clan of Neanderthals. Despite the critics considering it badly written and arduous (it never purported to be literature!) I’m sure I’m not the only one anticipating the release of the sixth and final book in the series, The Land of Painted Caves, due out in 2011 – over 30 years after the publication of The Clan of the Cave Bear.

To get me in the mood for the final release, I’ve been perusing the shelves for a book of similar storyline. My search led me to Margaret Elphinstone’s The Gathering Night. A tribe of hunter-gatherers exists in this book also, but this is where the similarities end. The Gathering Night encircles a number of perspectives by focusing on every member of the closely-knit team, who are trying to account for, and move on from, the mysterious disappearance of a young and able hunter. As the tradition of oral story-telling offers pieces to the puzzle, one gets the idea that although the usual epic adventure and dramatics expected from this niche aren’t available here, there is a certain art in portraying the lives of this small group. There is still action, intrigue and mystery, but with a more personal air as we come to understand the intricacies of each relationship and its place in the group’s social heirarchy. The arrival of a stranger garners suspicion, but also the opportunity to solve the mystery once and for all.

After the chunksters I’ve been drawn to lately, The Gathering Night was a welcome change and an interesting, surprisingly intimate take on the world of the early Homo sapien.

The Wisdom of Crowds

The inimitable Cory Doctorow‘s latest project, With a Little Help, is a self-conscious attempt at creating a book that not only bends the traditional rules of publishing and distribution, but of editing, marketing, sales and just about every other aspect of book publishing you can think of. Like a few of Doctorow’s other books, With a Little Help will be available as an ebook in various formats from his website for free (you can download it for free or buy a paper copy here). What’s different about this one, though, is that it is the author’s first foray into self-publishing. There’ll be a low-price print-on-demand paperback version, a special high-price limited edition hard cover, an electronic audio edition for free, and a low-price CD audio edition.

There are a lot of very interesting things to be learned from this project, and I could go on about it for hours, but what I’d like to concentrate on right now is one of the ways Doctorow was able to put the project together, which is laid out in the title of the collection: with a little help. But he didn’t just get help from his friends – he opened up donations in time, money and expertise to the open web in a way that is usually described as crowdsourcing.

Just a few examples: he offered one reader or group of readers the opportunity to commission one particular story for the collection (for the princely sum of $10,000), fans from other languages or who use unusual ereaders can translate or convert his books and have them posted up alongside the official versions, he crowdsourced proofreading (giving typo-spotters a shout out in the endnotes of the book), web design, cover design (there are multiple covers) and even book packaging (he’s using discarded burlap coffee sacks to cushion the high-end hardcovers en route!).

What I love about this project is the sheer audacity of it. There are so many moving parts, so many different levers and buttons that Doctorow decided to press for the hell of it along the way that will make it a very interesting prospect to track as it makes its way into the marketplace. The crowdsourcing aspect means that all of his readers and helpers are all sharing a little in the outcome of the book (though not, it is to be assumed, in the financial outcome – if there is one). It is a grand experiment – the kind of thing that a major publishing company should be able to do, but usually doesn’t. My question for everyone today is this: what do you think of all this crowdsourcing? Is it inevitable that the quality of the book will slip? Would you proofread a book for free if you got a credit at the end for any typos you found? What do you love or hate about this project? Let loose in the comments.

The Rosie Black Chronicles

A little while ago a book with an extremely stylish cover landed on my desk — Genesis, Book 1 in the Rosie Black Chronicles, by Lara Morgan (author of The Twins of Saranthium books — Awakening and Betrayal). It’s a YA, somewhat dystopian spec fic epic that will soon be continued in Equinox.

It is set in the city of Newperth in a future world of contrasts — the human race has colonised Mars, but the Earth is ravaged by MalX, a new virulent form of Malaria; people live in the big, shiny city of Newperth, with the out-of-bounds ruins of the old city close by; many people live in luxury in the centre of the city, while others live in poverty on the outskirts. In this world, we are introduced to an ordinary teenage girl named Rosie Black, who finds a locked box. In that box are secrets with the potential to destroy a very powerful organisation… and the people behind this organisation will stop at nothing to make sure their secrets stay hidden. With her best friend killed and her father kidnapped, Rosie must rely on the help of her aunt, a mysterious stranger and a feral teenage boy.

It’s a well-plotted, competently written, exciting story. Rosie and the other good guys are all likeable, and you want them to win. The bad guys are nasty and unlikeable, and you read the book hoping that they will get their comeuppance. All the ingredients are here for a successful and entertaining book — and it is entertaining and enjoyable. Certainly, other reviews have said great things about it (see here and here). But for me it was missing something — a vital spark to turn it from a good book into a great book. The plot, while exciting and interesting, is a little predictable; the setting, a typical, slightly dystopian science fiction setting; the characters, good but missing vitality. I can’t help but compare it to other recent genre books that I’ve read — Kirsty Murray’s Vulture’s Gate, for instance, a dystopian, YA science fiction novel that definitely has that special spark, making it one of my favourite books from 2009.

If book 2 of the Rosie Black Chronicles was to come across my desk, I’d happily read it (and probably enjoy it)— but I won’t be eagerly awaiting it and rushing off to buy it the moment it is released (as I have done with Behemoth, the sequel to Scott Westerfeld’s Leviathan).

Now, I should caution potential readers. This is just my opinion. And just because the book didn’t spark for me, doesn’t mean it won’t spark for you. Reading is such a subjective pastime. Do remember, I am the person who thought Lord of the Rings was an incredible snore-fest… so my judgement is not necessarily to be trusted. 🙂

Has anyone else out there read the first instalment of the Rosie Black Chronicles? Do you agree or disagree with my opinion? Leave a comment and share your opinion.

For more info about Lara Morgan and her writing, check out her website.

And tune in next time for a Merry Christmas post.

Catch ya later, George

PS. Follow me on Twitter… or I’ll be forced to tell you what I really think of Lord of the Rings. 😉

No. 5 – Most Popular Aussie Novels of All Time

We surveyed our customers to discover the Most Popular Aussie Novels of all time – we’re counting down the Top 24 Novels between now and Christmas Eve…

At #5 – The Thorn Birds by Colleen McCullough

36.2% of all respondents have read this book

Synopsis for The Thorn Birds by Colleen McCullough

The Thorn Birds is a 1977 best-selling novel by Colleen McCullough, an Australian author.

Set primarily on Drogheda, a fictional sheep station in the Australian outback, The Thorn Birds is the unforgettable story of the Clearys, spanning three generations.

The book’s title refers to a mythical bird that searches for thorn trees from the day it is hatched. When it finds the perfect thorn, it impales itself, and sings the most beautiful song ever heard as it dies.

In 1983 it was adapted as a television mini-series that, during its television run March 27-30, became the United States’ second highest rated mini-series of all time.

The mini-series starred Richard Chamberlain, Rachel Ward, Barbara Stanwyck, Christopher Plummer, Bryan Brown, Mare Winningham, Philip Anglim, and Jean Simmons. It was directed by Daryl Duke.

Source: Wikipedia

About Colleen McCullough (Books by Colleen McCullough…)

Colleen McCullough-Robinson, AO, is an internationally acclaimed Australian author.

McCullough was born in Wellington, in outback central west New South Wales, in 1937 to James and Laurie McCullough. Her mother was a New Zealander of part-M?ori descent. During her childhood, her family moved around a great deal, and she was also “a voracious reader”. Her family eventually settled in Sydney, and she attended Holy Cross College, having a strong interest in the humanities.

Before entering tertiary education, she previously earned a living as a teacher, librarian, and journalist. In her first year of medical studies at the University of Sydney she suffered dermatitis from surgical soap and was told to abandon her dreams of becoming a medical doctor. Instead, she switched to neuroscience and worked in Royal North Shore Hospital in Sydney.

In 1963 she moved for four years to the United Kingdom; at the Great Ormond Street hospital in London, she met the chairman of the neurology department at Yale University who offered her a research associate job at Yale. McCullough spent ten years from April 1967 to 1976 researching and teaching in the Department of Neurology at the Yale Medical School in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. It was while at Yale that her first two books were written.

The success of these books enabled her to give up her medical-scientific career and to try and “live on her own terms” In the late 1970s, after stints in London and Connecticut, USA, she finally settled on the isolation of Norfolk Island in the Pacific, where she met her husband, Ric Robinson (then aged 33), whom she married on 13 April 1983 (she was aged 46).

Source: Wikipedia

The List so far…

#11 – Puberty Blues by Kathy Lette and Gabrielle Carey

#20 – For the Term of His Natural Life by Marcus Clarke

No. 6 – Most Popular Aussie Novels of All Time

We surveyed our customers to discover the Most Popular Aussie Novels of all time – we’re counting down the Top 24 Novels between now and Christmas Eve…

At #6 – Looking for Alibrandi by Melina Marchetta

35.9% of all respondents have read this book

Synopsis for Looking for Alibrandi by Melina Marchetta

Josephine Alibrandi is a third generation Italian Australian completing her last year of high school. She is the School Vice-Captain of St Martha’s in Sydney. Josie learns to overcome the narrow minded social and racial bigotry of people like Ivy Lloyd (Poison Ivy) and Carly Bishop. Josie reacts angrily to derogatory terms like wog and ethnic. She ultimately learns to have pride in her heritage and by the end of the novel is proud to say I’m Australian with Italian blood flowing rapidly through my veins.

The absence of her father for Josie’s first sixteen years means she has been heavily influenced by two powerful and strong women: her mother Christina and her grandmother Katia (Nonna). Josie unravels Nonna’s deepest secret, which is the adultery she committed with her Australian lover, Marcus Sandford. Josephine’s father, Michael Andretti, visits and despite Josie’s initial anger at his presence, he becomes extremely close to her and her to him.

Friends such as Sera, Anna and Lee influence Josie’s choices throughout her last year. A greater influence comes from her boyfriend Jacob Coote, and her crush, John Barton, whose suicide has a great emotional impact on her.

The story is Josephine’s reflection in her final year at high school and the narrative style is first person.

Looking for Alibrandi is a novel written for ages between 12 and above, it reveals a great understanding of what life is about. Josephine realises by the end of the novel what life has in place for her future, and what she does and doesn’t take for granted.

Source: Wikipedia

About Melina Marchetta (Books by Melina Marchetta…)

Melina Marchetta was born in Sydney on March 25, 1965. She is of Italian descent. Melina attended high school at Rosebank College in the Sydney suburb of Five Dock. She left school at age fifteen as she was not confident in her academic ability. She then enrolled in a business school where she gained useful office skills, such as typing, which helped her gain employment with The Commonwealth Bank of Australia and later at a travel agency where she worked as a consultant. This work gave her confidence to return to school and gain a teaching degree. She then got a job teaching at St Mary’s Cathedral College, Sydney in the heart of the Sydney CBD until 2006. She now writes full time.

Her first novel Looking for Alibrandi was released in 1992 to much acclaim with a first print-run sellout within two months of its release. Published in 14 countries, including 11 translated editions, Looking for Alibrandi swept the pool of literary awards for young adult fiction in 1993 including the coveted Children’s Book Council of Australia (CBCA) Book of the Year Award (Older Readers). Dubbed “the most stolen library book” the popular novel has sold more than half a million copies worldwide and was followed by her film adaptation of the same title released in 2000.

While writing the AFI award-winning screenplay Melina taught English and History full time for ten years at a city high school for boys. During that time she released her second novel Saving Francesca in 2003, followed by On the Jellicoe Road in 2006. Both novels have been published in more than 6 countries, with Saving Francesca translated into 4 languages. On the Jellicoe Road was recently awarded the prestigious 2009 US Michael Printz Award for excellence in young adult literature.

Melina’s fourth novel, the fantasy epic Finnikin of the Rock, was released by Penguin Australia in October 2008. It has since won the 2008 Aurelius Award for Best Young Adult Novel and the 2009 ABIA (Australian Booksellers Industry Awards) Book of the Year for Older Children, and was recently shortlisted for the 2009 Children’s Book Council of the Year (Older Readers) Award. In the USA Finnikin has received starred reviews from Publisher’s Weekly, School Library Journal, Booklist and Bulletin Centre for Children’s Books.

Her fifth novel The Piper’s Son was released earlier this year.

The List so far…

#11 – Puberty Blues by Kathy Lette and Gabrielle Carey

#20 – For the Term of His Natural Life by Marcus Clarke

Wookiee Cookies

Finding the perfect present can be an arduous and pot-luck task, but the thrill when you do stumble upon the thing that’s just right is unrivalled.

I did an H&R Block-like fist pump when I found a present that was perfect not just for my Secret Santa, but a whole raft of current and future recipients. Including me. Because any gift this good warrants me buying one for myself.

The veritable gift gold? A brilliantly conceived, brilliantly executed Star Wars Cookbook: Wookiee Cookies and Other Galactic Recipes. Featuring such recipes as Wookiee Cookies, Yoda Soda, Hoth Chocolate, Princess Leia Danish Dos, and (my favourite) Boba Fett-ucine, it’s simultaneously both incredibly practical and useful, and outrageously entertaining.

The recipes are incisively, tongue-in-cheek clever, but they’re also recipes that would see the light of day. That is, ones you’d actually cook, instead of admire and dismiss as too hard, too time consuming, or filled with ingredients too exotic and too tricky to source.

The book is a hardy hardcover, but is spiral bound so it can be laid flat for easy reference while cooking. Better yet, the pages are made of a special glossy, wipe-clean material for those of us (kids and adults alike) who tend to spread our ingredients beyond the bowl.

There are also stickers at the back that contain such gems as Yoda saying [and I’m paraphrasing here, because I gave the book away and have yet to purchase my own copy] ‘Eat it you will. Good for you it is.’ It’s referring to spinach, with a clever little accompanying image.

I first bought this cookbook for my brother, massive Star Wars fan that he is, but it’s clear that this book has broad, age- and gender-transcending appeal. It was a hit with my Secret Santa recipient, and the people who witnessed its unwrapping. My best friend’s eyes lit up when I described it to her, and she’s ordered a copy for her boyfriend. My work colleague has ordered one for her three, school-aged boys. I’ve ordered one for me. And at least three of my (girl) friends have earmarked it for themselves.

What I’ve realised, coincidentally, is that this cookbook is almost a solution for my cooking issues, about which I moaned in a previous blog. (For those of you who didn’t suffer through it with me, the summary is that I can’t cook and I struggle to find cookbooks that cater to my quirky, no herbs-or-spices, vegetarian needs.)

Part of the reason it’s perfect is that the recipes are straightforward and engaging. My guess is that they’re designed so kids (to whose cooking abilities I’m about equal) can master them easily. And, although it does contain some recipes with meat, I can forgive it that, because this cookbook takes the pressure off cooking with a capital ‘c’ and injects the fun I’ve been missing.

I figure that between this cookbook, and the volume two that’s available and that I’m placing an order for now, I should find some recipes that suit my eating tastes and cooking proficiency. That and a handy gift that I can give to people of varying ages, genders, and cooking abilities.

The Book That Broke The Book-Loaning Camel’s Back

Christmas is all about giving. Or rather, it should be, but tends to get swamped by rampant commercialism that inspires people to think less about others and more about me, me, me. The problem I’m finding, though, is that although I’m far from being sidetracked by the commercialism of Christmas, I’ve also lost my giving spirit.

Specifically, my book-giving spirit.

I’m not talking about losing the will to give books as gifts—sheesh, if I ever lost that, it would be worth checking whether I still had a pulse. I’m talking about the will to loan books out. I used to be such a rich depository of books and loan so many out that I was a veritable, unofficial library for friends and passing acquaintances. It was something I was happy to do—I was only too enthused to recommend titles for different tastes, for those who were big or small readers alike.

I enjoyed seeing people enjoy books, and loved having conversations about what they thought of a certain book, how they interpreted and reacted to an author’s particular style and intentions. In retrospect, I think I got as much out of the giving as they got out of the borrowing and reading. Maybe more.

Somewhere along the way, though, and I can’t quite pinpoint when or how it happened, I lost the desire to loan books out. I’ve gone from being the most generous book loaner ever to a scrooge-like character who breaks into a cold sweat when she so much as thinks someone is going to ask to borrow a book.

I think it comes from being taken advantage of one too many times, and from having one too many books not come back. I now kind of know how video stores and libraries feel as people rack up fines and never quite get round to dropping the DVD or book in the returns slot.

My situation’s worse, though, because I don’t issue fines and end up out of pocket and a little sad and grumpy at my loss. Some books I’ve had to fork out the cash to replace because I can’t bear not having a copy on my shelf (Donna Tartt’s The Secret History springs to mind). Others I can’t (and shouldn’t have to) bring myself to rebuy (I’m thinking of John Perkins’ Confessions of an Economic Hitman—I know where it is and I live in hope that it will one day make its way back to me).

Still others I haven’t and can’t replace because I’m not entirely sure whether they’ve been loaned out and have lost their way back or whether I’ve misplaced them myself. The former is likely, but I’m opting for the latter to give people the benefit of the doubt.

Before you say that I should have a borrowing system so I can track my books, I completely, utterly agree. The only reason I haven’t is because it makes one seem uptight and scrooge-like and makes potential loanees feel awkward and untrustworthy. And, given that I’ve always been keen to encourage people to read, I’ve been reluctant to put anything that might seem like a barrier—like a ‘sign here and promise to bring it back or I’ll beat you with a big, metaphorical stick’ loan record—in their way.

The problem with giving so much and so readily is that you come to the point I am now: frustrated by the one-unreturned-book-too-many that broke the book-loaning camel’s back. I can’t name a specific book—it doesn’t matter and there are too many—but I can tell you that I now start to squirm considerably when I see someone eyeing off books on my shelves.

I haven’t yet found a way to say no if someone asks for a loan—my polite upbringing overrides my true feelings—but I no longer enthusiastically offer (or even offer full stop) to loan any books out. I think my facial expression belies my internal struggle, though, and I’m fairly sure that it resembled Edvard Munch’s The Scream recently when a friend asked to borrow my un-read, un-spine-cracked, pristine copy of Bret Easton Ellis’ Imperial Bedrooms. When I unwillingly said yes but really meant and hoped he picked up on my body language that said no, he took it off the shelf and put it not somewhere where it would be carried to maintain its immaculate condition, but in the pocket of his cargo pants.

Sigh.

I’m not sure whether I’ve lost my book-loaning spirit forever or if it’s just temporarily gone AWOL. I’m hoping it’s the latter, because the former would be too incredibly sad. Either way, I’d really appreciate a return of my books, anonymously dropped off in the middle of the night or otherwise.

No. 7 – Most Popular Aussie Novels of All Time

We surveyed our customers to discover the Most Popular Aussie Novels of all time – we’re counting down the Top 24 Novels between now and Christmas Eve…

At #7 – Tomorrow, When the War Began by John Marsden

34.5% of all respondents have read this book

Synopsis for Tomorrow, When the War Began by John Marsden

Tomorrow, When the War Began is the first book in the Tomorrow novel series by John Marsden. It is a young adult invasion novel, detailing a high-intensity invasion and occupation of Australia by a foreign power. The novel is told in first person perspective by the main character, a teenage girl named Ellie Linton, who is part of a small band of teenagers waging a guerrilla war on the enemy garrison in their fictional home town of Wirrawee.

Tomorrow, When the War Began was adapted into a feature film of the same name that was released on 2 September 2010 in Australia and New Zealand. It was written and directed by Stuart Beattie, and starred Caitlin Stasey in the role of Ellie Linton.

Ellie goes out camping in the bush for a week with her friends Homer Yannos, Lee, Kevin Holmes, Corrie Mackenzie, Robyn Mathers and Fiona Maxwell. They find a way into a large, vegetated sinkhole in a remote area of bush the locals have dubbed “Hell”, and camp there for the week. During this time they see large numbers of planes flying through the night without lights, and though it is mentioned in conversation the following morning, they think little of it, dismissing it as military planes heading back from a demonstration.

When they return to their home town of Wirrawee, they find that all the people are missing and their pets and livestock are dead or dying. Fearing the worst, they break into three groups to investigate Wirrawee’s situation. They confirm that Australia (or at least, Wirrawee) has been invaded and local citizens are being held captive by a hostile foreign force. Ellie’s group is discovered and, in order to escape, use the fuel tank of a ride-on lawnmower to create an improvised explosive. However, on returning to the nearby meeting point, they discover Robyn and Lee missing. Homer and Ellie search for them and they are met by Robyn, and they discover that Lee has been shot in the leg and hiding out in the main street of Wirrawee, the centre of the enemy’s activity. Ellie and Homer confer with the others and Ellie decides that they should attempt to rescue Lee, using a large excavator to move and protect him. After a protacted chase that sees several soldiers killed, Lee is successfully rescued and returned to the safety of Hell.

While hiding out in Hell, a romantic relationship forms between Ellie and Lee; Homer falls in love with Fi; Kevin and Corrie continue a romantic relationship started a few months before the invasion.

They decide to raid nearby farmhouses, searching for food and other supplies, and then retreat to Hell to establish a base camp for themselves. The group eventually moves toward waging a guerrilla war against the invaders and Ellie, Fi, Lee and Homer steal a petrol tanker, and blow it up under a bridge, destroying the easiest route into Wirrawee (the detour was very slow and complicated). While this is happening Corrie is shot in the back while finding food with Kevin, and Kevin sacrifices his freedom to drive her to an occupied hospital for medical assistance. This leads onto the end of the book which stops there leaving the reader wondering if Corrie will be all right.

Source: Wikipedia

About John Marsden (Books by John Marsden…)

John Marsden (born 27 September 1950) is an Australian writer, teacher and school principal. Marsden has had his books translated into nine languages including Swedish, French, German, Dutch, Danish, Italian and Spanish.

Marsden was born in Victoria, Australia and spent his early life in Kyneton, Victoria, Devonport, Tasmania and Sydney, New South Wales. At age 28, after working several jobs, Marsden began a teaching course. Whilst working as a teacher, Marsden began writing for children, and had his first book, So Much To Tell You, published in 1987. Since then, he has written or edited over 40 books and has sold over 5 million books throughout the world.

In 2006, Marsden started an alternative school, Candlebark School in the Macedon Ranges, in which he is the school principal. Marsden has since reduced his writing to focus on teaching and running the school.

Source: Wikipedia

The List so far…

#11 – Puberty Blues by Kathy Lette and Gabrielle Carey

#20 – For the Term of His Natural Life by Marcus Clarke

Pigeons

When I hear the word ‘pigeons’, I immediately visualise dozen of birds flying around, crapping on the heads of famous statues. But there’s more to that word. ‘Pigeons’ also happens to be the name of a non-profit organisation dedicated to running literacy programs in Melbourne. Their latest project, Pigeon Letters, which saw primary school students teaming up with established authors to co-write stories, has resulted in the publication of an anthology. On Monday, as one of the participating authors, I went along to the launch of the book. And what a fantastic event is was! Excited kids, proud parents and assorted authors gathered together to celebrate this unique publication.

But let’s backtrack a little as I tell you about Pigeon Letters. This is the second year that the project has run, organised primarily by Lachlann Carter and Jenna Williams, along with their merry band of helpers. It’s an in-school letter writing exchange, linking primary school students (10-12 years of age) with established Australian authors (at varying levels of young-at-heart). Each student is paired with an author. Over the course of two terms, through a series of letters, the authors and students collaborate on the writing of a short story.

The pilot program in 2009 worked with a class of students from North Melbourne Primary School and 12 authors. This year, the program was expanded, involving a larger group of students, Class 5L from Footscray City Primary, and 21 authors and comic book creators. The result was a collection of 18 short stories and 3 short comics.

I was lucky enough to be one of the participating authors, along with:

Jen Breach (Sawbones)
Stephanie Brotchie
Mirranda Burton
Bernard Caleo (Tango Collection)
Sherryl Clark (One Perfect Pirouette)
Paul Collins (The Slightly Skewed Life of Toby Chrysler)
Meredith Costain (Dance Academy: Learning to Fly)
Robert Greenberg (Swimming with Skeletons)
Michael Hyde (Change the Game series)
Jackie Kerin (Phar Lap the wonder horse)
Alison Lloyd (Year of the Tiger)
Andrew McDonald (The Greatest Blogger In The World)
Kirsty Murray (Vulture’s Gate)
Martine Murray (Mannie and the Long Brave Day)
Michael Pryor (Laws of Magic series)
Sally Rippin (Beautiful Haircut)
Claire Saxby (There Was an Old Sailor)
Jen Storer (Tensy Farlow and the Home for Mislaid Children)
Gabrielle Wang (Little Paradise)
Tony Wilson (Thirsty Flowers)

The program is a terrific opportunity to enthuse kids about writing and for them to learn from people who are actually professional writers. And it’s a great opportunity for authors, as well. It gave me the chance to interact with a young person of the age that I write for. And it was a great learning experience for me. It was my first attempt at co-authoring a story. Me and my writing partner, Joel, crafted a World War II story called “Friend or Foe?”. Joel was the driving creative voice. He has an interest in World War II history, so he came up with story setting and concept. What started out as a traditional adventure story about a German soldier on a suicide mission, turned into a human drama about the effects of war. It is not the sort of story that I would have written on my own. So I owe a debt of gratitude to my young co-author for pushing my boundaries and getting me to think outside the square I would normally write in. I have no doubt that Joel has the potential to become an author in his own right, if he chooses to go down that path. And if he doesn’t… that’s okay too. He has, at the very least, had the chance to write a story, have it professionally edited and published in an anthology. A pretty fine achievement for one so young!

Copies of the anthology, Pigeons: Stories in the Post Volume 2, are available for purchase, with proceeds from the sale going towards future literacy projects. So, to buy a copy or to find out more about Pigeons, check out their website.

Are there any other projects like this running in Australia? If anyone knows of any, please, leave a comment and tell us about it.

And tune in next time for The Rosie Black Chronicles.

Catch ya later, George

PS. Follow me on Twitter… or run the risk of having a pigeon crap on you from a great height.

No. 8 – Most Popular Aussie Novels of All Time

We surveyed our customers to discover the Most Popular Aussie Novels of all time – we’re counting down the Top 24 Novels between now and Christmas Eve…

At #8 – I Can Jump Puddles by Alan Marshall

33.2% of all respondents have read this book

About Alan Marshall and I Can Jump Puddles

Alan Marshall (2 May 1902, Noorat, Victoria — 21 January 1984, Melbourne) was an Australian writer, story teller and social documenter.

His best known book, I Can Jump Puddles (1955) is the first of a three-part autobiography. The other two books are This is the Grass (1962) and In Mine Own Heart (1963).

When Marshall was six years old he contracted polio leaving him with a physical disability that grew worse as he grew older. From an early age, he resolved to be a writer, and in I Can Jump Puddles he demonstrated an almost total recall of his childhood in Noorat. The characters and places of his book are thinly disguised from real life: Mount Turalla is Mount Noorat, Lake Turalla is Lake Keilambete, the Curruthers are the Blacks, and his best friend, Joe from the books, is Leo Carmody.

Alan Marshall wrote numerous short stories, mainly set in the bush. He also wrote newspaper columns and magazine articles. He travelled widely in Australia and overseas. He also collected and published Indigenous Australian stories and legends.

In 1981 the Australian Broadcasting Corporation produced a nine part mini-series of Marshall’s autobiographical stories.The actor, Adam Garnett, won the 1982 Logie Awards for Best Performance by a Juvenile, for his role as Alan Marshall in the series.

Source: Wikipedia

The List so far…

#11 – Puberty Blues by Kathy Lette and Gabrielle Carey

#20 – For the Term of His Natural Life by Marcus Clarke

DOG GONE – BY CAROLE POUSTIE

The main character in Carol Poustie’s Dog Gone is the feisty Ish. With the death of his grandfather and the break up of his parent’s marriage, he’s had a lot to deal with lately. His dog and best friend, Lucky is the one who has helped him through.

Ish and his sister Molly have been sent to stay with Grandma while their mum takes a ‘healing holiday’. But when Ish’s Mum has an accident, it soon becomes clear that their stay with Grandma is going to become a bit more permanent. This means that Ish is forced to start at a new school where things aren’t what he’s used to. Then there’s the school bully who takes an instant dislike to Ish and finds a way to blackmail him.

Just when things look like they couldn’t get any worse, Ish’s beloved dog, Lucky disappears. Lucky means everything to Ish. He is the friend who has helped him through the bad times – through the difficulties of his parent’s marriage breakup and his constant conflict with his sister Molly.

Ish misses his Grandfather who always seemed to know how to make him feel better about things. When he goes to visit his grandfather’s grave, he finds that there’s something mysterious happening in the cemetery.

I darted into the cemetery and hid behind a tombstone. I hunched myself up, balancing on the balls of my feet, straining to peer into the night, listening anxiously for whoever was out there to make another sound. It was freezing – I had trouble keeping my jaw clamped shut so my teeth didn’t chatter.

Grandfather was a poet who passed his skills and love of poetry onto Ish and it’s here that Ish finds solace and understanding. He’s also helped by Grandpa’s fishing rod, which seems to have taken on a life of its own. And further assistance comes from an unlikely source.

This book is full of action and suspense but it’s also a poignant tale of a boy whose family is at the crossroads. It’s a story of loyalty, courage, unexpected friendship and the healing power of poetry.

Children who love dogs and adventure will enjoy this story. Dog Gone is published by Avant Press. It is written by Carole Poustie www.carolpoustie.com.au and illustrated by Andrew McLean.

How To: Edit on an iPad

The iPad has been hailed as a boon to readers of books, newspapers and the web since its release at the beginning of the year. And it’s a great device for passive consumption of multimedia content and for sharing – but what about working? Well, having tried to use it for writing, I’d say its potential for writers is limited. But what about for editing?

Unlike editing on a traditional computer, the iPad provides a more paper-like electronic editing experience. It’s still not perfect, but for less mark-up heavy edits (like proofreads, light copyedits and report-based structural edits), it’s excellent.

iAnnotate

I’ve tried a bunch of different PDF editing apps on the iPad, but the standout is iAnnotate by Aji. It sells in the App Store for about $12.99, which is a bit pricey for an iPad app. However, if you’re an editor and you already have an iPad, it’s definitely worth it. You might also want to invest in a stylus for the iPad if you foresee using it for editing on a regular basis. Although the device is optimised for a finger (and in fact doesn’t work with a normal touchscreen stylus), for fine-level work and writing freehand it’s easier to use a stylus. Aji has a deal with a company called brvsh to provide discounts, so it’s worth checking it out (under the help menu after purchasing iAnnotate).

Mark-up

The easiest way to load a PDF into iAnnotate is by email. Email yourself the PDF you want to edit, and you can easily open it up in iAnnotate. The app takes a little while to index the PDF, making it possible to search and annotate the text. If email doesn’t suit you, or the PDF to be used is too big to email, you can also load PDFs into the app via iTunes or by downloading a PDF from a website directly.

There are a bunch of different ways to mark up the PDF itself, but the main ones – crossing out text, underlining, highlighting, commenting and so on can be accessed on the customisable right-hand side palette. There is a similar toolbar at the bottom of the page used for navigating the document – searching, flipping pages, going to a particular page number or accessing and jumping straight to existing annotations.

One useful tip for editors is the ‘stamp’ function. Using this tool, you can save any single piece of mark-up (such as the delete mark, as above – click to enlarge) as a stamp, which can then be accessed on the palette. This means you don’t have to physically draw each piece of repetitive mark-up, it can be inserted into the document at the tap of a finger.

All mark-up, once inserted, can easily be moved around, deleted or changed. The page can be zoomed in (using the iPad’s pinch to zoom multitouch movement) so any fine editing can be easily done on spacing or punctuation (without straining your eyes).

Exporting

When you’ve finished editing and the time comes to get your document back onto your computer (or directly to the author or typesetter), there are a few options. Using iAnnotate’s sharing feature, you can choose to email the entire PDF, a textual summary of the corrections or both. If you choose to send the PDF itself, you can send just the pages that have mark-up, or the entire PDF. You also have the option (shown above) of exporting the annotations in full (so they can be edited using Adobe Acrobat software on a computer by the author or another editor), as flattened mark-up(which means the annotations can’t be modified, but can be viewed with any computer or printed instantly) or the unedited, unannotated version of the PDF (which iAnnotate preserves). This gives you lots of options to send corrections to the typesetter or back to an author to check.

What’s Missing?

Although iAnnotate is the most full featured PDF editor on the iPad, there are still a few annoyances. Chief among these is the search function, which doesn’t seem to recognise spaces. This means you can search for individual words in a document, but if you’re looking for a few words or a phrase – too bad. Another missing feature is the ability to use the keyboard to write in-line notes directly onto the PDF (like the Typewriter feature on Adobe Acrobat). However, these are small annoyances, and it’s likely Aji will address these in future updates.

Questions?

Editing is a big subject, and using the iPad is another big one – so if there’s anything I haven’t covered (or haven’t been clear about), please let me know in the comments below and I will update this post.

An enduring complaint – on new publishing methods

While many people are quick to applaud recent changes in publishing, we should remember that not all change is good. The advent of new technologies has, it’s true, made books cheaper and more widely available. But at what cost to books and the people who read them?

New mass-publishing technologies simply encourage too much writing of too little value. I can barely get through my bookshelves as is. Now with all the recent technological advances, there is more information out there than one person could ever hope to read and more appearing daily. And while there more out there, the quality of available reading has decreased. Any idiot who wants to drivel on has been given a free licence too by the easy availability of self-publishing and publishers for hire. Manuscripts are rushed without any attention to the quality of the text, and the sheer mass of new books distracts readers from focusing on more classic texts.

Sound familiar? It should. These are common complaints from the Renaissance era after the invention of the printing press, according Ann Blair, professor of history at Harvard University. Her article, “Information overload – the early years”, describes both the general reaction to the printing press and the coping and optimising mechanisms developed to deal with the sudden surge of text.

She argues that, far from the printing press devaluing words, human history is a long process of learning in exponential increases. We are very good, it appears, at both accumulating information and coming up with innovative new methods for dealing with those accumulations.

She also highlights (perhaps accidentally) that getting your sook on about the stresses and changes imposed by new technologies is something the human race seems to really enjoy. The invention of the printing press brought forth a hundred and something year slew of complaints that people currently advocating ebooks, self-publishing and online media might find wearily familiar. Allegations that it allowed any person to speak, irrespective of whether they are really wise enough to be worth listening too. Charges that publishers are too quick to bow to the whims of the masses and release publications that were “foolish, ignorant, malignant, libelous, mad, impious and subversive”.

The article highlights that, while accumulating knowledge and methods of dealing with that are ancient traditions of the human race, so too is having a really good whinge about it.

“Complaints about information overload, usually couched in terms of the overabundance of books, have a long history — reaching back to Ecclesiastes 12:12 (“of making books there is no end,”). The ancient moralist Seneca complained that “the abundance of books is distraction” in the 1st century AD. “Is there anywhere on earth exempt from these swarms of new books?” asked Erasmus, the great humanist of the early 16th century.”

More recently we’ve had have Mark Bauerlein penning The Dumbest Generation: How the Digital Age Stupefies Young Americans and Jeopardizes Our Future (Or, Don’t Trust Anyone Under 30), who believes modern technology is fostering a “brazen disregard of books and reading”. Maggie Jackson goes even further with her book, Distracted: The Erosion of Attention and the Coming Dark Age in suggesting that our culture of constant information which “warns that modern society’s inability to focus heralds an impending Dark Age—an era historically characterized by the decline of a civilization amid abundance and technological advancement.”

Even Nicholas Carr’s The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains, which is combines neuroscience with history and pop-culture in a search for how the internet will shape the thinkers of the future, struggles to say anything really positive about the future of text and reading. It’s all doom and gloom in the future, even if we have all the books that we could ever want to read there and then some.

To advocates of ebooks and online reading and writing, all I can say is that slagging off new technologies has a long and illustrious history and this, too, shall pass. Going on the Renaissance model, you can confidently expect the complaining to die down. In about a century and a half or so.

The Novels that MISSED OUT of the Top 24 Most Popular Aussie Novels of All Time

Now that we’re well on our way through the Top 24 Most Popular Aussie Novels of All Time – only 8 more to name – we thought we’d publish a list of the novels that came in places 25-34. Tell us what you think about the list so far!

And here they are:

25 – CAREY, Peter – Oscar and Lucinda – read by 19.4% of all respondents
26 – JOHNSTON, George – My Brother Jack – 19.0%
27 – MARSDEN, John – Letters from the Inside – 17.9%
28 – GUNN, Jeannie – We of the Never Never – 17.7%
29 – TSIOLKAS, Christos – The Slap – 16.8%
30 – BIRMINGHAM, John – He Died with a Felafel in his Hand – 16.7%
31 – SHUTE, Nevil – On the Beach – 16.6%
32 – REILLY, Matthew – Ice Station – 16.2%
33 – KENEALLY, Thomas – Schindler’s Ark – 15.8%
34 – CAREY, Peter – True History of the Kelly Gang – 15.4%

No. 9 – Most Popular Aussie Novels of All Time

We surveyed our customers to discover the Most Popular Aussie Novels of all time – we’re counting down the Top 24 Novels between now and Christmas Eve…

At #9 – Playing Beatie Bow by Ruth Park

31.8% of all respondents have read this book

Synopsis for Playing Beatie Bow by Ruth Park

Playing Beatie Bow is an Australian children’s book written by Ruth Park and first published in 1980.

The story is set in Australia and is about a girl named Abigail (christened Lynette when she was born) who travels back in time to colonial Sydney-Town in the year 1873, where she meets Beatie Bow, a girl whose name has become part of Abigail’s local folklore. Much of the book is set in real-life locations around Sydney’s historical Rocks district.

Lynette Kirk was a happy young girl who was a cheery about her parents and life, until the day her father went off with another woman leaving her and her mother (Kathy). Lynette wanted nothing to do with her father so she changed her name to try to get everything about him out of her life. After wanting to be named after a witch she changed her name to Abigail, which her grandmother suggested.

She went down to the park with her young next door neighbours Natalie and Vincent, finding them playing a game called, ‘Beatie Bow’. After becoming very interested in a little girl that stood there watching them play (Little Furry Girl) she decided to follow her. This was after having a fight with her mother, when she told Abigail that she had been seeing her father again and that he wanted the two of them to move back in with him and live in Norway where his architectural job was located. Abigail did not take this news well – She went for a walk to cool off, when she once again saw the little furry girl and following her found that she had followed her back into her own time in the 1800s. She got tripped over by the Little Furry Girl’s father who gave Abigail the injury of spraining her ankle and causing a bruise her head.

Further into the novel the character Granny (Alice Tallisker) told Abigail that she was ‘the stranger’ and had ‘the gift’. ‘The gift’ came from the crochet on the top of her dress which enabled her to travel and heal. Later in the book it mentions that the crochet was going to be made by Granny as she had already made plans for it.

She falls in love with Judah, who was betrothed to Dovey, and realised firsthand what it’s like to love somebody but not be able to have them. This helped Abigail realise that she should not be selfish towards her parents and should let them have a second chance of a decent life and marriage. Judah and Abigail share a kiss which Beatie is able to see from the shore.

Abigail finally manages to get back to her own time, she discovers that her neighbors Natalie and Vincent are the descendants of the Bow family. Abigail also finds out that Beatie grows up to be quite a well educated lady and Judah dies at sea after marrying Dovey. After Abigail returns from Norway with her parents she meets Natalie and Vincent’s uncle, who looks precisely the same as Judah, the two fall in love and Abigail tells him the story of how she went back in time.

Source: Wikipedia

About Ruth Park (Books by Ruth Park…)

Ruth Park AM is a New Zealand-born author, who has spent most of her life in Australia. She has won many literary awards. Her best known works are the novels The Harp in the South (1948) and Playing Beatie Bow (1980), and the children’s radio serial The Muddle-Headed Wombat (1951-1970), which also spawned a book series (1962-1982).

She was born in Auckland as Rosina Lucia Park, and her family later moved to Te Kuiti further south in the North Island of New Zealand, where they lived in isolated areas. During the Great Depression her working class father worked on bush roads, as a driver, on relief work, as a sawmill hand, and finally shifted back to Auckland as council worker living in a state house.

After Catholic primary school Ruth won a partial scholarship to secondary school, but this was broken by periods of being unable to afford to attend. Later she worked at the Auckland Star before shifting to Australia in 1942. There she married the Australian writer D’Arcy Niland.

When contracted in 1942 to write a serial for the ABC Children’s Session, she wrote the series The Wide-awake Bunyip. When the lead actor Albert Collins died suddenly in 1951, she changed its direction and The Muddle-Headed Wombat was born, with first Leonard Teale then John Ewart in the title role. The series ended when the radio program folded in 1970. Such was its popularity that between 1962 and 1982 she wrote a series of children’s books around the character.

Source: Wikipedia

The List so far…

#11 – Puberty Blues by Kathy Lette and Gabrielle Carey

#20 – For the Term of His Natural Life by Marcus Clarke