Book reviewers and the editors of periodicals that commission them are used to sour assessments of their worth, but Professor John Dale’s article on The Conversation yesterday is in a class of its own…
Academic rigour, journalistic flair
Articles on Books
Displaying 761 - 780 of 854 articles
Good book reviews are all alike while every bad review is bad in its own way. In Australia reviews are often bad in many different ways. Historically the trade has consisted of retired English academics…
Many professional authors are also parents, but recently, there have been a number of success stories of parents simply writing for their own children and becoming very successful. And this recent surge…
For you. You’ll soon. You’ll give her name. In the stitches of her skin she’ll wear your say. The foundational challenge of Eimear McBride’s novel is plainly visible in its opening lines, above: the incomplete…
Recently on The Conversation, I described a remarkable moment of language experimentation highlighted by recent Australian poetry prizes. Panning out to a wider view of contemporary Australian poetry…
The Saturday Paper publishes anonymous book reviews and, occasionally, reviews by identified critics. That anonymity was a much-discussed feature when the paper launched in March, and the debate continues…
Crime novel covers are often plastered with endorsements: “A terrific read,” “A real page-turner,” or “Author Y is the next Author X.” It’s far less common to read quotes such as the following from Fairfax…
A 34-year-old British-born writer has won Australia’s most prestigious literary prize. Evie Wyld’s All the Birds, Singing was named as the unexpected winner of the 2014 Miles Franklin Award tonight. The…
So it’s Day 21 in Channel 5’s Big Brother household. It would also have been George Orwell’s 111th birthday. And this month marks 65 years since his landmark novel Nineteen Eighty-Four was first published…
Randolph Stow’s To the Islands (1958) is an astonishing novel, a work of poetic skill and political subtlety – and one that is rarely mentioned today. Its omission from Australian literary syllabuses and…
The public clash between Hachette and Amazon has been making headlines for a while now, most recently around J K Rowling’s latest novel. Amazon bowed to consumer pressure after complaints that the book…
What place do e-readers – and in particular ebooks – hold in the reading behaviour of Australia’s 10 million public library borrowers? There are some 181 million items loaned every year by the nation’s…
Ever get lost in a book? A new online database of crowd-sourced information called Placing Literature allows readers to explore the settings they are reading about through an interactive map. To me, this…
As her second Galbraith novel is published, JK Rowling once again finds herself in the public eye for something other than the book just out. Her enormous donation to the Better Together campaign attracted…
Shy people have quite a bit to contend with – not least the word itself. It has a number of different meanings, none of which are flattering. To “shy away” from something implies avoidance; to “shy” can…
When the Harry Potter series became a global phenomenon, adult editions were published that replaced the brightly illustrated covers with dignified photographs of inanimate objects on a black background…
Five years ago, in the midst of the rancorous parallel importation debate the Productivity Commission undertook a thorough examination of book prices in Australia compared to comparable prices in the US…
Bloomsday has come around again, the day (June 16) in 1904 on which all the events of James Joyce’s great novel Ulysses unfold. 1904 was an auspicious year for Joyce. It may surprise some people to know…
The Call for Entries is now open for the 62nd annual Australian Book Design Awards which are seeking the “bravest and brightest, the most original and beautiful” books published before December 31, 2013…
When Richard Flanagan’s The Narrow Road to the Deep North was published last year, one reviewer proclaimed he had just read the winner of the 2014 Miles Franklin Award. Flanagan’s novel has now got as…
Top contributors
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Associate Professor in Literary Studies, Monash University
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Associate Professor in Media, University of Notre Dame Australia
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Lecturer, School of Design, University of Technology Sydney
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Honorary Associate in Creative Writing, The Open University
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Executive Dean (interim) Faculty of Arts and Design, University of Canberra
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Lecturer of English, University of Liverpool
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Visiting Fellow, Centre for Cultural and Creative Research, University of Canberra, University of Canberra
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Professor in Publishing Studies, University of Stirling
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Dean of Research (Creative), University of South Australia
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Honorary Senior Lecturer, School of Education, University of Notre Dame Australia
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Associate Professor, School of Languages, Literatures, Cultures and Linguistics and Fellow of the Australian Academy of Humanities, Monash University
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Professor of Reading and Children’s Development, The Open University
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Adjunct assistant professor, University of New England
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Emeritus Professor of Australian Literature, University of Sydney
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Director, Monash University Publishing, Monash University
