Detectives don’t walk down just any old mean street. They prefer them well trodden. London, Los Angeles, Paris, and Tokyo are all favoured haunts for crime fiction writers. In Spain, the unchallenged capital…
Time to adjust your sets. Since October last year, this column has focused on television, but “Square Eyes” has now metamorphosed into “Portable Magic”, and will discuss books, reading, and literary culture…
Valley of the Dolls is a novel about wanting. Characters want something badly.
Marta Manso
This year marks 40 years since the temple of airport fiction lost its Chief Vestal. Author Jacqueline Susann maxed out her mortal coil back in 1974, on September 21, felled by cancer. She was only 56…
Ned Kelly’s Jerilderie Letter is not your standard bushranger confessional, it’s a searing document of prophecy and self-mythologisation.
Raymond Barlow
If you had to argue for the merits of one Australian book, one piece of writing, what would it be? See the end of this article for information on how to get involved. Ned Kelly’s Jerilderie Letter was…
Tom Hollander playing Dylan Thomas.
BBC/Modern Television
In Other People’s Countries, a memoir of his Belgian childhood, Patrick McGuinness writes: “I sometimes think it’s getting worse, this past business, that it’s rising up in me like damp creeping up a wall…
Is that a Kindle in your pocket? Then I’m just not interested.
VanKeefer
Mills & Boon, the guilty pleasure of many a reader over the decades, is shunning the Kindle in favour of launching its own app. You can now download your favourite bodice ripper and read it discreetly…
David Ireland’s 1976 novel The Glass Canoe leads its readers into the world of a dying tribe of drinkers.
matthewwu88
If you had to argue for the merits of one Australian book, one piece of writing, what would it be? Welcome back to our occasional series in which our authors make the case for a work of their choosing…
We’re into awards season – so lets look at the awards.
Lukas Coch/AAP Image
As the award season gets into swing, the number and quality of books published in 2013 show that this was another bumper year for work by Australian women. The winner of the 2014 Stella Prize for Australian…
Gabriel García Márquez died on Thursday April 17, aged 87.
EPA/Mario Guzman
Novelist, short story writer, journalist, film critic, writer of screen plays, Gabriel García Márquez was a man of many facets and extraordinary skill. He achieved that rare feat for a Latin American writer…
Did you get a card for the bard? Intrigue around Shakespeare the man continues unabated.
Wikimedia Commons
In William Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, the conspirator Cassius bitterly describes the position of Caesar in Rome. He says: … [H]e doth bestride the narrow world Like a colossus, and we petty men Walk…
Are libraries destined to be archaeological sites of the pre-digital age?
Chris Devers
Today we eagerly embrace new technology for fear of being left behind. A toddler with an iPad in hand is a welcome sign of a child learning to succeed in a digital world. Remainders of the pre-digital…
Don’t panic, she still likes books too.
Todd Morris
A furious debate has been raging for some years now between adults. Are you a Kindle lover or a devotee of the good, old-fashioned book? As the e-book spreads into children’s publishing, some look in terror…
Why was this novel, completed in 1971, withdrawn from publication at the last moment?
scrappy annie
It is nearly 50 years since Australian writer Elizabeth Harrower’s previous novel The Watch Tower appeared. Why, after producing four novels between 1957 and 1966, did she stop writing? Or at least stop…
Need some way of sorting through all these…
Thomas Hawk
The winners of the enormously respected Pulitzer Prizes have been announced, and of the 21 award categories for journalism and the arts, three caught my eye in particular. Donna Tartt’s The Goldfinch won…
Telling stories for black and white alike involves a difficult negotiation of cultures and contexts.
Luke Redmond
If you had to argue for the merits of one Australian book, one piece of writing, what would it be? Welcome back to our occasional series in which our authors make the case for a work of their choosing…
“We are the words, we are the music, we are the thing itself.”
Wikimedia Commons
Interest in all things Bloomsbury certainly seems to have taken an upturn. The National Portrait Gallery is planning an exhibition of the seminal modernist writer Virginia Woolf, to open later this year…
‘I am not like you suburb-dwellers,’ Carr is telling us. ‘I am extraordinary.’
Alan Porritt/AAP
Bob Carr is at least as vain as your average politician. The unusual thing is that he knows it. And the shocking thing is that he doesn’t seem to mind letting us know that he knows it. Such are the complex…
I have often argued that I would not let any teacher into a school unless – as a minimum – they had read, carefully and well, the three great books on education: Plato’s Republic, Rousseau’s Émile and…
The most magical moment of Matilda’s life is when she meets Feather, a wild bird-man whom she loves with all her heart.
Alfonso Jimenez
If you had to argue for the merits of one Australian book, one piece of writing, what would it be? Welcome to our occasional series in which our authors make the case for a work of their choosing. See…
Chris Grayling’s latest reform to the justice system has gone viral as news emerged he had banned prisoners from receiving books sent from outside. A blog piece penned by Frances Cook, of the Howard League…