Tag Archives: books

On Launching John Birmingham’s How to Be a Writer (Avid Reader, 9 June 2016)

Posted on 10/06/2016 by

Why, when things have changed so much in the publishing industries, listen to someone who started writing 30 years ago whose book is being launched by someone else who started writing 30 years ago? Because JB has lived, like any … Continue reading →

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It’s Not About Shelving The Books and Keeping Kids Quiet

Posted on 21/09/2015 by

Some schools no longer have teacher-librarians and, the more I see of teacher-librarians, the less sense that makes to me. What’s next? No teachers? Kids turning up to the classroom each morning and inventing the day ahead? Maybe there’s a … Continue reading →

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So Where Has All The Reading Gone?

Posted on 05/04/2015 by

I’m on the road at the moment with a book for younger people – 8-12-year-olds my publisher says, and they would know more about that than I do (though it already has some adult readers too). Like anything I write, … Continue reading →

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On to the ablogatory Part 5: Lucy Corin’s One Hundred Apocalypses and Other Apocalypses

Posted on 17/01/2014 by

Source of book: second recommendation from Fiona Stager at Avid Reader in Brisbane on 29 Dec 2013 (again I paid RRP) Text below : new This is not the first book I’ve seen where someone in the publishing house has … Continue reading →

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What We Talk About When We Talk About Books (Part 1)

Posted on 13/01/2014 by

I’m not a reviewer. Or, to be more precise, since school I have prepared only two pieces that could be called reviews of books, neither of them this century. One of them was of Rosie Scott’s Feral City in 1991. … Continue reading →

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New Adult – A Genuine Genre or a Too-thin Slice of a Shrinking Pie?

Posted on 12/11/2012 by

I can’t say who invented the notion of New Adult as a book genre, or what their intentions were. It’s easy to guess that their intentions might have been centred around something like, um, selling books, but perhaps they saw … Continue reading →

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I Like Your Old Stuff Better Than Your New Stuff

Posted on 24/09/2012 by

In late 1997, Brisbane band Regurgitator followed up their debut album Tu-Plang with Unit. Tu-Plang had won them two ARIA awards and a nice shiny platinum disc for their walls, but they’d pushed their sound somewhere a little different – … Continue reading →

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Is Your Platform Your Product – Social Media for Fun and Profit (part ii)

Posted on 17/08/2012 by

Much feedback after Monday’s social media blog post, hence a part (ii). See what this social media thing can do? You get to learn a few things, and refine a few ideas using something larger than your own brain – … Continue reading →

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On the Burning of Books and our Poor Misunderstood State Government

Posted on 22/06/2012 by

Newly anointed Miles Franklin winner Anna Funder has come down hard on our new Premier and his government regarding the axing of the Premier’s Literary Awards. She’s been quoted as saying ‘the first thing that someone with dictatorial inclinations does … Continue reading →

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Two New Lives for Perfect Skin

Posted on 14/05/2012 by

Perfect Skin was the novel that broke me in America. When I say ‘broke’ I don’t mean it put me on tour for months and bought me my second Lear jet, but it got me a start there. It gave … Continue reading →

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