Top 20 best-selling children’s booksWhat do The Cat in the Hat, Scuffy the Tugboat and The Tale of Peter Rabbit have in common? They’re all kids books, yes, and they’re all listed in the top ten best-sellers of all time.
Culture / The Arts / Books
Miracle on Collins Street: a feast of hungry readers
In this era of economic fogginess, at this transitional moment of reading and book-buying technology, a bookshop opening stuffed full of hundreds if not thousands of hungry readers is something of a miracle, writes W H Chong.
Bad sex in good fiction: UK Literary Review award
A modern retelling of the legend of Oedipus, featuring a character who spends 12 hours of lovemaking with his mother, took the top gong in the UK Literary Review’s 2011 Bad Sex in Fiction Award, reports Emma Mustich.
Authors pick the best LGBT books of 2011
This year has been a bad one for book retailers and, partly as a result, argues Band of Thebes, a bad one for LGBT books. Here is their survey of favourite queer reads sourced from over 90 authors.
Kerouac’s long lost novel found and published
The first novel of beat legend Jack Kerouac was considered lost forever. The Sea is My Brother has now been released by Penguin, but how excited should we get about a book the author made no attempt to publish? ask Claire Allfree.
Book industry report just the first page in publishing reform
Reforms proposed by the Book Industry Strategy Group are long overdue but don’t go far enough and may be difficult to implement, according to industry players and authors.
Re-writing literary history: what happens when you kill the main character
Harry Potter author JK Rowling recently announced that she nearly killed off sidekick Ron Weasley midway through the series. Jon Methven examines what would happen if some of literature’s favourite characters had been edited off the page.
Google launches ebooks in Oz
Aussie readers can now purchase an enormous range of Google ebooks directly from Google, as well as bookseller partners including Booktopia and Dymocks.
Melbourne Uni to hive off bookshop to private operator
The University of Melbourne will abandon control of its 80-year-old bookshop and put it out to tender amid a torrent of red ink flowing through Australia’s stricken bookselling industry.
Criticism: a battle ground for ideas and power
Criticism is like public affairs and politics in the sense that it’s not just about ideas but power and influence. Richard Brody discusses two writers: one changed critics, the other changed the cinema.
Johnny Depp on his “explosive pal,” Hunter S. Thompson
“Shit, man, we must build a bomb!” yelled gonzo journalist Hunter S Thompson at Johnny Depp the day they met. Depp recounts his experiences with the eccentric legendary writer to The Daily Beast.
Grey areas of madness: an interview with Jon Ronson, on The Psychopath Test
Jon Ronson is well-known for his journalism and his books Them: Adventures with Extremists, and The Men Who Stare at Goats. He chats with Angela Meyer about his latest book The Psychopath Test.
Strange bedfellows: new nexus between Israel and far Right
This is an extract from an essay in On Utøya: Anders Breivik, right terror, racism and Europe.
Paul Kael: the critic who moved to Hollywood
A small salary from The New Yorker was not enough for the late, acclaimed film critic Pauline Kael to live in relative comfort. As a new bio by Brian Kellow explains, she moved to Hollywood and was chewed up and spat out by the system.
book reviews Revisiting the oldies: Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift
Jonathan Swift’s 1726 novel about a man who finds himself in fantastical lands populated by strange people is a genuinely funny and absorbing tale that undoubtedly deserves its reputations as a classic, writes Angela Meyer.
Guy Rundle: The middlingness of this year’s Booker Prize list
The West is broke, the Middle East is in flames, the world is going to hell on a hire bike, but let’s get to what really matters — the Booker Prize.
My Cup Of Tea: Controversy aside, snaps to Australian poets
Australian poetry is suddenly the subject of considerable debate. While there’s controversy over a new poetry anthology by UNSW Press, there’s wider optimism over the health of poetry more generally.
Battle of the books: female authors fight back
A battle of the book lovers has broken out on model-turned-crime author Tara Moss’s blog. There was some snarky back and forth with The Age’s Cameron Woodhead, author Kerryn Goldsworthy and others, reports Amber Jamieson.
Advice for authors: when to go back to the drawing board
It’s a tough call for every author: when to ditch your work and start from scratch. in a short essay novelist Tony D’Sourza explains how and why he went about it.
Black Postcards and hazy memories: Dean Wareham opens up
The multi-talented Dean Wareham has toured the world as the face of Andy Warhol’s Superstars. He sits down for a chat with Kent MacCarther, discussing his new book Black Postcards and a long and distinguished career speckled with drugs and g-strings.
vale The most remarkable person I have ever known: eulogy for Diana Gribble
Legendary publisher Diana Gribble had the gift of seeing you in the round, with great and sometimes unsettling clarity, and she gave the impression of treating everyone as distinctive individuals, writes friend W H Chong.
How Book Depository is costing Australia Post millions
UK online bookseller Book Depository offers free shipping worldwide and cheaper book prices than stores can offer here in Oz. But what does that free postage really cost? Eloise Keating investigates.
Daily Proposition: Slam poetry for a good cause
“Hey you’re a cartoonist, why don’t YOU enter the Climate Change Poetry Slam?” And with those words, my career as a performance poet began.
vale Good night, Diana Gribble, goodbye, rest in peace
Diana Gribble was a legend in the book world, instrumental in creating two Australian beacons of independent publishing: McPhee Gribble, and Text. W H Chong pays tribute to his dear friend.
Charles Dickens: the biographer’s nightmare
Charles Dickens remains an enigma despite innumerable books and articles written about him. There is so much information about Dickens’ life it is virtually impossible to get a clear picture of the man, writes Robert Douglas-Fairhurst.
