I am a fan of books on war. There. I’ve said it. Actually I haven’t read many since I was about fifteen years old, but I am still partial to a browse in the Military section of the bookshop every now and then. Which might be rather strange for a committed pacifist who believes that there must always be a better alternative to sending in the soldiers. But there’s something about a war story … Read more
If you’re a writer of history, you might be interested in the 2010 History Festival “Writing the Past” at the NSW Writers’ Centre, Sat 13th March. All kinds of writers from novellists to academics and professional historians will be there and there are panels on historical fiction, writing politics and true crime, memoir and individual lives, stories of Sydney, as well as biography and local/community.
The festival page is here and you can download a program here.
Here’s my first e-reader, a BeBook, bought at the beginning of this year and still going strong.
When does a short story become a novel? I’m not looking for an answer like “when it’s a novella” or one that involves numbers of pages or words. Rather, I’m interested in process: how an idea for a story, a story that could fill say five or ten thousand words (well within the classic definition of a short story), might be “stretched” into novel-length. Can we tell when this has happened? Can we point at a place in the text and say “there, that’s where it happened”?
Writing fantasy isn’t the sole prerogative of fantasy writers. How about long-serving members of parliament? [since this was posted, Tony Abbott has become leader of the opposition. Wall builders around Australia should start ordering bricks and cement]
Reading at the launch of Cutwater literary anthology in Chippendale, Sydney. July 11th 2009.
Image by Georgia Blackie 2009.
I’ve been carrying out appraisals of manuscripts of children’s books. You might think, because the style of writing, the marketing and the themes and the apparent intended functions of children’s literature that are so different to those of adult books, that some different skills or approaches or considerations apply. And, I suggest, you’d be wrong. Here’s why …
Here are my photographs of the Kids & YA Literature Festival held at the NSW Writers’ Centre in Rozelle on Saturday 4th July.
I think I am reading this because it is going to be discussed in the First Tuesday Book Club, Jennifer Byrnes’ entertaining literary discussion program on ABC 1. But I am also reading Fowles’ book because I am fascinated by the premise. Like Sebastian Faulks’ Engleby, it features the voice of obsession: a lonely misfit stalker.
There are some books, not many, that you want to carry on reading, long after the final page. It might be the setting or the theme that you love. Perhaps it’s the main character, someone you admire and long to travel further alongside. It might be the quality of the language. Usually, in a good book, all of these are present in some form, but when you reach the end, you’re glad. It’s been a great journey, but it’s time to move on.
What on earth could be the reasons to want to carry on reading The Kindly Ones, the grim and very long first-person fictional account of a senior German officer from the Second World War? Read more