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As reported here and there. Evelyn Juers, one half of Giramondo Publishing and independent scholar and author, has been keeping me posted on this absorbing struggle. 
Having had struggles of my own at granular level here, patiently bashing out a community based program for my son with financial and moral support only, (heck, we take what we can and run with it, don't we?) I neglected to send out her media statement a while back.

She did faithfully send through links on the battle, which I tweeted, including one to a petition which eventually gathered almost 10,000 signatures.

And two some days ago, the exciting news appeared in the Sydney Morning Herald that the wishes of Australian scholars would be respected and their space inside this iconic study room extended and soundproofed, without diminution of the visual and practical support they usually enjoy there.

Service enhancements and improvements to the Mitchell Reading Room include a glass wall, extended study space for scholars and the maintenance of access to special collections, though the future of specialist librarians in these areas remains uncertain. Books previously removed (and even a card catalogue) will be returned to the reading room. 

Glass walls. Serious Strong stuff. Sending a powerful message to beancounters in beautiful libraries everywhere - Scholars Matter.

(Cross-blogged from Mulberry Road.)

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Aieeee.

I've already quietly filed away a personal post on the illnesses of other family members this year, in the drafts section, as this has never really been that kind of a blog. However, it is true that people close to me have been very sick this year, and will be for some time. But on top of that, I am going to be having a strange life for the next couple of months.

I threw a tantrum with unexpected rewards attached last week, after hearing my son's behaviour in care had deteriorated to new lows,  not previously recorded.  As I said to the manager over the phone, "if they haven't told me about this, then what else is going on that I haven't heard about?" Oh. My. Goodness. So bear with me because this site will be on hold for quite some time while I get that all sorted.

In the meantime, some literary people, and an 'early adopting' kind of blogger deserve serious gold stars:

Lisa Dempster, director of the 2013 Melbourne Writers Festival, for an expansive and exciting programme. I thoroughly enjoyed the London Review of Books sessions I attended, as well as taking in a thought provoking session with music writer Simon Reynolds. And I could have gone to plenty more...!!!!

 

The Sydney Review of Books - subscribe to their newsletter now, if you haven't already.  Between the freebies at LARB, LRB and SRB (as well as the Literary Saloon at the Complete Review) you will have a lot of things covered book review -wise.

Alexis Wright and Giramondo, for another stellar outing with The Swan Book - I have mentioned this briefly in a post I've written for Readmill, the ebook app. The ABR review carries more information than I can put down right now and you can find it here.

And something to look forward to, and buy: new books from Richard Flanagan and Thomas Pynchon.

Finally, someone I began my blogging days reading has started posting again. This is always a good thing. Welcome back, Dervala Hanley.

Don't be good while I'm away, HAVE FUN. I will work hard, and I will have fun and think of you all.

And yes, I will keep scrapbooking at the little place, because it's faster. 
Faster is my son's favourite word. Say no more.

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Last weekend was a great one for reading about Australian writing, with the launch of two new e-publications.

The University of Western Sydney is supporting the brand spanking new Sydney Review of Books, which launched with several articles on Friday. There will be fresh reading every week for the next two months of this pilot project headed up by critic and editor James Ley, so get along there.

First postings include critical essays and reviews by Kate Middleton, Evelyn Juers, Kerryn Goldsworthy, Peter Pierce, Mo Yan and Nicholas Jose, as well as a call to arms for a watch on criticism by Ben Etherington.

Charlotte Wood, author and essayist, has begun a series of interviews available by subscription, The Writer's Room Interviews. You can sign up for them here, at an annual cost of $27.50 for six issues. The first interview was with Tasmanian writer and Patrick White prizewinner Amanda Lohrey, and I found it completely absorbing, probably because I love her work.

There were two things from the interview, among many, that struck me.

Firstly, I liked what Lohrey had to say about how taste affects the reading of fiction:

CW: A painter friend of mine says people think they don’t know what good art is, but that in every show he’s ever had, the best pictures sell first. You don’t understand it,but you know it.

AL: You do know it. It’s instinctive. But at the same time I think that’s more true of the visual arts than of literature. For it’s also true with fiction that there is no single standard of excellence. A book is a meeting of subjectivities and the subjectivity of one writer will speak to one reader but not to another. There are some writers who don’t speak to me at all but I can see why they speak to other readers, can see that they are in the same zone in terms of their preoccupations, and their conditioning, what’s important to them. It’s just not important to me and I’m not interested. So I don’t mean to say — I’m not trying to posit an idea of excellence that everybody responds to. I think literature is very much a one-to one conversation, which is why I cannot argue with someone who says The Alchemist is their favourite book when they’ve obviously got a lot out of it.

Secondly, Lohrey made some useful remarks about what she called 'inventive' realism:

I’ve always been interested in exploratory and inventive modes of realism, not for their own sake but because each new project demands its own aesthetic. I could get very technical on the subject but this is probably not the time or place. I would say, however, that one of the important functions of university writing courses is to encourage students to interrogate taken-for-granted modes of representation. If you decide to write in a conventional way, at least know why you’ve made that decision. Traditionally, film-makers have been much more concerned with issues of representation and more innovative. And to be fair, the camera gives them more scope, but that doesn’t mean that we as writers shouldn’t think about it. You don’t have to be obviously ‘experimental’, you don’t have to write like Gertrude Stein or James Joyce — small unorthodox manoeuvres can have potent effects.

Small and unorthodox. I like the sound of that.

I've been so busy reading these two publications that I did not have time to blog about them at the time. Which speaks for itself. Go, enjoy, be enlightened or enraged, as you will.

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To mark its 25th anniversary, the Australian Network for Art and Technology is presenting an intriguing residency, The Subjects, at a sleep research institute:

Acclaimed author, Sean Williams, will be joined by artists Thom Buchanan and Fee Plumley and writer Jennifer Mills for a week-long residency at the Appleton Institute, Central Queensland University’s Adelaide-based sleep research centre.

Isolated from contact with the outside world, The Subjects will experience severely disrupted sleep patterns, loss of subjective control and constant surveillance. Each day – or is it night? – they will produce creative accounts of their experience. These will be posted to the project blog, enabling those of us on the outside to respond directly with comments and questions.

As the residency progresses we expect The Subjects’ to become increasingly stressed by their privations. Will they go mad – quietly or otherwise? Will they lose their creative mojo? Will they find new ways of expressing themselves, personally and creatively? You be the judge.

The Subjects and The Scientist (that's Professor Drew Dawson) will also be participating in a special panel discussion for Adelaide Writers’ Week.

All four participants have started posting, and I'm looking forward to reading about their time at Appleton.

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Not only that, the bloggers wrote over 1000 reviews of books by Australian women writers. Yes, we're talking about the Australian Women Writers' challenge, people.

Elizabeth Lhuede has been running this reviewing challenge since early this year Recently, at the Huffington Post, she summarised the reasons for staging a blog-led intervention to raise the profile of Australian women writers in their own country:

Last year when I went hunting for books by Australian women at my local library in the World Heritage area of Katoomba in the Blue Mountains, I couldn't find any. The librarians weren't much help. They said, "Look for the kangaroo on the spine."

I asked friends. Like me, they'd heard of Geraldine Brooks (who lives in the US), Kate Grenville (who won the Orange Prize), and multi-award-winning author Helen Garner. Familiar, too, were names like Shirley Hazzard, Janette Turner Hospital and Kathy Lette (all non-Australian residents). But what about women living and writing in Australia - women of my own (younger) generation? Their books weren't being reviewed in Australian literary magazines.

She goes on to discuss the foundation this year of the Stella Prize for Australian women's writing, which will be awarded for the first time in 2013.

Around the time that her entry at the Huffington Post blog was posted, she also discovered that the librarians at Nowra library had noticed a rise in the circulation of books by Australian women since they had promoted the Australian Women Writers' Challenge at their library. 

That is the kind of story I just love to hear. Bloggers and librarians making a difference for a group of writers who deserve more attention. Very, very cool stuff, and every one of you must take a bow.

And on top of that, there's a massive database of reviews at the Australian Women Writers' Challenge website, and a new challenge planned for 2013.  So all interested bloggers and librarians should go and have a look around, and consider joining up.

And here's two posts from the site I've saved for later: 

Overland fiction editor and writer Jennifer Mills, on classics 

WTF is women's fiction? by author Paddy Reilly

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Note also that Eleanor Hogan's Alice Springs, the latest in a series of books on Australian cities published by NewSouth Publishing, will be launched at Readings in Carlton on Monday night.

Eleanor kept the popular blog The View From Elsewhere during her time in Alice and has drawn on her experiences there in writing this account. She also wrote for Sarsaparilla, a space some of you might remember.

Hogan’s uncompromising narrative is based on her experience living in Alice Springs between 2005 and 2010 to work as a policy officer in Aboriginal services. Looming large is a disparate population. Some residents are non-Indigenous expats from capital cities who have relocated to ‘make a difference’ as part of the town’s welfare economy. Others are the Aboriginal recipients of this welfare, many of whom Hogan shows to be living in serious disadvantage born from dispossession, and made even more difficult by seemingly unending cycles of alcohol, violence, poverty, bureaucracy and exploitation.

These depictions are not based on idle impressions, but are supported by a public servant’s eye for statistics and policy documents and a journalist’s skill in interviewing prominent community members. Lives led in this place of extremes are difficult, but are cross-cut with the pleasures of community that exist in regional centres, and the importance of sport, art, friendship, family and culture.

A tough portrait of life in a beautiful but harsh landscape of contradictions, Alice Springs is as much a series of general questions about living ethically as it is Hogan’s memoir of being an outsider looking in.

Alison Huber, Readings.

Here's a review at The Australian, and an extract from the book at Inside Story.

 

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A busy time of year chez nous. And I am not blogging much, more's the pity.

However I do have a review of Josephine Rowe's new story collection from UQP, Tarcutta Wake, up at The Ember. Here is a taster:

I think when Josephine Rowe is older, we will be approaching these early collections as extended prose poems, reaching into each other. Reflecting on her second collection of stories, How A Moth Becomes A Boat, words like ‘painterly’, ‘highly visual’, and ‘cinematic’ spring readily to mind. Even on a repeat reading, where one is more receptive to small nuances, three stories is all it takes before you are seized once more by the urge to swallow that book whole.

Perhaps there are already academics out there sharpening their pencils at the prospect of tracking plot devices and mood shifts, shadows and shapes, as they roam through Rowe’s early works, including this latest collection, Tarcutta Wake. Rowe is that rare thing, a poet completely at home in prose which asks to be read aloud (like poetry should be). While facing down cliché, Rowe is capable of compounding an astringent and powerful vocalism from closely observed moments and often percussive sounds:

It is understood that a second key will not be cut, just as it is understood that you will not be staying long enough for it to matter. But three weeks now, most of February, and you’re wearing his clothes, smoking his cigarettes, sharing his bed and his razors. From his kitchen window you watch the freight trains thunder past, headed west. By the time you’ve eaten and dressed it will be twelve or one, hot as hell. You’ll listen to the telephones ringing out over the loudspeakers of the factories and Joe’s Storage from across the highway and, grinding your first cigarette of the day into his stainless steel sink, you will not understand why the sound of the freight trains breaks your fucking heart. ‘Stay’ - How a Moth Becomes A Boat

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In the Weekend Australian Review, Geordie Williamson has a fine review of what must be an engrossing academic title which deserves a discerning readership, Margaret Olubas' new book on the life and works of Shirley Hazzard. As Williamson writes, this title is "astonishingly" the first of its kind. The review is behind a paywall but I liked these sentences enough to excise them. (There is a free 28-day trial on the website if you wish to read further.)

Her monograph argues that liberal humanism does not have a geographic home; it is not fixed in space, does not emerge from a single source. Rather its fragile decencies are founded on connections between disparate individuals, creative artists and people-smugglers of the intellect who carry other people's words around inside their heads.

 

 

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All right, I know most of my posts in the past couple of reloaded weeks have been about poetry.
But.You.Must.Visit.This.Tumblr.

Found via the newly launched Haplax, in turn mentioned in the Writers Victoria weekly news email, the SoLong Bulletin Of Australian Poetry And Criticism is edited by Elizabeth Campbell,  LK Holt and Petra White.
LK Holt's posts in particular look snappy and fun, though there is an illustrious bunch of contributors already. It seems to have been here for some time.
 
The search box on that Tumblr theme is more effective than some I've played with too.  (All blogging platforms have their Achilles heel.)
Go, enjoy. It's a fine surprise.

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  Barbara Temperton reports from Cordite on poetic activity in her new neighbourhood, and includes a shot of a beautiful new book to be launched at the end of August:

Graham Kershaw (Hallowell Press) has been working for some time now on the production of the poetry anthology: Dark Diamonds: poems from the south coast of Western Australia. Dark Diamonds has been printed on a treadle platen press – an Arab, designed in the 1870s – using traditional letterpress techniques, with Centaur metal type imported from a foundry still operating in California. The books are hand-bound, as cloth-lined hardbacks. Alison Kershaw’s illustrations are copper relief etchings printed on the Arab. Dark Diamonds will be launched at 3pm on Saturday, August 25th, at the Butter Factory Studios, 8/12 Mt Shadforth Road, Denmark.

Notes from Narrogin and the Great Southern | Cordite Poetry Review

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photo by Brian Yap - found via Trove.

The time has come, a fact's a fact. Though Peter Kenneally has gently accused me of being all Farnsey about it*, I am  pulling up stumps here, and decamping quietly to my internet scrapbook at Mulberry Road. (It's okay, you can all come...if you like. But it will be quieter.)

*I have misremembered that - it was somewhere else, regarding something else. Sorry for taking your name in vain, sir. I do feel like Farnham though.

I did try to manage my internet habits so that I was no longer a purveyor of links. But...I think I actually got worse before I got better.

Let's face it - the news is all around you now, from SPUNC, City of Tongues, Kill Your Darlings, LiteraryMinded, Kerryn's new offering Read, Think, Write, Meanjin, Overland, the Wheeler Centre, Unwakeable, the Oz, even the Paris Review - so all good Ozlit news junkies know where to go.

As I say goodbye (though this site will stay here so links will be maintained), I want to note that the death of Randolph Stow in the age of digital publishing is as good a time as any to say goodbye. The last post will remain at the top of the page here as a memorial, because I can, because I'm a fan

I hope you won't mind keeping an eye out for news about the National Disability Insurance Scheme during the Federal election (and the State, if like me you are unlucky enough to have two this year). I've created a page with  some links and information for interested parties - click on the tab above for details if you'd like to know more.

Thanks to all who have visited, commented, sent me books, and invited me to events or made me welcome at their gatherings, and above all, been friends through some testing times. It's been a great ride, and I've enjoyed your company. Take care.

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THE LAND'S MEANING
For Sidney Nolan

The love of man is a weed of the waste places,
One may think of it as the spinifex of dry souls.

I have not, it is true, made the trek to the difficult country
where it is said to grow; but signs come back,
reports come back, of continuing exploration
in that terrain. And certain of our young men,
who turned in despair from the bar, upsetting a glass,
and swore: "No more" (for the tin rooms stank of flyspray)
are sending word that the mastery of silence
alone is empire. What is God, they say,
but a man unwounded in his loneliness?

And the question (applauded, derided) falls like dust
on veranda and bar; and in pauses, when thinking ceases,
the footprints of the recently departed
march to the mind's horizons, and endure.

And often enough as we turn again, and laugh,
cloud, hide away the tracks with an acid word,
there is one or more gone past the door to stand
 (wondering, debating) in the iron street,
and toss a coin, and pass, to the township's end,
where one-eyed 'Mat, eternal dealer in camels,
grins in his dusty yard like a split fruit.

But one who has returned, his eyes blurred maps
of landscapes still unmapped, gives this account:

"The third day, cockatoos dropped dead in the air.
Then the crows turned back, the camels knelt down and
       stayed there,
and a skin-coloured surf of sandhills jumped the horizon
and swamped me. I was bushed for forty years.

"And I came to a bloke all alone like a kurrajong tree.
And I said to him: 'Mate - I don't need to know your name -
Let me camp in your shade, let me sleep, till the sun goes
       down.'"

LANDFALL

 And indeed I shall anchor, one day - some summer morning
of sunflowers and bougainvillea and arid wind-
and smoking a black cigar, one hand on the mast,
turn, and unlade my eyes of all their cargo;
and the parrot will speed from my shoulder, and white yachts
      glide
welcoming out from the shore on the turquoise tide.

And when they ask me where I have been, I shall say
I do not remember.

And when they ask me what I have seen, I shall say
I remember nothing.

And if they should ever tempt me to speak again,

I shall smile, and refrain.

(Both in A Counterfeit Silence. Angus and Robertson, 1969. And I do wish Typepad would leave my spaces where I bloody put them.)

Age and Sydney Morning Herald

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So many books, only one life...I thought at first Mr Deaver was a serial killer, which is why I clicked on this when it came up in my reader. Got him confused with someone else....It is, after all, a fine name for a crime writer.

From last week, there are five book reviews up on the blog at Overland. What a great platform for blog reviews - good to see this.

Included is a review of Lisa Dempster's Neon Pilgrim, Alec Patric's poetry collection which has been released as an e-book, and Emmett Stinson's short fiction collection, Known Unknowns, from Affirm Press.

Academic librarian Constance evaluates the Kobo reader, recently sold out at Borders stores across Australia.

Maud noticed this, and I thank her for it.

Not in a book group? try this one on for size. If you're not in the States, you might like to use it as a reading list later on. With notes.

The Duck has found us all something really good and silly to finish on.

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Musgrave, David. Glissando. Sleepers Publishing, 2010.

Glissando is remarkably close to its name in its inception and execution: a ripple across strings previously played by others, to largely dramatic effect, with a melancholic afterglow.

The strings have been noted by others - Murnane and White come to mind (think plains, hidden properties, maps, remarkable houses, Voss-like travels, a melancholy narrator.)

The problem with this book to me, if there is one at all (and I think I'm nitpicking when I say this), is that dipping into such a potent mix carries the hazard of producing a pastiche from the contents. I think Musgrave manages to avoid this, but it is a narrow escape.

I do like the central conceit of the lost wager of the National Theatre, tying Murnane and White together with a bond of pure whimsy. And the empty house, Glissando, with its library containing the narrator's grandfather's journals, reminds me of another house in another book, by Alex Miller. But perhaps all that means is that Australia is full of empty settlers' homes with mouldering libraries in them.

So the worry for someone like Musgrave, following in these people's steps, is not pastiche, but simply, how to make this a memorable excursion, when one's fabric is shot through with so many other threads? Madame is a good start, as is Reggie, the narrator's disturbed brother and maestro pianist, travelling the world like David Helfgott. But I am concerned that I will mainly remember this book because it reminded me of others (and pasting in all of the travelling company from Voss doesn't help with this.) It would be better to be able to take away the deeper satire at the expense of theatre, notably at a Rabelaisian feast later in the book, but regrettably that has not stayed with me.

Nor do the notes of sadness struck in the coda act as a satisfactory recall of earlier themes for this reader - Archibald Fliess is first and foremost a narrator, and doesn't quite emerge as a full character, so it's a bit late in the day to start giving him a personality at the end, I think. Though this is not unknown in literature, of course, as many great satirists play outside the margins, do they not? Once more, the aptness of that title springs to mind.

It is pretty much imperative that one has read Voss before reading this, and reading Gerald Murnane's The Plains wouldn't hurt either. Having read David Marr's biography of Patrick White just prior  was, for this reader, one of those remarkable reading coincidences - is it accident that the Fliess grandfather is a great collector, as was one of White's uncles at the fabled Belltrees? I don't think so. That music has a dying fall indeed.

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The Emerging Writers' Festival is kicking off in Melbourne this weekend, with the official opening tomorrow night at BMW Edge (at time of writing, there were a couple of tickets left to this.)

The First Word is …
A celebration of writing, writers and the word.

A night of performance, comedy, spoken word and burlesque.

The official opening of the 7th Emerging Writers’ Festival.

The First Word is …

Dance, comedy, readings and…

The Call to Arms – the Emerging Writers’ Festival’s unique keynote address, this year delivered by romantic fiction writer Toni Jordan.

The Glory of Love – Craig Schuftan.

Love Vs Angst, what makes a better writer? – top writers Josh Earl, Kate Mclennan and Michaela McGuire battle for supremacy in our 2 Sides of the Coin debate.

For a bunch of fascinating events this weekend, scroll down that page, or click here for the full and burgeoning program of festival events over the next nine days.

If you're struggling to get to everything you want to, check out the EWF Online program to see what you can do via your modem. The festival events are, as usual, very moderately priced - and of course, the online program is completely free.

Let the games begin...

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A radio of paper. A fine new thing of audio podcasts on a monthly basis, of new writing.

After mountainous hours of pixel shifting and finger tapping – and countless more wrestling sound waves – we are extremely relieved and excited to announce that Paper Radio has now arrived. For those of you visiting for the first time we should explain that Paper Radio is a sonic interpretation of the unique culture of Australasia – in the shape of a podcast.

The first episode from the FM (fiction) channel, Chris Somerville’s The Drowning Man, is the story of an aloof teacher whose life is defined and dominated by the irascible temperament of water. In our next edition, a documentary for the AM (non-fiction) channel, Georgia Moodie rewinds to the 1920s and tails the experiences of the first African American jazz musicians to tour Australia.

The near future holds audio productions from Rachel O’Neill, Benjamin Law and Thomasin Sleigh.

Paper Radio has been created by a team headed by Jessie Borrelle and Jon Tjhia, working out of Melbourne.

I'm subscribed.

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The news is out and about. The winners of the Calibre Prize for essay writing awarded annually by Australian Book Review were officially announced at a conference in Canberra yesterday.

The $10,000 prize, judged by ABR editor Peter Rose and James Ley, will be once more shared between two winners, Doctor Lorna Hallahan for her essay "On Being Odd" and Doctor David Hansen for "Seeing Truganini". (2010 marks the third year in a row that this fairly new prize has been shared.) The media release is here.

In other ABR related news, editor Peter Rose will read his poetry at Readings bookshop on May 10 as part of Readings' regular poetry event, Pages to Poetry, along with fellow poets Susan Hawthorne and Michael Farrell.

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via wheelercentre.com

Where else, I ask, will you get to hear Shaun Tan give a free keynote address on graphic novels and attend a weekend of graphic storytelling related events?
At the Wheeler Centre on the Anzac Day weekend, that's where.

Saturday sees a bunch of panels led by luminaries of the art such as Bruce Mutard, Nicki Greenberg, Tan, Dylan Horrocks and Oslo Davis, while on Sunday there are some very reasonably priced workshops with practitioners such as Bernard Caleo, of Tango fame.

I'm only providing a couple of links today - I would love the Wheeler Centre to provide 'one link to rule them all, one link to find them' - somewhere in that calendar. I'll just begin at the beginning, and you can scroll down to find the rest.

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Australian independent Scribe Publishing is involving Varuna Writers'Centre and the Ned Kelly crime writing awards in its selections for their next volume of short stories, to be released in February 2011. There's a stellar cast of contributors in the first volume, which you can read about here.

For New Australian Stories 2.0 we are collaborating with two partners.

Firstly, our friends at Varuna, the Writers’ House, will be running the Varuna/NAS national short story competition, with the winners (judged by Peter Bishop, Cate Kennedy and Aviva Tuffield) to be published in New Australian Stories 2.0, and/or to be awarded a week-long residency at Varuna to work with Cate Kennedy, one of Australia’s finest writers of short stories.

Submissions to the Varuna/NAS competition open on 1 June and close on 30 June. Visit the Varuna website for more details: www.varuna.com.au

Secondly, we are teaming up with the Ned Kelly Awards to publish the winner of the S.D. Harvey Short Story Award in New Australian Stories 2.0. This award was established in 2009 in honour of Sandra Harvey, a respected journalist who worked both for the Sydney Morning Herald and the ABC’s Four Corners program, and was fearless in her pursuit of the truth.

Applications for the S.D. Harvey Award close on 31 May. For more information about entering the award, go to: www.nedkellyawards.com/SDHarvey.html

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Some writing news: the Queensland Writers' Centre has moved into the State Library of Queensland, joining a hub of writerly organisations which will also house the Queensland branch of the Institute for the Future of the Book when it opens. Details here.

Express Media has appointed Lisa Dempster the director of the 2010 Emerging Writers' Festival. Hearty congratulations to editor, publisher and writer Lisa, whose travel book Neon Pilgrim  I wrote about last year.

Richard Nash has been writing on what publishing will look like in 10 years time, for Galleycat.

From writing, to film - we all got our fill of 2009 lists I'm sure, over the break - however Mr Celluloid Tongue has more, probably some lists you will like. Good to see Spotless Mind and The Proposition up there - the much-praised film of Sweeney Todd I have yet to see, though I saw a bloodcurdling amateur production in 2008. Gore in operas I can handle, but I do not like my musicals steeped in it, I'm afraid.

Finally, thanks to John Williams of The Second Pass for this site, which he says is updated 'far too infrequently for my taste, but it's always worth the wait'.

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It can't possibly be almost the end of the year, can it? Christmas shopping is in progress.In that spirit there's a list of top reads from the past year after the jump, in no particular order other than abecedarian, arranged by type.

If you're still hungry for selections and suggestions after trawling through mine, there are other lists, by other people, covering all five (six?) Readings stores and beyond. And there's a very comprehensive US/international roundup at The Millions, of course. I might not be back for a little while, as there's plenty of good book news around - follow the blogs here (scroll down for the feeds) and you won't be bored.

What I want for Christmas: Peter Carey's Parrot and Olivier, Lorrie Moore's A Gate at the Stairs, botanical prints I've had framed, which will be ready to pick up next Friday, a bottle of brandy and a month's supply of Zero lemonade.

AND...safe holidays for everyone.

Novels
Auster, Paul. The Book Of Illusions
Castro, Brian. The Bath Fugues
Conte, Steve. The Zookeeper's War
Coetzee, J.M. Disgrace
Fitzgerald, Penelope. The Blue Flower
Hyland, M. J. This Is How
Kennedy, Cate. The World Beneath
Lalami, Laila. Secret Son
Leigh, Julia. The Hunter
__________. Disquiet
Malouf, David. An Imaginary Life
Mills, Jennifer. The Diamond Anchor
Murnane, Gerald. The Plains (preferred this, on the whole, to Barley Patch, which was nonetheless also intriguing.)
Nowra, Louis. Ice
Perkins, Emily. Novel About My Wife
Roth, Philip. Indignation
Toibin, Colm. Brooklyn
Valmorbida, Elise. The TV President

Short Stories (individual authors, discontinuous narratives and anthologies)

Amsterdam, Steve. Things We Didn't See Coming

Cho, Tom. Look Who's Morphing

Cotter, Jason and Michael Williams, eds. Readings and Writings: Forty Years In Books
Ford, Richard. Rock Springs
Le, Nam. The Boat

Poetry
Aitken, Adam. Eighth Habitation
Beveridge, Judith. Storm and Honey
Clemens, Justin. Villain
Curnow, Nathan. The Ghost Poetry Project
Middleton, Kate. Fire Season
Porter, Dorothy. Akhenaten
____________The Bee Hut

Literary biography
Boey, Kim Cheng. Between Stations
Juers, Evelyn. House Of Exile
Kefala, Antigone. Sydney Journals


Biography and travel
Andrews, Julie. Home
Cummings, Stephe

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...just in case you did not know, there is a subscription drive at the literary journal Overland - and the fancy button below will take you to that esteemed journal's blog to read guest posts around and about good Australian writing (as well as occasionally urging you to read the current issue and SUBSCRIBE).

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, Abbotts and Bishops, it's an

                        

and I am supporting it because its editorial team have their eyes (and get their hands) firmly on well-written, readable essays on public issues, in short it's worthy of your attention, and above all, EXTREMELY good value for money - the cheapest literary mag around. I don't know how they do it for the price - essays, fiction, poetry, reviews. Incredible.

(There's also some very attractive subscription packages with other Oz mags - package deals with Island, Griffith Review, Wet Ink and Meanjin.)

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The Centre for Books, Writing and Ideas website is well and truly alive today: from Twitter there is news of the media launch this morning, and some programming is already up on the website, as well as a NAME, "The Wheeler Centre" - which is not as clunky as CBGBWI, I know - news of their opening for the masses in February, and other great things in the associated pipelines, including a Reading The City program next March.

I am hardly surprised to read that such a program is in the waters, as the State Library's Summer Read program has downsized itself for a snugger fit with local libraries (it's going online in early December, so keep an eye on that here.)

On first glance, this is a really nice looking website - I like the site map down the bottom. There will be news posted daily on the site from the "Dailies" section, which has an RSS feed? yes. You can also subscribe to Events from that page. Excuse me now, I've liveblogged a website (not the media event, I hasten to add - there are pics of that on Twitter) and I'm off to play.

*Later today - Michael Orthofer has heard the news, and spread the word, but also speaks of ANOTHER Wheeler Center, in Montana. Zut alors.

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This story is astonishing. Some entrepreneurs are just whitewater rafters, through and through, aren't they?

Ramona snaffled Peter Stothard, the editor of the Times Literary Supplement (TLS) and had a chat to him about newspaper book reviews a couple of weeks ago.

Lynne is a brave, brave person and I hope podcasting will enable me to listen to her broadcast on teh Beeb when it happens in a week or so, and drink champagne.
If there is anyone out there who wouldn't mind translating that Latin from the BBC's head office in the picture for me, I'd be most grateful.

As Jessamyn West says, will these books get all messed up? Via librarian.net, from Vogue Italia.

And if there are librarians out there looking for a testdrive of things to do with the library's new Kindle before it's released to the users, Kathryn Greenhill has a ripper list here.

Finally - Anne Beilby reports on the Text website that the French rights to Gerald Murnane's The Plains were sold to P.O.L. just before he won the Melbourne Prize. One more country besides Sweden in which Murnane can be enjoyed.

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Grracious. The hardest working man in online serialisation has already had his work 'in development' signed for a film deal.

Max Barry is the author of traditional fiction titles Syrup, Jennifer Government (which comes with its own online game, downloaded by thousands), Company and Machine Man, which he is publishing online as a feed which carries a fee past a certain number of pages.

I first heard a chirp about this on Twitter a couple of weeks ago - and now it's in the open, and has been written about in Variety and on the Wall Street Journal books blog to boot. Looks like MM is now on my holiday reading list. He has some thanks for a mentor and friend on the latest post on his website:

I have to mention (again) my Machine Man muse/tormentor M.I. Minter, the guy who essentially provoked me into doing this, because his response to this latest development was:

It’s amazing the fantastic things that happen when you regularly produce work.

Three hearty virtual cheers!!! I look forward to seeing this solidify.

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