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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.)

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.

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.

Oh dear, busy 2013. Busy, busy. Children boating and flying past fires and floods, as they do. (Yes, mine. It astounds me.)

But I did find these fine things recently:

According to Maud, this lady is the Flannery O'Connor of the internet age. 

Everyone needs to know how to do this. Yes, you! From Pat Grant.

Patti Smith sings William Blake. From Jacket2.

Via things magazine: what happens when you photograph a car on fire, asks J.M. Colberg?

The act of photographing, the gesture, has become part of our interaction with the world. You photograph just like you look. You know that you can never look at all of those photographs again (in all likelihood you never will - who has the time?), but it’s not about the photographs - it’s about the photographing. The act of photography might have turned into the equivalent of whistling a song, something you do, something that might or might not have beauty, a communicative act just as much as an affirmative act: I was there, and me being there means I had to photograph it.

And from Jessamyn West, a link to a NYT discussion, "Do We Still Need Libraries?"

(Crossposted at Mulberry Road.)

On February 12, fortyfivedownstairs is holding a poetry reading in honour of former MP Barry Jones' 80th birthday:

Barry Jones is one of the more remarkable politicians to have sat in the House of Representatives in Canberra, a much loved and respected figure on both sides of politics.

As a tribute for his 80^th birthday late last year, the Chair of fortyfivedownstairs, Julian Burnside, has curated a night of some of Barry’s favourite poetry and music.

Readers include Race Matthews, Gareth Evans, Peter Craven, Marieke Hardy, Dr. Joan Grant, Max Gillies and John Stanton.

The Flinders Quartet will also perform on this memorable evening.

Get your tickets here.

Top 10 non-fic and fiction picks of 2012 - from Longreads. Enjoy.

Probably everyone on Twitter knew this but me - you will soon be able to download all your tweets. (At present it is invite only). Via ReadWrite (they dropped the "Web" a while ago.)

Find yourself some books that deserved a wider audience, according to people in British publishing, in this article from The Guardian on publishing in 2012.

The boat installation, A Room For London, wraps up with this podcast from Colm Toibin, which includes a reading of his story about the old age of Joseph Conrad's character Marlow.

Finally, some Tumblr treasure from Maud Newton - a list of favourite New Yorker articles from the archive.

I know, I know. It's only the third of December.

Traditionally (a tradition of 24 years standing this year), we have four birthdays in January. So I am preparing about ten days earlier than everyone else. (Who else saw that hilarious Kikki K insert in The Age on Saturday? that calendar had NO TIME FOR SHOPPING in it. Just 'list' seguing effortlessly into 'wrapping'.)

Some of these are quite old. So forgive me if you have seen them already.

If you are feeling the pull to slow down over this busy time of year, the ABC has been running a program introducing meditation over the past six weeks. I heard about it through the Melbourne Meditation Centre, but it may well have been bruited elsewhere. Here's the toolkit. (You can easily trawl down the page to week 1 and begin at the beginning.)

I was interested to see this app, Flipboard, mentioned on the Killings blog by publishing researcher Caroline Hamilton, as I follow one of its developers on Twitter. And it looks to be a very pretty way of aggregating all your stuff on your iPad, too. 

Caroline also mentions a 2010 article by Craig Mod that I really thought I'd read already. As it's not in my bookmarks, then I guess I will have to read it now, but it sure looks familiar...Books In The Age Of The iPad.

 It's probably a bit late for Australians to order these and have them by Christmas, but this gorgeous Swiss toymaker's website is fun to look at, and I dare you not to order something one day. Via Things magazine. (Being the non-starting quilter I am, I have this on the wishlist.)

Something else I still haven't read - Terry Eagleton's review of a new bio of Derrida, from The Guardian.

Robert Crum, a couple of weeks back, had things to say about book marketing, coming up as a result with a list of lit-labels of his own which included the rather clumsy 'lit-lit':

The development of the literary marketplace in the past 30-something years has been echoed by a new, and acute, sensitivity to the place of genre within the trade. In a market-savvy creative economy, you could say that genre has become everything. I have been able to identify 15 contemporary shades of "literature".

I'll leave it to you to decide if his colours of writing are to your taste. Happy Christmas - if Typepad is listening, I want a better clipping tool, please. Like the one I have already on this blog, where, regrettably, you will be more likely to find me in the lazy, hazy days of summer. Thanks for reading the very intermittent postings here this year.

From ndis.gov.au, 29 November:

Today the Prime Minister introduced legislation for the National Disability Insurance Scheme into the Commonwealth Parliament. You can watch her speech online here, just as people with disability, their families and carers and NDIS campaigners from around the country did this morning, from the public gallery of the House of Representatives.

The legislation sets out the framework for a national scheme – a framework that will initially operate in five launch sites from mid-next year.

The legislation has been referred to a Senate Committee for their consideration. During their inquiry, the Senate Committee will hear evidence from people with disability, their families and carers about the Bill, which means everyone will have another opportunity to consider the details, and to input into the drafting and design of this important legislation.

Following conversation with people with disability, their families and carers, with service providers and advocates through the Senate Committee, and ongoing work with the states and territories, the Parliament will vote on the Bill next year.

You can also read the Bill and provide feedback through our online forum Your Say.

I have been hearing from various professionals all year about younger families who are at breaking point, and it breaks my heart - I was raising my children at a time when there still wasn't enough support, but there was less, shall we say blockage? in the system. We need this so badly, and we need it now.

If you haven't yet joined the campaign to support this important reform, you can still sign up at everyaustraliancounts.com.au, and share the details of the campaign with your friends. The money for this insurance scheme is still not guaranteed, and we need Australians to stay tuned and make sure we build this right. Congratulations to the Gillard government for getting it this far - now we all need to pull together to get the job done well. 

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.

If you want to find out what THAT's all about - well, in other words, Madeleine Tucker's show Olympik Phever has been extended for a week at Son Of Loft, Lithuanian Club, North Melbourne (just around the corner from the North Melbourne Town Hall).

The show features sports of sorts, songs, videos, and yet another ridiculous costume, to which my pimping today carries a clue. To tell you any more would be a total spoiler. But I cannot get the accompanying song out of my head today, mainly because I've been singing it to my nieces while their mum and dad went along to chuckle.

Well done, team (Maddy, Danny, Rena, Sarah). Go you good things.

Tickets available here.  And yes, still a cosy venue.

Hey there, hoopla, daughter's circus is in town again. It's that fringey time of year...

I have enjoyed all of Maddy's posters so far, but I really love the retro look of this one, designed by Rena Littleson.

Facebook has the details.

Fringe has the tickets.

Be there quickly, as the venue is cosy 

Olympik Phever is performed by Madeleine Tucker, and was developed by Madeleine Tucker and Danny Cisco: 

It's the middle of the Olympics and bespangled entertainer Madeleine Tucker has been given her big chance to shine, filling in as the presenter for a late night Olympics TV special. With interviews, live ads and musical numbers, she’s set to cram in as much high-quality entertainment as she can!

Not one for sports fans, this colourfully kitsch extravaganza will pay surreal homage to the faded world of variety television, with catchy songs and segments galore!


TICKETS ARE ON SALE NOW now NOWW noooowww
 

If you can't make it to the show, you might like to take in some of Maddy's videos at her blog. (Look for Rodney The Goblin.) 

As you may or may not know, Australian Book Review is moving from its Richmond premises to a new cultural hub in the revamped J.H. Boyd Girls High School in Southbank, as we speak. An opening junket is planned.

Here is the news:

On Saturday, 7 July – between 10 a.m. and 2 p.m., ABR will take part in the City of Melbourne’s official launch of Boyd.

We hope that many Melburnians will come along and visit our office upstairs. We’ll be presenting a series of readings each half hour.

Readers will include Joel Deane, Lisa Gorton, Elisabeth Holdsworth, and Chris Wallace-Crabbe.

It should be a memorable day.

Over at Cordite, Adam Ford tells us why he would like to have Thirty More Australian Poets.

Margaret Atwood is sharing her writing online at Wattpad, a social writing site.

"I didn't think they were going to disapprove," said Atwood. "I've already looked at quite a bit [of writing] on the site but haven't commented yet. I think it would be too crushing for me to comment. Out of millions of users, how am I going to single somebody out? It's enough to judge the poems."

She will, she said, be listening to feedback from her readers, however. "I think any feedback is interesting, and this is not your usual poetry reading group," she said. "This is nothing new. [It's] simply being reinvented by the internet ... The Pickwick Papers was published serially and people would respond to the chapters by letter. That's why Sam Weller became such a big part of the book." (The Guardian)

Something marvellous the Guardian has offered over the past couple of months: a series of posts on John Donne's life and work by Roz Kaveney.

Kevin Murphy reports at the Melville House blog that Seth Godin's selfpublishing venture is over.

Also from Melville House comes the news that the Folger Library is releasing its New Folger Library editions of Shakespeare as e-books.

An  illustrated  review of a cartoon-artist's view of New York in the twenties at The Ember, by Nick Terrell.

And finally, an update on Susan Johnson's blog on the progress of the reloaded Queensland Literary Awards.

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.

Alice has been walking and taking photographs at her mother's command. The results are bewitching.

Writing at Desktop, Australian blogger Gerard Edelson calls Banksy's film, Exit Through The Gift Shop,

'that rarest of things in the internet age: a cinematic Trojan horse.'

His full review will be posted on his own blog, Celluloid Tongue, in good time, in good time.

One of my favourite short story writers is putting one up a month as a podcast, and selling the print version from her website as a zine (and Jen makes pretty ones.) We are lucky punters. Get over there and listen, and send off for a bundle when she has a few more up. I will be.

Polari's first issue features an interview with Edmund White, poetry by Pam Brown, the short fiction of Dallas Angguish and the writing of Staceyann Chin. This new international journal is is currently holding an open call for submissions from LGBT and queer writers for its second issue, with a publication date of October 1st 2010.

And finally this link from John Williams at The Second Pass, to an interview with US historian Jill Lepore, carries a very sweet tale of an inspiring letter with it. What an interesting idea for a teacher to have, taking letters every year from 15 year old pupils and posting them back five years later. I wonder if he ever got any of them mixed up...(yes, that would be me if I was that teacher.)

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...

At the recent W3 conference, self-publishing platform Lulu was not only a Gold Sponsor, but just look where their exhibition booth was.

Jane Ciabattari of the Critical Mass blog enjoyed Patti Smith's address at the PEN World Voices conference last week. There is a link to audio of the event at the end of her post.

As they say on Dumbfoundry, the seventeenth issue of Otoliths is...fresh.

Older news, but still worthy - last year a POD publisher issued 272,930 titles. Publishers' Weekly tells you how BiblioBazaar did it.

Last week Ramona Koval interviewed Nicholas Birns, the editor of the scholarly journal on American studies of Australian writing, Antipodes, and the podcast is here. 

Two remarkable collections of poetry are available this month at a reduced price at Giramondo Publishing. For a limited time you can purchase the latest collections by Jennifer Maiden and Judith Beveridge together, for $35, at a saving of 20%.

FInally - I really enjoyed watching Hanif Kureishi talking on the Guardian website last week to mark the publication of his Collected Stories (at 688 pages, I'd be wanting that in hardback). Some great photographs, and I never tire of listening to him. It is great, too, to hear him say that while the idea of a collection 'rather horrified' him at first, feeling it was 'some kind of tombstone', he also now feels moved to write more. YESSS.

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.

Thanks to Thuy Linh Nguyen for reminding me of the new online mag, Islet, from literary journal Island, and their blog, Conversation. And thanks to all of you for requiring me to visit the website and remind myself what a beautiful cover shot this is.

I am  just wondering if anyone can shed some light on this. I bookmarked it a while ago and have been wondering whether it stalled or no.

Something of Clive's about Les that I must read.

As reported by Darcy Moore a couple of weeks ago, the first trailer of the film of John Marsden's excellent novel, Tomorrow When The War Began, is now available.

This film of a talk by Richard Nash on book publishing comes thoroughly recommended by Chris Anderson, Wired editor and author of the seminal text The Long Tail. He was very effusive about it on Twitter the other day, calling it the 'best post on the future of books and publishing I've ever seen'.

The Dublin Impac shortlist is out. And speaking of shortlists, it is nice to see Karen Hitchcock's tight and edgy first collection of stories on this one, in some good company.

Kerryn informs us that the latest issue of JASAL is a special issue dedicated to the memory of Australian poet Vincent Buckley.

Finally, I was delighted by the snippets of this interview I heard last week with recently deceased Scottish tenor Kenneth McKellar on Margaret Throsby's morning interview show, and am looking forward to listening to the lot today. Aaah technology, iz waking up the dead.

Wellll....it's time for a longer break, for a lot of good reasons (which is, of course, a far, far better thing than taking it for bad ones.) Think 'talking 25 year old son with autism' for starters. I will be flashing intermittently here like a sick modem till June, if at all, and then taking stock again.

For now, the Internet's going to continue as a fine distraction, taken neat, rather than an enthralling one, diluted with mixers (for example, if I see one more post on e-readers in my feeds I will probably mutate into an iTablet myself). I will lurk on my friends' blogs - that's a given, and there might be a review, or two at some stage - but only general maintenance will be undertaken here.

You might like to follow the Wheeler Centre, SPUNC news (yes, that's the feed to the whole site down in the lefthand corner of the homepage), the engaging blogs of the book artist known as Ampersand Duck and artist Fifi at Strange Fruit, and keep an eye on this page, and things magazine, while I'm gone.
Till June, adieu.

SOOOO much going on in the City of Books that my head reels. I told my son I wasn't buying any more books, except for him, and it was an awful lie.  For just look at these nice new things:

1. Puncher and Wattman's latest anthology of poetry, Out Of The Box, a contemporary collection by gay and lesbian writers edited by Michael Farrell and Jill Jones, is to be launched at Hares and Hyenas on February 2 by Christos Tsiolkas and Kathleen Fallon. Jill has details on her blog, Ruby Street, and links to an interview with Scott Patrick Mitchell at OutinPerth.

The new anthology Out of the Box is the brainchild of Michael Farrell and Jill Jones, arguably two of our nation’s most exciting queer voices. Together this poetic duo have brought together an impressive number of poets, among them the likes of David Malouf and Dorothy Porter.

‘We wanted a book that presented poetry being written now which is why, by-and-large, the poets are represented by relatively recent work, explained Jones of the process behind creating Out of the Box. ‘It is quite consciously not historical, nor even a survey of the last 20 or 30 years. We hope much of it is fresh, with just a dash of older work.

2. Karen Andrews is busy putting the finishing touches to a fine anthology of blog writing over at Miscellaneous Press, with a stellar lineup of contributors. That makes three, not two, books I will soon buy (see no.6). I am indeed a God-awful liar about my bookbuying.

And there's more, as they say when selling steak knives, though not all of it for sale.

3. The Wheeler Centre has put more programming online, some of it as far ahead as May.

4. Submissions are being accepted for the sixth Sleepers Almanac, until February 12. And it will also be released as an iPhone app.!

5. There is an impressive stream of independent publishing news from the Australian small press cooperative, SPUNC, whose membership is growing steadily. Their RSS feed is a very good thing to be keeping your eye on, you know you want to.

6. The latest Lifted Brow, no. 6, which looks fabulous, was launched with a themed party last week at the Bella Bar at Trades Hall. I didn't quite make it there, but I believe it was a hoot.

On top of this, it is nice to know, isn't it, that Tom Keneally thinks it is just as well that the new writers' stamps are self adhesive or else he would be licking David Malouf's and Peter Carey's arses. I feel much wiser now, myself. (Going to buy the stamps too, for sure. The early Carey one has a great retro feel about it.)

All a bit too much for this blogger - I am looking forward to quieter distractions, but more anon.

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.

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.

Kris Hemensley welcomes all to a reading by US poet Susan Schultz, the editor of Tinfish poetry journal, at  Collected Works Bookshop on Wednesday evening this week. (Issue 17 of the journal is available free here from Tinfish Press , and 'centerfold' artworks from the last eight issues may also be viewed online.)

As is usual with the events at the most specialised literary bookshop in this city of books, a gang of other poets will accompany this distinguished visitor, including Michael Farrell. Here are the necessary details. Susan Schultz has a blog on her editing, academic writing and poetry, here.