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For it is true, some of us live in an Internet world. And isn't "Internet Tendency" just the best name ever for a service delivering an i-Phone app from indie publishers? How 'hubbly jubbly'.

Mc Sweeney's email newsletter promises great things for its new iPhone app, The Small Chair:

No longer will T-Pain be your only salvation on trains, during lunch, and through all the other empty gaps in a day. Allow McSweeney's to fill your moments of solitude, moments of togetherness, moments of intolerable boredom.'

Und so weiter. There's a review making extravagant claims about sales of The Small Chair, here at Boldtype.

Australian Bookseller and Publisher Online announced this afternoon that Random House Australia (RHA) has launched a print on demand (POD) program that will allow it to produce single copies of out-of-print titles:

The program, which has been 18 months in the planning, is in partnership with Sydney-based SOS Print+Media and will cover out-of-print in-copyright Random House titles that sell nine or less copies per year. (Books which sell in small quantities of 10 or more fall into the publisher's short-run program and are printed by Griffin Press.)

Random House sales director Gavin Schwarcz told WBN the program would ensure the publisher's books stayed in print, but that it was as much about meeting customer expectations as making a profit.

‘It's a reduced margin for us,' he admitted. ‘The author will make the same [royalties on these books], but it's all about service. I think with the world the way it is, the consumer nowadays just thinks if they want something they don't understand why they can't get it.'

Schwarcz said the POD initiative would mean booksellers could satisfy customer requests and added that such a program could even help to promote some out-of-print titles.

The Millions has a nifty countdown of post-millenium besties on, compiled after extensive consultation with a large and impressive panel of writers/bloggers/writer-bloggers, with thoughtful reviews of each title provided. Via John Williams at Second Pass.

Well, there are prizes. And then, there are prizes.

And speaking of the other kind of prize, three hearty cheers for Sleepers and Steve Amsterdam's win. Not bad for the first novel out of their blocks, is it now. Not too shabby at all.

Just In. A simply smashing post on early writing from Penni Russon.

My other top selection for the week is this stupendous post about Venice and Tintoretto, from Fiona's exceptional Strange Fruit blog on painting, photography and writing.

It is time to thank poet and writer George Dunford, of Hackpacker, for his great article on litblogs in last week's Big Issue, which I fortunately got into town to buy late in the week while attending to some panel discussion and the launch of Nathan Curnow's  Ghost Poetry Project, which was a very moving occasion (photos from Sean M. Whelan there). More of that anon.

Feel bad that others can't see what you are reading when you carry your Kindle/iPhone/iLiad/whatsit around? (Not really an Australian problem yet, is it?) Etsy may have the solution. Via Three Percent.

In Readings in Hawthorn this morning, saw a very attractive display of Faber Firsts - enjoy those retro covers for the modern era if you haven't seen them already. (Let's face it, I saw mine in the shop, so I'm last to the party.) They are rather fine, and for some reason I think I like them better than what I've seen so far of the poetry. A little overdone? I just don't know.

...and it has no silly visuals, no annoying fake bookshelves, just pure refreshing chat. ONCE A WEEK at this stage, anyway, tune in not just to Lake Wobegon, but to Louise Swinn and Zoe Dattner's radical new take on conversation around books, the Twenty-First Century BookShow.

First seen on the Overland blog, where Jeff casts a sober eye on how we will continue to talk about books, and where.

I know where I'm going to be every week. In this instalment, listen to Zoe talk about YA novels and hiding in the library, and Louise discuss the problems of short story dissemination and the first Cutwater anthology. In one take, like Ella, including a sneeze. FAB.

See you next week sometime, as there's lots going on and I'm off to watch Episode 3 over lunch.

I saw this video from French publishing company Editis and downloaded it last night from its original source thanks to a tip off on Twitter from Maud. However, the original video is full bandwidth quality and takes forever to load (I checked 250 feed items and was still waiting), so the obliging folk at if:book have found us a lower -res version on YouTube, which still looks quite good in high-quality mode.

It does give a tantalising glimpse of how the ideal e-reading solution might work in the best of all possible worlds. I could well be in line when they beam these up.

...till M.J. Hyland's newie. (Via my very own comments in a previous post. That's what happens when your friend from way back says your blog is 'overwhelming' - you become completely self-referential.)
Talk of exploding wheels rolling down thoroughfares. This is going to be great.

OH look at that.Scribd Store is open now.

Are you an independent publisher? this might be the way to get the Amazon Kindle to shift a few copies quickly. (Story from The Millions.)

Martin Edmonds has a review of Luca Antara in the New York Times.

Something big is coming - in two volumes and shrouded in mystery. But relax, we are unlikely to be able to read it in English before 2012.

From Andrew Burke comes this exhortation to help a fabulous poetry publisher and buy yourself something good at the same time.

Wow, that renga is finished - here's the final result, and it is stunning.

Finally, at The Complete Review M.A. Orthofer evaluates two new review aggregating sites, and finds his own comes up pretty well (which is hardly surprising, as it is hard to surpass for coverage and general excellence).

This has been driving huge amounts of commenting traffic to Cordite, so go have a look. The slowly maturing result is magnificent, too.

Remember book trailers? and how awful they were? Apparently they are improving. (It looks like Sloane Crosley, of eating cake fame, put a lot of work into hers too.) Via Boldtype.

People are never satisfied, are they?

Here is a fine swag of Queensland writers, via the Empty Pages blog at the Queensland Writers' Centre. (I guess I could have tweeted that, if I was small-boned enough.)

Posted this mainly because I just like the name of the feature (and our shed is in need of a Howards Storage World makeover). I like the Cloffice, too, mainly because I have half a room...and it's a real mess right now.

This book has a foxy cover, as Kath might say - but even more impressive is its author's completely silly rider.

This is such an impressive use of technology. Flick on the slide show and enjoy your own West Wing.

Here's another amazing local cover, coming in October to a shop near you.

And finally, why did I not know about this till I got an OzBallet newsletter? It's already been going for a month: check out David McAllister's post on the So You Think You Can Dance final (and note he was not given a seat in the house on the night, tssskk.)

This news, just to hand.

And this as well - I've read three of them, for once, and loved The Pages and Breath as well as this. Might just pick up Ice anyway, because 'I'm worth it'.

(If you'd like a chance to win them all, enter the Readings competition.)

Europeana reports that its interactive features are now fully functional. If you haven't yet checked out this mammoth digital project with search tentacles reaching across Europe's museums and archives, maybe it's time.

Beautiful writing from this lady, as always. Not as frequent as she was, but Dervala Hanley is still close to the best of my web in the life writing category.

As Ron Hogan noted last week, it was Helen Sweetstory's birthday and she is 59. That would have been a swell party.

Haven't been reading Mr Rosen for a while, but hey, he's sure been busy.

I do not think we will be able to ignore this book when it comes out. Talk of putting colour back into your life (or your books)!!

Finally, more of Waugh from Picador. Amazing.

Kim has been exploring the Queen's bookshop, as you do. This is a great post, and I am glad she got in before the snow show.

“First publication is a pure, carnal leap in the dark which one dreams is life.” If this was all she had said, I think she would still be noticed. Hortense Calisher died a few weeks ago, aged 97, in the US.
There is an obituary here.

Something else to read - as well as Stephany's blog all the time, which is magnificently good.
(This I salvaged from last year's news, it was too good to throw away.)

I agree with the eds at the Literary Saloon that the US cover of the Penguin reissue of The Vivisector is indeed a shocker.

And I think there would be whole epics in Naked Man. But let New Yorkers have their fun.

Three cheers for Jennifer Mills, who has been travelling but nonetheless has managed to pick up lots of good stuff. (There is more about her writing here.)

Everything I have read by Mills here and there makes me prick up my ears. There are some great posts on her blog about South America:

 - guatemalingerer

Shades of Mr Chatwin here ( everywhere, really)...

-alert now orange

When people like this are blogging it makes one glad to be alive and plugged in to broadband. Jen is an online poet (who sells her own zines too ). She remarked recently that she doesn't blog often, but man, when she does, I sit up and scan that screen with greatly increased attention. I'll be looking out for her debut novel, The Diamond Anchor, in 2009.

Fancy a round of handheld Villette sometime soon? Nintendo might be able to help. The first thing we do, let's blast all the Reeds, though.

Alison Croggon was there, watching Warne watch Warne, so read all about it.

Tim Howard, of Sterne, has a review of Murray Bail's The Pages in online journal The Quarterly Conversation.

Of Twain, and buttermilk, and important modern neologisms that aren't as new as we thought they were, Jack Pendarvis sings. Via Maud, comme d'habitude.
Maud's been exceptionally helpful, too, evaluating the iPhone as an e-reader.

Steven Conte has put up some nice book covers and written feelingly of other things at the Summer Read blog, while Sophie C got out a new camera and does Melbourne with her usual visual panache.

Since I started on this the other week, there have also been posts from Toni Jordan that are dry, warm and humorous, as one might expect from the author of her witty first novel Addition, and as I leave for the beach and some reading and festivities of my own, the blogging will continue over there, so get on down.

Other spots to watch include of course Ange's fabulous Literary Minded blog at Crikey, Lisa Dempster's book blog at Unwakeable, where she is reviewing her selection from the Summer Reads, and Mobylives, which seems to get better every week. (Yes, that whale is sure out there.)

And you might like to have a look at Perry's profiles of litbloggers over at Matilda - skip the first one, 'cause you know all about this space, and you may find some new sites of interest. I certainly did. Thanks, Perry.

HAH. Only ONE WRONG. On teh first try. I'm arrogant (that's a clue to the one I got wrong.)

Miriam Burstein found some dead cakes here, which reminded her (and others) of Miss Havisham's wedding feast.

Another week, a new blog to read - what fun. Linh Dinh describes her travels around the States in a recent tour, here on Harriet, the Poetry Foundation blog.

Antipodean SF#126 is now available, link via HorrorScope. TEN fabulous original science-fiction, fantasy, or horror mini-stories of about 500 words each that will entertain, yet won't take hours to read.

To coincide with his tour, Text Publishing will release two Leonard Cohen novels here.(And I say Hallelujah because Google Reader helped me pull a feed off their new website.)

Mark Thwaite alerts us on ReadySteadyBook to a notification site for new DRM-free e-books.

And according to Bud Parr, there's some Pynchon-lite on the horizon.

She's a famous librarian who writes like a dream, she was here very recently (I could not really justify the outrageous price of the seminar without a current job), and she loved the joint. Of Melbourne, K.G. Schneider, the Free Range Librarian, says:

'Melbourne is a lovely city about as old as San Francisco, with similar Gold Rush origins. It’s the first city I’ve been in for a long time that felt truly sui generis.

Some old cities feel like a set piece, some have had their souls rebuilt into chilly commercial canyons, but Melbourne has kept a lot of character (not without proactive help from its citizens). From the Vic Market to the funky little cafes in alleys, Melbourne resists being bottled. Sydney is beautiful and tidier, but Melbourne has broader shoulders and a way of tossing its hair that says, “I’ve been through a lot.”'
(And yes, I've cut the links to her photos there, but you can see them from her site.)

Not only does Canongate Publishing's blog invite the public (including the publishing industry) to contribute posts (called gateposts), but it selects blogs of note to feature every once in a while. (This I discovered via Stephen Mitchelmore at UK blog This Space, featured last week. )

Not only that, it's the front page of the whole establishment, the first hit for Canongate on Google and the publisher's public face is integrated quite well into a social network site. Haven't seen anything else like this yet; I will have to get out a bit more, I think. A search turned up this article by Hannah Davies in The BookSeller (thanks to Book Addicts for the link), which will be my starting point for further forays. Davies notes that Canongate's site was in beta in September and due to be launched, so I would say this is still very new.

The Canongate site could do with some more navigation aids either on top or to the side. It seems to have been designed by someone who thinks most blogs are messy affairs, however most of (er, most of) our mess has some purpose or other. Because of the lean design, presently the search box on the Gateposts page of Meet At The Gate can only help you find things you already know are there, unless they're the latest or greatest posts, of course.

Keep your eyes peeled and you'll be able to browse topics and contributors from the side menu on the front page (though sadly you cannot find the posts on featured blogs easily). See, our categorised archives exist for a reason...and there could be a reason why there's no room for them here, also.

There appear to be dribs of more innovative technology drabbed here and there through the site - a Twitter feed of news and some MySpace and Facebook addresses are mentioned, but only from one page.

Otherwise it's an interesting experiment and I am reasonably impressed by their efforts to bring writers, publishers and the public together in a social network. A fair bit of thought has gone into this, and given the prestige of bloggers in the UK (most of the prominent bloggers were sent Sony E-readers to trial in September), it would want to be pretty to attract their attention.

Now I'm off to read Maria Hyland's post - whoo hoo. Hope I can comment....nope, I am too shy. Never mind how she feels about Helen Garner being nominated for a prize alongside her - I can't even put fingers to keyboard when I have the chance to talk to MJH. I must have some favourite writers after all, and this is the test I will apply in future.

Also she's published by Text, Canongate's partners down under. So I am left wondering if the arrangement's so very different from providing a few choice sentences for a cover blurb. While not as gratingly obvious as the author blogs at Faber, some of which seem to be simply webpages put up on Blogger under industry pressure, this is a funny state of affairs. Do the authors volunteer for this activity? How does this work exactly?

(The blog of the month at Faber for November, that of Richard T. Kelly, author of a bio of Sean Penn and other works, is worthy of a post on its own on author blogging. He's doing quite a nice job with whatever it is that he thinks he's doing there. The labelling is a tad gratuitous, but he seems to like, and 'get,' blogging, which is more than can be said for the blog I found there in October, which has discreetly disappeared from the site.)

There are also snippets from Canongate's 'archives', which I assume doesn't always include sniffy correspondence like this. I am going to follow the Gate site for a bit and see what else turns up, and I will keep you informed of any progress I make.

The Lifted Brow No. 4 (Fake Bookshelf) is available for preorder.

It's biennial, published in Melbourne, and comprehensive - TLB4 has no less than 67 stories and comics, and 40 songs, based on the titles on a fake bookshelf. According to my informant, the issue includes:

Andrew Burke at Hi Spirits notes that the Cutwater anthology is now taking submissions for its 2009 issue.
The chosen theme for the issue is "Ratbags", inspired by Australian Chamber Orchestra's leader Richard Tognetti's essay on the topic in 2005.
The whole thing can be found on the ACO blog, itself a great place for a ramble around - check out the Richard Tognetti posts, particularly.

Do note, too, that Andrew has edited the latest issue of Masthead online poetry anthology, with Candice Ward.

Fizzy Train is coming, coming down the track,
you gonna ride that fizzy train and it won't bring you back.

Ahem. My daughter's show in the Fringe festival opens next week, All Aboard The Fizzy Train; it's a revamped and expanded Deakin final-year piece that grew wings and flew off into these modest beginnings of the big time. Which is pretty exciting stuff, and all mothers must blog such things.

This engaging, whimsical three-hander stars Mr Confetti, a jewel-encrusted butler, a family (well, a father and son) of irons, and a range of other surprising characters, songs and props.

Which reminds me, I must pop down to the drygoods deli in Blackburn - I'm on fig supply this season.

Apologies to Woody Guthrie, of course, are in order.

Tim Berners-Lee has launched a Foundation to support further research into the World Wide Web and the digital divide, among other things.

Jessamyn West has a very personal and lovely tribute to the late David Foster Wallace here,
and Scott McLemee has written about him at Inside Higher Ed as well.
(Link via Critical Mass).

From Anne Fernald, this link to Quay magazine, a journal of the arts, where Erika Dreifus
has written on the Twin Towers in the current issue.

La Mama theatre will remain at its home in Faraday Street, Carlton; fundraising to keep it there has finally been successful, a mere two weeks before the doors were due to close. A list of donors to the cause can be found here at Alison Croggon's Theatre Notes blog.

From the National Young Writers Festival newsletter (and the website, on this page), there's been a callout for participation in the Interactive Narrative Workshop, to take place very soon in Newcastle and virtual spaces:

Electrofringe and the National Young Writers’ Festival are presenting an interactive narrative workshop at the 2008 TiNA festival. The session will be held in the Process Space on Friday 3rd October from 4-6pm, and is free and open to all. It will be the first meet up session to kick-start the process. Writers will be teamed up with interactive specialists and form groups for future collaboration. Following the initial workshop, the project will further organise frequent meet-ups in Sydney and Melbourne where collaborators can show their work and exchange ideas.

The project’s online home will be the ABC’s new POOL platform (www.pool.org.au), which will permanently form the goto and exchange place for people to post ideas and work in progress, and discuss projects as they unfold.

It looks as though online participation is a goer if you can't get to Newcastle for the workshop (read further here). So email Elmar Trefz at [email protected] with the following details:

    * Name
    * Contact details
    * Artform(s) (fiction / playwriting / video / web development / flash development / interactive media / artist / etc)
    * Any projects or ideas you’re working on, concepts, scripts, proposals, areas of interest or obsession.

if you are a young writer this interests.

A new version of The Time is not yet Ripe by Louis Esson is currently playing
at the Carlton Courthouse from 27th August to 13th September.
The press release recommends buying tickets early to beat the VCE crowd - so I'm a bit slow off the mark here.

Set in Melbourne on the eve of a federal election, this acerbic satire tells the story of Doris, daughter of the Prime Minister, and her fiancée, Sydney, socialist candidate for the seat of Wombat, as they are forced to choose between love and political ideals.  This crisp version of Esson’s rarely produced 1912 classic sparkles with Wildean themes of surprising contemporary relevance.  Practical politics, sedition laws, politicians and the national identity are satirised by the father of Australian theatre. ‘The Time is not yet Ripe’ is a witty landmark in the story of Australian playwriting. It is a play that continues to connect with audiences and theatre makers. It is beguiling and smart, and surprisingly prescient.

Apparently rarely performed, it finishes next weekend, showing Wednesdays to Sundays only. Bookings 9347 6142, or at lamama.com.au

It is lucky Twitter wasn't around in Eliot's day - Milton is up for some serious dissociation over there.

Jennifer Mills is travelling in the States and blogging, vividly as usual, all about it here.

It sounds like Eddie Campbell's parents' attic is the perfect archive away from the archive. That's one graphic artist whose parents bought some good books, isn't it?

On the subject of children's books, this small but well-formed Vintage books blog came to my attention via WeHeartBooks, a sweet site dedicated by bookselling mums to young readers and their parents everywhere. (Found via a MWF blog alert, of all things. Love this searching stuff.)
The only truly amazing kids books I own in collectors' terms, though, are two pristine Ant and Bee reprints we found on Brunswick Street about six years ago, bought for the future with my daughters' blessing - we all felt they was something we could not leave in the shop. They are no longer worth about $300 each, but even when they were, mine were not for sale, they are to read with little people only. (And serious comedians of course.)

Finally, do keep an eye out for what Boynton finds in that NLA Newspaper archive, because it's bound to be gold.

You see, it doesn't just happen down here. Rowan Wilson of ReadySteadyBook blog has been looking for the works of Wyndham Lewis in bookshops and having no luck. Publishers are getting their act together, he says, to rectify part of this scandalous situation.

Kim of Reading Matters alerts us to Faber's podcast and Flickr page.

Congratulations are due to the Literary Saloon weblog at the Complete Review, run by M.A. Orthofer and staff, which is celebrating its sixth birthday. The Literary Saloon covers an incredible amount of book news from all corners of the globe, and offers reviews of many books we would not normally see reviewed in Australia, particularly works in translation. Well done, guys!

Pam Brown, poet and Jacket mag editor, reviews  Miriel Lenore's sixth poetry collection for Cordite:

Her deftly written poems, refreshingly unadorned by punctuation, combine perception and observation recorded at a slant, giving them a droll tinge. She quotes eclectically from writers as various as Rudyard Kipling, Eileen Myles, Andrew Marvell, Alice Walker, Nicholas Grimald, Emily Dickinson and others.

Here are forty-six short poems invoking the Adelaide Botanic Gardens – “this garden I share with the city” – a refuge where Lenore can drift into reveries about original Persian walled gardens, ancient gods, goddesses, scientists, saints and artists...

Miriel Lenore has worked as a plant breeder which gives a definite clue to her interest in botanical science, one of the threads in these poems. She writes in homage to Carolus Linnaeus who invented a plant classification system and she revels in proper plant names – didierea, pachypodium, ferocactus horridus, platanus hybrida, quercus macrocarpa, cyperus papyrus...

A close-up photo of an intensely hot-pink lotus flower on the front cover, handwritten titles and quotes, detailed photos denoting each section of poems mean that this small book has been packaged, deceptively, in great-gift-idea mode.

But as you read the poems you discover that it is not that at all. The poems are smart, perceptive, wittier than the package suggests, and if the book is available in the Schomburgk Pavilion shop, I’d suppose that many unsuspecting Adelaide Botanic Gardens visitors might find themselves converting to poetry after reading this engaging memento.