How to use this Page

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.

It is such a pleasure to see video making its way into reportage from the truly excellent Emerging Writers' Festival - three cheers for director Lisa Dempster who has been packing her video camera every day. Here's Chris Meade from if:book London (who clearly packs a camera as well), interviewing Lisa earlier this week (taken from his blog BookFutures.)
Meade has another video at that post, and earlier on the blog has reported on the Bloggers' Brunch and the festival. The very fine discussion at the Brunch on digital publishing and writing futures is still open for latecomers (you will see me promising to come back if you get to the end of it...obviously I didn't quite make it.)

Meade is posting more videos later this week, so clearly the festival made a good impression. Go EWF team.

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...

News has come from the Emerging Writers' Festival  of a surprise addition to the Living Library program - Chris Meade:

Digital publishing: Chris Meade
Chris is Co-Director for the Institute for the Future of the Book in London. 

His particular interest is publishing and writing in the digital age.  Previously he was Director of the Poetry Society where he set up the Poetry Café in Covent Garden and the lottery funded Poetry Places project.

In the 1980s he was a pioneer of reader development, promoting public libraries as 'imagination services'.

Chris is the author of The Thoughts of Betty Spital (Penguin 1989) and a past winner of the George Orwell award for his play ‘We Two Boys’.

He is a member of Friendly Literature Organisations (FLO), a consortium supported by Arts Council England with whom he has been exploring the creative potential of new media for readers and writers.

Chris Meade will only be available for eight mentoring sessions so get in quick!

Booking details here. UPDATE: Meade will also be involved in another event at EWF. Details to follow. (I have been told I will like it.It doesn't get more enticing than that.)

Yes, there was a lot going on in Victoria this weekend for booklovers, with the Clunes Booktown event on the same weekend as the Williamstown Literary Festival. But I am still catching up with what went down in Goolwa, SA, on the Anzac Day weekend at the Australian Poetry Centre's national festival, Salt On The Tongue.

Thanks to poet-bloggers who attended for these timely reports:

• Jennifer Mills can bring us up to speed with her great podcast page, Sound Atlas, made with other poets walking through the town over festival weekend.
• Jill Jones has put up a post (and in other posts, recommends several new books)
• Graham Nunn at Another Lost Shark (thanks to Ralph Wessman at Currajah for the link to those posts of Graham's), blogging his days at Goolwa Parts 1 and Part 2.
• Tamryn of the RedRoom company has given her impressions, mentioning that new poems of Lisa Gorton's were given an airing at the Giramondo Poets session.

And that's about all Google can find for me, but I will let you know if more reports come to light. I'm sure there will be reports at the APC's site at some stage as well.

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.

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.

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.

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'.

Readings bookshop had the announcement up before the Melbourne Prize Trust did. Congratulations to both winners: richly deserved. I am sure Mr Miller will carry it off another day.

(Note: I'm sure the reference on the Readings website will be rephrased speedily, but not all of Murnane's works are actually available from the Readings catalogue at this point in time. There are two other titles available as POD from Sydney University Press, here,  but at least two other short story collections, Emerald Blue and Velvet Waters, are currently out of print. I do hope plans are afoot to change that tout de suite.)

PS I won't re-edit this again - apologies to readers of feeds, I'll be a cleaner blogger from now on.

Ralph at Currajah was very quick off the mark last weekend! picking up the news of Beverley Farmer being awarded the Patrick White prize, and spreading the love, along with her misgivings (see Susan Wyndham's report, here).

(If you cannot read that bio on Austlit because you are not a subscriber, you should be able to join using a public library card, or a State Library one. Or you can read this older bio by Laurie Clancy, with some good notes on her books, which does not include her latest publication, The Bone House.)

One of my favourite books is Farmer's collection of diary extracts and short stories, collected mainly around their writing, A Body Of Water. There is a story about a Buddhist retreat in that volume, complete with a diary account of the retreat, that provides a magnificent study in how to render fiction out of memory.

Farmer is a prose poet in many ways - from her notes from October in that book comes this account of reading at Mietta's, a fine restaurant with literary leanings, at some time in the eighties:

Heat and sun for the first day of daylight saving. I read a story in the "Readings with Readings" program in the Lounge at Mietta's, among the fringed lamps, clustered gold bubbles of light overhead, black statues bearing flowers - heat and smoke drifting. The dappled grey marble of the round tables, bright with the light of wineglasses.

At seven o'clock tall buildings still reached up into the sun.

In the livid night sky - never black in Carlton - a crescent moon lay on its back holding a smaller moon clasped, a dim full one. (On top of a stupa they have an orb in a cusp.)

Further up that page, she writes of a house she had rented by the coast, somewhere near Lorne:

Skirting the full frog pond with a chilly scud across it, over the road and dunes you go down onto the surf beach. The tea-trees up there in the dune-folds are whiskery knuckles, leafless and lichen-splattered, scraping the sand. Though the sea is so near, there's not a whisper of it, as if this really were another time.

I liked living back there, deep in the tea-tree. Glaneuse Road: after the French barque Glaneuse, wrecked off the surf beach in 1886 with her bottles of contraband cognac. (And Glaneuse, gleaner: what I was and am.) For those six months I was suspended out of time in a glass lantern, not swinging - still, somewhere between two seasons. An old life, a new.

From A Body Of Water, UQP: 1990, p.188 (the one with the Matisse painting on the cover, yesss. Iss mine, preciousss.) A volume of Farmer's longer, meditative essays on art and life, The Bone House, is available from Giramondo. I don't know how many of her other books are in print - her Collected Stories have been on school reading lists from time to time. She spoke with Clive Hamilton and Alfred Yuson on Radio National's Book Show on the art of the essay in 2006 and a podcast is still available, here. I have also found an essay in Island from 2005, 'The Dog Of The Work', in my travels...Enjoy.

Finally. The news is out on this year's PM's literary awards.

Minister for the Arts Peter Garrett has just announced the winners of the 2009 Prime Minister's Literary Awards.

The winner of the 2009 Fiction award is Nam Le for his book of short stories The Boat. The judging panel was impressed by the daring scope and excellence of its execution, the generous breadth of its emotional and social traverse and the excitement generated by every story.

In 2009, two books and three authors share the Non-Fiction award. The winners are Evelyn Juers for House of Exile: The Life and Times of Heinrich Mann and Nelly Kroeger-Mann; and Marilyn Lake and Henry Reynolds for Drawing the Global Colour Line.

Both books explore important racial, moral and political issues of Australia's past. The Non-Fiction judging panel said "With great intellectual authority and international research Evelyn Juers, Marilyn Lake and Henry Reynolds tell their stories magnificently."

The link for this Bookforum review of The Boat comes from Nam Le's reviews page on his website - scroll right on down...

The most recent Latrobe University Bulletin  carried these remarks on Reynolds' and Lake's prizewinning book, here, and the Cambridge University Press catalogue entry includes (somewhat chunky bits of) reviews. 

And my March '09 review of House of Exile, with links to other sources, is here.

While Bob Stein's address on the future of the book at the Capitol on Thursday night was riveting stuff, its delivery was not without some issues - it never ceases to amaze me how MWF administrators manage to program digital publishing events in venues with no Internet access. While two years ago anyone appearing with Net-dependent stuff should have come armed to the teeth with backup plans (including the ability to use a screen set up in a tent!) it's a tad surprising in 2009 that we still need to spell this kind of thing out to festival organisers.

Is it really that hard to let a presenter on digital issues know that there are digital issues with the venue well in advance? Not only that, but as with Germaine Greer's address in this venue a year ago (not part of MWF), it was apparently not possible to have stage lights dimmed, making it hard for Stein to see his own laptop screen while presenting. I doubt the magnificence of the venue made up to him for that, if indeed he could see the damn place at all (Greer could not, and complained she could not see us several times).

Rant over. In a rather large nutshell, early work with text and video at the Voyager Company showed Stein that 'a book is a medium where the user is in control of their experience', in other words, 'user-driven media'. In the early '80s, a book was also what he described as a 'random access device' - and in that sense, without the availability to the general public of recording and rewinding tools, television was not.

In his work on the Criterion series of films recorded on laser disc for Voyager, Stein watched films and 'read' movies the way he read books, turning back and forward, stopping, repeating bits he needed to see again, developing multimedia features now common on DVD, such as director commentary.

He left Voyager in the mid-90s but was coaxed back into publishing sometime in the 'noughties, eventuating in the development of the annotating tools and projects for which he is best known. 

A blog assisting in the production of New York University professor Mitchell Stephens' book, Without Gods, was shown (Stephens' latest project with the Institute can be seen here.)

His remarks on the use of CommentPress software to produce Ken Wark's book and online publication Gamer Theory suggested that Wark's work was the first time he had noticed that making comments alongside the work seemed to change the nature of the conversation - he said Wark became 'a professor at a seminar, and led conversation past the boundary of the book'. Teachers who have used CommentPress (blog-like software that allows text to be commented on in paragraph blocks, to one side of the page rather than at the end)  have said that it changes the boundaries of the classroom.

The Golden Notebook project, one of the most recent uses of CommentPress, involved seven writers of different ages reading Lessing's novel together and providing their commentary. To Stein's mystification, none of them liked the book very much (it is one of his favourites) but loved the process.
From these experiments he has drawn the conclusion that 'an old-school author's commitment is to engage with a subject matter on behalf of readers, while new-school author makes a commitment to engage with readers in the context of a particular subject.

(Sadly he did not get to Sophie in any detail - I do have the reader software installed on my desktop so I guess I'd better just have a look at it sometime.)

In question time some other eggs were laid: in answer to a question about the future role of the editor, he said that the 'great publishers of the future will be able to build and nurture communities around the work', and that editors will be of tantamount importance in future networked writing, as well as designers.

He said that it had been his custom to say that the worth of content would sink to zero and community would replace it, but that this had frightened everyone too much! so he now says, 'let's redefine content to include the conversation'.

One future direction for fiction would involve authors creating worlds in which readers will direct narrative - this is not a new suggestion, as those working with the Australia Council's Story of the Future program would know.
Someone else asked if the word 'book' was something of a hindrance - to which he said, provocatively, that we will know we have got somewhere when we don't use the word anymore, when we have another word for this experience. 'The locus of social discourse is the printed page,' but this is changing. He said also in response to this question that he thinks we will come to a time when many books will not be finished, and 'the author will become leader of a group of writers'.

In closing answers, he also felt that humans were not threatened by multitasking demands that new technology makes, but that they will simply LEARN to do it: that we are moving away from immersive, deep reading models to new things, and we do not yet know what form they will take. Several times during the night he mentioned that the first novel did not appear until 300 years after the printing press (he made the claim for Richardson's Pamela), and considers that 'completely new forms of collaboration' will take a while to develop.

Australia is to have its own Institute For The Future Of The Book, if:book Australia, in Queensland from 2010. Kate Eltham announced this good news at the digital publishing session in the morning, and you can read more about that here.

Shortlists? Vic Premier's, Age Book Of Year? we haz them.

As well as a wacky bestseller list from Readings. Just look at the first two there, don't they look cosy together?

The zine fair that was once the total Festival has truly emerged -

sitting alongside our usual cultural icons in this Marvellous City of Literature and GT Fords.

A very fine ten day festival, and I  only got to a tiny bit of it. The wrap at Arts Hub reports director David Ryding expressing delight at a 55 year old writer's ability to get four publishers interested in her work due to contacts made at the festival.

People are, justifiably, making very agreeable noises all over - Estelle has given some great reports on 3000 Books especially - leaving me scratching my head saying, "Who IS David Ryding?" (apart from being the nice man who answered my complaint about the proposed change to the name of the Scrabble event some time last year, after my emerging comedian took part in it.)

Anyway. Early last year enterprising young theatre blogger Chris Summers of Theatargh went head to head with Ryding  about what he is hoping to achieve as festival director, and I feel is close to realising after only two years in the seat. It's a fine interview, and captures the feel of EWF in lots of ways - Ryding turns the interview format on its head and asks a few questions of his own, in much the same way his festivals do.

The program advisory committee has also played its part - with people of this calibre on board, a good result's guaranteed.

I enjoyed three sessions on Saturday. (My memory of one session I attended in 2006? or 2007 was that it was sloppy and unfocussed, but one session does not a festival make.) 

Ryding and his team seem to have gone all out to engage as many fascinating potential mentors for emerging writers in this state as they possibly could.

My only criticism of what I've seen is that with panellists of the quality I saw on Saturday at the Town Hall, they can afford to allocate more time to sessions or create more space.

The excellent State of the Divide panel started late and should have run at least another half-hour longer - it was a pity to bring these people from all over the country and only allow them about eight minutes each to speak (less for some, regrettably.) Simonne Michelle-Wells' presentation in particular was remarkable and I am waiting to link to her post summarising it, so watch this spot.

Estelle  captured how this festival approaches the matter of assisting writers to emerge in a nutshell here:

The events I saw were sprinkled with these kinds of refreshing and sometimes fruity admissions, often beautifully put - David Mence, speaking at Honesty and Truth in Writing, heard 'historians' feet drumming down corridors' (or something like that) when he commenced researching his play on the founding of Portland at the State Library of Victoria.

It was good to hear from some imports from vital sources like Newcastle's amazing TINA festival (this old blogger might get up there one day, to see some 'colour and movement', as Dame Edna might say) - Scott Patrick Mitchell asked enticing questions around the topic while discussing his poetic street art project The Trickster's Bible.

Rachel Hills has posted some pointers from an earlier session I did not get to, and is a dynamo I am ashamed to admit I had not encountered. (Who don't you know, Ange?)

It was also great to meet Tom Cho, who came out and matched his face yet again to his new book at the Page Parlour, as the zine fair is now known, and to buy Gracia Haby and Louise Jennison's work, to buy the latest Blue Dog at the APC table, to visit Karen Andrews, and to see a constant crowd around Arlene TextaQueen's table (damn, I forgot to try to photograph that), to buy Mandy Ord's book from the author herself, and pick up a back copy of Tango.... yep, book budget blown again.

So keep the finance coming - this wheel's on fire, rolling down the road. (And affordable, too.)

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.

Here be the prizewinners. That is a lot of money, isn't it. Surely there could be a little bit for poetry next time around.
Anyone out there who has read and enjoyed The Zookeeper's War, do drop a line in the box below, won't you.
As you were.

Here's a slice from a rather large piece of Booker cake published in the Guardian this week. Among others, James Wood spoke to the G about judging the Booker 'way back when':

After serving on the 1994 Booker prize committee, I made a pledge never to judge a big fiction prize again, and I have so far honoured it. We were a congenial group, and our chairman was not a former politician or bureaucrat but a distinguished literary critic (John Bayley); our meetings were friendly, and surely no less or more argumentative than those of other years. But the absurdity of the process was soon apparent: it is almost impossible to persuade someone else of the quality or poverty of a selected novel (a useful lesson in the limits of literary criticism). In practice, judge A blathers on about his favourite novel for five minutes, and then judge B blathers on about her favourite novel for five minutes, and nothing changes: no one switches sides. That is when the horse-trading begins. I remember that one of the judges phoned me and said, in effect: "I know that you especially like novel X, and you know that I especially like novel Y. It would be good if both those books got on to the shortlist, yes? So if you vote for my novel, I'll vote for yours, OK?"

...Since then, prizes have become a form of reviewing: it is prize-lists that select what people read, prize-lists that make literary careers. Bookshops order novels based on the prizes they have won or been shortlisted for.

From a list of 40 judges' remarks (posted twice when I read it!) 

Ruth Rendell confessed to giving one of the longlist novels away after leaving it on the train in 1995; and Tibor Fischer didn't mince his words, saying (like several other judges) that no one really shifts from their initial choice of winner:

What did I learn? Discussion is futile. No one changes their mind about a book. You might as well have a show of hands straight away. There aren't many bad books (only one novel ended up in the bin after two pages), but there are a lot of so-so, nondescript novels that leave no trace. Publishers are idiots.

But Pip! what larks. In which Hanif remarks that he never reads a book past 100 pages (which does not explain how he got his degree in philosophy, does it), and that he has put a lot of jokes in the first 100 pp. of Something To Tell You because he thinks there will be lots of people who will put it down after that. Ramona tells him to stop selling it short, and I agree wholeheartedly. Very pleasurable excursion in festival land, between two very able practitioners.
(Warning: the interview contains a small spoiler.)

The Festival will wind up tomorrow night and I had two days there this week, which was quite enough as there is a lot going on chez nous just now. I found something electrifying on Thursday which I probably would not have bothered with immediately. though I was aware of its release, and that's poet Robert Gray's most recent volume of autobiography, The Land I Came Through Last, from Giramondo, which he spoke about at the Festival Club around lunchtime. I am powering through it now and will review it later in September.

The David Malouf session was a little less predictable than these things can be, though the usual stuff about how do you write, how do things develop, was gently pushed around by himself and Ivor Indyk, without many surprises presenting themselves; one point which I'm sure Malouf has made on other occasions like this was that his second book, An Imaginary Life, could really have been written at the end of his career, and all the others written between that and Johnno. He spoke at some length about family history, a classical education and the impact of Ovid, and bilingualism in children.

There was a funny question from the floor about the 'physicality' of Malouf's writing practice, in the sense of 'how do you move around the house? do you go for walks?' to which Malouf replied with a nice anecdote about Patrick White ringing up to ask if he was interrupting the ironing, complete with vocal impressions.

He also made the rather remarkable suggestion that grappling with 'the matter of Australia' had been a task authors took on over about the last forty years, but that it was now pretty much over - that young Australian writers are not interested in it. I wonder what someone like Julienne Van Loon, who set her latest book in the Pilbara region, would make of that suggestion.

I think I was here this time pretty much to see how Fed Square rates as a MWF venue, to watch old people struggle with BMW Edge steps, in much the same way they would do at the Beckett or Tower Theatres at the Malthouse (where there must have been lifts, I guess.) Fed Square has tremendous potential apart from the access issues in several areas, and the bloggers who were there this weekend will have seen more of that (links to follow) than I did on the relatively quiet Thursday and Friday.

It would be good to have something slightly smaller available for smaller sessions, as well as the Festival Club in the ACMI function space  - one of the younger Americans I visited professed herself a bit intimidated by the size of ACMI 2: Mark Sarvas, of course, took it in his stride, and it was lovely to finally meet him and be able to thank him briefly for the inspiration of The Elegant Variation, on which a lot of newsy book blogs are based.

I enjoyed the Thursday session on small(!) mags with Julianne Schulz of Griffith Review, Sally Warhaft of the Monthly, and Philip Gourevitch of the Paris Review. Having these three, along with Briton Michael Burleigh, chewing the fat on the coverage and editorial practice of their publications was pleasurable, if only for the heartwarming thrill of hearing these smart, smart women give enthusiastic and articulate summaries of their considerable achievements. The blokes were also fine - the women, though, were particularly fine, went for GOLD, you might say.

The blogging session the following night was also very good - Antony Lowenstein and Margaret Simons, along with blogger extraordinaire Professor John Quiggin, did not let the chairperson, John Lenarcic (from RMIT Business no less), get away with any nonsense about blogs versus mainstream media, or pyjamas and cats.

Evidence of the digital/techno divide was steadfastly dismissed by Margaret Simons (Lowenstein did try to address it in part) and I felt for the poor lady who begged for some elucidation of how one found worthwhile blogs to read ("I have children and I work, what am I going to do when the paper is gone? I don't have time to blog") - feed reading is something that I think libraries could offer classes in, and is maybe something you're more likely to get information about from the ABC than a newspaper (though they do offer explanations of what RSS is on their websites, I think).

The working family woman made the salutary point that radio is surviving. That is interesting in itself, of course, and sometimes users do manage to win some fights with technology.

The title of this presentation maybe should have been, "Growing and Changing Media", with the focus squarely on changes, rather than the potential destruction of traditional media: change was certainly discussed intelligently by all panel members, and they were generally able to maintain that focus in the face of small, ineffectual diversions by the convenor.

I met Angela Meyer of LiteraryMinded there, which was terrific - what a top blogger about books and writing this dynamic young person is, and what contacts in new publishing she has! do subscribe to her feed at once if you haven't already. Angela recommended Lowenstein's book to me, so I snapped that up along with the latest Meanjin, which is damn pretty - bravo Sophie, the design overhaul was long overdue and will have to go some ways towards increasing sales in a design crazy town like this one.

I also took in the Going Down Swinging commission, Static: White Noise, which again was beautifully framed by Beamer Edge.
Festival highlights for me then - saying hi to Mark, and picking up Robert Gray's book, which I've hardly put down. But a truly sublime treat was sitting in Teh Edge and hearing Orlando Figes and Alison Croggon discuss and read Anna Akhmatova's poetry: like Oliver, I want some more.

Here's that list we have all been waiting for. Thanks to Beth for the tip off about the email alert.

It is not known whether Kevin 24/7, as Chris Taylor of The Chaser dubbed him last night in a bit of clever joshing with the Finance Minister, has had time to read everything yet.

However the Minister did make noises that essays and a test of the Cabinet might be involved at some point.

(You can see that again on Sunday at 4.30, or go to ABC's IView to watch it now. The videos of the show on the regular site are not terribly up to date, so Iview might be the shot if you are a member of this demographic.)

I am really not a follower of the ole Bookeritis, although I am chuffed for de Kretser and Toltz. But I was intrigued enough by something Lynne Hatwell of dovegreyreader picked up on a forum to follow it in order to read how Jamie Byng, Canongate publisher, feels about The Spare Room being passed over by the longlisters in favour of a thriller.

(Hatwell concurs, and it's been all over the Brit blogs and press; the following day Laura Barton chipped in with an alternative POV over at the Guardian blog.)

Byng voiced his disappointment thus:

I think some excellent books are on the longlist. My favourites are the Rushdie and Sebastian Barry and Steve Toltz novels, all of which I think are superb books that deserve wider audiences and I think bits of Netherland are breathtakingly beautiful and that this is a very interesting novel too.

But I cannot respect a judging committee that decides to pick a book like Child 44, a fairly well-written and well-paced thriller that is no more than that, over novels as exceptional as Helen Garner's The Spare Room or Ross Raisin's God's Own Country.

I will declare my bias - as the publisher at Canongate I had a vested interest in seeing The Spare Room make the shortlist. But from an objective point of view this novel has been as well-reviewed as any book Canongate has ever published (including Life of Pi, The Crimson Petal and the White, The Secret River, Lanark, The People's Act of Love and Carry Me Down.)

As well as the book getting exceptional reviews, I received remarkable and heartfelt responses from a whole array of other novelists about the book pre-publication including Peter Carey ("The Spare Room is a perfect novel"), Hilary Mantel, John Banville, Alberto Manguel, Diana Athill and Michel Faber, any one of whom I would respect as a judge of serious fiction more than all five of these judges put together.

One has to be philosophical about these things and as a publisher particularly so as you come to realise what a lottery these prizes are. Rilke once wrote, "Nothing affects a book as little as words of criticism" and regardless of what a panel decides the book is the book and time will tell which of these books are still being read in ten years time. I am certain that The Spare Room is a modern classic that will continue to be read and enjoyed and appreciated long after all of us are dead.

And Lynne, a community nurse and 'sock-knitting quilter' in Devon who reads more books than I've had hot dinners I think, and has a terrific instinct for well-written works, is quite passionate in support of TSR:

It (Child 44) was a brilliant read, a thriller a real page turner, but what you read is what you get, it's not literary fiction, no hidden depths to plumb and fathom that I could discern.I loved it and said so, BUT that has never been what the Booker has stood for imho. It has always been about something much deeper in my mind and Helen Garner's The Spare Room embraces that depth with real dignity.

If I'd been a judge I'd have argued and pleaded that book's cause until I was flat on my face for what it tells us about illness, human nature, friendship, guilt and all those wonderful grist to the mill things that life is all about.Then you read it again and again and discover even more.

The Literary Saloon at The Complete Review covered more of the discussion, particularly the submission process for the Booker, which I knew zip about - apparently each imprint is confined to two titles only.

Doesn't explain why Hanif Kureishi didn't get a look-in, does it
(and I note that John Sutherland of The Guardian shares my view on that one, also saying, 'In short, the longlist is good for business. It boils the kettle.')

I'm sitting on the fence after this, other than to remark that William Dalrymple's considered and comprehensive review of all Amitav Ghosh's books, as well as Sea Of Poppies, in the Australian today is leading me towards an earlier book of his, The Glass Palace, rather than the Booker nominated title. Though when I will get to it, I cannot say.

And that's a good long list of online reviews at the Oz, too - timely and a substantial sampling of each Saturday's hard copy offerings.

Nice to see, and probably has a bit to do with Perry Middlemiss' persistent scrutiny of the weekend review sections' online presence, and his widely read review roundups. (The Age's latest book reviews are not even up today, whereas the Australian's were live on Saturday afternoon.)