The difficult world of Irish (small) publishing
Publishing. One could imagine a glamorous world: lingering lunches with authors and literary editors; long discussions with literary giants on structuralism and the state of the novel; glittering book...
View ArticleTravel: Ile d'If of Count of Monte Cristo fame a world apart from nearby...
The Ile d'If is just over a mile from the mouth of the harbour in Marseille, but the two are worlds apart. France's largest port is thronged with people and traffic; the island has just a couple of...
View ArticleAnn Brenoff's Sage Insight on Aging and Family Caregiving
L.A-based Huffington Post writer Ann Brenoff is one to watch. She's truly distinguished herself in recent weeks for debunking some of the most common myths about marriage, aging, and family caregiving....
View ArticleTackling extremism is no easy task
"Let no-one be in any doubt, the rules of the game are changing.""The game is up." Two politicians from different parties, 10 years apart, delivering a similar message to extremists. The first...
View ArticleCompassion Rising as Strategy for Climate Adaptation
On last Thursday's Late Night, Stephen Colbert interviewed Joe Biden about his son's death. It was remarkable to hear a potential presidential candidate speak so candidly about his emotions. He used...
View ArticleUndercover: news from the book world
FROM LITTLE THINGS BIG THINGS GROW If you go down to Sydney's Royal Botanic Gardens, you will find a Queensland bottle tree planted last Sunday by the children's author and illustrator Pamela Allen. In...
View ArticleFestival Diary: Day 2
Craft of the Screenplay Something must happen in the first five minutes of a movie, reiterated screenwriter Sabrina Dhawan. At the two-hour workshop she conducted at The Hindu Lit for Life 2014,...
View ArticleTrans: A Memoir by Juliet Jacques review – an honest account of gender...
‘I felt trapped not by my body,’ Jacques writes, ‘but by a society that didn’t want me to modify it.’ But this is no mythical hero’s journey...
View ArticleThis Bhagavad Gita is for all ages - fun, understandable
Title: The Gita for Children Author: Roopa Pai Publisher: Hachette India Pages: 264 Price: Rs.299 The Bhagvad Gita has been a universal, all-time bestseller. But even its translated versions in a host...
View ArticleWestern Media's Miscount of Saudi Arabia's Syrian Refugees
In the face of mounting criticism from human rights leaders like Malala Yousafzai, who have called Europe's response to Syrian refugees "pitiful", EU leaders have struggled to develop systems of...
View ArticleLord Ashcroft’s Cameron biography bears hallmarks of revenge job
Peer and pollster may have thought his book would serve as political obituary for a defeated Tory leader but the polls were proved wrong...
View ArticleSun and Mirror ‘zero’ chance of deep price cuts as retailers dump Star
Richard Desmond company’s decision to halve price of weekday and weekend editions of tabloid leads to newsagents group pulling titles from shelves...
View ArticleRoberto Saviano: my critics want to caricature me as the Rushdie of Rome
The author of Gomorrah and Zero Zero Zero hits back at charges of plagiarism...
View ArticleLooking for Australia's version of Serial, the podcast
What if This House of Grief, Helen Garner's haunting account of the murder trial of a Melbourne father who drove his three boys into a dam, had been podcast in drip-feed episodes and not published as a...
View ArticleBeautiful geometry: William Boyd on John Hoyland
The world is finally waking up to John Hoyland and his abstract paintings. But William Boyd has been an admirer for decades. As John Hoyland: Power Stations opens at Damien Hirst’s new gallery, the...
View ArticlePromotion and Your Tribes
To badly paraphrase and twist an observation from W. Somerset Maugham - There are three rules for successful book promotion. Unfortunately, nobody knows what they are... Many of us have figured out...
View ArticleThe BBC's decision not to report the dead pig allegations against David...
The BBC likes to say that, when a really big story breaks, the nation turns to the corporation for its take on the news. Not now it doesn’t. Not when #piggate has dominated social media all day, not to...
View ArticleJeremy Tarcher dies at 83; maverick publisher packaged book deals for...
In the early 1960s Jeremy Tarcher packaged book deals for celebrities, which resulted in such comical titles as "Phyllis Diller's Housekeeping Hints" and Johnny Carson's "Happiness Is a Dry Martini."...
View ArticleThe BBC's refusal to report the dead pig allegations against David Cameron is...
The BBC likes to say that, when a really big story breaks, the nation turns to the corporation for its take on the news. Not now it doesn’t. Not when #piggate has dominated social media all day, not to...
View ArticleChristopher Pyne's A Letter to My Children raises questions for them and us
Memoir A Letter to My Children By Christopher Pyne Melbourne University Publishing, $32.99. Buy now on Booktopia How self-analytical can a serving politician be? After all, he lives in a world of spin,...
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