Looking for something to read?

We all are mate. Well, the Guardian has original work by writers such as Annie Proulx, Colm Toibin, Patricia Highsmith, Richard Ford and DBC Pierre on their website. They’re short stories and they’re free.

Various bits

I’m far too lazy to actually think this evening so a bit of this and that:
A collection of toilet wall graffiti from 18th Century London (it’s much better than you think).
The New York Times features Robert Lowell and describes confessional poetry as ‘a sort of orderly bleeding‘. Oh yes. (Use login stackblog password stack)
Yummy. A [...]

How do you pack your books?

Having chosen two books to pack in my bag to escape to the Blue Mountains for the weekend, this article was rather timely. The Telegraph identifies the ‘types’ of holiday book-packers.
For many of us, the holidays begin not with the first step on to the plane, nor with the slamming of the car boot, nor [...]

Literary clubbing

Wish we had a club like this in Sydney, man.

Blogging Iraq

Via the Guardian, Baghdad burning is a blog coming out of Iraq, written by a woman. She tags it “Girl Blog from Iraq… let’s talk war, politics and occupation”. It’s about to be published as a book.
We know a lot of our new officials and spokespeople are blatantly lying and it’s fine to lie [...]

Sydney Uni Chancellor’s book fair

Put this in your calendars immediately: the Chancellor’s Book Fair at Sydney Uni will be held this year on Saturday 17 September to Wednesday 21 September.
I got there just before it opened on the first day last year and couldn’t get near the door. Nevertheless, I got so many bargains I was like the proverbial [...]

It’s all relative innit?

Stacy Shiff, a woman after my own heart, bemoans the relative nature of truth to the general population. No, not that they’ve suddenly come over all post-modern, but that they get their news from things like comedy shows. She kicks it all off with a go at that tome of postmodern truth, the Da Vinci [...]

Dash’s meme

(Editor’s note: this meme has been passed to Dash by Sage. Sage’s Mum wisely decided that all us adults had had enough meming for one century and passed the baton to a number of bloggers’ infants. My infant, Dash, will be guest-posting this evening. He prepared this piece before he went to bed).

Total number of [...]

The danger of books

When I sent my mother the list of ‘harmful books‘ mentioned recently on this blog she noted that if a book was dangerous then it must be the best kind. For books are supposed to challenge us, force us to see the world in a way we may not have otherwise seen. Aren’t they?
There’s been [...]

I need some new glasses

I’ve just been told I look like Janet Albrechtsen when I wear my reading glasses. Ugh.