If for no more reason than the new Dan Brown has just been published, today’s post nods back to books. (’The [Dan Brown] books came straight off the printer, went straight into boxes and were then wrapped in black plastic and sealed,’ Random House spokeswoman Ms Reid said.)
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To a book with a cosmically different level [...]
Postmodern Writer Is Found Dead at Home
Headline, New York Times, Sept 14, 2008
Interviewer: ‘What does postmodern mean in literature?’
Foster Wallace, smiling: ‘After modernism.’
‘… I think that postmodernism has to a large extent run its course.’ This, in 1997.
He doesn’t loom large in the Australian landscape as he does in the US. No matter, his effect [...]
In September’s ABR (Australian Book Review) there is a full page ad for the new issue of Griffith Review. The headline reads:
We’ve always been smart – now we’re sexy too.
It goes on: ‘Presenting Griffith REVIEW 25: After the Crisis, the first edition with our new partners at Text Publishing and featuring an elegant redesign. (etc [...]
2,400 pages. That’s what President Obama’s vacation (to use the Yankeeism) reading entails according to the White House, as reported by Slate’s invaluable John Dickerson:
The Way Home by George Pelecanos, a crime thriller based in Washington, D.C.;
Lush Life by Richard Price, a story of race and class set in New York’s Lower East Side;
Tom Friedman’s [...]
I finally got around to reading Nicholson Baker’s piece on Amazon’s Kindle – the device that will finally do away with The Book. I could, of course, have read it online three weeks ago but I had misplaced that edition of the New Yorker and I just knew I had to read about the Kindle [...]
For those who have been following the neoliberalists (The Productivity Commission) jihad on books in this country – they want to remove Parallel Importation Restrictions, PIRs, or to name its true nature, they want to abolish Australian territorial copyright for writers – here is a roundup of the news from the week just past.
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The Sydney [...]
I want cheaper books.
Why should I care about the supposedly affected people: the “local” authors, publishers, printers, publicists et al?
As ‘Kim’, a stirred-up reader of James Bradley’s sharp and nuanced post on the issue, commented:
‘Make no mistake, Australia is becoming a nation of people who simply don’t read books. The exorbitant price of books here [...]
The previous post was on Vic. Prem. Brumby slamming the Productivity Commission’s report on territorial copyright (to give the issue its correct name, rather than “parallel importation restrictions”).
In a comment, writer Alison Croggan pointed out that ‘in fact, the State Governments of Victoria, NSW and South Australia all lodged submissions arguing against the removal of [...]
In the Age this morning: Vic. Premier John Brumby, often regarded as a pro-market economic rationalist, has slammed the Productivity Commission’s call for an end to the protection of the local book industry.
‘Removing restrictions on parallel book importation would damage Victoria’s cultural and creative industries for no real benefit. It would be an act of [...]
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