Welcome Lit-lovers

Welcome to the new home of LiteraryMinded.

There are a lot of technical things still being worked out so bear with me while I work out wonky spacing and the like – I’ll also liven up the menu options to the right soon. I am completing my honours thesis at the moment so I’m just a bit stressed. Bear with me. It’ll become much more navigable.

Those lit-lovers who have followed me over from the old blog, thank you. And to the new readers, I hope you will enjoy my thrice-weekly posts of book reviews, news, commentary, author interviews, and fun stuff (in a literary-minded vein). The blog also charts my interaction with the literary world – through my work, through festival attendances (when funds allow it), and through my own journey as an emerging writer.

I enjoy receiving your comments and feedback, and with this platform you just have to sign up to WordPress (takes five minutes with a username and email, it’ll prompt you when you go to comment) so you can participate. If publishers and authors are interested in sending me books for review and adding me to their mailing lists, see the ‘About Angela’ page.

As an introduction to what the blog is about for new readers, here are some of the posts I really enjoyed writing since the blog’s conception in May 2007:

• The Best Unpublished Books – Parts One, Two and Three.
• Review of Doomsday Men – PD Smith (an early review, after which I met up with PD Smith when I was in London – a really great book)
• Review of Eat the Document, Dana Spiotta, and an interview with the author (this book touches upon many of the themes I am very interested in – it will give you a good idea of what I like and the kind of writing I aspire to fiction-wise).
• A more academic review, of Gail Jones’ Sorry, printed in Australian Women’s Book Review.
• Review of Krissy Kneen’s erotic collection Swallow the Sound.
• A mini-analysis of Humbert’s journey of self in Lolita.
• These were quite popular – Literature Aspiring Writers Should Read Part One and Two.
• A LiteraryMinded Day in London.
• Interview with Jim Sharman, director of The Rocky Horror Picture Show and author of wonderful autobiography Blood & Tinsel.
• Interview with Matthew Condon, author of my favourite book of 2007, The Trout Opera.
• My Melbourne Writers Festival Posts (One, Two and Three) are what got me noticed by Crikey, as well as a mention on Antony Loewenstein’s blog (thanks Antony!)
• A Very Short Introduction to the Absurd, My Absurd Moment and Lester Burnham As Absurd Hero.
• My short story Dead Women, published in Hecate and online in Greenbeard.

Feel free also to take a trip through the archives.

And you can all look forward to reviews of Max Barry’s Company, Helen Garner’s The Spare Room, some Manga, an erotic novel, John Marsden’s Hamlet, Gen Y writer William Kostakis’ Loathing Lola and an interview with him, plus a review of some recent literary journals and more interviews and profiles.

This isn’t a blog that will report on everything that happens in the literary world, such as awards and events – it is a more personal interaction with literature, the literary journey and the literary ‘scene’. If you’re after straight news, there are some great links in my blogroll.

I’ve also been hoping for some time now to get into vidblogging. I made one film while overseas, asking people in each country what their favourite book is. But due to crap camera, crap cable or crap editing software, I have not yet presented this video. Once I manage to save the funds for some new equipment I plan to set up ‘the LiteraryMinded couch’ where I’ll have literary conversations with visiting writers to Melbourne, and I’ll carry along the camera to give you an insight on some of the spoken-word poetry events etc. which happen down here!

Enjoy and welcome again!