Vintage, 1989 9780375713347 (2002 edn) (Also Aus, US, UK) Miss Olympia is an emotional, hunchbacked albino dwarf, and the complex narrator of this wonderful novel. In the present, Oly secretly watches over the remaining members of her carnival-of-freaks family: her daughter, Miranda, and her mother, Crystal Lil. Why her observance and care is secretive is revealed through [...]
Monthly Archives: December 2010
Happy holidays
December 24, 2010 – 11:00 am
Two gorgeous 1930s cartoons that my sister and I used to watch every festive season. You might remember them too: Warm wishes to all my readers!
Guest review: Greg Westenberg on John Mateer’s The West: Australian Poems 1989–2009
December 21, 2010 – 12:40 pm
Fremantle Press, 2010 (Aus, US, UK) 9781921361869 Remember that Renaissance sculpture you admired, briefly, in a Roman or Florentine church, cool and hard and chiselled and, perhaps a little too dramatically posed? Reading John Mateer’s collection of poems The West, gives an analogous sensation. The sculptors worked in marble that kept its material nature, the hardness [...]
Sending out your books for review: a few tips
December 17, 2010 – 12:53 pm
I’m a very lucky person. I receive several books in the mail each week and several more offers via email. There are a lot of books being published every day, and many that interest me or that I think would interest the readers of this blog. Literary editors, freelance reviewers, magazine and journal editors, and other [...]
Johanna Adorján’s An Exclusive Love
December 10, 2010 – 1:07 pm
Translated from the German by Anthea Bell (Aus, US, UK) Text Publishing, September 2010 9781921656569 Johanna Adorján’s grandparents took their own lives in October 1991. In this reserved and moving book Adorján pieces together the last day of their lives, interspersing this narrative with details of her grandparents’ pasts, pieces of her own story, and musings on various related [...]
‘I want to read that, too!’ Wanting to know and be everything (but then take my time with something)
December 7, 2010 – 12:27 pm
The Christmas party season is in full swing. I’ve forgotten names, drank too much, jumped on a trampoline, been told secrets, held hands with sweaty strangers (swing dancing), stuttered (kinda a new one) and swapped WIP stories with emerging and published writers. There’s a lot of pressure to be in the know. To have read [...]
Daily Mail
Elsewhere
Policy
Partners
Independent news, blogs and commentary on politics, media, business, the environment and life.
Copyright © 2012 Private Media Pty Ltd, Publishers of Crikey. All Rights Reserved.
Web development by Valegro
Editor: Jason Whittaker
Publisher: Eric Beecher
Political Correspondent: Bernard Keane
Level 6, 22 William St, Melbourne, 3000
Ph: 1800 985 502
Fax: (03) 8623 9975
Cut, print, that’s a wrap: 2010
In 2010 I… fell madly in love presented/chaired at Perth Writers Festival, Format Festival, the Australian Booksellers Association conference, Byron Bay Writers Festival, Write Around the Murray; and locally here in Melbourne for the Melbourne Writers Festival, Williamstown Literary Festival, Emerging Writers Festival, and some events for Express Media. I also attended other writerly events, such as Writers at [...]