Thanks to everyone for your great entries in the #madnesscomp. If you want some suggestions on mad-lit, see the comments on the previous post. The winners of the two signed copies of Jon Ronson’s The Psychopath Test, chosen by a random number generator, are @liza_belle and @semiordinaryjoe. The random number generator chose two people who [...]
Author Archives: Angela Meyer
Grey areas of madness: an interview with Jon Ronson, on The Psychopath Test
October 27, 2011 – 9:03 am
Picador, Australia, 9780330451369 (paperback) In The Psychopath Test Jon Ronson takes us on journey through the mad ‘industry’ of madness. And it’s not all acid-tripping psychopaths. Ronson follows leads to high-security prisons, a mansion filled with predators… and to L Ron Hubbard’s coca cola stain. What results is an inevitably open-ended, sometimes frightening and often hilarious look [...]
20 Classics #8: Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift
October 19, 2011 – 10:59 am
I’m reading 20 classic, modern-classic or cult books. I aimed to read them all in 2011, but that’s beginning to look unlikely. Read more about this project here. Why did I want to read it? I had vague ideas about Gulliver’s Travels. I remembered Ted Danson being tied up by some little people in a film version I [...]
Black Postcards: Kent MacCarter interviews Dean Wareham (part two)
October 11, 2011 – 10:10 am
Part one of this interview can be found here. How do you feel about TS Eliot’s (in)famous quip, ‘Good poets borrow, great poets steal’? I was having a hard time figuring out what TS Eliot meant here – what’s the difference between borrowing and stealing in poetry? So I Googled that phrase (the internet is [...]
Black Postcards: Kent MacCarter interviews Dean Wareham (part one)
October 10, 2011 – 10:52 am
By Kent MacCarter Dean Wareham – musician, author, actor and a co-inventor of the ‘shoegaze’ aesthetic – is coming home to Australia. Sort of. This month, he, his partner Britta Phillips, and band will be touring Australia and New Zealand playing entire sets from seminal rock band, Galaxie 500, 19 years after their demise and [...]
Review of Animal People by Charlotte Wood in the Age today
October 8, 2011 – 4:55 pm
I reviewed Charlotte Wood’s new novel Animal People for the Age and it looks like it has already found its way online, on the SMH website (not sure if it was in their print version as well). It is definitely one of the best Australian books I’ve read this year, and I do encourage you to [...]
Vale Diana Gribble
October 5, 2011 – 5:40 pm
As reported on the main website today, Diana Gribble, co-founder of Private Media (owner of Crikey) and a huge influence in the Australian publishing industry, has passed away. I only met Di once. She and Sarah Stokely took me to lunch after Crikey had invited me to become one of their bloggers, three years ago. [...]
Reading fiction is addictive and unhealthy, says Corn Flakes guy
September 30, 2011 – 6:10 pm
I just came across this astonishing passage, quoted by John Fiske in Understanding Popular Culture. It’s from the Ladies Guide in Health and Disease by John Harvey Kellogg (yes, of Corn Flakes fame), published in 1882. There are also chapters on ‘marriage’, ‘personal beauty’, ‘diet’, clothing’, and, ah, ‘criminal abortion’. He says: ‘The reading of [...]
Between worlds: Dominic Smith on Bright and Distant Shores
September 27, 2011 – 12:42 pm
Allen & Unwin, 9781742374161, 2011 (Aus paperback, ebook + US/Kindle) Bright and Distant Shores is hugely imaginative historical fiction. It’s set just before the dawn of the 20th century in Chicago and the South Pacific. Owen Graves is sent by Hale Gray, the president of Chicago First Equitable, to collect some ‘special items’ to display [...]
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
I’m leaving Crikey! (But I’ll still be blogging…)
Readers, it’s been three years since my humble ‘blogspot’ blog moved onto this great website, garnering me new readers and a range of opportunities. It feels like time to return LiteraryMinded to the quiet backwaters of the internet. There are a few reasons, which I may go into more over at the new blog. One is that, [...]