9780230754317 Pan Macmillan, May 2011 (Aus, UK, US/Kindle) Reviewed by Lyndon Riggall I admit defeat. I’ve been trying to present these events with a structure. I simply don’t know how everything happened. Perhaps because I didn’t pay proper attention, perhaps because it wasn’t a narrative, but for whatever reasons, it doesn’t want to be what I want to [...]
Tag Archives: genre fiction
A dream-logic London squid riff: an interview with China Miéville (part two)
October 18, 2010 – 8:26 am
Read part one here. Angela Meyer: Just going back to what you were sort of talking about, the excessive nature of Kraken (Aus, US, UK) and chucking everything in – I’m really interested in your writing and I just find it so rich but at the same time I found I still was reading it [...]
Guest review: Chris Flynn on Justin Cronin’s The Passage
September 7, 2010 – 5:30 pm
The Passage Justin Cronin (Aus, US) Orion 9780752897851 Reviewed by Chris Flynn It’s funny how movies influence books so much these days. The fact that The Passage was optioned by Sir Ridley Scott for $1.75 million within a week of Cronin settling on a $3.75 million publishing deal for his vampire apocalypse trilogy is unsurprising [...]
Last weekend’s literary connectivity, and what I’ve been reading lately
July 14, 2010 – 2:59 pm
On the weekend I was up in sunny Brisbane for the Australian Booksellers Association 2010 conference. It’s a conference for members and friends of the ABA – so, booksellers, publishers, and some librarians and media. I was officially there as a ‘blogger’ – on a panel called ‘Customers, Connections and Communities’, with Andrew McDonald from [...]
Dan Brown’s The Lost Symbol goes well with cheap wine, corn chips and reading into the morning
September 23, 2009 – 7:54 am
The most blockbustery blockbuster of the year found its way into my lap and with curiosity piqued (and a break needed from festival preparations) I indulged in one solid reading session – cover to cover – and was mainly intrigued, despite a few small snags. In The Lost Symbol, Harvard Professor Robert Langdon is called [...]
Melbourne Writers Festival 2009 diary part three: future cities, beautiful rhythms and a literal ending
August 23, 2009 – 9:56 am
‘I just blogged’ I said to my friends when I ran into them, flustered, between sessions. Chris Flynn looked at me and said ‘that sounds dirty’, like ‘I just did a blog’, ‘I just dropped one’ and other variations. And now, the word blog is RUINED for me. But I was enlightened by two things: [...]
Carrie Ryan’s The Forest of Hands and Teeth
June 30, 2009 – 8:03 pm
The Forest of Hands and Teeth Carrie Ryan Gollancz 9780575090859 2009 (Aus, US) Mary’s village is surrounded by tall fences to keep out the ‘Unconsecrated’. It is the only world she has ever known, but she remembers her mother’s stories of the world before the return – tales of tall buildings, and a vast expanse [...]
I might be related to Stephenie Meyer
January 16, 2009 – 7:50 am
I keep seeing my name around lately. One thing I’m glad of is that Stephenie pronounces it the same way as me. Not Mayer, but Mier. I haven’t read the books yet. Maybe I will someday. I don’t mind the odd bit of Undead sexual tension here and there. Sure, hype can often be a turn-off. [...]
Crime Time! Doors Open by Ian Rankin
January 2, 2009 – 4:26 pm
Orion, 2008, 9780752890715 (Aus, US/Kindle) Ian Rankin is known for uncovering Edinburgh’s underbelly in his Inspector Rebus novels, but a different side again is exposed in Doors Open – the dark streak of rich, bored executives; art lovers; and software engineers in the Scottish capital. Mike Mackenzie is a 37-year-old art collector who is offered [...]
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Writing on writing: guest post by Harry Bingham
I’ve been a professional writer for more than ten years, but it was only recently, when asked to produce a How to Write book by A&C Black/Bloomsbury, that I came to think systematically about this craft of ours. I mean ‘systematically’ in two different dimensions. First, there’s the whole area of technique. How, precisely, [...]