The other day I was pleasantly wasting time on Skylark and Son, when I came across this mention of The Quinkins, a wonderful children’s picture book written by Percy Trezise and illustrated by Dick Roughsey. This book made a huge impression on me as a child, but until recently I’d clean forgotten all it. Immediately though, this extract brought back some pretty vivid memories sitting on the library floor, reading about the fat, squat Imjim luring away young children, only to be thwarted by the long, graceful Timara: From the beginning, the Yalanji tribe belonged to the beautiful country of… [Read more]
What books should I buy a 9-year-old girl?
If you don’t have kids, or even if you do, figuring out what to buy them between about six and twelve years of age is tough because they all read so differently. I put a bit of work into getting a list of books for my niece’s birthday next week (with particular help from Alien Onion) and thought that good work shouldn’t go to waste. As a bit of background, I let people know that Pia was a pretty advanced reader who’d made it through most of Harry Potter. Here it is: Cicada Summer by Kate Constable The Graveyard Book… [Read more]
E-Reader Roundup: From Apples to iLiads
E-readers are being bandied about left, right and centre, and indeed there always seems to be one that will be better/faster/prettier/smaller/smarter just around the corner. As far as I can tell, e-readers haven’t really taken off in Australia beyond the novelty factor (in all my commuting, I’ve only ever seen one used on the train, and even then it could have just been a very big palm pilot). But all that may change, particularly with the Apple Tablet looming. Jonathan Strahan also makes an interesting point that the arrival of e-books does not necessarily mean the death of the paperback…. [Read more]
My Beautiful Libraries
What good bookbuff doesn’t love a library? And I mean heart and soul want-to-roll-around-in-the-dust-and-must-from-the-shelves type of love. Here are a few shots of some absolutely beautiful beehived bibliotheques from Curious Expeditions. Our own State Library of Victoria makes the cut, and I also love the dramatic red banisters in the Handelingenkamer, and the rattling-bones gothic feel of the Chained Library in Hereford, where rare books were once kept linked to the shelves to prevent stealing. JA Comments by Chris 25 Jun 09 at 7:55 I like this one in Porto: http://erraticmusings.typepad.com/.a/6a00d8341c003a53ef0105362e6384970b-400wi Google image search ‘livraria lello’ for more … by… [Read more]
The Australian Cover of the Death of Bunny Munro
Nick Cave’s latest novel, is called The Death of Bunny Munro. It’s due for an August release and is published by Text Publishing. To celebrate its release Meanjin is running a long essay by Mark Mordue on the life and work of Cave in its September edition, alongside a design essay by Mary Callahan on her work designing Nick Cave Stories. The Death of Bunny Munro is about a man who sits in a hotel and masturbates fantasising about vaginas. This is the cover. The image takes the old adage that sex sells though that, in itself, isn’t the problem… [Read more]
On the Wire
Last week, I came across this article in the New York Observer, which effectively raises the question ‘do novelists have a duty to write more about contemporary social issues?’ Walter Benn Michaels, a professor of American literature and theory at the University of Illinois, was quoted as saying on a public panel that fiction should be more like US TV show The Wire, which for five seasons accurately portrayed various aspects of life in modern-day Baltimore, from the drug trade to the school system to the print media and so on. In an essay previously published on bookforum.com, Michaels argued… [Read more]
A Social Occasion
‘The third occasion on which he came in contact with the Feinsteins Waldo knew there was no escaping something that was being prepared. Mrs Feinstein’s formal note deliberately arranged it for the Saturday. So that you are able to introduce us to your brother, the writing ended underlined.’
From the Meanjin archives, fiction by Patrick White first published in 1965.
