Number 3 chiller
J. M. Coetzee, Gerald Murnane and the relation between the real and the ideal, in Sydney Review of Books.
Why is English spelling so bizarre?
From the Brontë sisters to J. K. Rowling, a potted history of pen names.
Truly novel bookstores from around the world.
Watch a funny video featuring the grossest words in the English language.
Nicholas Shakespeare’s literary guide to Australia includes Murray Bail’s The Voyage and Eucalyptus, and Patrick White’s Happy Valley.
The greatest American novel? 9 experts share their opinions.
The DOJ has won its ebook antitrust case, to Amazon’s advantage.
For a Song and a Hundred Songs is a compelling and harrowing read: Liao Yiwu’s prison memoir reviewed in the New York Times.
How do we talk about books that are only okay?
Avoiding the passive voice—with zombies.
So Me and Mr. Booker is a book of wavering, hesitant in its sympathies, welcoming readers to find their own allegiances however they please, which is a mark of its confidence, as well as Cory Taylor’s impressive talents. A great review of Cory Taylor’s Read more
‘Women’s desire is an underestimated and constrained force’: an interview in the Guardian with Daniel Bergner, plus an extract from What Do Women Want? Adventures in the Science of Female Desire.
Everything you need to know about the great ebook price war.
Onomatopoeia for the eyes. For the eyes!
9 commonly used words with surprisingly unsavoury histories. I think we should all start saying ‘gentleman cow’.
Placing Literature maps book scenes in the real world.
I don’t know Read more
Listen to a great review of Charlie Lovett’s The Bookman’s Tale: A Novel of Obsession on Radio NZ.
Revising your writing again? Blame the Modernists.
Hardly one copy would sell here. Hardly one. Hardly one. Gertrude Stein is rejected.
Related: Read more
And so it is that this immensely gifted Chinese writer performs his poetic acts of mourning for the entertainment of audiences in Berlin and New York—an exotic “dissident” abroad, his voice to be heard everywhere except where it is most needed. Read more
