RIASS stuff:
On Spoilers and The Mystery of Edwin Drood by Charles Dickens In which I argue that if youre averse to spoilersyoure probably not reading the way youre meant to.
Does buying books second-hand make us bad people?
Baked beans, flashbacks and The Self-Preservation Society by Kate Harrison Rating: 
(in which I discuss my mother-in-laws end-of-world preparations.
Other bookish stuff:
Adrienne Kress on learning to love reading Kress talks about how she needs to be reminded how much she loves reading, and offers some tips for authors that may help them cater to reluctant readers. These include short chapters and scenes; a plot that moves forward, as Kress notes that literary fiction can be a tough sell to readers like her; plenty of dialogue and not so much description; and a good dollop of humour.
Nick Harkaway on marketing and brand identity in publishing Publishing websites remain ghastly experiences and very few brands have any kind of strong connection with the readership. The sense that publishing doesnt need to deal direct with the public because that job belongs to booksellers (and now authors) remains Harkaway goes on to add that publishing seems to be content to wait and then follow the crowd, rather than innovating, and is missing huge opportunities for promotion and engagement in the meantime.
Is it possible to become a better writer? Well, just like most things in life, yes. There are some great quotes in here, including this one by Garth Stein: For those who say 'you either have it or you don't,' I suggest that the 'it' is inspiration, which can be elusive for sure, but you can teach the other aspect of writing, and that is craft.
Mo Yans short story Bull is available at the New Yorker (this is going to be my morning coffee break reading!)
An interview with mystery author MC Beaton Beaton, who grew up in violent Glasgow, has an interesting take on modern-day gritty crime fiction. 'Murder in real life is often brutal and short and nasty, and I suppose I like the sort of middle class mystery which a lot of writers despise. Nowadays, it's got to be set in the tower block [housing project] and the heroine in the first chapter is a lesbian and her mother's in the tower block with Alzheimer's'People are steering for political correctness.'
Joss Whedons Top 10 Writing Tips I found the tip about having something to say quite interesting. A couple of times this year Ive read a book and have come away wondering why the author even bothered to write the bookit just felt so flat and slight and by the numbers that it was utterly passionless.
How gorgeous is this classic novella series?
A reader on why she hates the term womens fiction Overington says that the value of fiction dealing with certain types of social and cultural issues is going to remain out of the mainstream unless we stop labelling and marketing such fiction as women's fiction, with all the derision and dismissal the term carries. It's irrelevant whether such derision is warranted. It exists in places that matter: in the reviewing pages of newspapers and magazines, the corridors of academia and in the rooms in which decisions are made about how to sell books. And because it exists there many good books which explore issues that we collectively need to tackle with more intelligence and creativity than we are currently doing are ignored and the issues they tackle remain forever unresolved.
Joel Naoum on the business of storytelling many modern publishers are distracting themselves with experiments that do nothing but provide a nice press release and show-off the latest capability that Amazon, Apple or Google have built in to their newest device. And it's not just publishers. I've been on a number of panels with industry pundits who love to talk about the death of the book and how technology is going to radically alter our sense of what narrative is and how we are going to consume stories in a completely different, non-linear and interactive way. What an utterly exhausting proposition.
speaking of Momentum, the second Momentum Books podcast is live (and Im listening to it right nowsurprising lack of swearing there, guys. Post-recording editing, eh?).
Random House Australia are looking for a Senior Editor/Editor
In Melbourne? Swing by this cool documentary launch tonight.
Robot book scanner perfectly captures 250 pages every minute
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