RIASS stuff:
Review: Nikki and the Lone Wolf/Mardie and the City Surgeon by Marion Lennox'Rating: 
Starting over: thoughts on rebuilding my book collection from scratch'A follow-up to my post on'clearing out my bookshelves.
Giveaway: House at the End of the Street by Lily Blake'(Aus only)
I'm this week's'featured blogger over at Beauty and Lace. If you can't get enough of me talking about myself, do swing by!
Other bookish stuff:
Another imprint announcement, this time the unfortunately named Random Romance, a digital-first romance imprint from Random House.
Have a habit of bumping into things when reading and walking? Never fear: theres an app for that.
Overland has declared 2012 the Year of Australian Women Writers
The ten most beautiful school libraries in the world
Heard about the Biblio-Mat vending machine? Heres how it came about.'The Biblio-Mat is powered by an Arduino microprocessor, a device the size of a deck of cards that is popularly used for art installations, while the coin slot is monitored by an on-board computer that tracks the size and amount of inserted coins. As well, the machine is equipped with limit switches that inform the computer when one of the columns is out of books and there's a laser tripwire that, detecting a book has fallen, stops the column from rising any higher.
Amazon has ditched Penguin for its Amazon Breakthrough Novel award, and is going to publish the winners itself instead.
The best YA/MG book covers of the year' and some more beautiful books.
Can television be a gateway drug into reading?'A reader reflects on the book- and literary-themed TV shows of his youth. Press Gang, guys! Press Gang!
Seven great and seven not-so-great things about being a writer'He missed the bits about the excruciatingly long waits and the lengths that people will go to to avoid/delay paying you.
Imagine tailoring your books to different audiences for better sales'For instance, Higher Than Jesus has a chapter that gets very sexy. Would I keep or lose readers if I kept the same level of violence but lost the sex and made it more romantic or asexual? If only there were some kind of empirical evidence that people like sex. Hm. Yes, people's values around the relative offence of sex versus violence kind of baffles me. The point is, theoretically (if you had the ambition and time) you could write a series rated G, PG, R and XXX, all from the same novel.
Could selling a used book become illegal in the US?'Could selling your used Mercedes or Toyota be a copyright violation? Its not likely a car company would place such a restriction, but book publishers certainly might and do. And, it is important to note that the limitation, if upheld, could apply to libraries lending books, and even people giving away old copies, which is why the American Library Association and Goodwill have joined in this protest.
Bookish giftwrapping, if youre that way inclined.
Why we need more indigenous authors and characters in Australian YA'It seems that non-Indigenous Australian writers are at an impasse ' either they fear misrepresenting Aboriginal culture through character, or they don't write about them at all and it's as though they don't exist in contemporary Australia. One is as bad as the other. Perhaps the answer to this conundrum lies in accountability. [Author Sue] McPherson notes that; 'Elders look over my manuscripts before it's given the nod for publishing. If something looks questionable negotiations and changes are made.' There's no reason why non-Indigenous authors writing Aboriginal characters and culture can't be held similarly accountable.
Curmudgeonly statement of the day: I dont like one-word book titles. Discuss.
Im pretty sure Linda Day inspired me to become a journo. Or maybe it was the idea of a guy like Spike ;)