RIASS stuff:
A'giveaway of'Preloved'by Shirley Marr.
A review of The Wedding Season'by Su Dharmapala. Oh dear. This one is for all those poor girls who have been hassled non-stop about marriage by well-meaning relatives. (Rating: 
)
A list of books about the Titanic'(why yes, there are lots of them)
Other bookish stuff:
An interview with Libby Hathorn:'[what makes a good children's book is]'freshness of characters (unless a sequel), a smooth flowing style that makes you want to turn pages (like the Harry Potter series) and an original idea.
The secret subversiveness of Louisa May Alcotts'Little Women: It was Alcott's genius to fill the didactic frame of a girls' book with her ambition'with disturbing ideas, anger, and frustration as well as her father's inspiring and impossible striving for moral perfection, to which her mother provided a humane antidote.
The top 5 future of the book cliches: Almost every post (particularly in the last twelve months) on the future of reading makes nostalgic claims about the pleasure (and importance) of reading alone in solitude for hours at time and conflates this experience with paper book reading and literacy. Let's get this straight ' whether you make the time to read for great stretches of a time all by yourself has less to do with your reading format of choice and more to do with how you choose to spend your time, how busy you are and the available alternative choices to reading.
Disney Hyperion shuns the book blogging community by denying them review opportunities: For the past few months, it appears as if Disney-Hyperion has decided to accept review requests from most book lovers EXCEPT for bloggers. Why is that,'exactly? Honestly, I would like to know.
Interview: Richelle Mead on The Golden Lily, vampires and alchemists'People really want to set up these rivalries [between authors of vampire fiction] because theres a lot of vampire books out there. People want to believe were all fierce rivals, and really theres just so much camaraderie with authors. Everyone kind of boosts each other. If readers like one vampire book, theyll want to read more, so Twilight kicked it off, and its really helped my series, but I like to think its more than it being just a vampire book. I like to think its the characters and stories that appeal to readers.
Learning infantilised by relying on the internet:'Im not really bothered whether its paper or an e-book, the important thing is that its read from start to finish following an authors train of thought, through perhaps some complex arguments and situations, from first principles through to their conclusion, says Helen Fraser, former managing director of Penguin.'Its only by learning deeply about and around a subject that you can truly hope to master it.
Danny from Little Elf Man on plotting: My novel has alternating chapters from two different characters perspectives. I made a spreadsheet that had 3 columns: Chapter / Elsie / Angus. I arbitrarily picked a number of chapters (24 sounded good) and put numbers in the first column. Then I greyed out alternating cells in a checkerboard type way so show when that character will not be narrating at that point. Then I wrote in what happened in chapter 1 because Id already written that one. Then, borrowing Emilys idea, I put my twist in towards the end, and then worked backwards.
Are these the 50 coolest book covers ever? Whats your favourite?
Five Melbourne writers reveal the flavours that fuel their creativity
Read an excerpt of Nicole Murphys forthcoming book The Festival
Thomas Pynchon has struck a deal with Penguin to digitise his entire backlist
GigaOM Launches Digital Book Imprint
On writing a book in 22 hours. Feeling lazy now?
A beautiful bookish apartment
The Jungle Book, adapted for iPad, is free until June 16th!
Events:
The Antipodes Writers Festival will run from 15-17 June at The Wheeler Centre
Job opps:
Position available at Pan Macmillan Australia, Sydney office: Editor (full-time)
