RIASS stuff:
Nose in a Book: do you read whilst walking?
Book review:How Many Miles to Babylon?'by Jennifer Johnston:'A deeply moving account of forbidden friendship against a WWI backdrop.
Coming up: a review of'A Tale Dark & Grimm, a guest post from Kate Forsyth, an interview with Joel Naoum from Momentum publishing, and interviews with Michael Grant and Richard Hine.
Just a note that I'll be tango dancing my way through Argentina in April, and would love to receive some guest posts to feature during that time. Feel free to drop me a line at readinasinglesitting@gmail.com.
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'Other bookish stuff:
Happy 21st birthday to Melbournes Spinifex Press! To celebrate, theyre offering a 3 for 2 book sale!
The CBC finalists have been announced'(cheers for local Shaun Tan)
Amazon has awarded the Los Angeles Review of Books a $25k grant:
The money will be used to help launch the new complete LARB website on April 18, as well as to pay its prestigious roster of contributing editors, columnists and writers from Los Angeles and nationwide.
Paypal backtracks on obscene ebook policy:
Im glad theyre moving in the right direction, said'Joan Bertin, executive director of the National Coalition Against Censorship, but I hope they continue to consider potential problems they are creating for themselves and their customers by getting involved in such policing. I dont think we need another quasi police force trolling the Internet.
Dorchester entertaining offers from reputable houses:
CEO Robert Anthony said Dorchester is currently in the process of entertaining offers from reputable publishing companies and look forward to making an announcement shortly, reiterating what we [Publishers Weekly] reported last week.
Cooking the books: on being a cookbook ghost writer:
Many real-world cooks have wondered at the output of authors like Martha Stewart, Paula Deen and Jamie Oliver, who maintain cookbook production schedules that boggle the mind. Rachael Ray alone has published thousands of recipes in her cookbooks and magazine since 2005. How, you might ask, do they do it?'The answer: they don't. The days when a celebrated chef might wait until the end of a distinguished career and spend years polishing the prose of the single volume that would represent his life's work are gone. Recipes are product, and today's successful cookbook authors are demons at providing it ' usually, with the assistance of an army of writer-cooks.
What do we mean by strong female characters?
A recap of the National Book Critics Circle event
Seeking new ways to portray Nabokovs Lolita
John Birmingham: Everybody has a book in them: thats the best place for it
Publishing as we know it is dying, to be reborn as something very different. You can see it in the best seller lists at Amazon, where the top selling titles are freebies and 99? shockers hammered out by the sort of amateurs the entire publishing industry was set up to stop ever getting into print. They are eating the business model of the old, established houses which now seem to be turning to them as saviours.
An interview with illustrator Sarah Singh:
I think my style is transferable to any subject matter. I strive for a timeless style in my work. It was fun to use the same methods I use when I work on current fashion drawings'watercolors, pen and ink. When I started working with the books, the whole concept was to have the covers have a feeling of the clothing, and to capture the fabrics and details of the period. That was really important.
An interview with Lissa Price, author of'Starters:
I was trying to get a flu shot a few years ago and they didn't have enough vaccine. I think one of the batches spoiled. Anyway, the U.S. government set up a triage system that gave it out to the very young and the elderly, as well as the infirm. I thought, what if this was a deadly, killer disease? The only ones left would be the weakest members of our society.
The least helpful reviews on Amazon and GoodReads.
Art inspired by Salinger, Joyce, Melville, and others:'(Sadly, the Meville-inspired Twitter failwhale isnt on the list, but 'it should be, damnit!):
Thanks for including a link to my post. I appreciate it :)
My pleasure, Marcy. :)