RIASS stuff:
Calling all bookish Melburnians! RIASS and some bookish buddies are planning a night out at the Astor Theatre on the 9th of June. All welcome, so if you're a local (or wish to commute), feel free to drop by. Details'here.
A review of Uncommon Criminals'by Ally Carter, in which Carter really starts to show what shes made of (Rating: 
)
A giveaway of'Out of Sight, Out of Time'by Ally Carter (Aus only, ends 27 May)
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Other bookish stuff:
A poem from the lovely Kate Forsyth in Fairy Tale Magazine (see also Kates guest post on Rapunzel retellings)
The oldest profession in the world? Actually, it might be lexicography: As we have learned, perhaps in elementary school, a word isn't a word unless it's in the dictionary. If it's not a word, you can't use it.Therefore, you need the dictionary before you can utter a word. So dictionary making has to be among the oldest of professions, if not the oldest.Not convinced? Please open your Bible to the book of Genesis. There you will read that Adam's first job, even before Eve was created, was'lexicographer. God told Adam to name all the animals God was busy creating.
Jami from Absurdly Nerdly reflects on her male:female reading ratios: There have always been strong female writers, but like any other'institutionalised'bigotry, minorities fail to get the recognition they deserve because people do not want to go out of their way to over come prejudices by forcing themselves to confront their fears and issues. People are unwilling to go against the pack and try something new, non-mainstream. I've always been the opposite, there isn't a fad I haven't made sarcastic remarks about (which becomes its own sort of bigotry). I think, maybe somewhere in the middle is the more solid ground to stand on. To think, to stretch our beliefs, to try and understand something other than what we have always known. To give a chance, where one was not given.
An interview with Herve Tullet, author of Press Here: I do not use dots in an aesthetic way.' From the beginning, I always worked with a low economy of material ' scribbles, holes, stick figures, stickers, 'dots, stains, splotches, primary colours and so on ' its often the visual vocabulary [children] use in their own drawings'and so its a vocabulary that can be understood by everyone. My first books were books with holes. Maybe the dots in'Press Here'are a kind the figurative representation of these holes.
An interview with Fleur McDonald:''Writing for me is definitely an escape, absolutely. 2008 was a very tough year for us. We had over 1000 cows agisted up near Perth, nine hour's drive away. Anthony was leaving at 4am and not returning until 2am to check them. Out the windows all I could see was sand blowing around empty paddocks.'If you don't take joy out of some tiny thing that happens then you're stuffed. You need to find joy in what you do otherwise you spiral down into a pit.'
Eoin Colfer answers 10 terrifying questions: My first love was cartoons and for many years I tried to develop sufficient drawing skills to become a comic book artist but I had to admit defeat at about age twenty. Then I determined to become a playwright and did a bit of that for ten years with varying degrees of success, ie not much. Finally, aged 30, I decided to give novels a go and luckily that worked out for me or I would be casting about still for an artistic outlet.
Why Is Literary Fame So Unpredictable? Despite the unpredictable fortunes of books, I'll hazard a few general rules of what makes a title endure. The most obvious: be the object of a film, preferably by the BBC. This helped Galsworthy in the nineteen-sixties, and again with a later production, in 2002. Another: become an adjective. Because we talk about things being 'Kafkaesque' or 'Borgesian' means their work has become reflexively symbolic, and will continue to haunt the curricula of English courses for time immemorial. It also doesn't hurt to coin a maxim or two. How many readers have been sent down the path of L. P. Hartley merely by some reference to the past being a foreign country?
An interview with Philip Roth: You're looking, as you begin, for what's going to resist you. You're looking for trouble. Sometimes in the beginning uncertainty arises not because the writing is difficult, but because it isn't difficult enough. Fluency can be a sign that nothing is happening; fluency can actually be my signal to stop, while being in the dark from sentence to sentence is what convinces me to go on.
Hachette Book Group is testing a pilot program to offer new eBooks in libraries this spring
Texting: is it an acceptable form of business communication?
The gender bias issue in relation to Australian academic journals
Sally Rippin on the ABIA awards:
Amazons Kindle deal with Waterstones, and what it could mean for the Nook
Are you going to the'ABA 88th Conference & Trade Exhibition 2012?
Jobs and Opps:
Vacancy for Publishing Assistant (with experience) at Allen & Unwin. Contact jobs@allenandunwin.com with CV & outline of experience
Video:
Paulo Coelho on World Book Night:
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Thanks for the link! The texting article is an interesting question, sometimes I wonder if it is not so much that we now communicate almost solely via typed words, but that textspeak is so informal as to make me wonder sometimes if people even know how to spell. Which is a little bit of an oxymoron for me as I am a terrible speller. Thank goodness for spell check!
Ive heard that a lot of students struggle with not knowing when to use textspeak or notapparently its cropping up in a lot of exams. However, they also use spellcheck to their benefit, using it to sort of autofill words or quickly correct a typo as a faster option than retyping. Interesting stuff!