RIASS stuff:
Murder in Mesopotamia: crime, archaeology and Agatha Christie'(my notes from a recent lecture at the Melbourne Museum)
Book Review: The Marriage Plot by Jeffrey Eugenides'Rating: 
Book Review: Peaches for Monsieur Le Cure by Joanne Harris'Rating: 
Other bookish stuff:
Hand-lettered illustrations of Emily Dickens poetry
Reading Lois Lowrys'The Giver as an adult'Its sacrilege, I know, but I havent yet read this. I was, however, taken by this quite from Lowry, as Im a huge fan of ambiguous endings: Many kids want a more specific ending to'The Giver. Some write, or ask me when they see me, to spell it out exactly. And I dont do that. And the reason is because'The Giver'is many things to many different people. People bring to it their own complicated sense of beliefs and hopes and dreams and fears and all of that.
Mastering the rules of dialogue'Takeaway point: todays short attention spans mean that only characters in classic Russian novels get to speak uninterrupted for pages on end. (Hold that thought about killing your landlady, will you? I just need to finish this tweet.)
Imelda Evans on genre and expectations'Evans notes that genre labels are more of a marketing tool than they are an effective way of deciding whether a work is of value. With the changing publishing landscape, these labels arent as relevant, and allow people to work across-genre boundaries or subvert them. Evans goes on to provide an interesting discussion of a romance novel that has gone against genre rules and has received (some) poor feedback accordingly. I do think that genres such as mystery and romanceparticularly the category style novelsnecessarily adhere strictly to a formula. That formula is what readers are purchasing. Mystery and romance novels, however, published under a more mainstream novel can likely get away with more. On the issue of categories/labels, I do think its almost a rehash of Yahoo vs Google. When books have to be physically shelved, a category system is easiest, and necessarily forces these strict genre interpretations. When books are digital, they can exist everywhere all at once depending on how theyre tagged, labelled, or what have you, allowing for more flexible genre boundaries.
Adam Jay Epstein and and Andrew Jacobson, authors of The Familiars, talk about their childhood heroes.'Epsteins was Einsteinso much so that he wore an Einstein t-shirt once a week every week for a year; Jacobsons was, fleetingly, a lawyer cousin who hooked him up with basketball tickets. I kind of like that Jacobsons is so mundane and self-oriented: its a reminder that what makes a hero is really a matter of perspective.
Gruffalo author Julia Donaldson urges Maria Miller to protect libraries''Of course volunteers have a role to play, and of course it is preferable to have a volunteer-run library than no library, but what I object to is the tendency to dress this trend up as vibrant 21st-century thinking, instead of being honest enough to admit that it is a reluctant response to cuts.
Writing and the publishing industry. What would you change?'The author wants to see more people not only reading books, but actually'paying for them. The constant push to drop prices is affecting everyone in the publishing chain, from publishers all the way down to authors, he says, noting that if Amazon eventually becomes a publishing monopoly, then it may be able to fix the value of the written word. Not only that, but wed miss the gate-keeping element of the traditional publisher.
Bedroom quirks of famous authors'My goodness, Byron was quite the man about town. And Kafka was too self-conscious to strip off. And F Scott Fitzgerald had a foot fetish. There you go!
The digital book experiment is just getting started'Serialised fiction is getting a rebootwith authors now able to respond to readers criticisms/feedback along the way and integrate these into their work. Im not quite sure about this, to be honest. I know that serialised fiction differs from full-form fiction, but I cant help feel that these stories may suffer because of a demand for non-stop action and drama and so on, and will lack the quieter moments and arcs that are so essential to a longer work.
A breakdown of May book sales in the USA''An impressive jump in YA ebooks there.
On the Road depicted as one big winding infographic''Whoa, Etch-a-sketch!
10 essential books on typography''These look at new typography, culturally sensitive typography, philosophical insights into typography, and typography in both print and on-screen media.
Susan E Goodman on authors and self-promotion'Goodman says that over the past few years the burden of promotion has shifted away from the publisher and over to the author. Publishers have PR handbooks and guides for authors; author portals include things like marketing tips. Some authors have been explicitly told to write a certain number of blog posts a week, and to maintain strong Twitter and Facebook presences.
Applications for Readings Foundation Grants 2013 for community and the arts are now open
An interview with Raymond Carver'On being awarded a grant at Iowa: They offered me more money to stay on the second year, but we just couldnt do it. I was working in the library for a dollar or two an hour, and my wife was working as a waitress. It was going to take me another year to get a degree, and we just couldnt stick it out.
I enjoyed my share of series but I do have my limitation I would prefer my fantasy / paranormal to be limited to a trilogy only (quartet at most!). Anymore, I usually will not keep up past 7. Do I have short attention span? Just lack of patience, I just dont have the patience to wait over & over again ;p
I used to follow Kay Scarpetta & Temperance Brennan religiously but after 13 /15 Im so over it.
Stand alone fiction is, these days, a relief to me :)
Im not a fan of series fiction either, to tell you the truth, Tien. I dont mind so much in middle grade, but in other genres I find it a struggle. It can work if the books stand alone, but I cant deal with series that require me to keep the earlier books in my head.
OK, I cannot believe you have not read The Giver.:) I too was one of those who hated the ambiguous ending, and actually it isnt really my type of book. But it was a interesting learning experience as a younger reader.
My hero has always been my grandmother. A woman who raised 12 children and still laughs on the phone whenever I talk with her.
Im such a sucker for ambiguity. Perhaps thats why I loathe epilogues so much. I love puzzles, and I love being able to fill in gaps and imagine things.
There are so many modern classics that I havent readalthough perhaps its also that a lot of US modern classics arent read as much over here. We have our own canon to work through. :)
Your grandma sounds amazing. :)