Reading is a kind of death. One exits one’s life, is gone from the world. If my telephone rings, if my beloved calls out my name, I am no longer here. I don’t exist. Dead to the world. And reading erases the world.
On reading in general, and on reading Johanna Adorján’s An Exclusive Love in particular.
A fascinating look at book covers before and after, from initial concept to final design.
On accidental fan fiction: how does a writer avoid imitating their favourite author/s?
So says A. S. Patric in his review of Mary Costello’s The China Factory for Readings.
Anne Enright says ‘It is the accumulation of tiny pleasures…that makes The China Factory such a satisfying and accomplished debut…[Mary Costello’s] writing has the kind of urgency that the great problems demand—call them themes; they are the kind of problem that make a writer. With a bit of luck, they could keep her at the desk for the rest of her life.’
Karenlee Thompson gave The China Factory a rave review in a guest post on ANZ Litlovers Litblog, saying, ‘Light creeps into the shadows behind everyday façades as Costello quietly shocks with deft pauses and the great unsaid. Beautiful.’
Read an interview with Mary Costello in the West Australian here.
The China Factory can be found in all good bookshops and on our website.
Text Publishing is doing a giveaway for a terrific new Australian series—The Rephaim by Paula Weston—in Melbourne on Tuesday 21 May.
Hot-blooded bad boy Rafa—a black-winged half-angel—will be giving out copies of book one in the series, Shadows, in the Melbourne CBD that afternoon.
To grab your free copy, keep an eye on Text’s Twitter and Facebook accounts to find out where exactly Rafa will be on 21 May. And don’t forget to bring your camera to get a pic of you with the gorgeous dark-eyed angel boy…
…such is Kadare’s skill as a storyteller that he renders conventional wisdom with the force of a childhood trauma. The New York Times reviews Ismail Kadare’s The Fall of the Stone City.
Dis/honouring dead writers: on the ethics of posthumous publishing.
May I have your pantelegraph? The ritual of book signing in a digital age.
In The Not Returning Part of It, Malcolm observes that ‘those who have been lied to are especially prone to compulsive truth-telling’. The unlikely placement of the adjective underlines Malcolm’s suggestion throughout this collection that truth is complex, and its invention a risky and sometimes dubious project. Her own superb melding of the invented with the observed is, to borrow Garner’s words, ‘free-striding’, fearless and sparkling. Felicity Plunkett considers Janet Malcolm’s new collection.
The Millions calls Forty-One False Starts an ‘explor[ation of] the artist’s temperament as a source that feeds and is adjunct to the making process, rather than as something of separate and greater meaning.’
Ileene Smith interviews Janet Malcolm for FSG’s Work in Progress blog.
Read more about Forty-One False Starts here. This collection can be found in all good bookshops and on our website.
50 incredible tattoos inspired by books.
The fascinating stories behind classic book titles.
How to shop at a bookshop: an easy 20-step guide for authors.
19 emotions for which English has no words.
20 literary facts to impress your friends with.
Literary pets: the cats, dogs and birds famous authors loved.
Imagine lies, then write them down in order. THAT IS LITERALLY ALL AUTHORS DO.
20 amazing outdoor libraries and bookshops around the world.
From Henry James’s passion for painting to E. M. Forster’s love of music, novelists find inspiration in other art forms.
12 things famous authors absolutely hated.
Dust off your deerstalkers, folks, we got a real-life Oxford English Dictionary mystery on our hands!
Maria Takolander is blogging for Southerly this month. Read her first (hilarious) post here. Takolander’s collection of stories, The Double, will be published by Text in September.
Author Maureen Johnson is sick of gendered book covers. Her Coverflip project encourages people to reimagine a book cover as though the author were of the opposite gender. Check out some of the terrific results here.
Some reasons why men read books by women, in case you needed any other than ‘because some good books are written by women like some good books are written by men and seriously it’s 2013 can this not be a thing any more please’.
After 19 years on death row, Damien Echols is starting to build a life in Salem, Massachusetts.
New research tells us that reading for pleasure as a teen is the most important indicator for future success—so how do you instil a love of reading?
Small-time literary ambition doesn’t come cheap: the cost of slush pile submissions.
Watch a video interview with Romy Ash, whose debut novel, Floundering, is on the Miles Franklin Literary Award shortlist.
What writers can learn from rock stars.
It’s like throwing a Lolita-themed children’s birthday party. Did anyone actually read The Great Gatsby?
Forty-One False Starts is a brilliant collection of essays from one of the world’s great writers of literary non-fiction. Janet Malcolm, writes David Lehman in the Boston Globe, ‘is among the most intellectually provocative of authors, able to turn epiphanies of perception into explosions of insight.’
The New Republic says that Forty-One False Starts ‘reminds just how fun [Janet Malcolm’s] not-niceness can be’. Read some terrific reviews from Slate and the LA Times. Helen Garner’s brilliant introduction to the book can be read here, while Alice Gregory ranks Janet Malcolm’s books in order from best to worst over here.
Forty-One False Starts is available in bookshops and from our website.
