The Book Post

Publishing controversy, The Slap, eBooks, and surviving as host of the book industry 'night of nights'...

On Tuesday night, Australia's literati - publishers, agents, book sellers, authors including Chloe Hooper, Shaun Tan, Mem Fox, Kate Morton, and (Australian Book of the Year and Literary Fiction Book of the Year winner) Christos Tsiolkas, along with book lovers including Jennifer Byrne, Gretel Killeen, William McInnes and Judith Lucy – gathered at the Sofitel in Sydney to recognize and celebrate notable achievements in publishing and literature.

Tim Winton was up for numerous awards for his brilliant novel Breath, but was not in attendance. Similarly, he was not at the Miles Franklin Awards last week when his novel won what is arguably the most important literary award in Australia, giving the author his fourth Miles Franklin. From Western Australia's North West Cape, Winton told The Australian that he was ‘stoked’ to win the award for the fourth time, but he was 'not good in crowds'.

Tuesday night was not Winton’s night. Breath did not win in any of its nominated categories. Nor did the night belong to Dymocks, who were nominated in all but one state for Chain Bookseller of the Year, and lost out to Hill of Content, in a win that earned a particularly rapturous applause from the audience thanks to the oppressive presence of the heated Territorial Copyright debate – a hugely unpopular bid to abolish current Australian copyright laws, pushed in large part by Dymocks. Please read more on the subject HERE. The issue hung uncomfortably in the air throughout the evening.

As MC (and a popular genre novelist), I had the somewhat daunting task of breaking the Antarctic-sized ice, and hosting proceedings on stage in front of a packed room of literary heavy weights and peers. My job description also involved keeping the focus of the awards on celebration instead of controversy...

» Read more on 'The Australian Book Industry Awards 2009'

Bibliophile Porn, Part VIII. Reading by candlelight. Mmmm...Not sure it would be the same with an eBook. (For more on The Pleasures of the Page, click here.)

I couldn't write poetry to save myself, (is there such a thing as investigative non-rhyming narrative crime poetry?) but I do love poetry and I have a certain fascination with poetics. And although I would probably struggle to design a cardboard box, I also have an appreciation for architecture.

Metaphors of Space, an event at the recent Sydney Writer's Festival, explored both architecture and poetry. As regular Book Post readers will know, I covered the Sydney Writers' Festival for ABC Sydney, but two festival poetry events conflicted on the final day of the festival - The Dorothy Porter Tribute in the Bangarra Theatre and the event Metaphors of Space in the Bangarra Mezzanine nearby.

Sadly, I am not as omnipresent as say, swine-flu hysteria or 'Chk Chk Boom', and while I attended Poetry as Passion: A Tribute to Dorothy Porter, my partner, poet and philosopher Berndt Sellheim took in the goings on of Metaphors of Space.

Here is his review. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did...
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» Read more on 'Metaphors of Space - A Review'

This morning Morgstar, a fellow Twitterphile, sent me a link to Pop Crunch, and their page listing 'The 10 Most Disturbing Books Of All Time'.

American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis quite rightly rates a mention, as does Marquis de Sade's The 120 Days of Sodom (a somewhat less cheery adventure than watching Geoffrey Rush's charismatic miscreant in Quill). Forgetting for a moment that the Pop Crunch #1 The Girl Next Door by Jack Ketchum, 'Inspired By Actual Events', is followed closely by three images of scantily clad college girls with the heading The 50 Hottest Student Bodies (Very creepy ad placement. Very creepy. Could only be creepier if the #1 was Anne Rule's The Stranger Beside Me, about Ted Bundy and his college ways.) I got to wondering what The Book Post top 10 most disturbing books of all time would be?

Now, I don't want suggestions that, say, Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code was your all time most disturbing read because it was written badly, blah, blah, etc, and some such nonsense. I am talking about wonderful, disturbing reads that haunt you afterwards. What are your picks?

The Silence of The Lambs by Thomas Harris?
Lord of The Flies, William Golding?
The Handmaid's Tale, Margaret Atwood?
Ian McEwan's, The Comfort of Strangers? (Not much comfort there, as it turns out)
George Orwell's dystopian nightmare in Nineteen Eighty-Four?
How about my oft-cited favorite - Stephen King's The Shining? (Any book with a central plot about a writer going mad...well...)
What about the gothic classics, like Dracula by Bram Stoker?
Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray?
Poe?
Mary Shelley?

So what will it be, readers? Let's get your vote for Top 10 Most Disturbing (Wonderful) Books Of All Time...

Bibliophile Porn, Part VII. This book is hot. Okay, technically it's burning. Here at The Book Post we encourage all manner of lit love, not book burning. However, this image qualifies as bibliophile porn in that this fiery tome was once a mind-numbing manual on management skills, and as such is arguably better as ash.

At City Recital Hall last month, during the Sydney Writers' Festival, Professor Germaine Greer walked on stage to rock star applause from a packed house of readers, intellectuals, students and fans, including actor Rachel Ward and psychiatrist Dr. Norman Doidge. The applause continued...and continued, with Greer bowing her head quietly. When she could finally get a word in, she quipped, "Oh, what am I going to do with you?"

Since her famously brilliant and controversial attack on sexist culture in 1970, The Female Eunuch, Germaine Greer has been one of our most important and contentious public voices.

The topic of her sold-out talk was ‘The Australian Way: The Influence of Australia and Australians on British Politics and Politicians’ in which she reflected on the Australian example as taken up by the British, first as the inspiration for 'Thatcherism' and more recently as the adoption by the British government of the Australian 'points system' for incoming migrants. (As a migrant from Canada, I too had to pass this dreaded points system) I covered her talk for ABC Sydney, and this is what I had to say:

Any Evening With Germaine Greer - as the talk was advertised - is bound to include some off-topic tirades, some moments of sensational comedy, and plenty of well placed profanities. She did not let us down.

» Read more on 'Contagious, Contentious Germaine Greer'

Most writers have tales to tell of rejection slips, binned manuscripts, writer's block and a slow, gradual climb to the kind of decent readership that might allow them to quit their fourth job. What follows, however, is a very different kind of story...

During the Sydney Writers' Festival this year, a sold-out crowd of (mostly) white people gathered to hear the extraordinary success tale of Christian Lander, author of Stuff White People Like. Perched on the Heritage Pier stage in the Indie uniform of sneakers, jeans, (non-Ed Hardy) T-shirt and ironic cardigan, Lander came across like a young, Canadian Woody Allen, only hip. And it's not just the sympathetic slant of his brows or the style of his black-rimmed spectacles. Lander had his audience in fits of laughter.

I wonder, if Woody Allen began his comedic career in the Internet age, would he too have been discovered by blog?

Christian Lander described his story as an "Internet fairytale"...

» Read more on 'Stuff White People Like - Living the Blogger's Dream'

Bibliophile Porn, Part VI - Hemingway's first book, published by Robert McAlmon, 1923, in an edition of only three hundred copies.

This week I attended Sydney Girls High to speak at the launch of Why Can’t I Look The Way I Want? by Melinda Hutchings, a book about body image and overcoming eating issues.

I first met Melinda at the launch of her book How to Recover from Anorexia and Other Eating Disorders in 2001, and we have been close friends since. I could see right away that she was genuinely passionate about encouraging healthy body image in the community and helping others to recover from eating disorders. Melinda herself suffered from and overcame an eating disorder, so she understands first hand the issues involved.

At the launch I was awed by the personal stories of the other speakers, Chris Gibson and Rachael Oakes-Ash, who had their own tales to tell about struggles with eating disorders, but like Jacinta Tynan, who acted as MC at the launch, I did not have the same kind of story to tell. The reason I wanted to speak at Melinda’s launch in 2001, and the reason I spoke at the launch of Why Can’t I Look The Way I Want?, is that I have seen the effects of eating disorders, although in another context.

» Read more on 'Book Launch - Why Can’t I Look the Way I Want? by Melinda Hutchings'

The following essay, Billy Pilgrim Commits Quantum Suicide; Radicalises Time-Theory, by Astrid Lorange was read at the third of my informal book gatherings, Literary Salon 3 - Atwood and Vonnegut, which focussed on the separate near-future dystopia themes in Margaret Atwood's, The Handmaid's Tale, and Kurt Vonnegut's, Cats Cradle. Here Astrid contemplates the Tralfamadorians of Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse 5, and the possibilities of quantum suicide. I share it with you through The Book Post with permission from the author, hoping that you will find it as mind-bending as I did. Happy reading,

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Billy Pilgrim commits quantum suicide; radicalises time-theory, by Astrid Lorange

'The most important thing I learned on Tralfamadore was that when a person dies he only appears to die. He is still very much alive in the past, so it is very silly for people to cry at his funeral. All the moments, past, present and future, always have existed, always will exist. The Tralfamadorians can look at all the different moments just the way we can look at a stretch of the Rocky Mountains, for instance. They can see how permanent all the moments are, and they can look at any moment that interests them. It is just an illusion we have here on Earth that one moment follows another one, like beads on a string, and that once a moment is gone it is gone forever...'

» Read more on 'The Salon Readings 3 - Astrid Lorange on Quantum Suicide'

The following short story, The Beach, was read by award-winning author and ACT Young Australian of the Year Jack Heath (pictured above) at the second of my informal book gatherings, Literary Salon 2 - Stoker and Shelley. In keeping with the salon themes of the classic 1897 horror, Dracula and the 1818 original, Frankenstein, the short story The Beach is a tale of horror. I share it with you through The Book Post with permission from the author, hoping that you will find it as creepy and wonderful as I did. Happy reading,

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» Read more on 'The Salon Readings 2 - The Beach by Jack Heath'

Bibliophile Porn, Part V. Vintage love. The shopping from Elizabeth's Second Hand Books, Fremantle.

As you well know from the bibliophile confession in my Book Post welcome , I dig on books. I also dig on writing. So it is somewhat counter-intuitive that I should give you this bold warning:

WRITING CAN BE HAZARDOUS TO YOUR HEALTH.

I recently wrote a fairly satirical piece in the Sydney Morning Herald entitled 'When writers’ festivals turn into Twilight Zone episodes', in which I outlined some of the more bizarre experiences authors have had at writers' festivals. For instance, I've had the electricity go out during readings, had people shout bizarre things at me on stage or walk out, and I even had the medium Allison DuBois tell me she was in touch with my late mother, and that my mother was proud of me.

The next day in the SMH letter section, however, I noticed one earnest reader’s response under the title ‘Spare a thought for us, Tara’. Noeline from Arncliffe dared me to try being in the checkout at Coles, or being a taxi driver or nurse. “None of these are paid as handsomely as the successful writer,” she complained. "If the odd or odder sometimes berate you from the audience it is a small price you pay."

Of course Noeline is absolutely right. My article patently neglected to mention the plight of the checkout staff at Coles.

So today, as I winced on a massage bed whilst being woman-handled by a German physiotherapist named ‘Heike’ - a name which sounded suspiciously like the noises I was making every time she applied her formidable pressure into my torqued back - I got to thinking about the real hazards of writing. As an occupation, it's not quite up there with working a checkout, coal mining, or say, being an assassin, but being a writer does have its occupational hazards…

» Read more on 'The Hazards of Writing'

Bibliophile Porn, Part IV - In praise of mature books.

I recently covered The Sydney Writers' Festival 2009 for ABC Sydney, and had this to say about the festival's opening address:

On one dark and fairly stormy evening in May, Sydney's literati braved bucketing rain to attend the Sydney Theatre in Walsh Bay for a sold-out opening address by acclaimed Nigerian author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. (pictured above) Her reputation preceeds her, yet Chimamanda stepped in to the stage spotlight, stunning in a colorful headscarf and dress, lips curved into a gentle smile, and immediately shrugged off her formidable list of accomplishments to state that she felt a bit like a "pretender to the throne."

Literature, or literatures, she says, are the perfect antidote to the danger of the 'single story' - the 'single story' being the problem of the stereotype or one-sided viewpoint, a concept which is close to her heart.

Chimanada's Nigerian homesland suffers regularly from the tyranny of 'the single story'. Most of what Westerners understand about Africa is through media reports of 'bloody wars' and famine. Africans are painted, she says, "as waiting to be saved, or adopted by a white foreigner". Hence when her first novel, Purple Hibiscus, catapulted her into literary stardom, she was met with a critic who labeled the novel as 'not authentically African'. Presumably, because the African characters in her novel, "drive cars and are not starving".

» Read more on 'Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and the Tyranny of the Single Story'

Bibliophile Porn, Part III - Bibliophile and famed erotic writer Anaïs Nin, (February 21, 1903 to January 14, 1977) with some of her collection of books.

At The Book Post I will interrogate an eclectic mix of writers for your reading pleasure - and because I want to know what makes other writers tick. Today I tracked down James Palmer. Palmer was recently in town for the Sydney Writers' Festival, and we got to chatting about his first novel, The Bloody White Baron, which has been shortlisted for the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize, and described by London's Sunday Telegraph as "One of the most demented, savage and grotesque stories of modern times... An enjoyable, exciting biography". The finely researched non-fiction novel tells the life of Baron Ungern-Sternberg, a violent and headstrong Baltic aristocrat who conquered Mongolia after the Bolshevik Revolution, the last time in history a country was seized by an army on horseback.

He was also a sadistic, anti-Semitic, psychopathic Buddhist. I'm not making this up.

Eccentric Ungern-Sternberg had rather a taste for torture, and was not exactly someone you'd want to meet in a back alley, let alone on horseback - usually on a snow white mare and decked out in bright costume - with his blood-thirsty army in tow...

» Read more on 'James and The Bloody White Baron'