Still Life With Cat

For in his morning orisons he loves the sun and the sun loves him. For he is of the tribe of Tiger. For the Cherub Cat is a term of th...

Here's a thing I've just noticed about this week's copy for the column of short book reviews I'm currently writing for the ...

Publishers Random House have just posted to Facebook a link to an article called '10 Legendary Bad Boys of Literature', which feat...

Writers' Week is about to start and I have to do a few things at it, so there's not been a lot of time to blog -- too busy trying to...

This isn't the first time I've had cause to consider the uses of literature in thinking about how to live one's life and manage...

I've just finished reading the latest Patricia Cornwell. Its title is The Scarpetta Factor , which considering that the previous one was...

... were announced today. Evelyn Juers' House of Exile: The Life and Times of Heinrich Mann and Nelly Kroeger-Mann shared the nonficti...

So when I got home this afternoon from fifteen rounds with a sibling -- the ferocious upfront one, all teeth and claws all the time, and no ...

There are four kinds of book review. There's the good good review , which is both favourable about its subject and skilfully, knowledgea...

For those of you who may not remember Leonard Bast, he is the failed aspirational with whose shabby umbrella the heedless Helena Bonham Cart...

Recent events have inspired me to have another go at reviving my dedicated Aust Lit blog, Australian Literature Diary , which has been lyin...

Wow, a two-week hiatus. I don't think I've not-blogged for that long since I started in October 2005. For some reason this time of y...

Among the numberless occasions afforded by life for irritation, here's one that's been getting to me lately more than usual: can any...

What with first the longlist and then the shortlist , I'm not really all that surprised that the 2009 Miles Franklin Literary Award has...

Because I am supposed to be a grown-up, and because I made a promise, I'm not buying into the question of the literary stag night 2009 ...

Finally at 2 am this yesterday morning I put this book down, about half-finished in one hit, and went to bed, but I didn't want to. It...

Well . There goes my cred. Utterly contrary to my predictions -- and my confidently nominated winner hasn't even made the longlist -- h...

Peter Carey has a really excellent, impassioned piece in today's Age on what the elimination of territorial copyright will mean for Aus...

Tennyson, who really was quite an extraordinary sort of chap as fellow devotees of A.S. Byatt will know, once wrote a poem about the myth of...

Here from Ladbroke's via Matilda , culled from the form guide as it stands tonight, is a list of the people I personally would like to ...