Still Life With Cat

Okay so this is totally a First World problem and a very minor one at that. If that offends you, stop reading now. Ahem. There's this ...

From his first novel Open City by Teju Cole, who is a Nigerian New Yorker and professional historian of early Netherlandish art: The cl...

Latika Bourke on Twitter: "Opposition Leader Tony Abbott says the # Qantas dispute 'isn't a Workplace relations problem...this...

Quoted in a report tonight: Bob Brown: 'This lockout is also a sellout of the spirit of Australia.' Tony Abbott: 'It is t...

'There's only one thing worse than being talked about, and that's not being talked about.' -- Oscar Wilde (From Boo...

I had to be dragged, not exactly kicking and screaming but certainly emitting weak staticky signals of protest, onto Twitter. But now that...

How have I managed never to see this before? Thanks to Lucy Sussex for the link.

UPDATE, 27/10/11: I am reliably informed that the AGNSW did indeed have copies of the other books and had either sold them all or not unpac...

I have done all of these things so I know whereof I speak. In ascending order of reluctance: 1) Give blood 2) Give a speech to a crowd, u...

What on earth does the Leader of Her Maj's Opposition think he means by 'blood pledge' ? Doesn't he know that Talk Like A ...

The first time I heard the expression l'esprit de l'escalier I was driving home with someone from somewhere (yes, this post is inde...

I don't make a habit of yelling obscenities at my father down the phone, but when the conversation throws up (and I use the expression a...

The other day I heard someone in an extremely influential literary job describe the writing of Alexander McCall Smith, in passing and almo...

STOP THE BRATS!

Especially not in the most widely-read column of the Sunday paper in your home town.

STOP THE GOATS!  

The inimitable Alexander McCall Smith is as we speak in the South Australian outback mining town of Coober Pedy. At this very moment -- an...

The brevity that is the soul of Twitter is not, I feel, entirely my thing. It's enough of a struggle writing four short fiction review...

Thanks to the newly discovered (by me) wonders of Twitter I just found myself here , where the wonderfully gifted and possibly distantly rel...