reeling and writhing

MOVING ALONG...

If you're visiting here for the first time, yes, this blog was archived by the National Library of Australia in its PANDORA archive of notable Australian websites.

Ten years ago, the material on this site was newsy enough for people to check in regularly. Now it's time for it to be archived at Wordpress, and for me to stop paying money to Typepad to keep it looking sophisticated. 

Heck, I could be sponsoring some writer friends at Patreon instead of doing that.

What you find here is a skeleton of the old Reeling and Writhing with a very short sidebar, because this is a free Typepad blog now. However the categories all work, so you can hack around it by clicking on them if you wish. 

If you'd like to hunt around it more effectively, there's a mirror website on Wordpress with more features. I may add some copies of reviews I've published to that site as time goes by.

And there is a full snapshot of the blog at PANDORA, with working links.

But hey, the internet is as full of holes as space these days. 

Thank you for coming by. I had fun here for a while, and then I went elsewhere - mainly to Mulberry Road, and to Twitter.

Good Old Boys - David Malouf and team save the Mitchell Reading Room

As reported here and there. Evelyn Juers, one half of Giramondo Publishing and independent scholar and author, has been keeping me posted on this absorbing struggle. 
Having had struggles of my own at granular level here, patiently bashing out a community based program for my son with financial and moral support only, (heck, we take what we can and run with it, don't we?) I neglected to send out her media statement a while back.

She did faithfully send through links on the battle, which I tweeted, including one to a petition which eventually gathered almost 10,000 signatures.

And two some days ago, the exciting news appeared in the Sydney Morning Herald that the wishes of Australian scholars would be respected and their space inside this iconic study room extended and soundproofed, without diminution of the visual and practical support they usually enjoy there.

Service enhancements and improvements to the Mitchell Reading Room include a glass wall, extended study space for scholars and the maintenance of access to special collections, though the future of specialist librarians in these areas remains uncertain. Books previously removed (and even a card catalogue) will be returned to the reading room. 

Glass walls. Serious Strong stuff. Sending a powerful message to beancounters in beautiful libraries everywhere - Scholars Matter.

(Cross-blogged from Mulberry Road.)

As the narrator of The Swan Book might say - "WELL!"

Aieeee.

I've already quietly filed away a personal post on the illnesses of other family members this year, in the drafts section, as this has never really been that kind of a blog. However, it is true that people close to me have been very sick this year, and will be for some time. But on top of that, I am going to be having a strange life for the next couple of months.

I threw a tantrum with unexpected rewards attached last week, after hearing my son's behaviour in care had deteriorated to new lows,  not previously recorded.  As I said to the manager over the phone, "if they haven't told me about this, then what else is going on that I haven't heard about?" Oh. My. Goodness. So bear with me because this site will be on hold for quite some time while I get that all sorted.

In the meantime, some literary people, and an 'early adopting' kind of blogger deserve serious gold stars:

Lisa Dempster, director of the 2013 Melbourne Writers Festival, for an expansive and exciting programme. I thoroughly enjoyed the London Review of Books sessions I attended, as well as taking in a thought provoking session with music writer Simon Reynolds. And I could have gone to plenty more...!!!!

 

The Sydney Review of Books - subscribe to their newsletter now, if you haven't already.  Between the freebies at LARB, LRB and SRB (as well as the Literary Saloon at the Complete Review) you will have a lot of things covered book review -wise.

Alexis Wright and Giramondo, for another stellar outing with The Swan Book - I have mentioned this briefly in a post I've written for Readmill, the ebook app. The ABR review carries more information than I can put down right now and you can find it here.

And something to look forward to, and buy: new books from Richard Flanagan and Thomas Pynchon.

Finally, someone I began my blogging days reading has started posting again. This is always a good thing. Welcome back, Dervala Hanley.

Don't be good while I'm away, HAVE FUN. I will work hard, and I will have fun and think of you all.

And yes, I will keep scrapbooking at the little place, because it's faster. 
Faster is my son's favourite word. Say no more.

Launch for Lucy Todd next week - Whitmore Press

Whitmore Press is delighted to announce that Lucy Todd’s debut poetry collection, Listening to the Mopokes Go, will be launched in Melbourne on 16th August. The details:

The Alderman (upstairs)
134 Lygon St, Brunswick East
Friday 16th August, from 6.30pm
Launch by Cassandra Atherton – poet, novelist, critic and academic.

Lucy was the winner of the 2012 Whitmore Press Manuscript Prize.  All welcome.

"the lights begin to twinkle from the rocks..."

"To those claiming "Twitter" (singular mass) is "this" or "that" (insert blanket generalisation), some perspective." (Simon Sellars @ballardian on Twitter.)

Tweetping offers visualisation of global Twitter usage in real time.

Make sure you have a look next time you're awake in the dead of the night. The world is twittering away while we (do not) sleep.   

will you please be quiet...

Now if I wanted to attend Texts In The City at the Wheeler Centre, as a Books 101 kind of thing, I guess I would. And usually I don't want to.
But even without viewing them, and given that these sessions would be pitched to Year 12 students, I still think it's timely to recommend Alison Croggon talking about Wuthering Heights, and Josephine Rowe discussing Ray Carver's stories.

Enjoy. 

a pile of stuff #34

A seed library, in Ohio. (No returns, obviously.) Via the Melville House blog.

Also from Melville House, here is a fine slide show of some old New York bookshops. The first Scribner's was astonishing, was it not?

This compelling eulogy by Joanna Murray-Smith for her mother Nita was published on the Overland website in early July.

At Cordite, Geoff Page reviews Chris Wallace-Crabbe's New and Selected Poems.

Expanding the canon after death doesn't just happen in writing. Scholars and performers have revived some sonatas Beethoven wrote when he was 12, and 20, and added them to the 'iconic' 32. What this achieves, I do not like to guess. 

a pile of stuff #33

City Lights Books has been around for 60 years. Party On!!

Jeannette Winterson will get a shot at a cover version of The Winter's Tale. And Anne Tyler will follow up with her rendition of The Taming Of The Shrew.

I’m not the sort of person who wishes things had stayed as they were. I like Tumblr and Twitter, etc., etc., and I’m interested to see what comes next. But I do feel a little wistful from time to time for the newness of the experience of typing some stream-of-consciousness thing like this — which is not at all what I was expecting to write when I opened up WordPress — and setting it loose into the world.

-Maud Newton, on what happens after blogging.

At Cordite, Jacinta Le Plastrier rereads Ariel. 
Here, Ron Silliman links to a few recordings of Sylvia reading from it.

And it's GOODBYE GOOGLE READER. I am writing this links post with the help of the nifty Newsblur, which allows me to save stories in the reader. Pretty damn fine feature. I decided it was nice enough to pay a little money to use Newsblur properly, and so far they are managing just fine with all the refugees from Google.