Melbourne independent bookseller Readings is now posting reviews online, which give a fairly substantial taste of their excellent monthly newsletter, which you can have posted to your home, or your email address, if you apply on the homepage. There are feeds, so subscribe to keep up with reviews of new stock, including new Australian fiction.
There's a news tab on the overhauled, freshened up website, and here's a roundup of the events hosted by the independent bookshop chain in 2007 - over 230, with support from Asialink, Deakin University, Cinema Nova, Sisters in Crime, the Midsumma festival and the Royal Women's Hospital, to name just a few.
Here's their interview with the author of the next thing I want to buy. I foolishly flipped through the weekend newspaper review sections last week, thinking Toltz was yet another international writer - let's face it, the Australian titles hitting the papers are few and far between this time of year. And he did look remarkably like this fellow - what was Jason Steger (Age books editor) thinking, putting them on the same page? We're not all awake on Saturday morning...
I can see where Steger's objections to Kevin Rudd having a decisive influence over the Prime Minister's prize are coming from, I guess - but hey, when did we ever, ever have a Prime Minister who would pledge the time to make such a judgement? Surely that's something to crow about.
Not so good that there are no publishers going to the summit, though. Michael Heyward should have had an invite, at the very least. But looking at this, I wonder, did anyone nominate anybody? As Tony and Mick used to say, "What's that all about?"
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