Sally Rooney voted top fiction writer in the 2021 Goodreads Choice Awards
11 December 2021
Beautiful World, Where Are You, by Sally Rooney, has been voted the best fiction title for 2021 by Goodreads members, who voted for books across seventeen categories in the annual Goodreads Choice Awards. Congratulations to all authors whose works were nominated this year.
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books, literature, novels, Sally Rooney
To all the people who’ve blocked me on Twitter
11 December 2021
“For everyone who blocked me on Twitter”… I can’t tell you much about the book itself, but there’s a book dedication you don’t see every day, as seen in The End of Gender, by Canadian sex neuroscientist Dr Debra Soh.
Via Paul Dalgarno, on Bookstagram.
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Sci-fi and fantasy novels with disabled characters
11 December 2021
Kit Kavanagh-Ryan, a presenter of The Book Show, has put together a selection of five science fiction and/or fantasy novels featuring central characters who are disabled.
Sometimes, however, speculative fiction creates a space where readers and writers get to imagine ‘crip futures’ in our fiction: spaces real or imagined where we question our idea of what ‘normal’ bodies and minds look like – what normal means at all.
Maybe it’s the sort of novels I read, titles usually found on literary award shortlists, but now that I think about it, few of them include people with disabilities.
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The two hundred greatest Australian albums of all time
10 December 2021
Keeping it all Australian today, not the plan, just the way it turned out: Rolling Stone’s list of the top two hundred albums of all time. While the top twenty titles include household names, only the work of two artists, Tame Impala, and 5 Seconds of Summer, is less than ten years old. Many of the top albums were released in the latter part of last century, and I’ll be curious to see how they’ve fared in terms of chart position, in say twenty years’ time.
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Prime Minister’s Summer Reading List 2021
10 December 2021
Australian public policy think tank the Grattan Institute has selected six books for the Australian Prime Minister to read over the upcoming summer break.
This year’s list covers a wide range of important issues including the disparity between private and public education systems; land use and the environment; grief, loss, and the female voice; poverty; sovereignty of the First Nations of Australia; and technology’s impact on our lives, our politics, and our values.
The only fiction offering on this year’s list is She Is Haunted, by Melbourne based author Paige Clark, a collection of short stories exploring themes including grief, heartbreak, and illness. Here’s hoping the Prime Minister takes the time to read these titles, and others, during the holiday break.
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Australian writing, literature
The Indie Book Awards 2022 longlist
10 December 2021
Another place to source titles for your to-be-read list, the longlist of the
2022 Indie Book Awards was unveiled earlier this week. The awards, which focus on Australian works, honour fiction, debut fiction, non-fiction, illustrated non-fiction, children’s, and young adult books.
Established in 2008, the Indie Book Awards celebrate the best Australian writing; and who better to nominate and judge the best-of-the-best than indie booksellers! What makes indie booksellers uniquely placed to judge and recommend the best Aussie books of the past year, is their incredible passion and knowledge, their contribution to the cultural diversity of the Australian reading public, by recommending beyond the big brands, and above all, their love of quality writing. The Awards recognise and celebrate indie booksellers as the number one supporters of Australian authors.
The shortlists for each category will be announced on 19 January 2022, while the winners will be named on 21 March 2022.
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Australian writing, literature
West Side Story, by Steven Spielberg
9 December 2021
Steven Spielberg’s film adaptation of the 1957 Broadway musical West Side Story (trailer) arrives in Australian cinemas on Sunday 26 December 2021, though if you look around there are some preview screenings before then. A Romeo and Juliet inspired story for the twentieth century, remade for the twenty-first.
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film, Steven Spielberg, trailer
Earth’s climate change black box
9 December 2021
An aircraft’s black box contains data that may help investigators piece together what caused an accident, and hopefully ensure there isn’t a repeat of whatever went wrong. What then to make of Earth’s Black Box? It is a quadrilateral-like shaped structure that will stand in a geologically stable location, on the west coast of Tasmania, and collect climate data. Like an aircraft flight recorder, the information Earth’s black box stores is intended to one day guide a future civilisation, should global warming spell the demise of ours. Thank you, and have a nice day.
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Working from home is bad for your chess moves, and complicated work tasks
9 December 2021
Reports of a “new” study analysing the performance of chess players who were participating in tournaments, online from home, during the pandemic, and the subsequent impact on their game, were crossing the wires yesterday. I’m not sure such a study is exactly new though, I found reports about similar research dating back to at least a year ago when I went to find out more.
Regardless, it seems the home office may not be the best place for carrying out certain mentally demanding tasks, a finding made after looking at the quality of some chess players moves which apparently were not to up to the usual standard, while they were playing from home:
According to Dr Dainis Zegners: “Chess is, in many ways, is similar to the work of the knowledge society’s office workplaces: the game is strategic, analytical and takes place under time pressure. Cognitive skills used in chess are also used for complicated tasks and strategic decision making such as drafting a legal contract, preparing a tender document or managerial decisions – the kind of tasks that require clear and precise thinking.
The approach some organisations are taking in having employees present in the workplace a few days a week may then be sensible. Come into the office when something taxing needs doing, and then stay home the rest of the time. As long as we don’t have to spend five full days in the office.
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Good Weekend’s Christmas reading guide 2021
8 December 2021
I’m sure we’re going to be seeing a few of this lists over the next few weeks, but the 2021 reading guide from Good Weekend, contains some choice titles, fiction and non-fiction.
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