Paula McLean’s Stella Forever Fund donation
2 December 2021
Future recipients of the Stella Prize, a literary award recognising the work of Australian women writers, can except to see their efforts acknowledged for years to come, following a one-million dollar donation to the Stella Forever Fund by former Stella Deputy Chair Paula McLean.
McLean’s donation is a part of the Fund’s objective to secure a total of $3 million in prize money by April 2022, when the next Stella award winner will be announced. The announcement is being presented as a ‘matched funding’ initiative, meaning that every donation made up to $1 million will be matched by McLean, as a way to kick-start an even greater circle of giving around this important literary prize.
RELATED CONTENT
Australian literature, literary awards, Stella Prize
Books men should read
2 December 2021
Seven books to buy for men in your life, by Sheree at Keeping Up With The Penguins. Unlike similarly titled lists you may see published by book-sellers at certain times of the year, this is one you want to look at.
So, why on earth am I making a list of books to buy for men? Well, I’ve noticed that people do actually pay attention to these recommendations, and the “books to buy for men” page is almost always almost exclusively populated with books written by men. What about the books by women, the ones that might “normally” find a large audience of women, but would actually really benefit cis-men?
I could probably say more about the matter of why the “for him” recommendations issued by book-sellers, are filled with titles by men, about men, when there’s a stack of awesome novels written by women they could also be reading. If the question is asked enough though, perhaps more people will think about it.
RELATED CONTENT
Darren Hanlon’s literature inspired music playlist
2 December 2021
Last week Australian musician Darren Hanlon put together a music playlist inspired by works of literature for radio station Double J. Included is a cover of the old Dire Straits hit Romeo and Juliet, based of course on the play of the same name by William Shakespeare, by Lisa Mitchell.
RELATED CONTENT
Darren Hanlon, literature, music
The metaverse, you can log out anytime, but you can never leave
2 December 2021
The Metaverse as seen by Sydney based writer and musician, Penny Flanagan:
Call me paranoid, but I’m starting to think that Zuckerberg’s end game is to stop all of us from existing physically in the real world. I think he wants to “make the time spent on the internet better” so that he can turn us all into 24/7 flubby, docile sources of advertising revenue. In truth, his ideal for the metaverse is a world where the internet is so satisfying, you won’t want or need to leave it for the real world.
I can see where Flanagan’s coming from, particularly in light of the recent lockdowns that have forced many of us to participate in an elemental iteration of the Metaverse. If you, that is, consider the likes of Zoom, Slack, Facetime, et al, to be a prototype of the virtual environment Meta/Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg proposes creating.
And while there’s little doubt Zuckerberg is eyeing potential revenue, I see benefits in some of the ideas on the table. I’m also not doubting some people could become completely immersed in this new virtual realm in time, but I think we’re some long-way off from seeing the Metaverse eventuate in the way Zuckerberg envisages it.
RELATED CONTENT
Sarah Winman’s Still Life wins Dymocks Book of the Year award
1 December 2021
Some late news to hand… Still Life by London based British author Sarah Winman, was recently named winner of the Dymocks 2021 Book of the Year. Still Life is averaging a tad over four stars in reader ratings on Goodreads, which means the title should be on your to-be-read list.
RELATED CONTENT
Vale David Dalaithngu
1 December 2021
Iconic Indigenous Australian actor David Dalaithngu died yesterday, aged 68. He starred in a stack of locally made movies, including Walkabout, Storm Boy, Crocodile Dundee, Rabbit Proof Fence, The Tracker, The Proposition, Australia, and Charlie’s Country.
RELATED CONTENT
House of Gucci film draws ire from Gucci family
1 December 2021
House of Gucci, Ridley Scott’s depiction of events leading up the to the 1995 murder of Maurizio Gucci, former head of the same Italian fashion house, has been criticised by the Gucci family as being inaccurate and insensitive:
“The production of the film did not bother to consult the heirs before describing Aldo Gucci — president of the company for 30 years — and the members of the Gucci family as thugs, ignorant and insensitive to the world around them,” the statement said. “This is extremely painful from a human point of view and an insult to the legacy on which the brand is built today.”
Meanwhile Lady Gaga’s portrayal of Patrizia Reggiani has been lauded by film critics, with at least one suggesting she deserves an Oscar for her work.
RELATED CONTENT
Are fiction readers ready for novels about the Covid pandemic?
30 November 2021
Fiction writers were always going to incorporate the current Covid pandemic into their work at some stage, and possibly some may have wondered when exactly that would be appropriate. Given there is doubt as to whether the virus will ever completely disappear though, many writers have decided waiting for a “better time” is futile, if a look at new and recent publications is anything to go by.
But Lara Feigel, writing for The Guardian, questions whether readers are ready to see pandemic-related plots featuring in the work of their favourite authors.
When lockdown hit last March, some writers offered their services as delivery drivers or volunteered at Covid test centres. Others attempted to make progress with preexisting projects, blanking out the new world careering into being in front of them. But nothing written in the past 18 months can be entirely free of Covid, with its stark blend of stasis and fear. And now, as we see the work made by writers who confronted it head on, questions emerge. Do we really want to read about the pandemic while it is still unfolding? Do we risk losing sight of the long view in getting too caught up with the contemporary?
For my part, I think it’s going to come down the tastes of different readers, and their personal experiences of Covid. The pandemic is prominent in a number of novels I’ve written about in the last couple of months, including Wish You Were Here, by Jodi Picoult, The Black Dress, by Deborah Moggach, and The Sentence, by Louise Erdrich, while Covid — in the form of another viral outbreak — is alluded to in The Quiet at the End of the World, by Lauren James, Scary Monsters, by Michelle de Kretser, and The Animals in That Country, by Laura Jean McKay.
RELATED CONTENT
Three new e-readers from Kobo and Kindle reviewed
30 November 2021
Reviews of three brand new e-readers by Jason Snell at Six Colors, for anyone considering upgrading their current reader.
But change is coming to the e-reader world this fall, in the form of three brand-new readers. From upstart challenger Rakuten Kobo come the Kobo Sage and the Kobo Libra 2. And from the big dog, Amazon, comes the 11th-generation Kindle Paperwhite.
The Australia Reads 2021 National Reading Survey, which I wrote about yesterday, indicates up to two-thirds of Australian book readers peruse e-books to some degree. Currently about half the novels I read are e-books, though at the moment I’m still mainly using my smartphone rather than a reader.
RELATED CONTENT
Results of the Australia Reads 2021 National Reading Survey
29 November 2021
According to the recently published findings of Australia Reads 2021 National Reading Survey, one in four Australians did not engage with a book, either by reading or listening to one, in the eighteen months to June 2021. So much for thinking people would leap at the chance to read more, given many have had lockdown enforced downtime on their hands recently. I know I would’ve if I’d not been required to pretty much work continually throughout the most recent lockdown.
But 64% of respondents found the lure of movies and television too tempting, while 46% of people said perusing social media, and browsing the internet took up much of their time. Of the some three-thousand survey participants, about a third were general readers, being the proverbial average person on the street, while the remainder were considered to be “engaged” readers, generally being people subscribed to news updates from publishing houses, and who no doubt can be found on Bookstagram.
I’m not sure if three-thousand or so people makes for a particularly representative sample, but the findings are nonetheless fascinating reading. A few items caught my eye as I looked through the data. For instance:
- 38% of Australians think they read more books during the pandemic, versus 53% who didn’t. 9% thought they read less.
- Of engaged readers, 37% are considered to be obsessed readers, typically reading at least one book per week.
- Many “obsessed readers” have numerous book in their TBR stack, and read two or three titles simultaneously.
- 52% of respondents have never listened to an audio book.
- 54% of Australians give up on (DNF) a book if they don’t quickly become interested in it.
- 43% prefer a book recommendation from family and friends, while…
- … less than 12% of respondents trust recommendations via social media.
- And, 3% of Australians think they spend too much time reading.
Encouragingly though, becoming a regular reader, for all the associated benefits, isn’t too difficult. If a person were to read for ten minutes a day, assuming a rate of three-hundred words per minute, that would equate to ninety-thousand words (the average novel’s word-count) a month, or twelve titles a year.
RELATED CONTENT