The Man Himself, new music from Gang of Youths
9 October 2021
The Man Himself, new music from Sydney based Australian music act Gang of Youths, I won’t say no to that. A third album is reportedly on the way, but no word yet as to when it’ll arrive.
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Love Your Bookshop Day 2021
9 October 2021
Happy Saturday. Today is Love Your Bookshop Day, and the occasion couldn’t be timelier after many bookshops in some parts of Australia have had to keep their doors closed for months, and contend with a series of lengthy lockdowns that have affected everyone.
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In Moonland, by Miles Allinson
8 October 2021
The birth of a child seems a strange time to start delving into the past, but that’s what happens in the second novel of Melbourne based Australian novelist Miles Allinson, In Moonland (published by Scribe Publications, August 2021). Rather than think about his new born daughter Sylvie, Joe is intent on finding out more about his father, Vincent, who died when Joe was seventeen.
Vincent was a temperamental man, kind one minute, aggressive the next, who once spent time at a spiritual retreat in India. After catching up with Vincent’s surviving friends, Joe discovers something happened in India which had a profound impact on Vincent. Despite what Joe learns though, many questions about his father’s life remain unanswered.
At the time of his death, it was suggested Vincent was trying to stage a car accident so he could make an insurance claim, but Joe discovers that may not have been the case after all. In later years, Sylvie narrates the story, as she travels to meet her estranged father Joe, in a country since ravaged by climate change, and governed by an authoritarian leader.
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fiction, Miles Allinson, TBR list, writing
The Luminous Solution, by Charlotte Wood
8 October 2021
The Luminous Solution (published by Allen & Unwin, September 2021) is new work – non-fiction this time – from Sydney based Australian Stella Prize winning author Charlotte Wood, she of The Weekend fame.
A rich inner life is not just the preserve of the arts. The joys, fears and profound self-discoveries of creativity – through making or building anything that wasn’t there before, any imaginative exploration or attempt to invent – I believe to be the birthright of every person on this earth. If you live your life with curiosity and intention – or would like to – this book is for you.
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Australian literature, Charlotte Wood, writing
Abdulrazak Gurnah winner of the 2021 Nobel Prize in Literature
8 October 2021
United Kingdom based Tanzanian novelist Abdulrazak Gurnah has been named the 2021 winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature.
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Abdulrazak Gurnah, literature, writing
Now and Then: Ten Years of Stella
7 October 2021
Although the inaugural award was not made until 2013, it is ten years since the inception of the Stella Prize. To mark the occasion, Stella co-founder Chris Gordon will host an online discussion with past winners and shortlisted authors about the impact the award has had, and its outlook over the next decade, this evening at 6:30PM (AEDT). Details on how to be involved are here.
Join Stella co-founder Chris Gordon in conversation with Carrie Tiffany (winner of the inaugural Prize in 2013 for Mateship with Birds), Emily Bitto (winner of the 2015 Prize for The Strays), and Claire G Coleman (shortlisted in 2018 for Terra Nullius) as they discuss Stella’s impact thus far, and what might be achieved over the next decade.
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Australian literature, literary awards, Stella Prize
On final approach: Forever, the new Flight Facilities album
7 October 2021
Seven years after the release of their debut Down to Earth, Sydney based Australian electronic act Flight Facilities lands on Friday, 12 November 2021, with their new album Forever. I’ve been queuing up their new singles – including the title track – on Spotify for weeks now… let the countdown to 12 November commence.
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The Animals in That Country, by Laura Jean McKay
7 October 2021
A flu of pandemic proportions is sweeping the country, and there seems to be little humanity can do to quell it, try as we might. That’s the somewhat familiar premise of The Animals in That Country (published by Scribe Publications, March 2020), the debut novel of New Zealand based Australian writer Laura Jean McKay.
But this disease had an odd symptom: those who become infected are possessed of the ability to understand the languages of animals. While having a conversation with their pets is probably something many people would cherish, that’s not quite the way this flu works. The infected become privy to the thoughts of every last creature. And for some people the result is an unbearable form of information overload. They die a slow death by madness, from an avalanche of once mute voices.
For straight-talking grandmother Jean, who works in a remote Australian wildlife park, the illness is a blessing in disguise. With the exception of Kimberly, her granddaughter, she much prefers the company of animals anyway. But when Lee, her son, leaves with Kimberly, in a bid to escape the outbreak, Jean, accompanied by a dingo named Sue, sees little choice but to go in search of them.
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fiction, Laura Jean McKay, TBR list, writing
It’s time to think twice about Facebook, right?
6 October 2021
Tim Biggs, writing for the Sydney Morning Herald, on yesterday’s Facebook outage:
The fact that the impact was so wide may cause you to ponder what we all already know, that Facebook has inserted itself into as many facets of our online lives as possible, for the purposes of the collection and cross-referencing of our data, to drive its experimental advertising machine. And though outages like this are rare and the hyper-connectedness of Facebook services is unlikely to become an ongoing problem in the sense that they’re falling over all the time, it is timely that we’ve been forced to reckon with just how ubiquitous the company is, if only for a few hours.
I don’t use Facebook too much, but was alarmed I couldn’t access Instagram for several hours yesterday. But am I going to look for alternatives? Yeah, right…
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Coffee prices are on the rise
6 October 2021
International Coffee Day was last Friday, 1 October 2021, but with it came word that coffee prices are on the rise, and may even double in the next year. While increases are hopefully welcome news to some bean growers who have been struggling with low margins, consumers can expect to pay more for a cuppa in the near future. The current catalyst for rising prices are lower than usual yields on coffee farms in Brazil, one of the world’s largest producers. As a result of severe droughts and then frosts, Arabica harvests may be their lowest in twelve years.
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