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Sunday, November 17, 2019

Well-Behaved Packers and Stories

rain lets up
and the price of umbrellas
comes back down!




  • Kerry Francis Bullmore Packer. Reluctantly.
    • When asked to state his full name and the capacity in which he appeared. 
  • I am not evading tax in any way, shape or form. Now of course I am minimizing my tax and if anybody in this country doesn't minimize their tax they want their heads read because as a government I can tell you you're not spending it that well that we should be donating extra.
  • Transcribed from the in-memoriam 2006 television show The Big Fella: The Extraodinary Life of Kerry Packer

  • There is a little bit of the whore in all of us, gentlemen. What is your price?


Important poets are indeed under-read, inadequately appreciated, or simply forgotten for myriad reasons, not the least of which is the ever-changing Zeitgeist. And sometimes it’s just a matter of bad luck — of careers cut short by unforeseen circumstances, including untimely death



Packing some power

His father and grandfather have been immortalised on the small screen, but James Packer says he "knows nothing" about a new play about his famous family which makes its debut on the stage of the Belvoir on Saturday










Kerry and James Packer in 2004.
Kerry and James Packer in 2004.
Photo: Rob Griffith
Called Packer & Sons, the play is by Tommy Murphy, who was also responsible for the excellent Mark Colvin’s Kidney and Holding the Man.
Directed by Belvoir's artistic director Eamon Flack, it is being billed as "a play about power and what it does to the men who wield it."
But when PS approached Packer this week about the new play, he admitted: "I know nothing about it".
Granted, he has probably been pre-occupied in recent months, with both his personal and business lives. He is not expected back in Sydney until his shining edifice at Barangaroo, the towering casino, is completed in around a year's time.
Who would want to be Packer, eh?
Sure, you’d get the money and fame, but what of the decades of family dysfunction, the domineering father figures and the shackles of the family business?
I’m talking about the men of Sydney’s legendary Packer family, of course - Sir Frank, his sons Kerry and Clyde, and James, son of Kerry, and the last to (literally) wear the Crown (Resorts, that is, James’ gaming and entertainment group).

We want to confound people': Packer and Sons makes business personal

Playwright Tommy Murphy developed a "complex sympathy" for 


       At Publishers Weekly Ed Nawotka finds Translations Pay Off for Amazon with their imprint AmazonCrossing. 
       They've published: "more than 400 books, from 42 countries and in 26 languages" -- with some notable (sales-)successes; they're also bringing out more non-fiction titles



Australian non-fiction (in alphabetical author by title)


Life Stories (in alphabetical order by title):


And from elsewhere (in alphabetical order by title):


What was your favourite nonfiction read of the year?

I can’t decide between The Resurrection of Winnie Mandela, by Sisonke Msimangbecause it made me rethink the way we demonise women who don’t behave the way we expect them to; Accidental Feminists, by Jane Caro because it’s an homage to my generation and all the things we achieved for women; and Blooms and Brushstrokes, A Floral History of Australian Art, by Penelope Curtin and Tansy Curtin which is definitely my most drop-dead gorgeous coffee table book of the year.