Saturday, March 18, 2006



I hate flowers. I paint them because they're cheaper than models and they don't move.
- Georgia O'Keeffe

You know you're at Bondi Iceberg club when the guy in front of you in the line for Gabriella’s favourite calamari and chips, the strange dude with the silver mobile in his golden suit, actually is James Packer (James and Frank Lowy are two Ausies considered the richest men in the world), rather than just some tall hipster who looks like him. And later when the Czech waitress with impressive accent who is standing behind the bar suggests in her tone of her voice to hurry up and get his ass moving ;-) This brings me to Bukowski's later works grapples for meaning and (lost) authenticity in the fat-and-happy, driving-a-BMW years, is interesting because the contrast between his lean years and later success is just so stark and difficult to swallow. Franzen, if crass, probably knew what he was doing Oprah: Irony and humor: the realization that there's a way to go on, but ultimately no cure

Sputnik Sweetheart is a little like an Eric Rohmer film, in that everybody talks incessantly and not always cogently, but their babble matters less than the deeper feelings and human truths it betrays. Alas, it also runs the same risk of appearing slight the moment one abandons the effort of caring Murakami Haruki : Before I became a writer, I was running a jazz bar in the Center of Tokyo

Art of Living & Literature Across Frontiers: Freedom to insult
Antipodean = 'one who is from a part of the earth that is diametrically opposite'

We may be at the mercy of the great powers, but we’ve always kept our heads above water with irony and perseverance. One of the most frequently challenged authors of the past decade has two books on the American Library Association's (ALA) list of the most frequently challenged books of 2005. Robie H. Harris' “It's Perfectly Normal: Changing Bodies, Growing Up, Sex, and Sexual Health” heads up the list, while “It's So Amazing! A Book about Eggs, Sperm, Birth, Babies, and Families” rounds out the top 10. Both books drew complaints for sexual content.


Love may be lovelier the second time around, but literature just turns ugly [Condemned by their own words: The ten worst autobiographies ; Powerful women are either sexually voracious rulers like Catherine the Great or Elizabeth 1, or treacherous bitches like Cleopatra or Helen of Troy Celia Brayfield; Believing Makes It So Happy Antipodean ; Adam Shand's journey into Australia's outlaw nation to examine the claims that bikies are the foot soldiers for organised crime… Unhappy Antipodean Outlaw nation ]
• · Gregor Samsa did not die near the end of Kafka's The Metamorphosis but instead lives, as a beetle, with a side-show of human oddities Reissued: Insect Dreams by Marc Estrin; With great black clouds of Schadenfreude gathering over successful debut novelists, it’s a miracle anyone ever writes a second book at all. An author can’t win with a second novel. If your first novel was a flop, you know that you’ll be dead in the water if you don’t knock ’em dead with the second: Ludmilla’s Broken English Blood in the Cold River: how sharks love the scent of second novels
• · · These are tough times for writers in Zimbabwe, says Martin Goodman Fighting for fiction ; The retailing or remarking of any work has to carry the past into the future. The question of originality is an interesting one. Originality belonged to God. Humankind reflected and copied Her word ; If the writers Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh win their case against Dan Brown, will the journalist who first described them as "historians" be able to claim royalties from everyone who has subsequently copied him? The imitation game ; If you had to pick just one book to take to the moon with you, what would it be? 10 Welsh authors pick books for a long trip along Cold River; Coping with a breakup is hard for everyone, but in my opinion, it is harder for men than it is for women. This is especially true for all those men who were involved in long-term relationships. It's not fair
• · · · If you struggle with the moral questions raised by the disastrous political commitments of certain otherwise stimulating or even essential writers, then ponder this anecdote. Letter from Sarajevo ; Finns head the list in terms of newspaper reading and library use, and studies show that Finnish children read better than any other country’s: dedicated to Aleksi and Anton Letter from Finland ; Dedicated to Minna Monaghan A Presence with Secrets ; Monika Kruesmann - Just saying 'no', just doesn’t cut it The gap between rape and consent
• · · · · The New Eastern European Intellectual: Why do some EEs make a fortune while so many others struggle financially? A Culture of Lies; It's also about a family coping with death and madness, so there's plenty to get your teeth into. he risk in transferring a play to the screen, of course, is that it will be dragged down by its theatrical origins Proof
• · · · · · Simone Weil wrote that suffering is a sign of God’s love. That is her beautiful use of paradox. Bidden or not bidden, God is present ; It is like what we imagine knowledge to be: dark, salt, clear, moving, utterly free, drawn from the cold hard mouth of the world -Elizabeth Bishop At the Fishhouses Australia's Eureka Street follows the leaders online