Review: Untitled (Past, Present, Future)

Visiting the Stedelijk Museum with my family, after three rewarding but long days of getting value for money from our museum discount card, was one highlight of our time in Amsterdam. By this stage we were weary and in danger of becoming jaded with even the most fabulous cultural artefacts, but such was the excellence […]

Skara Brae and V. Gordon Childe

Tourists strolling the ancient, Neolithic settlement of Skara Brae will note the site owes its “current presentation” to the Australian archaeologist who excavated it between 1928 and 1931. Vernon Gordon Childe (1892 – 1957) was never well-known in the country of his birth and has mostly been lost to history. However, Childe is well-worth exhuming […]

Some reflective thoughts about social reading…

We read to know we are not alone.   SOURCE I have recently purchased a new Kindle e-reader. You can click on that last link and read the specs but in short it has “Amazon’s 6″ Paperwhite display technology with E Ink Carta™ and built-in light, 300 ppi, optimised font technology, 16-level gray scale“. It is […]

December 2015: My Reading

“There are two motives for reading a book: One, that you enjoy it; the other, that you can boast about it.” Bertrand Russell I had the goal of writing a blog post each month this year and feel quietly pleased at keeping up the pace. I have made notes and lists, in all kinds of […]

A Baker’s Dozen: Most Enjoyable Reads of 2015

Reviewing the books I read or re-read in 2015, I decided to choose the thirteen I had derived the most pleasure as a reader. In other words, I reflected on how much satisfaction was felt sitting with the book – and why. If you have the patience, the following slideshow will countdown to the book […]

November 2015: My Reading

  This month I have made a conscious effort to finish a number of half-read books and finally investigate some that have been on my “to read” lists for years. Fiction Shaun Tan is another Western Australian who produces highly original, inspired words and images. Several of his books are truly wonderful. I have spent […]

July 2015: My Reading

Two weeks of holidays certainly provided time for more books this month than last. I continue to enjoy the pleasures of rereading and science fiction, as well as some light but thoughtful travel books and tomes exploring historical wisdom on how to live – and win elections! High Possibility Classrooms Dr Jane Hunter has written a […]

Subscribe?

Why do people still pay to subscribe to magazines, journals, websites and newspapers? For some time, to subscribe, one has entered an email address or added the website as an RSS feed for an endless stream of online articles and posts. I subscribe to about a thousand websites using Feedly. In another sense, we subscribe by clicking ‘like’ or […]

May 2015: My Reading

Certain books, though, like certain landscapes, stay with us even when we have left them, changing not just our weathers but our climates. Robert MacFarlane This is certainly true of Robert MacFarlane’s books. He is a perfect writer for me. His obsessions with authors, walking, literature, language, nature and landscape are just thrilling. That saying about reading […]

April 2015: My Reading

Italy A full two weeks of the April were spent in Italy – most of the trip was spent in Perugia, a town located in Umbria before having a few nights in Rome – and I tried to read appropriately for (and during) the experience. River of Shadows by Valerio Varesi is not my usual genre, […]

March 2015: My Reading

“Science fiction is a literature that belongs to all humankind.”  Liu Cixin March has been an exciting month of science fiction reading and some progress has been made finding novelists writing in languages other than English. The trick, of course, is to be lucky enough to find novels superbly rendered by their translators. A tip from […]

February 2015: My Reading

There’s been a good variety of books completed this month including graphic novels, historical fiction, essays, memoirs, biographies, contemporary fiction, revolutionary pamphlets and plenty of history. Christopher Hitchens and Thomas Paine Last month I consumed oodles of Orwell and re-read Hitchens’ evaluation of the author’s importance to contemporary literature and journalism. This has led to re-discovering […]

The Professional and the Personal

Back in 2008, Martin Weller’s video, A Twitter Love Song, captured the potential of social media to be the ‘sweet spot’, a kind of comfortable marriage of the personal with the professional. This ‘subjective’ video message of Martin’s really appealed at the time (and still does). This, I think it is fair to warn you, is a […]

January 2015: My Reading

It is not a New Year’s resolution but I intend to write one blog post a month about what I’ve been reading. Usually I write a roundup of books enjoyed twice a year but these posts do not tend to say much in the sense of being reviews. They are more lists with a few […]

iPhoneography #2

Your first 10,000 photographs are your worst.                                                                          Henri Cartier-Bresson Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.     […]

Charging Windmills: My Reading in 2014

“A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies, said Jojen. The man who never reads lives only one.” George R.R. Martin “I wanted to crawl in between those black lines of print, the way you crawl through a fence, and go to sleep under that beautiful big green fig-tree.” Sylvia Plath “I don’t remember ever […]

Reading (so far) in 2014

“An entire life spent reading would have fulfilled my every desire; I already knew that at the age of seven. The texture of the world is painful, inadequate; unalterable, or so it seems to me. Really, I believe that an entire life spent reading would have suited me best.”     Michel Houellebecq “I sink down […]

Paul Kelly & Your English Class

“He is a storyteller, a poet, and has the unique ability to communicate with all Australians, across all age groups and gender. Collaborating with indigenous musicians, young performers, and artists of all genres, Kelly has created some of the most important songs of our times.” I grew up with Paul Kelly. His music and distinctive voice […]

Our School, The Red Room Company & Life Matters

“The Red Room Company works in partnership with schools, teachers and poets to put the playfulness back into poetry. One school which has particularly embraced creativity through these projects is Dapto High School.” LIFE MATTERS I had a fun start to the last week of term today being interviewed on Radio National by Natasha Mitchell about our partnership with […]

Eggs & baskets, Kobo & Calibre

It always concerned me that Amazon had such a monopoly on ebooks. However, my customer satisfaction since purchasing my first kindle in 2009, compared with the obvious inferiority of other e-readers, has been high. The price, ease and massive catalogue of ebooks available did not make it seems so bad to have all my eggs in one basket. I […]

My Reading in 2013: Favourite Books

He didn’t want a television, he had no need of a radio. He didn’t want the world to come in….He couldn’t stand the false hysteria of soap operas, the forced hilarity of sitcoms, the feigned outrage of commentators and the hosts of current-affairs shows. He didn’t own a computer. He didn’t need its temptations. He […]

(My) Doctor Who (1963-2013)

Cuddled up on the couch with my children early this morning watching the simulcast Day of the Doctor, the fiftieth-anniversary of Doctor Who, made me feel all tingly and nostalgic. I have not really enjoyed Matt Smith’s incarnation of The Doctor and considering the hype around the event, figured it would likely be anti-climatic. Not so. […]

What have you read (so far) in 2013?

Darcy tapped the page of his book and the next appeared. It had been years since he had to physically labour, turning page after page, of a novel or heavy non fiction tome and he knew he would resent having to make that much effort to read when his Kindle iPad app was so convenient. […]

Review: The Great Gatsby by Baz Luhrmann

“I think he got it just right”                                       F. Scott Fitzgerald’s granddaughter Fresh from viewing the dazzling, 3D kaleidoscope, that is Baz Luhrmann’s adaptation of The Great Gatsby, it is imperative that my disbelief at reviewers, who have castigated or had […]

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