I won't pretend to be the world's biggest Hunger Games fan. I've only read the first of the trilogy—which I thoroughly enjoyed, despite having some misgivings about some of the world-building—and while the news I heard about the film all sounded good to me (casting, the fact… Read full post »

I'm writing this on a Mac.

Pretty much everything of value I've ever written, I wrote on a Mac. Book reviews, articles, blog posts, aborted attempts at novels and short stories and picture books—written on a Mac. A book proposal I'm currently working on. My Masters thesis:… Read full post »

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This is the paper I gave at Diana Wynne Jone: A Conference, in at the University of the West of England, Bristol, July 2009. It's a mix of personal anecdote and analysis of English fantasy and Australian children's fiction of the 60s and 70s. But mostly it was,… Read full post »

As many of you will have heard, Diana Wynne Jones died yesterday. Although Diana's death was not unexpected—she was diagnosed with lung cancer two years ago—it has nevertheless come as a great shock, and a great sadness, to her legions of fans. Not least of all me.… Read full post »

I was out the front of my house this evening, picking up the local paper and the mail, when I noticed my elderly neighbour Herbie walking up the street. Herbie is pinned together with rods and titanium—I forget what happened, although I think he did tell me once—and he was walking… Read full post »

My mother and eldest sister have come across my writing on this blog (thanks to a friend who posted links on Facebook) and it's prompted a bit of collective re-visiting of family history. Since she read my blog post "I have lived in many houses", Mum has started listing all the… Read full post »

As you may (or may not) have noticed, I have changed the name of this blog. Blog names seem to matter less on Open Salon than elsewhere, so it's kind of neither here nor there, except that—as I documented in this post—I did want to give the blog a name that… Read full post »

A few weeks ago, I wrote about the many houses I have lived in. On Friday (March 11 2011), I visited the first house. Well, not the first house where I lived, nor even the second, but the first house I remember living in. The first one that, for me, counts.… Read full post »

Driving home from work tonight, in the final long stretch before the turnoff to the laneway that runs behind my house, I saw a man ahead of me standing on the side of the road holding aloft a sign. Behind him was a car, parked awry, driver's door open, as if… Read full post »

Further to my post titled "I have lived in many houses" (aka the Great Unwritten Nick Drake Novel), and because Kim asked for the music (and indeed, I wouldn't have known about Nick if it weren't for Kim), here is Nick Drake and When the Day is Done.

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Some years ago—more than 10, less than 20—I started work on a novel inspired, in part, by this piece I read online about the house that Nick Drake grew up in. I didn't remember Nick Drake from my own childhood; I only heard of him and his fey, haunting music when… Read full post »

Hello. I don't even know who I might be speaking to. As you might have noticed, shadowy figure of a theoretical reader, I have not posted here since 2008, when I was avidly following the US Presidential elections. I wrote a lengthy post from my perspective as an Australian following US… Read full post »

Bruce Wolpe, long-time advisor to Rep. Harry Waxman and now manager, corporate affairs at John Fairfax Holdings (publishers of the Sydney Morning Herald) has called the election for Obama.

Can't figure out how to embed it but the video is here. Read full post »

The title of this post is partly tongue-in-cheek, and partly wishful thinking.

Tongue-in-cheek, because for years under our previous, conservative/reactionary government (yes, ironically, the leading conservative party in Australia is the Liberal party), many Australians resisted then-prime minister… Read full post »

I originally started this as a comment on The Biblio Files blog about Banned Books Week, and then realised how long it was turning out to be, and decided to make it my first Open Salon post. Curiously, I already keep a children’s and youth literature specific blog, and had thought… Read full post »