Furious Horses

Just recovering now from my trip on the weekend to the Emerging Writers Festival in Melbourne. I just have to say a huge thank you to the organisers for inviting me down to speak, putting me up in a swish hotel (see below) and generally being awesome...

We saw each other—as was the cliché—across a crowded room. A celebration for some sporting team we both happened to stumble into. Each of us trying to find our way home, taking a shortcut through the hotel lobby, running straight into a wall of red and white...

You insisted our first date be held at a certain time of the year. Moon cycles, tides rising and falling—everything had to be perfect. You had that face—that body—so I let you make me wait...

She had maps spread out all over the floor. I told her they looked blank, but she told me, in all seriousness, that they were charts of salt flats. While I brewed some tea, she pushed tiny matchbox cars across the paper, making motor noises with her mouth...

Sorry there haven't been many posts of late, but I've been feverishly working to create something special to celebrate my appearance at the Emerging Writers Festival this weekend. Alls I can say for now is it will begin at 12.00am on Saturday morning. Or midnight Friday, if you prefer. Stay tuned.....

So now it's official. The book UNTITLED by UNKNOWN (as previously discussed) has been revealed to be...The Link by Colin TudgeWhat is "The Link"? A 47 million year-old lemur-like creature with opposable thumbs and ... a tail...

There's nothing quite like the anticipation of a book you already know will be insanely great. The Millions has a nice take on Haruki Murakami's much-anticipated and secrecy-shrouded monster novel "19Q4". Read about it here . No date on English translation yet, but it's still exciting!

For all those (three) Furious Horses fans in Melbourne, I will be down your neck of the woods soon for the Emerging Writers Festival, whose organisers have very kindly invited me down to talk about this blog, in a session called From Here to There, at the Melbourne Town Hall on Saturday May 30th at...

I promised myself I wouldn't, but I am such a sucker for dubious book covers...

Just looking at the recent keyword searches that led people to this site, it's clear that more than a few inquisitive minds have been trying to figure out the identity of the mysterious book released by Hachette on May 28 called UNTITLED by UNKNOWN (as previewed in my previous post)...

This has to be quick because I'm busy listening to the new Wilco album, but in the spirit of music and books colliding, this is worth a look:Artist Andy J Miller and Canadian nonprofit The Yellow Bird Project have created this awesome collection of mazes, dot-the-dots and colouring pages based on...

One of the most exciting parts of my day at the bookshop I work at is pouncing on a fresh delivery from our American book supplier...

In what is becoming rapidly a truncated, shortcut world, it's a pleasure to see someone making URLs longer and more enjoyable, rather than trimming them down, tinyurl-style. Over at dickensurl.com, you can turn that boring weblink into a piece of art...

It's only May, but I already feel that I've seen my favourite title of the year so far...

Sometimes publishers use the tactic of urgency to get them to buy their books. Sometimes they use the power of secrecy, and sometimes they use the bargaining chip of importance. My new favourite is being bandied about by Hachette Australia...

One of the few gripes I have about living only 15 minutes walk from my place of work is that I miss the serious reading time a commute can allow you...

Started the day off not too well today. But what better way to cure mild depression than to rearrange your bookshelves? Finally tired of tripping over the collapsed towers of books that litter my house, I decided to bite the bullet and organise them. I have five bookshelves...

You've read about it already, but here is a great response to the more than slightly sinister Dymocks email urging their customers to support the ban on parallel importation of books.Then there's the Amazon censorship scandal, where everybody's favourite non-GST-paying book supplier is denying...

When all that’s left is to sit down and eat your cheese bread and really enjoy that DVD you’ve saved up all week, there’s a knock at your door and when you haul up and walk over and look through the peephole, you see the fisheyed view of a famous person and it’s so unusual to see them from...

To say he saw the great painter on the beach would be an extraordinary overstatement, but to all intents and purposes it was him. In his later years perhaps, but still that figure was a famous one, in his deep blue boyleg swimmers...

So often I'll pop over to the nice site that collates all the stats about how many (few) people visit my site. The numbers aren't so interesting, but the keyword searches certainly are. You may notice I put my favourites at the bottom of the blog...

Alright then, how about book covers that improve between formats? Enough of ragging out on B-format bungles. Take, for instance, Joseph O'Neill's marvellous book, Netherland—my sixth-favourite book I read last year (if you want to see my top ten, then read on below)...

One of the big big hand-sell titles for Australian indies last Christmas was Chris Cleave's very strong book The Other Hand, whose cover went through many different permutations before arriving at the final choice...

Oh, and to complete the strained pun, The Fighting George Orwells

So you're a venerable, legendary author who's written over 50 novels, winner of the National Book Award, O. Henry Award and Prix Femina. Do you think by now you would have gathered a little respect in the old book cover design field...

One of the surprise fiction hits of last year was the grandma-pleasing story of friendship and reading, Mary Ann Shaffer's The Guernsey Literary & Potato Peel Pie Society. The first format, a beautiful textured cream hardcover was both simple and identifiable...

Those of you who follow this blog have probably guessed that I have a soft spot for book covers. And, being a bookseller, I do indeed judge a book by its proverbial...

Customer: I've ordered a book in and I'm here to pick it up.Me: Okay, here it is.Customer: Is that what it looks like?Me: (bumps head against desk)

Anyone for bookshop porn?**Not actual porn. Just beautiful bookshops.

HarperCollins can't even manage one story per day. They do one per month. By all different writers. Which just happen to include Louise Erdich, Laura Lippmann and Mary Gaitskill... I guess that's okay.Read them here - via Snufft

So that's it for the one year of stories. Thanks to everyone who read them -- or at least some of them (not even I've read all of them) -- left their very kind comments, or in some other way contributed to my overall wellbeing...

Over at The Morning News, the Fifth Annual Tournament of Books has begun! Their best books of 2008 go head to head each day during March, culminating in an eventual winner, and the presentation of a live rooster to the lucky author...

A blog called Furious HorsesWas thought up by curious forcesTo publicly practiceA writer who’d lacked thisReleased all his words, and his pausesBefore the first month was yet writtenThe writer, with false fame, was smittenAlthough it was wrongHe bought a dot.comHis ego, now baited, had...

That voice. That voice was the last thing on my mind. I had come to see the sky shake with shimmering sounds. I had arrived to watch free spirits set music alight with fresh life and defiance. It was 1969. It was the week that saved my life...