James Ley

Recently acquired. (The Stein bio is excellent. Haven't got to the others yet.)

The Age called out the Myanmar genocide. Why not Gaza's? The paper's treatment of the Palestinians reeks of double standards.

I wrote a piece for @deepcutnews about how the media sees some genocides as more important than others

www.deepcutnews.com/p/the-age-ca...

The Mushroom Tapes review – Erin Patterson through the eyes of Helen Garner, Chloe Hooper and Sarah Krasnostein This account of what the three authors observed during Patterson’s triple murder trial does resemble a podcast transcript at times, but it is extremely readable

I signed off on my review of The Mushroom Tapes before the book got the gold plate publicity treatment over the weekend. When I write that it’s hard to differentiate this book from the torrents of chatter about the case, it’s not a positive evaluation.

www.theguardian.com/books/2025/n...

The entertaining insurgent • Dominic Kelly Conservative activist William F. Buckley cajoled America along the road to the Reagan revolution

Reviewed Sam Tanenhaus's William F. Buckley bio. insidestory.org.au/the-entertai...

Grim, funny and unremitting, Evelyn Araluen’s The Rot is a book attuned to dark times The Rot is haunted by complicity, and haunting in its insistence on remembering every betrayal.

Tom Ford on Evelyn Araluen's new book The Rot

theconversation.com/grim-funny-a...

Copyright is dead. When it comes to AI my property has been stolen all the same The point.com.au

@marquelawyers.com.au with a take you need to read on copyright and AI on @thepointau.bsky.social

I suppose not taking a massive step backwards counts as a win. I wrote for Crikey about copyright, AI, Anthropic and the TDM exemption that the Albanese government has finally ruled out.

Why do we think hard work is virtuous? Max Weber’s Protestant Ethic gives a sharp answer The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism is neither a history of economics, nor a religious history. It borrows from both, but is stranger than either.

Excellent essay by Chris Fleming on Max Weber's Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism

theconversation.com/why-do-we-th...

The twelfth issue of Socrates on the Beach is live. Thank you to the authors and the translator and those who helped with the issue. socratesonthebeach.com

David Brooks wins 2025 Patrick White Literary Award | Books+Publishing Purchase a subscription to view job ads and other premium content on Books+Publishing.

Congratulations to our member, David Brooks, for being awarded the 2025 Patrick White Literary Award – a richly deserved recognition of his profound contributions to Australian literature, contemporary poetry and environmental thought. Read more here:

I’m going to re-up my own piece on BSU. Back in 2022 I wrote that Dalton was the novelist-laureate of Scott Morrison’s Australia. Why is it that readers can’t move on from this guy and his retrograde fantasies? sydneyreviewofbooks.com/reviews/crit...

Critic Swallows Book | Sydney Review of Books To call into question the literary value of Dalton’s fiction is not to disqualify the pleasure and imaginative release that hundreds of thousands of readers have found in his novels, especially Boy Sw...

"D’s sales have been so great...the aesthetic value of his work has been taken as self-evident. His consistent ideological commitments have been ignored. This, broadly, is symptomatic of a historical moment in which cultural value is conflated w market value" sydneyreviewofbooks.com/reviews/crit...

Oh no! Very sorry to hear this. I never met Moya, but greatly respected her writing.

Second-hand bookshop find

Sue Turnbull

Creative Australia awards Khaled Sabsabi $100,000 grant months after dumping from Venice Biennale Funding is a silver lining in a tumultuous year for the Lebanese-Australian artist from western Sydney Creative Australia has awarded a $100,000 grant to artist Khaled Sabsabi, months after he was controversially dumped and then reinstated by the federal arts body as Australia’s representative for the 2026 Venice Biennale. The grant – one of 16 made under Creative Australia’s Visual Arts, Craft and Design Framework – will fund the creation of a new body of work for a solo exhibition opening in March 2027 at Adelaide’s Samstag Museum of Art, which will also include Sabsabi’s Venice Biennale work. Continue reading...

Creative Australia awards Khaled Sabsabi $100,000 grant months after dumping from Venice Biennale

As the ceasefire begins, a look at the Gaza war by the numbers With start of the Israel-Hamas ceasefire and release of hostages and prisoners, here are some key figures related to the Gaza war and the Hamas-led attack on Israel that sparked it.

With start of the Israel-Hamas ceasefire and release of hostages and prisoners, here are some key figures related to the Gaza war and the Hamas-led attack on Israel that sparked it. n.pr/3WzUIOp

YouTube video by Arts & Social Sciences at ANU Gerald Murnane's Terra Nullius

Recordings of our two recent @calc-anu.bsky.social seminars are now available
Ken Gelder on unhomely Australia www.youtube.com/watch?v=8kv0... and
@jackquirk.bsky.social on Gerald Murnane youtu.be/eKFwHbxy2m4?...

Terrific sessions— enjoy

A great pessimist and unapologetic traditionalist: László Krasznahorkai wins the 2025 Nobel Prize in Literature Krasznahorkai’s language is the mad scream of a godless universe at our inexcusable squandering of every good thing given to us by chance.

Julian Murphet on Krasznahorkai

theconversation.com/a-great-pess...

Friday essay: Peter Jackson, the Black Australian boxing champion you’ve never heard of At his peak in the early 1890s, Peter Jackson was easily the most famous living Australian in the world. But he was more than boxer.

Excellent historical essay by Ben Etherington on the self-fashioning of a now largely forgotten Black sportsman

theconversation.com/friday-essay...

Thomas Pynchon's world of shadows

Vollmann reviews Pynchon

unherd.com/2025/10/thom...

I was the Archives Editor at Meanjin – its closure is baffling As Archives Editor, Emma Sutherland had ‘read everything’ in Meanjin's past, but was unprepared for its troubled present.

"It took more than an hour after the story broke, and was covered by several mastheads, to receive official notice from MUP; a group email confirming Meanjin’s immediate closure." ~Emma Sutherland, Archives Editor at Meanjin in @artshub.bsky.social this weekend.
www.artshub.com.au/news/opinion...

Friday essay: trauma memoirs can help us understand the unthinkable. They can also be art Sad Tiger and Trauma Plot are two stunning memoirs by rape survivors who immerse themselves in art and literature. They both transcend ‘art as therapy’.

With thanks to @aunz.theconversation.com for encouraging me to write about two extraordinary memoirs

theconversation.com/friday-essay...

A critique of pure stupidity: understanding Trump 2.0 If the first term of Donald Trump provoked anxiety over the fate of objective knowledge, the second has led to claims we live in a world-historical age of stupid, accelerated by big tech. But might th...

My essay on stupidology (originally published in N+1) is in today's Guardian www.theguardian.com/news/2025/oc...

My obscure little book is in the Anthropic AI database, so I just filed a claim. Cough up, scumbags!

secure.anthropiccopyrightsettlement.com/lookup

Alexis Wright has revitalised Australian literature, but a new book by a ‘superfan’ overlooks an important aspect of her work Alexis Wright’s work expresses a sovereign Aboriginal worldview, but owes a debt to a pantheon of authors from around the globe.

Lynda Ng on Alexis Wright

theconversation.com/alexis-wrigh...

He's good, that Nick. 😉

A sample

It's very short, self-referential in a darkly funny way, more so than No Longer Human, which I read earlier this year (it's the "prequel"), though slight by comparison.

'Rotten' Australian university culture lashed in long-running senate inquiry Australia's universities are blighted by a "culture of consequence-free, rotten failure", a senate inquiry has found.

Australia's universities are blighted by a "culture of consequence-free, rotten failure", according to the former chair of a senate inquiry examining governance at public universities. ... "There's no other sector in the country where failure is rewarded so handsomely and with so little scrutiny."