John Purcell

A Private View by Anita Brookner I’ve been making my way through Anita Brookner’s exquisitely written novels slowly but steadily over the past eight years. As a long-term reading project, I’m finding it fascinating to see how Broo…

“He had no doubt that she had earmarked him for future use, in which case she had made a grave mistake. He was not so stupid as to take her on trust or to tolerate any demands she might make of him. No doubt she thought to seduce him into this.” #BookSky 💙📚

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How odd. I found a second-hand copy of this and A Family Romance on the weekend. I started greedily on A Family Romance first. Not sure why. It is a hardcover, so I suppose it must be a class thing. I promise I will read your review after I devour it and A Private View.

Photo of the paperback of Man in the Holocene by Max Frisch

'A stunning tour de force, Man in the Holocene constructs a powerful vision of our place in the world by combining the banality of an aging man's lonely inner life and the objective facts he finds in the books of his isolated home.'

Delightful Saturday reading.

Or my life.

Start Me Up by The Rolling Stones was just on. I have heard their stuff all my life so I never pay any attention to their lyrics. Then I thought I heard something lewd. So, of course, I looked it up.

Yep, that's what I heard.

I think it's odd that after all this time publishers are still not aware of all the unintended signals they send to cautious booksellers about their upcoming titles.

Long before the marketing kicks in publishers might have killed a book's chances by any number of, for them, workaday decisions.

I do! I do love to see it!!

To Puff or Not to Puff Do away with blurbs? I don’t think so.

Are blurbs and endorsements on book covers pointless? Author @damonyoung.com.au digs into whether the industry should do away with the puff.

You can tell when a writer hasn't done the work. I don't mean research, I mean, hasn't lived fully. Hasn't read widely & deeply. Hasn't tried to see the world as it is, even if they only have access to a small patch of it. Hasn't taken the time to befriend people they have nothing in common with. 🌍📚

I only just noticed the quote on the front of Gliff by Ali Smith.

'Miraculous... tender, hilarious and ultimately uplifting. A ray of hope' Paul Murray, Irish Times

Hilarious?

5 new Australian publishers are making defiant, weird, grass-roots books The launch of 5 new Australian book publishers is good news, for once. Meet Perentie Press, Pink Shorts Press, Evercreech Editions, Aniko Press and Bakers Lane Books.

It felt like Australian publishing was shrinking with mergers and the shock closure of Meanjin - waiting to see the full story behind that!

But there's a few new players bring fresh energy and new books in recent months.

With thanks to @jocaseau.bsky.social for excellent editing.

Opinion pieces follow the same tiresome pattern. Headline promising a solution. Retreat in the opening passages to dull scene setting, often with way too much personal information. Followed by detailed reiteration of the problem & a recap of the current inciting incident. Then, no solution. End.

Are you starving for beauty? Well feast your eyes on the official 2026 Smith & Taylor Classics line-up!

📮 Preorder our annual subscription service at unnamedpress.com now to receive books throughout the year!

I have been listening to Ani DiFranco since Plastic Little Castles in 1998. Late, I know. Then I bought Living in Clip which sent me back through her earlier albums. She has been a constant in my life ever since. Songs like Out of Habit, Grey, Sorry I Am, Studying Stones, I'm No Heroine on repeat.

Just saw a novel called Water Dressed in Brown. Which I know as an Ani DiFranco lyric. 'And the coffee is just water dressed in brown.' Which is probably what the title is referring to because it's about being young in the nineties. But now I'm wondering if DiFranco is quoting a famous line? Anyone?

When you tell people you're trying to sell one novel and are writing another, they look at you like you've just told them you soil yourself because you enjoy it.

NewSouth Acquires Justine E. Hausheer's The Vanishing Wild NewSouth Publishing is thrilled to announce the acquisition of world rights to The Vanishing Wild: Australian Wildlife and the Fight Against Extinction, via literary agent Martin Shaw, a powerful and ...

Deal news! Really excited to share that @justinehausheer.bsky.social's book debut, "The Vanishing Wild. Australian Wildlife and the Fight Against Extinction", will be appearing courtesy of @newsouthpublishing.bsky.social in May next year! unsw.press/news/the-van...

Cover of the paperback of The Echoing Grove by Rosamond Lehmann

I haven't read this one. I have a copy in a box in the UK.

My favourite Lehmann is The Echoing Grove.

A photo of the paperback of Gliff by Ali Smith resting awkwardly on a white painted windowsill by a mottled glass window seemingly wondering why it has been placed there.

I have never been made to feel so complicit in my own demise and the demise of all that is good about modern democracy. A chilling but necessary read.

I am surprised every time I rediscover John Galsworthy won The Nobel Prize for Literature. According to Wikipedia 'Galsworthy himself did not think he deserved the award. "As the least worthy of the Nobel prizemen honoured today I shall have but few words to say", he wrote in his acceptance speech.'

I read that one of the young men was based on E.M. Forster, who was her children's tutor for a short while and later accompanied her on the caravan trip that inspired the novel. He wrote a memoir of his time with her that I haven't read.

I have a strong sense of deja vu - am I repeating myself?

The Caravaners by Elizabeth von Arnim Elizabeth von Arnim is perhaps best known for The Enchanted April (1922), a delightful novel in which four very different English women come together to rent a medieval castle on the Italian Rivier…

From the archive for Elizabeth von Arnim, #BornOnThisDay in 1866, thoughts on THE CARAVANERS, in which a pompous German baron takes his long-suffering wife on a caravanning holiday in England. A marvellous novel, lovingly reissued by Handheld Press. #BookSky

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‘Vital, witty, formidably blithe’: Ali Smith on Muriel Spark at 100 Spark shone a light on her times, and ours. In the week of her centenary, her fellow Scottish novelist celebrates a writer who gave us the gift of the future

Ali Smith's ever relevant essay on the ever relevant Muriel Spark

www.theguardian.com/books/2018/j...

I can't help but admire it. Fool that I am.

She dodges the job of a novelist. I can see Daniel Deronda enter the room. I can hear what he says. But why is here and what does he think of us, if at all, that's what I can never know.

I remember marveling at what you point out, her reliance on the reader being vigilant. As in life, if you don't remain alert, you miss so much.

My experience matched yours. I bounced off the side. Respect but no love. Still, I have collected quite a few. Might try another when feeling strong. A Father and his fate, I think it was. Twenty years ago when I could sit in my bookshop and read all day.

Spiky writer.

This review serves as a great introduction to Ivy Compton-Burnett.

Cover of Release the Bats: Writing Your Way Out Of It by DBC Pierre

This nutty book works every time. I've never come close to finishing it. I always drop it and start writing.

Release the Bats: Writing Your Way Out Of It
by DBC Pierre

Andy Griffiths: ‘I think it’s a pity that reading is being lost through neglect’ The multimillion copy-selling children’s author on his freewheeling childhood, the joy of being unproductive and life after the Treehouse series

A pleasure to interview Andy Griffiths! www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle...