Book reviews, new books, publishing news, book giveaways, and author interviews

Bookish News & Publishing Tidbits 20 May 2012

book news Bookish News & Publishing Tidbits 20 May 2012

RIASS stuff:

Calling all bookish Melburnians! RIASS and some bookish buddies are planning a night out at the Astor Theatre on the 9th of June. All welcome, so if youre a local (or wish to commute), feel free to drop by. Details here.

A giveaway ofOut of Sight, Out of Timeby Ally Carter (Aus only, ends 27 May)

A guest post with best-selling author Diane Chamberlain'about balancing writing and a second career.

RIASS is beginning a single sitting reads series of guest posts. If youd like to share your list of 5 books youve read in a single sitting, drop me a line at readinasinglesitting AT gmail.com. Were also always open to guest posts or interview requests, so dont be shy.

Other bookish stuff:

The second, er, coming of erotic writing: A lot of women find porn in terms of videos and movies quite laughable and unsexy. The power of erotic fiction is that your imagination is at play.[but]'you can string people along with sex only so far and then if theres no substance its not going to last.

Maggie Stiefvater on being a writer and a mum: Women. There is a lot of guilt associated with taking time for your career versus spending time nurturing children. Every time you leave the house and the kids have a babysitter or a substandard dinner or no bedtime story, our culture screams at us for being bad mothers. But guess what. Working mothers are not bad mothers. Women who have a sense of self-identity, either through a career or through a home-based activity, are women that kids respect. My father was on an air craft carrier for six months out of the year when I was a kid. I adored him and still do, and what's more ' I'm pretty much just like him. So it's not the amount of time you spend sitting in the presence of your kids. It's how you use that time.

A book is not just a book: A'book is more than a story. It's more than something created by the author. It's also a publisher taking a risk, and layer upon layer of invisible work by an editor, and final grooming by proof readers, and all those careful choices made by the designer ' the cover, the font, the chapter headings ' and then there are the printers, marketing people, sales reps, and the distributors, and the bookstore staff who unpack those books and decide where to place them in the store ' The list goes on.'All of those people, all of their energy, is in a book.

Friendships formed over reading: Could geeking out over a mutually beloved novel surpass even alcohol as the ultimate social ice-breaker? In my three months of solo travel in India, shared literary interests have opened the doors to several new friendships. Quite like the bond formed between travelers on similar journeys, the bond formed around a favorite novel is one of shared immersive experience, usually open to impossibly wide interpretations. When we meet someone else who's 'been there,' there's a biting urge to know exactly what the other person saw, what scenes remain strongest in her memory, what crucial knowledge or insight was retrieved, and what her experience reveals or changes about our own?

Confessions of a columnist: But, when I had the chance to jump, I had a change of heart. I realised it was a privilege to diarise in public, to record and share the more important moments of my life. I looked back over some of the earlier columns I'd written, and saw that I'd forgotten most of the things that had happened to me'but there they were, written down and laid out, typeset, proofed and printed. It was fantastic, in a way. It was as if my life mattered.'And I knew that was what angered the more disturbed readers. The fact that the column existed meant to them that I thought my life and opinions were more important than theirs.

Remember our post on submissive girls on YA book covers? We didnt even scratch the surface.

Amazon hires enough 'new employees to populate a medium-sized US town (or an Australian capital city)

10 of the Weirdest Children's Book Authors of All Time

Teeny, tiny books (and I thought my tiny copy of The Little Prince'was cool)

What do you look for in a book review?

Monocles The Review podcast visits the worlds best bookshops

Download chapters 1-5 of Shadow and Bone'by Leigh Bardugo. (The book is also discounted here)

Jobs and opps:

Knox Robinson publishing open to submissions

Carina Press is open to submissions

Videos:

Mills & Boon on the new Sarah Morgan title Summer Kisses (see our other Sarah Morgan reviews here)

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