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Keywords: Books

  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Book junkie's detox nightmare

    • Brian Matthews
    • 02 September 2011
    7 Comments

    My wife and I are performing a difficult, heart-rending task: culling our books. There are thousands of them, on shelves and in boxes, some of which were sealed and labelled 25 years ago. I know who to blame for setting me on the path to this agonising task. It was Mrs Murphy.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Stories from the Struggletown Library

    • John Falzon
    • 25 May 2011
    10 Comments

    There was a liberal use of corporal punishment in my school. We were seen as a loutish bunch of lads who needed a firm hand. It did nothing to help my education. You don't create a smart and confident Australia by taking to people with a stick.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Teaching boys to love and hate books

    • Gillian Bouras
    • 18 May 2011
    7 Comments

    My sons had their bedtime stories for years, but had to become used to my saying 'Just a minute' while I raced to the end of a page or chapter. Now grown, my technophile youngest had a most surprisng reaction to the marvellous present sent to me recently.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Publishing George Orwell

    • Brian Matthews
    • 14 April 2011
    2 Comments

    In 1981, a few months before actor Peter Davison became the fifth Doctor Who, Professor Peter Davison, the literary scholar, accepted a commission to produce the corrected editions of Orwell's nine books. The project was to be fraught by false dawns and recurring frustrations.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    The quick and the slow: a post-flood diversion

    • Susan Prior
    • 27 January 2011

    After all the flooding we were doing a little maintenance, the sort that requires a trip to the soulless hardware chain store. I left hubbie to it and ducked into the second-hand book store next door. The elderly gentleman serving asked me, ‘Are you from a big city – like London?’ ‘Why do you ask?’ ‘Well,’ he said, ‘you talk very quickly.’

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Keith Richards' other church

    • Philip Harvey
    • 08 December 2010

    'When you are growing up, there are two institutional places that affect you most powerfully — the church, which belongs to God, and the public library, which belongs to you,' writes Richards. Librarians know better than anyone that the library attracts the most unlikely clientele.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Defying the ebook revolution

    • Brian Doyle
    • 28 July 2010
    5 Comments

    Went to return a book the other day and it refused to go in the BOOKS ONLY slot. I tried again, thinking perhaps I had suddenly aged beyond belief and could not muster the muscle to cram it through the wall, but no, it was the book itself, adamant, recalcitrant, bristling and ruffling indignantly, that would not allow itself to be returned.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Apple angels and MySchool demons

    • Michael Mullins
    • 01 February 2010
    2 Comments

    Both the Apple iPad and the MySchool website will improve our lives if we overcome the urge to deify or demonise. The iPad is priced to appeal to the mass market rather than an elite, and it could hold the key to a manageable large-scale transition from printed books and newspapers.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    'Communist' Bishop's prophetic vision

    • John Battle
    • 30 October 2009
    3 Comments

    'Prophets' don't predict the future; they read the complex signs that spell out how structures and systems generate poverty. Dom Helder Camara's words still speak to the financial crisis and the need to bring justice for the poor.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Harry Potter and other killer serials

    • Brian Doyle
    • 21 October 2009
    6 Comments

    From Pullman's His Dark Materials and Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings to Lewis' Narnia novels or the tale of Mr H. Potter, the series is often where young readers enter the seething and delightful universe of books, in a way that sets them up for life as readers.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Book copyright debate ignores the future

    • Michael Mullins
    • 20 July 2009
    3 Comments

    Accusations of author greed and cultural philistinism dominate debate surrounding Productivity Commission recommendations on territorial copyright for books. Both sides have a point, but the argument may be irrelevant to the future of book publishing.

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  • EUREKA STREET/ READER'S FEAST AWARD

    Winners of Eureka Street's writers awards 2009

    • Staff
    • 16 July 2009

    Reader's Feast Bookstore is delighted to once again join with Eureka Street to offer an award in the area of social justice writing. Funded by Reader's Feast Bookstore and organised by Eureka Street, the theme for the essay was 'Climate change and the global financial crisis: can we afford to save the planet?'

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