Category: Books
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Thirty Two Words for Field and Sand Talk – Irish and Indigenous wisdom
Connecting with a better world Apart from reading some fantastic books, I’ve been having fun with my new Kick-Start creative writing workshops. They’ve been zipping along with the poetic contributions of talented students, filling the BRAG room on Tuesday nights with laughter and creative verve. BRAG stands for Braidwood Regional Arts Group and you can…
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Psychic space and an unusual recipe for mitigating a cold
When I was chosen to be a blogger in residence at the ACT Writers Centre I planned to supplement those once a month blogs with more frequent postings on this personal blog. But I’m going to have surgery soon (nothing serious) and I’ve been psyching myself up for that and doing all the things I…
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John Tesarsch – sophisticated and uplifting
John Tesarsch’s The Last Will and Testament of Henry Hoffmann (Affirm Press, 2014) is a masterpiece. I’ve reviewed a lot of books in the past twenty plus years, (in local magazines and 85 for The Canberra Times, and more recently in this blog) but I have never described a novel like that. This one deserves…
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Eating real food: a quick comparison of cookbooks
‘Gosh it’s easy to write a cookbook. Well, it’s easy if your primary role is “quality control”, and all the actual work is done by seasoned professionals and my slave-driven wife,’ writes David Gillespie in the Acknowledgements of his The Sweet Poison Quit Plan Cookbook (Melbourne, Viking, 2013, p. 199). He states that he ‘did…
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Cheerfulness is an achievement: favourite books of 2015
The Guardian Weekly ‘Books of the Year’ (18-31 December this year) is where writers and critics present their favourite reads of the past year and it is a reliable guide to some great reading. You can also hear authors speak about their work on theguardian.com/books/series/books Popular choices of ‘Books of the Year’ were Ali Smith’s…
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Meeting the sunlight: taking time to think
The picturesque town of Mallaig is on the west coast of the Scottish Highlands. I was waiting for a coffee at the Mallaig Tea Rooms when I saw a framed scroll on the wall above the little coal fire. It read: ‘These are times of more convenience but less time, more knowledge but less judgement,…
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Technological ineptitude but all things seem possible
First, an apology. I was taught how to blog by a not very good teacher who has gone on to something else and can’t be contacted. I didn’t realise until just the other day that in order to edit one’s blog, presumably one doesn’t have to press ‘Publish’ and then press the Edit to make…