The Book Thieves: The Nazi Looting of Europe's Libraries and the Race to Return a Literary Inheritance by Anders Rydell (Contribution by)

$27.99 AUD

Category: Reading, Writing & Storytelling

While the Nazi party was being condemned by much of the world for burning books, they were already hard at work perpetrating an even greater literary crime. As they ransacked Europe's libraries and book-shops, they began to compile a library of their own-one that they could use to wage an intellectual w ar on literature, history, and the ideologies of their opposition. Through extensive new research that includes records saved by the Monuments Men themselves, Anders Rydell tells the untold story of Nazi book theft, as he joins a group of heroic librarians in the effort to return the lost books. Taking readers on a journey across Europe, The Book Thieves shows just how much a single book can mean to those who own it. ...Show more

The Glossy Years: Selective Memoirs by Nicholas Coleridge; Anon

$55.00 AUD

Category: Reading, Writing & Storytelling

Diana touched your elbow, your arm, covered your hand with hers. It was alluring. And she was disarmingly confiding. "Can I ask you something? Nicholas, please be frank..." Over his thirty-year career at Condé Nast, Nicholas Coleridge has witnessed it all. From the anxieties of the Princess of Wales to the blazing fury of Mohamed Al-Fayed, his story is also the story of the people who populate the glamorous world of glossy magazines. With relish and astonishing candour, he offers the inside scoop on Tina Brown and Anna Wintour, David Bowie and Philip Green, Kate Moss and Beyonce; on Margaret Thatcher's clothes legacy, and a surreal weekend away with Bob Geldof and William Hague. Cara Delevingne, media tycoons, Prime Ministers, Princes, Mayors and Maharajas - all cross his path. His career in magazines straddles the glossies throughout their glorious zenith - from the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s to the digital iterations of the 21st century. Having cut his teeth on Tatler, and as Editor-in-Chief of Harpers & Queen, he became the Mr Big of glossy publishing for three decades. Packed with surprising and often hilarious anecdotes, The Glossy Years also provides perceptive insight into the changing and treacherous worlds of fashion, journalism, museums and a whole sweep of British society. This is a rich, honest, witty and very personal memoir of a life splendidly lived. 'Coleridge writes like a dream' Observer ...Show more

The Library Book by Susan Orlean

$14.99 AUD

$29.99 (50% off)

Category: Reading, Writing & Storytelling

On the morning of April 29, 1986, a fire alarm sounded in the Los Angeles Public Library. As the moments passed, the patrons and staff who had been cleared out of the building realized this was not the usual fire alarm. As one fireman recounted, "Once that first stack got going, it was `Goodbye, Charlie .'" The fire was disastrous: it reached 2000 degrees and burned for more than seven hours. By the time it was extinguished, it had consumed four hundred thousand books and damaged seven hundred thousand more. Investigators descended on the scene, but more than thirty years later, the mystery remains: Did someone purposefully set fire to the library - and if so, who? Weaving her lifelong love of books and reading into an investigation of the fire, award-winning New Yorker reporter and New York Times bestselling author Susan Orlean delivers a mesmerizing and uniquely compelling book that manages to tell the broader story of libraries and librarians in a way that has never been done before. In The Library Book, Orlean chronicles the LAPL fire and its aftermath to showcase the larger, crucial role that libraries play in our lives; delves into the evolution of libraries across the country and around the world, from their humble beginnings as a metropolitan charitable initiative to their current status as a cornerstone of national identity; brings each department of the library to vivid life through on-the-ground reporting; studies arson and attempts to burn a copy of a book herself; reflects on her own experiences in libraries; and reexamines the case of Harry Peak, the blond-haired actor long suspected of setting fire to the LAPL more than thirty years ago. Along the way, Orlean introduces us to an unforgettable cast of characters from libraries past and present - from Mary Foy, who in 1880 at eighteen years old was named the head of the Los Angeles Public Library at a time when men still dominated the role, to Dr. C.J.K. Jones, a pastor, citrus farmer, and polymath known as "The Human Encyclopedia" who roamed the library dispensing information; from Charles Lummis, a wildly eccentric journalist and adventurer who was determined to make the L.A. library one of the best in the world, to the current staff, who do heroic work every day to ensure that their institution remains a vital part of the city it serves. Brimming with her signature wit, insight, compassion, and talent for deep research, The Library Book is Susan Orlean's thrilling journey through the stacks that reveals how these beloved institutions provide much more than just books - and why they remain an essential part of the heart, mind, and soul of our country. It is also a master journalist's reminder that, perhaps especially in the digital era, they are more necessary than ever. ...Show more

The Making of a Poem: A Norton Anthology of Poetic Forms by Eavan Boland

$29.95 AUD

Category: Reading, Writing & Storytelling

This anthology illuminates the history, practice, and wonder of our most elusive art, poetry. Intended for all those who love poetry, including teachers, readers, writers, and students. The anthology draws the reader in to the excitement and entertainment of various poetic forms.

The Moth Presents: Occasional Magic - 50 True Stories of Defying the Impossible by Catherine Burns (Introduction by, Editor); The Moth

$22.99 AUD

Category: Reading, Writing & Storytelling

Before television and radio, people would gather on porches, on the steps outside their homes, and tell stories. Their bewitched listeners would sit and listen long into the night as moths flitted around overhead. Storytelling phenomenon The Moth recaptures this lost each week in cities across America, Britain, Australia and beyond, playing to packed crowds at sold-out live events.Occasional Magic is a selection of 50 of the finest Moth stories from recent shows, from storytellers who found the courage to face their deepest fears. The stories feature voices familiar and new. Alongside Neil Gaiman, Adam Gopnik, Andrew Solomon, Rosanne Cash, and Cristina Lamb, there are stories from around the world describing moments of strength, passion, courage and humour - and when a little magic happened. In finest Moth tradition, Occasional Magic encourages us all to be more open, vulnerable and alive. ...Show more

The Private Life of the Diary: From Pepys to Tweets - A History of the Diary as an Art Form by Sally Bayley

$24.99 AUD

Category: Reading, Writing & Storytelling

In a beautiful literary exploration, Sally Bayley tracks the evolution – and the potential twenty first century death of – the diary, mourning what it means to lose the art of writing simply for oneself. Diaries hold all manner of things: they allow us a moment to be completely personal, to self-aggran dise, to focus on self-reflection without concern of what someone on the outside might think. Discovered or published diaries of the past have also provided glimpses into history, eras and minds gone by, especially the inner lives otherwise unknown. Tracing the history of the diary from Samuel Pepys, whose record of the Great Plague and Great Fire of London informed history, through the likes of Virginia Woolf's personal confessions in the twentieth century, and up to the age of social media, Sally Bayley explores the beauty and the power of recording one's own life. Taking this thought all the way up to our era of exposure, with confessional journalism and social media barrage, Bayley explores what we might lose as individuals if we let go of the diary as private confidante, choosing instead a culture of public disclosure. ...Show more

The Short Story of the Novel: A Pocket Guide to Key Genres, Novels, Themes and Techniques by Henry Russell

$29.99 AUD

Category: Reading, Writing & Storytelling

The Short Story of the Novel is a new and innovative introduction to the best works of fiction from the last 500 years. Simply constructed, the book explores 60 key novels from The Tale of Genji to My Brilliant Friend.In addition to enjoyable descriptions of the novels and concise explanations of why th ey are important, the book illuminates the most significant writing genres, themes and techniques.Accessible and fun to read, with a foreword by Professor Peter Boxall, this pocket guide will give readers a new way to enjoy their favourite books - and to discover new ones. ...Show more

The Trials of Portnoy by Patrick Mullins

$35.00 AUD

Category: Reading, Writing & Storytelling

Fifty years after the event, here is the first full account of an audacious publishing decision that — with the help of booksellers and readers around the country — forced the end of literary censorship in Australia. For more than seventy years, a succession of politicians, judges, and government offic ials in Australia worked in the shadows to enforce one of the most pervasive and conservative regimes of censorship in the world. The goal was simple: to keep Australia free of the moral contamination of impure literature. Under the censorship regime, books that might damage the morals of the Australian public were banned, seized, and burned; bookstores were raided; publishers were fined; and writers were charged and even jailed. But in the 1970s, that all changed. In 1970, in great secrecy and at considerable risk, Penguin Books Australia resolved to publish Portnoy’s Complaint — Philip Roth’s frank, funny, and profane bestseller about a boy hung up about his mother and his penis. In doing so, Penguin spurred a direct confrontation with the censorship authorities, which culminated in criminal charges, police raids, and an unprecedented series of court trials across the country. Sweeping from the cabinet room to the courtroom, The Trials of Portnoy draws on archival records and new interviews to show how Penguin and a band of writers, booksellers, academics, and lawyers determinedly sought for Australians the freedom to read what they wished — and how, in defeating the forces arrayed before them, they reshaped Australian literature and culture forever. Praise for Tiberius with a Telephone: ‘This is, as others have remarked, biography at its best: diligently researched, with detail nowhere else examined, and a demonstration of fine judgement concerning the crucial interplay between personal disposition, role demands, and historical context.’ —James Walter, Australian Book Review ‘A welcome addition to prime ministerial biography … An engaging and informative read.’ —Troy Bramston, The Australian ‘This is the most detailed investigation and explanation of what happened … Completing a biography of this scope is an enormous undertaking, and Patrick Mullins does it with considerable skill … Mullins conveys the turmoil, the atmosphere of crisis, the bickering and the bloodletting that marked this extraordinary period of Australian political history.’ —David Solomon, Inside Story ...Show more

The Unpunished Vice: A Life of Reading by Edmund White

$7.50 AUD

$29.99 (74% off)

Category: Reading, Writing & Storytelling

An insightful account of the key role reading has played in the life of literary icon Edmund WhiteEdmund White made his name as a writer, but he remembers his life through the books he read. For White, each momentous occasion came with books to match: Proust's Remembrance of Things Past, which opened up the seemingly closed world of homosexuality while he was at boarding school in Michigan; the Ezra Pound poems adored by a lover he followed to New York; the biography of Stephen Crane that inspired one of White's novels.Blending memoir and literary criticism, The Unpunished Vice is a compendium of all the ways reading has shaped White's life and work. His larger-than-life presence on the literary scene - he is close friends with giants including Michael Ondaatje and Joyce Carol Oates - lends itself to fascinating, intimate insights into the lives of some of the world's best-loved cultural figures. With characteristic wit and candour, he recalls reading Henry James to Peggy Guggenheim in her private gondola in Venice, and phone calls at eight o'clock in the morning to Vladimir Nabokov - who once said that White was his favourite American writer. The Unpunished Vice is a wickedly smart and insightful account of a life in literature. ...Show more

The Writing Book: A Practical Guide for Fiction Writers by Kate Grenville

$24.99 AUD

Category: Reading, Writing & Storytelling

From the acclaimed author of The Secret River, a completely practical workbook that offers down-to-earth ideas and suggestions for writers or aspiring writers to get started and keep going Full of ideas and examples to get pen to paper or fingers on the keyboard, this guidedoesn't just talk about how to write fiction; it takes the reader, step-by-step, through the process of doing it. Each chapter concentrates on one aspect of writing: getting started, bringing characters to life, writing convincing dialogue, revising and writer's block, and more. Exercises in each chapter are carefully structured so that each one builds on the previous. Examples from contemporary writing demonstrate how different writers tackle the technical aspects of their art. By working through this book, a reader will gradually craft a piece of fiction, and develop confidence in their own fictional voice. Those who would like to write but are not sure how to start will find that this book gets them started, while those who are already writing will find plenty of practical ideas for new energy and direction. ...Show more

The Written World: How Literature Shaped History by Martin Puchner

$6.25 AUD

$24.99 (74% off)

Category: Reading, Writing & Storytelling

Think, Write, Speak: Uncollected Essays, Reviews, Interviews and Letters to the Editor by Vladimir Nabokov

$55.00 AUD

Category: Reading, Writing & Storytelling

The last major collection of Nabokov's published material, Think, Write, Speak brings together a treasure trove of previously uncollected texts from across the author's extraordinary career. Each phase of his wandering life is included, from a precocious essay written while still at Cambridge in 1921, t hrough his fame in the aftermath of the publication of Lolita to the final, fascinating interviews given shortly before his death in 1977. Introduced and edited by his biographer Brian Boyd, this is an essential work for anyone who has been drawn into Nabokov's literary orbit. Here he is at his most inspirational, curious, misleading and caustic. The seriousness of his aesthetic credo, his passion for great writing and his mix of delight and dismay at his own, sudden global fame in the 1950s are all brilliantly delineated here. ...Show more