Tuesday, July 04, 2006

ABC to launch new book club programme

Via AustLit

ABC Television will soon launch the First Tuesday Book Club hosted by journalist and publisher Jennifer Byrne.

A panel of book lovers and book clubbers will join Byrne to 'consider titles from all genres including fiction, non-fiction, biography, thriller, romance and history.'

ABC Television's Head of Arts and Entertainment, Courtney Gibson, said, '[t]his will be a book-obsessed beast of a show where viewers can get involved by reading the book beforehand and participating in on-line discussion forums.'

Jennifer Byrne, who hosted the ABC's one-off special My Favourite Book in December 2004, says, '[f]or a book addict like myself, this is like rolling in clover ... Our book club will hunt out the best and liveliest of the new [and] the most memorable of the old.' (ABC Television media release, 15 May 2006)

First Tuesday Book Club is currently in production and will be screened for the first time on 1 August 2006. It will continue to air, as its name suggests, on the first Tuesday of each month.

,

Sunday, July 02, 2006

This blog has moved

I have moved this blog to Wordpress. Please come and visit there.

Conversation : A History of a Declining Art (Hardcover) by Stephen Miller

Stephen Miller gives us a celebration and elegy for the art of conversation. His work at once enlightens and saddens me, two effects that fuse into one."-Harold Bloom

Miller traces the history of conversation from Aristotle to the present day, focussing particularly on the eighteenth century. For him, the Paris salons where Diderot opined and the London coffeehouses where Dr. Johnson imbibed between aphorisms represent conversation's apogee. In America, he feels, it fared less well, even before the contemporary menace posed by the Internet, iPods, and the polarization of the political sphere. Thoreau dismissed conversation as a waste of time, and Melville thought it was a tool of con men. Miller defines conversation as the act of speaking with others without any objective other than enjoyment and exchange, and there is something conversational about his own style, which tends toward anecdote and ignores theoretical approaches that could have enriched his argument. Copyright © 2006 The New Yorker

More reviews at Amazon where it is selling from $17.42 , ,

Saturday, July 01, 2006

Edublog simile generator

from David Davies who writes ...

" ... So anyhoo in order to help budding edubloggers I’ve created a little edugeek simile generator which may even help you come up with ideas for your post titles..."

Visit the simile generator

,, ,

Tuesday, June 27, 2006

States' help needed to ban books: Ruddock

The Federal Government has announced new steps to crack down on books or films that encourage acts of terrorism. The Attorney-General Philip Ruddock says he has written to state and territory Censorship Ministers, asking them to work with the Commonwealth to consider ways to ban the sale of books or films that support violent jihad or glorify suicide bombings. Mr Ruddock has also asked the Classification Review Board to take another look at its decision which found that eight books and one film did not incite or promote violence. Read on ... ,

Sunday, June 25, 2006

Syrian writer to spend 6 months in prison

DAMASCUS, Syria - A Syrian military court ruled that a dissident writer must serve six months in prison after convicting him on charges that include insulting the president, a human rights group said Wednesday. Read on … ,