Tag: books

The Suitcase

SoutherlyBlog4 Comments on The Suitcase

by Aashish Kaul Sergei Dovlatov’s comic masterpiece The Suitcase begins with the author’s brief, pathetic conversation with a clerk at the Russian Office of Visas and Registrations (the ‘bitch at OVIR’, he refers to her in anger), conducted in the course of pointless, exhausting formalities that were involved in emigrating from the erstwhile Soviet Union. Dovlatov describes this exchange with characteristic satirical flourish, an exchange essentially about the quota of suitcases allowed to an emigrant. ‘Only three suitcases? What am I suppose to do with all my things?’ But a week later, while packing, he finds that he needs just…

… read more

On Remembering Things

SoutherlyBlog3 Comments on On Remembering Things

by Walter Mason Year by year I become more conscious that I commit less and less to memory. I was in that final generation that made one last half-hearted effort to commit some poetry to memory. The only things that remain with me now are ‘My Country’, half of ‘The Man from Ironbark’ and the first three verses of ‘Advance Australia Fair’. Which, I think, pretty much puts me in the top 10% of the Australian population when it comes to memorised poetry, though I rarely find myself in a situation that demands I draw upon these poetic reserves. My…

… read more

Cabramatta Books

SoutherlyBlog1 Comment on Cabramatta Books

by Walter Mason At one point I wanted to do my post-graduate work on the free books distributed at Buddhist temples in Australia. The various media on offer – books, tracts, holy cards, pamphlets, CDs and DVDs – have always attracted me, appealing as they do my bower bird instinct. But I was encouraged instead to concentrate on my other great passion, the literature of self-help. So the final word on free Buddhist literature must await the attentions of another scholar. That doesn’t mean, however, that my interest in such ephemera has abated. Not at all. It has just shifted…

… read more

Next monthly blogger – Walter Mason!

SoutherlyBlog

Many thanks to David Brooks for his excellent posts last month, leading up to the issue 73.2 Liar/Lyre. This month, our fabulous blogger is Walter Mason. His bio is below: Walter Mason is an academic, blogger, speaker and writer.  He is part of the Writing & Society Research Group at the University of Western Sydney, where he is completing his doctoral thesis on the history of self-help books in Australia. Walter has spent long periods studying Buddhism and meditation in Asia and together with Stephanie Dowrick he runs the Universal Heart Book Club, an online book group that concentrates on matters of the…

… read more

Moving books

SoutherlyBlog2 Comments on Moving books

Kate Holden This post is a little late: the dilatoriness due not to lack of enthusiasm but the fact that I am in the middle of one of life’s cataclysms – moving house. And by ‘moving house’ you know that I, as a writer, primarily mean standing, hands on hips in the middle of my living room, gazing with an abruptly urgent sense of incredulity at the dozen or so tightly packed shelves that form the main decoration of my home. Moving house, in other words, means moving books. I am a forty year old writer and arts graduate from…

… read more

The present of books

SoutherlyBlog2 Comments on The present of books

Jill Jones Just recently, I found myself receiving a number of books from different sources over a matter of a couple of days. They are all, of course, poetry books. Despite the fact that poetry publishing is not a best-seller type of enterprise, there’s plenty of us who buy or acquire and are interested in books of poetry. I’ve even noticed a welcome increase in poetry reviews in the newspapers. Not all the reviews are terribly well done, or maybe they were savaged by sub-editors (who knows?), but at least they are providing space for dialogues about poems, poetry and…

… read more

Guilty Pleasures (Lights Out! Meet in the kitchen in one hour for a Midnight Feast!)

SoutherlyBlog

Kate Middleton While I often deny the word “guilty” in relation to pleasures, I admit the phrase has its attractions and, yes, usefulness. A guilty pleasure has a little subversive thrill embedded, and is often something enjoyed when we feel we “should” be doing something else. That feeling of “should” could come from an awareness that we are procrastinating, but just as often I’m sure it comes from the idea that we could be spending our time on something with greater seriousness. One of my teachers and friends, the wonderful fiction and non-fiction writer Sugi Ganeshananthan, once said, “Guilt is…

… read more