Wittenoom - 1984

Due to an extreme to medium risk to tourists visiting the area from exposure to airborne asbestos, the WA government is closing Wittenoom. Townsite status and placename status have been removed which permits the Shire to close roads and the name to be removed from maps. Quite 1984.

Ezra Pound:

“To use the language of common speech, but to employ always the exact word, not the nearly exact, nor the merely decorative word.”

I think we have too much of the "merely decorative word" in the scripts that come to us. Some of the editorial work we do is paring out the merely decorative which seems almost to be a modern addiction. The thought seems to be If I put enough icing on this cake it will taste good. Nobody wants to expose the story on which the book has been built.

Wild French Mushrooms

It popped up in my email this morning. It was an exciting subject line for an emai. And the body listed such excellently named mushroom as Wood Hedgehogs, Black Trumpets and Fairy Fings

post-colonial pun

I enjoyed this excruciatingly delicious pun found in Elizabeth Street Melbourne. It's in about the same location as the Southern Cross College, so I wonder if one has become the other.

Doris Lessing wins the Nobel

It wa sfascinating listening to her on the radio this morning. She was so matter-of-fact about the win. I guess that's what you feel like at 88. She said, well you can't give it to a dead person.

I do remember reading The Grass is Singing one hot summer's day in my late teens and finding it bizarre (I led a sheltered life) and intrigueing.

rate of change …

It just keeps on increasing a pace in the book trade. Collins have announced they're taking over the franchises of Book City. Well, there you go.

teen genre missing here?

It was interesting (and a pleasure) talking to the charming David Levithan, publisher of the Push imprint, in New York. There is a whole teen genre in the US which doesn't exist here, which David said started when they pulled the teen books out of the children's section and put it next to the adults section.

Helen Mirren

I'm just back from a trip to the US. The whole family went. A blend of pleasure and business. On the first night in San Francisco I watched the Emmy awards. It was quite a different feeling watching them over there than here. I felt I was in the culture the awards were about. One comment struck me in particular. When Helen Mirren collected one more of the awards won by "Prime Suspect", the British TV show she said, "You Americans are wonderfully generous people." [Pause and then, not wanting to sound too much lips on bum, she added.] You're a lot of other things as well. Some good, some bad." The generosity and the surprisingly warm open enthusiasm was what I experienced on the business side of the trip. It was a shot in the arm. [Footnote: Time saw fit to quote Helen Mirren's comment in their quotes column.]

reading the Blue News

Interesting to come back and discover that so much happened in three short weeks;:

75% of Lonely Planet is sold to the BBC
PEP makes and offer for the Australian Borders stores
Allen & Unwin sells its share ADS to Hachette and heralds a move to UBD