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Words & Ideas > On Writing

Large 9780008421953

Ex Libris: 100 Books for Everyone's Bookshelf by Michiko Kakutani

$35.00 AUD

Available Stock:
18

Category: On Writing

From 'the most powerful book critic in the English-speaking world' (Vanity Fair) comes an inspiring and beautifully illustrated selection of the life-changing books that none of us should miss 'Why do we love books so much?' For legendary literary critic Michiko Kakutani, books have always been an esca pe and a sanctuary, the characters of some novels feeling so real to her childhood self that she worried they might leap out of the pages at night if she left the book cover open. In Ex Libris, she offers a personal selection of over 100 works of fiction, nonfiction and poetry, with passionate essays on why each has had a profound effect on her life. From Homer's The Odyssey to The Writings and Speeches of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale to Elena Ferrante's Neapolitan Novels, Ex Libris covers a rich and vast range of classics, old and new, that will help build a well-rounded reader and citizen of the world. With gorgeous illustrations by lettering artist Dana Tanamachi that evoke vintage bookplates leafed between Kakutani's inspiring essays, Ex Libris points us to our next great read - and proves an unmissable reminder of why we fell in love with reading in the first place. ...Show more

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Large 9781529311518

Word Perfect: Curious Coinages and Etymological First Aid For Every Day of the Year by Susie Dent

$33.00 AUD

Available Stock:
9

Category: On Writing

'Susie Dent is a one-off. She breathes life and fun into words and language' Pam Ayres 'Susie Dent is a national treasure' Richard Osman Welcome to a year of wonder through the English language with Susie Dent, lexicographer extraordinaire and queen of Countdown's Dictionary Corner. From Turning a Blind Eye (Nelson putting the telescope to his missing eye to ignore the order to stop fighting) to why May Day became a distress call; from stealing someone's thunder to the real Jack the Lad, from tartle (forgetting someone's name) to snaccident (unintentionally eating a whole packet of biscuits), WORD PERFECT is her brilliant linguistic almanac full of unforgettable true stories tied to every day of the year. You'll never be lost for words again. ...Show more

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Large 9780008245122

The Bad Boy of Athens: Classics from the Greeks to Game of Thrones by Daniel Mendelsohn

$25.00 AUD

Available Stock:
5

Category: On Writing

'Mendelsohn takes the classical costumes off figures like Virgil and Sappho, Homer and Horace ... He writes about things so clearly they come to feel like some of the most important things you have ever been told.' - Sebastian Barry. Over the past three decades, Daniel Mendelsohn's essays and reviews h ave earned him a reputation as 'our most irresistible literary critic' (New York Times). This striking new collection exemplifies the way in which Mendelsohn - a classicist by training - uses the classics as a lens to think about urgent contemporary debates. There is much to surprise here. Mendelsohn invokes the automatons featured in Homer's epics to help explain the AI films Ex Machina and Her, and perceives how Ted Hughes sought redemption by translating a play of Euripides (the 'bad boy of Athens') about a wayward husband whose wife returns from the dead. There are essays on Sappho's sexuality and the feminism of Game of Thrones; on how Virgil's Aeneid prefigures post-World War II history and why we are still obsessed with the Titanic; on Patrick Leigh Fermor's final journey, Karl Ove Knausgaard's autofiction and the plays of Tom Stoppard, Tennessee Williams, and Noël Coward. The collection ends with a poignant account of the author's boyhood correspondence with the historical novelist Mary Renault, which inspired his ambition to become a writer. In The Bad Boy of Athens, Mendelsohn provokes and dazzles with erudition, emotion and tart wit while his essays dance across eras, cultures and genres. This is a provocative collection which sees today's master of popular criticism using the ancient past to reach into the very heart of modern culture. ...Show more

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Large 300

Rebel Without a Clause by Susan Butler

$25.00 AUD

Available Stock:
4

Category: On Writing

The English language is changing constantly. We invent new words and phrases, we mash up idioms, we mispronounce, misuse, misappropriate. Sue Butler has heard it all and is ready to defend and disagree with common usage. Veering from tolerance to outrage, she examines how the word sheila took a nose-div e after World War II, considers whether we should hunker or bunker down, and bemoans the emptiness of rhetoric. She shouts 'down with closure' as it leaps from the psychoanalyst's couch, explains why we've lost the plot on deceptively, untangles the manuka honey stoush, fathoms why the treatment of famous is infamous, and ponders whether you would, could or should ...Rebel without a Clause is a fascinatingly idiosyncratic romp through the world of words by lexicographer and former Macquarie Dictionary Editor, Sue Butler. ...Show more

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Large 9781925818062

A Novel Idea by Fiona McGregor

$29.95 AUD

Available Stock:
4

Category: On Writing

A unique, intimate portrait of writer's working life,as experienced by one of Australia's most highly regarded novelists and artists. A Novel Idea is a memoir in photoessay form that follows Fiona McGregor's life as she writes her award-winning novel Indelible Ink. It is a tongue-in-cheek rumination on the monotony and loneliness of the novelist's daily life, and the act of endurance the writer must perform. Through an extended sequence of photographs taken on a hand-me-down camera, accompanied by terse, evocative captions, the book spans several years of labour and procrastination, elation and despair. The details of the outside world intrude as McGregor works on the novel alone in her Bondi flat, with nothing but a desk, a pin-board, a laptop and a cat, and in studio spaces in Berlin and Estonia. McGregor's voice is wry, vulnerable, at times caustic, capturing the colloquial qualities of her fiction and the durational nature of her performance art via the ephemeral and essential thoughts that take up an author's days, weeks, and years. ...Show more

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Large 9780300244649

For Now (Why I Write) by Eileen Myles

$26.95 AUD

Available Stock:
3

Category: On Writing | Series: Why I Write Ser.

"[Myles] has a good time journeying through Hell, and like a hip Virgil, . . . is happy to show us the way."--NPR   In this raucous meditation, Eileen Myles offers an intimate glimpse into creativity's immediacy. With erudition and wit, Myles recounts their early years as an awakening writer; existentia l struggles with landlords; storied moments with neighbors, friends, and lovers; and the textures and identities of cities and the country that reveal the nature of writing as presence in time.   For Myles, time's "optic quality" is what enables writing in the first place--as attention, as devotion, as excess. It is this chronologized vision that enables the writer to love the world as it presently is, lending love a linguistic permanence amid social and political systems that threaten to eradicate it. Irreverent, generous, and always insightful, For Now is a candid record of the creative process from one of our most beloved artists. ...Show more

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Large 9780300221510

Inadvertent: Why I Write by Karl Ove Knausgaard

$28.00 AUD

Available Stock:
2

Category: On Writing | Series: Why I Write Ser.

The second book in the Why I Write series provides generous insight into the creative process of the award-winning Norwegian novelist Karl Ove Knausgaard "Why I Write" may prove to be the most difficult question Karl Ove Knausgaard has struggled to answer yet it is central to the project of one of the most influential writers working today. To write, for the Norwegian artist, is to resist easy thinking and preconceived notions that inhibit awareness of our lives. Knausgaard writes to "erode [his] own notions about the world. . . . It is one thing to know something, another to write about it." The key to enhanced living is the ability to hit upon something inadvertently, to regard it from a position of defenselessness and unknowing. A deeply personal meditation, Inadvertent is a cogent and accessible guide to the creative process of one of our most prolific and ingenious artists. ...Show more

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Large 9781760640194

On Shirley Hazzard: Writers on Writers by Michelle de Kretser

$18.00 AUD

Available Stock:
2

Category: On Writing

'Hazzard was the first Australian writer I read who looked outwards, away from Australia. Her work spoke of places from which I had come and places to which I longed to go ... It was reading as an affair of revelations and gifts. It fell like rain, greening my vision of Australian literature as a stony country where I would never feel at home. Splendour had entered the scene.' In this vibrant, rich and personal essay on acclaimed author Shirley Hazzard, Michelle de Kretser offers a masterclass in writing that is powerful and exhilarating, that is 'perfect' because it is 'exact'. She celebrates the precision and musicality of Hazzard's prose and illuminates the humour, humanity and revelatory impact of her work. This jewel of a book is both a wonderful introduction to Hazzard and a treat for her long-time fans. ...Show more

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Large 9781460757291

Leading Lines - How to Make Speeches that seize the moment, advance you cause and lead the way by Lucinda Holdforth

$35.00 AUD

Available Stock:
2

Category: On Writing

How to make speeches that seize the moment, advance your cause and lead the way. For those who aim to be leaders, mastering the power of speechmaking - the art and craft of persuasion - is more important than ever. If you want to be heard, it's not enough to have something to say: you must know how to s ay it. For those who aim to be leaders, mastering the power of speechmaking - the art and craft of persuasion - is more important than ever. If you want to be heard, it's not enough to have something to say: you must know how to say it. Leading Lines is about words and their power to change our world. The right words can be transformative. They can stir a heart or reimagine the world. One of Australia's leading speechwriters, Lucinda Holdforth gives detailed practical advice on how to write speeches that are true, credible, fresh and persuasive. Along the way she analyses numerous leadership speeches from an insider's perspective, offering original insights into the speechmaking process. And she argues for the essential role of speeches in modern democracies. This is not only a practical manual for crafting a powerful speech, it's a cracking read. PRAISE 'A book for anyone who aspires to a leadership role. Holdforth draws on her formidable expertise and experience working with CEOs like me to deliver this practical guide to the creation of leadership speeches.' Geoff Dixon, CEO and Managing Director of Qantas, 2000-2008 'This book is for all those who love words and the power they have to change lives. Leading Lines will be an indispensable tool for CEOs and speechwriters of every kind, it is also, quite simply, a cracking read, attractive to anyone who likes a good story' Tegan Bennett Daylight ...Show more

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Large 9780571339044

Faber & Faber: The Untold Story of a Great Publishing House by Toby Faber

$40.00 AUD

Available Stock:
2

Category: On Writing

To celebrate its 90th anniversary, here is the untold story behind one of one of the world's most iconic publishing houses. Faber and Faber is one of the world's greatest independent publishers. Literary superstars like T.S.Eliot, William Golding, Ted Hughes, and Sylvia Plath are synonymous with the nam e "Faber", as are the leafy squares of twentieth-century Bloomsbury. But what is the real tale behind the house that brought together these authors? And how did a tiny firm set up by two men in 1925 - weathering obstacles from wartime paper shortages to dramatic financial crashes - survive to this very day? Toby Faber has grown up with these stories, and uses a range of humorous and surprising sources to tell the history of the publisher in its own words. Drawing on material from memos to board minutes and unpublished memoirs, Faber takes us deep inside the evolution of the company: and along the way, we meet a cast of colorful characters that are stranger than fiction, whether poets or novelists, managers or editors. Decade by decade, Faber's portrait of one company's history becomes not only that of an entire century, but a hymn to the role of the arts in public life. Itshows us how publishing can shift a nation's cultural conversation - and speaks directly to the way we engage with literature today. ...Show more

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Large 9781472958211

Death by Shakespeare: Snakebites, Stabbings and Broken Hearts by Kathryn Harkup

$30.00 AUD

Available Stock:
2

Category: On Writing

An in-depth look at the science behind the creative methods Shakespeare used to kill off his characters. In Death By Shakespeare, Kathryn Harkup, best-selling author of A is for Arsenic and expert on the more gruesome side of science, turns her expertise to William Shakespeare and the creative methods he used to kill off his characters. Is death by snakebite really as serene as Cleopatra made it seem? How did Juliet appear dead for 72 hours only to be revived in perfect health? Can you really kill someone by pouring poison in their ear? How long would it take before Lady Macbeth died from lack of sleep? Harkup investigates what actual events may have inspired Shakespeare, what the accepted scientific knowledge of the time was, and how Elizabethan audiences would have responded to these death scenes. Death by Shakespeare reveals this and more in a rollercoaster of Elizabethan carnage, poison, swordplay and bloodshed, with an occasional death by bear-mauling for good measure.In the Bard's day death was a part of everyday life. Plague, pestilence and public executions were a common occurrence, and the chances of seeing a dead or dying body on the way home from the theater was a fairly likely scenario. Death is one of the major themes that reoccurs constantly throughout Shakespeare's canon, and he certainly didn't shy away from portraying the bloody reality of death on the stage. He didn't have to invent gruesome or novel ways to kill off his characters when everyday experience provided plenty of inspiration. Shakespeare's era was also a time of huge scientific advance. The human body, its construction and how it was affected by disease came under scrutiny, overturning more than a thousand years of received Greek wisdom, and Shakespeare himself hinted at these new scientific discoveries and medical advances in his writing, such as circulation of the blood and treatments for syphilis. Shakespeare found dozens of different ways to kill off his characters, and audiences today still enjoy the same reactions--shock, sadness, fear--that they did over 400 years ago when these plays were first performed. But how realistic are these deaths, and did Shakespeare have the science to back them up? ...Show more

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Large 9781760642310

On Beverley Farmer - Writers on Writers by Josephine Rowe

$18.00 AUD

Available Stock:
2

Category: On Writing

Beverley Farmer's novels and short stories focus on loss, migration and homecoming. In this beautifully hewn essay, fellow novelist and short-story writer Josephine Rowe finds a kindred spirit and argues for a celebration and reclamation of this long-neglected Australian writer. In the Writers on Write rs series, leading authors reflect on an Australian writer who has inspired and fascinated them. Provocative and well-written, these books start a fresh conversation between past and present, shed new light on the craft of writing, and introduce some intriguing and talented authors and their work. The Writers on Writers series is published by Black Inc. in association with the University of Melbourne and State Library Victoria. ...Show more

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