Category: Books & Writing
It doesn’t matter how much I read, I never seem to make any headway on the literary canon: novels by the likes of Cormac McCarthy, Saul Bellows, Toni Morrison, and Virginia Woolf — not to mention the sagas of Homer… Read more →
As a teenager I was certain there was life after death and at university I learned this meant I sat on the side of Dualism when it came to the Mind/Body philosophical conundrum.
According to the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy… Read more →
Mythology Versus Religion
Reading Stephen Fry’s retelling of Greek mythology in his novel Mythos, I had an epiphany as to how it is possible for Creationists to believe the world was created in six days, little more than 6000 years… Read more →
Zadie Smith recently released a collection of essays in a book called Feel Free. One of the older essays, Generation Why?, is a review of the Facebook-inspired movie The Social Network as well as a savage indictment of social media… Read more →
Solipsistic, narcissistic, neurotic – these terms could relate equally to myself as to the protagonists of pretty much every book I’ve managed to finish over the last couple of years. I can’t seem to deviate from thirty-something females living in… Read more →
Halfway through the programme, the time seems ripe to commit a few phrases to memory. The novel I’m writing as my thesis will be my sixth and I’m doing a masters in order to understand the process better, and to… Read more →
Unlike my other literary heroines—Jane Austen and George Eliot—I feel lucky to be Zadie Smith’s contemporary and to have read each of her novels upon release. I’ve grown up with her themes and Swing Time is no exception.
The details… Read more →
The final episode of the season offered everything you could have hoped for in terms of plot, but the score courtesy of Ramin Djawadi, was also sensational—as was the lighting. So much so I watched the episode twice in a… Read more →
Recently I read Patti Smith’s memoir M Train and it became clear she loves a good cafe as much as I do. In the book Smith spends a lot of time in her local Greenwich Village cafe, where she eats… Read more →
I had long heard the name Patti Smith and associated it with the exciting time in NYC, somewhere between Warhol and the Ramones. I thought of her first as a musician, like an American PJ Harvey perhaps – though she’s… Read more →
Today I was tidying up my papers in preparation for going back to NZ from Saudi and I came across a pamphlet on Rudra Meditation, which I’d been meaning to read for years. The final pointer was: “The greatest sadhana… Read more →
I plan to read all of Dr. Wayne Dyer‘s books and quote my favourite parts below. I’ve realised some of the 41 books shown on his website include anthologies or re-editions, so I’m aiming to read the 34 listed on… Read more →
Until last night my experience of Riyadh nightlife consisted only of going to and from a mall: sitting in the school bus or a taxi, inching along the enormous highways in a traffic jam or zooming through the glittering lights… Read more →
I haven’t found anything wildly compelling to read since devouring the first five books in George R. R. Martin’s series A Song of Ice and Fire, in the wake of watching four seasons of the TV show (Game of… Read more →
Better late than never, as they say. The HBO series based on George R.R. Martin’s books has been winning viewers steadily since it first aired a few years ago, and I am its latest super fan.
I had seen the… Read more →
As part of a birthday package, my mother recently hunted around for a magazine that she thought I’d like and came up with Renegade Collective, which neither of us had seen before.
The Aussie mag proved to be a great… Read more →
Melvin the dragon lived in a cave on top of a hill
and at the bottom of the hill was a village called Idyll.
Melvin couldn’t breathe fire and had stubby little wings,
so had no chance of flying, except… Read more →
A month or two ago a single pipe in one of Fonterra’s many tentacles was discovered to be “dirty” and this was blamed for the contamination of milk, which was used in the processing of infant formula – some… Read more →
So I hosted a non-literary book launch in a cafe a few weeks ago, which was closely patterned on the parties my friends throw at nightclubs: Book some DJs; make a poster; stick them up in appropriate public places; list… Read more →
This book by Patricia Fry (Allworth Press, 2011) certainly gives a self-published author a lot to think about. I have sped-read my way through and my mind has often boggled at some of the suggestions. On the other hand, some… Read more →
These 4-line ditties have hit the headlines lately, after Google Poetics drew our attention to the fact that when you type a word or two into Google, the search engine gives you four popular ways to complete the phrase. I… Read more →
That phrase came from a review of Zadie Smith’s recent novel NW but could as easily be applied to two movies I’ve been wanting to see for a while but – based on the reviews – couldn’t quite face.… Read more →
The cover of this book doesn’t do it any favours but one of the recommendations on the back says: “As useful a self-help book as one is likely to find.” And I would tend to agree! There’s a certain amount… Read more →
I’ve changed my URL to Street-lit.com as part of the marketing strategy for my novels. Street Literature encompasses modern urban life: pop culture, music, fashion, slang, partying, ambition, creativity, despair… wracked by guilt for how far we’ve come from our… Read more →
Photek has been my favourite electronic music producer since I first heard his stuff in 1996 and I kind of expect everyone else to have heard of him and adore him too. But no doubt some people are still in… Read more →
This pic is snuck from the fabulous blog: fuckyeahhemingway.tumblr.com where it was submitted by somebody called jwock.
I’ve loved a lot of Hemingway’s work but I’d particularly recommend the book I just read: Islands in the Stream. It’s broken into… Read more →
To quote my own novel: “It’s so wack and it happens all the time: places get hip on the strength of their nightlife and independent vibe then corporate types move in and make it mediocre faster than it takes a… Read more →
Although most of my work is still confined to my hard drive, I’ve been writing non-stop since I was 17 and have reason to believe I will some day succeed as a published author. Sometimes I’m even solicited for advice… Read more →
