New Books:

Kind of a ridiculously huge haul this week. If the mailbox isn’t empty, it is stuffed full. With the Australian dollar at a twenty-seven year high at the moment, this is likely to continue.

• The Discomfort Zone: A Personal History by Jonathan Franzen
• Making Modern Melbourne by Jenny Lee
• Allen Ginsberg: Beat Poet by Barry Miles
• The Dharma Bums by Jack Kerouac
• Melbourne Remade: The Inner City Since the 70s by Seamus O’Hanlon [review]
• Coming Up for Air by George Orwell
• The Road to Wigan Pier by George Orwell
• The Selected Letters of Tennessee Williams: Volume 1 1920-1945 edited by Albert J. Devlin & Nancy M. Tischler
• The Selected Letters of Tennessee Williams: Volume 2 1945-1957 edited by Albert J.  Devlin & Nancy M. Tischler

Reviews Posted on Start Narrative Here this week:

• Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs: A Low Culture Manifesto by Chuck Klosterman – more self-involved narcissism disguised as popular culture journalism.
• Transmetropolitan: Volume Six, Gouge Away by Warren Ellis and Darick Robertson – how far will Spider Jerusalem take his crusade against the Smiler? And how far will the Smiler go for revenge against Spider?
• Melbourne Remade: The Inner City Since the 70s by Seamus O’Hanlon – covering the transformation of key Melbourne structures and buildings over the past 40 years.

Links:

I spent much of the second half of the week blacked out by a migraine, so the only thing I could think of ranting about were the pharmaceutical industry and healthcare industry in general. But, then I googled my doctor and discovered that he is something of an avid Dungeons & Dragons player and so all is, until the next debilitating migraine at least, forgotten. “We’ve got a level 26 booknerd who has been attacked by a vicious migraine maelstrom. Roll die to determine next move.”

Anyway, links:

• Are these the book bloggers of the future? Results of the Guardian’s Young Critics competition.
• Anastasia of Birdbrain(ed) Book Blog is organizing a Book Blogger Holiday Card Exchange as a cheaper and more international friendly alternative to the gift exchanges that go on as we draw closer to the end of the year. Write in a card about something bookish, receive a card with something bookish inside. Brilliant!
• Douglas Coupland‘s The Radical Pessimist’s Guide to the Next 10 Years – “You’ve become a notch in the Internet’s belt. Don’t try to delude yourself that you’re a romantic lone individual. To the new order, you’re just a node. There is no escape.” Swoon.
• Bret Easton Ellis guest programmed the iconic all night video program Rage when he was here in August and his selection aired last night.
• The Reading Ape asks Are Book Blogs the Next Big Threat to Independent Bookstores? While I’m not entirely convinced by the argument, it is interesting to consider. Don’t the two, ultimately, serve completely different functions? Albeit with some similarities, obviously the promotion of the written word, but one is a business, one is a hobby, mostly a personal pursuit. Yes, independent bookstores are facing a number of threats but I think book blogs, great as they are, are relatively low on the list.

Image: The Reader by Frank W. Benson (1910)