Rich Lawyers pull cash from Writers’ Week

In what must be a relief to Adelaide’s eastern suburb matrons, they won’t get to hear those advocating the Palestinian cause at this years Writers’ Week. Australia’s largest law firm, MinterEllison, has cut ties with the Adelaide Festival and Writers’ Week over the inclusion of two Palestinian writers, who have criticised the state of Israel…

Why Read?

I haven’t read much of Will Self but we both share the belief that JG Ballard was a visionary. Self claims the British publisher’s prestigious literary list panders to political correctness, where gender and racial equality is deemed more important than the quality of literature being written. It’s not only the Brits but the Australian…

What we’ve become

And now for state of the nation … The Australian Robo-debt scheme pursued the poorest of the poor for welfare debt and in some cases, hounded them to death. Sounds like something Asimov or Heinlein would have written. Artificial intelligence gone mad and the middle class let it happen. Robo-debt was abandoned three years ago…

The hype behind books

Don’t get me wrong. I love bookshops but with more than 100 books published in Australia every week, it’s hard not to get the impression that books are to be sold rather than read. The publishing industry submits literature to the same market forces and homogenising values as movies, TV, streaming platforms and video games….