In a recent article for Eureka Street, Ellena Savage wrote that perhaps one of the purposes of reading is to help ‘connect with feelings that don’t have words, that only have images like swirling sandstone’. Jennifer Down’s debut novel, Our Magic Hour, is concerned with these feelings that don’t have words—the inexpressible emotions and sensations…
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If you’ve ever overanalysed a Facebook friend request, celebrated an increase in Twitter followers or agonised over the time elapsed from when a message was “seen” to a reply sent, then In Real Life is the book for you. Beguiling and affecting, Chris Killen’s latest novel examines human connections both online and IRL. In 2004…
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If, like me, you rolled out of bed on Boxing Day with a ham hangover and fell into a pile of wrapping paper and gifts that you don’t want, then I may have a solution for you: regifting. Regifting is basically a type of recycling. To regift, if you’d like the Merriam-Webster dictionary definition, is…
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When I first started interning for John Hunter at Hunter Publishers, he asked if I would like to proofread The Best of the Lifted Brow, a selection of pieces from The Lifted Brow to be published in late 2013. I nodded enthusiastically and said, ‘Yes!!!!!!!!!!’ with exactly that number of exclamation marks. The Lifted Brow…
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There are a couple of phrases that are guaranteed to disturb; subjects steeped in so much stigma that, once raised, make most people uncomfortable and nervous. When I see a cute baby I will, without fail, gurgle ‘ermahgawd I want one’, successfully disturbing my parents. If it’s an unusually cute baby I’ll hug myself and…
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Three years ago, I travelled to England in search of Jane Austen. I‘d been a tragic Janeite for a long time. I could tell you exactly what Captain Wentworth wrote in his letter to Anne in Persuasion and recite the first few pages of Pride and Prejudice. Even as I write, my Jane Austen doll,…
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In Martin Amis’s novel The Rachel Papers the protagonist Charles Highway says that twenty is the real turning point in life. The oft-celebrated milestones of eighteen and twenty-one are unimportant. In his opinion, twenty ‘may not be the start of maturity but, in all conscience, it’s the end of youth.’ At twenty you like to…
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For the whole of my long childhood, I had a nanny. Someone to pick me up after school, drive me to clarinet, make sure I had a nutritious afternoon snack, and entertain me until Mum and Dad traipsed home.When I was young I thought everyone was like me. Everyone had two working parents – and…
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I have a confession, dear reader. I have been sleeping around. In fact, I have been at it from an early age. I have been far from faithful I am a promiscuous reader, and I love then leave the books I read. I tease a book, thumb through the first few chapters, dog-ear pages,…
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Like most people looking to crack into the writing/publishing world, I have a number of unpaid jobs. I list them as internships on my CV to make them sound a little more impressive but really I’m just an unpaid office monkey who prints things out, writes post-it notes and makes figurines out of paper clips….
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Thousands and thousands of years ago, before texting and online dating, a group of men were waxing philosophical on the nature of love and relationships. One by one, aided by that age-old social lubricant, wine, they took to their soapboxes to praise Eros, the god of Love. Plato recounts this B.C. booze-up in his famous…
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I hope you like Mexican food because we don’t have the usual sausage sizzle organized for this year’s Miles Franklin Literary Award. It is tacos for everyone! Just a few days ago the 2013 Miles Franklin judging panel unveiled an all-female shortlist—the first in the awards 57-year history: Floundering by Romy Ash (Text) Questions…
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Next week, on Tuesday 16 April 2013, the winner of the inaugural Stella Prize, the award that celebrates women’s contribution to Australian literature, will be announced. The shortlist is as follows: The Burial by Courtney Collins (Allen & Unwin) Questions of Travel by Michelle de Kretser (Allen & Unwin) The Sunlit Zone by Lisa Jacobson…
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Everybody knows that age-old cliché, ‘Don’t judge a book by its cover’. It’s a well-meaning expression. Yes, we should probably take a closer look at the book before deciding whether or not to read it. Yes, it’s better to get to know a person rather than forming opinions based on their appearance. And yes, Lizzy…
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