Online reseller AmazonClicks.com today announced the world’s first huge scale book collaboration project. Hundreds of aspiring, unpublished and established writers from around the world will join together on 1st January 2009 for a unique one year experiment to write a Novel collaboratively. Not only will they jointly decide all the major aspects of the book, the genre, plot and even the title, but they will write the story.
Here are some facts compiled by author Shifra Horn for those wishing to escape the hell that is the Middle East for the paradise of New Zealand: In New Zealand, parents beat their children, and the locals frighten tourists (there was a time when they even ate them) and despise foreigners, Jews in particular. They justify their anti-Semitism by pointing to Israel’s policies in the territories. They’re alcoholics and misers, they take cover behind a ridiculous veil of political correctness, and they contend with stampedes of millions of sheep that descend upon them like flatulence. Horn offers praise, however, for New Zealand’s rich flora, its beautiful birdlife and its clean air. Read more »
Classical Sparks celebrates the 50th anniversary of the Christchurch Symphony Orchestra (CSO). This is a warts-and-all account, including a difficult and dramatic adolescence. Some periods of the orchestra’s history were so marred with discord that its survival has been doubt several times. It is a Christchurch tradition to passionately fight civic battles in public, and this story is as much about issues of money and power as it is about music. Regional orchestras in Auckland and Wellington developed at about the same time, but without the same difficulties. Read more »
Alan Turley has an eye for a gap and taken it. While every other rugby pundit is felling forests to cover the latest in the Deans vs. Henry soap opera, he’s gone back to basics to find the genesis of our great national saga. It’s a handsome book that’s going to please a lot of punters. The photos and illustrations are first class. There’s good coverage of the origins of the rugby species – from ancient civilizations, through the mass mauls of English village futeballe, the first rugby cheat William Webb Ellis, and on to the English public school old boys who brought the game to our stony and root-strewn paddocks. Read more »
A modest book that seeks to demystify art and increase the enjoyment of people visiting galleries has been such a success that its publishers, Awa Press, have produced a classy new hardback edition. Read more »
There’s a growing clamour on the Internet for Sam Hunt to be named the next New Zealand Poet Laureate. Well, if not a clamour a chorus of two; former Listener staff writer Denis Welch took time out from writing his unauthorised biography of Helen Clark to float the idea, and Bookman Beattie suggested the same thing on his blog. The Scoop Review of Books is happy to add the full weight of its not inconsiderable prestige to the call;-). Read more »
Vincent Bugliosi wants George W. Bush prosecuted for murder. There are others who are complicit in the crime, namely the Vice President and Condoleezza Rice, but Bush is the target of this famed former Los Angeles prosecutor (the Charles Manson case) and best selling author (Helter Skelter and The Betrayal of America as two examples). He is undeterred by the virtual major media blackout on interviews and advertising. He’s taking his case directly to the people through alternate media and the internet. Read more »
From: Doubtless: new & selected poems by Sam Hunt
This is a tough call as I think to be any kind of writer you need to read more like five hundred books. However these are a few of the books that spring to mind as having influenced me at particular times of my life. Firstly my mum was a big William Blake fan. If I had been a boy it’s quite likely I would have been named Blake. Probably my first introduction to his work was a recording of ‘Tyger tyger’ made in the 60s which was on a nursery rhyme tape we had. When I was a teenager – maybe 15 – I read the Songs of Innocence and Experience and enjoyed it. Read more »
PRESS RELEASE
A rare chance to hear one of New Zealand’s most distinguished screenwriters talk about his craft. Tetley’s credits range from Vigil to Out of the Blue. He has said, ‘I think a script can be beautiful in itself. It can be shaped and it can be elegant. There’s nothing else I’d rather be doing.’ Chaired by Ken Duncum.
Monday 18 August, 1-2pm, at the National Library Auditorium, Wellington.
Free Entry
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