Aussie Slang Down Under by Diane McInnes

$9.99 AUD

Category: writing poetry literature

This book is chockers with colourful Australian slang. This unique dialect is widely spoken across Australia and manifests experiences from the country's broad history. From borrowing Aboriginal words, through convict roots, the gold rush and bush ranging years to the First World War, these words have e merged to depict fundamental aspects of the Australian character and identity. . ...Show more

On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft by Stephen King

$22.99 AUD

Category: writing poetry literature

Damien Cave: (New York Times bureau chief in Sydney & friend of Bookoccino) "Not many books about writing manage to be both as practical and entertaining as this one. Even if you've never read a Stephen King novel, the insights he shares will change how you read and write (and maybe how you live)."   Immensely helpful and illuminating to any aspiring writer, Stephen King's critically lauded, classic bestseller shares the experiences, habits, and convictions that have shaped him and his work.   "Long live the King" hailed Entertainment Weekly upon publication of Stephen King's On Writing. Part memoir, part master class by one of the bestselling authors of all time, this superb volume is a revealing and practical view of the writer's craft, comprising the basic tools of the trade every writer must have. King's advice is grounded in his vivid memories from childhood through his emergence as a writer, from his struggling early career to his widely reported, near-fatal accident in 1999--and how the inextricable link between writing and living spurred his recovery. Brilliantly structured, friendly and inspiring, On Writing will empower and entertain everyone who reads it--fans, writers, and anyone who loves a great story well told. ...Show more

Walking Wounded: The Life and Poetry of Vernon Scannell by James Andrew Taylor

$47.95 AUD

Category: writing poetry literature

This uncompromising biography tells the story of a wounded D-Day veteran, a deserter, a violent drunk, a loving father who abandoned his first child, a boxer and brawler, a wife-beater, a bigamist, and a passionately romantic lover. It is also, most importantly, the story of a poet. Vernon Scannell wrot e some of the finest poetry to come out of the Second World War. He won the Chomondeley Prize and the Heinemann Award, and for half a century he was acknowledged as one of the leading poets in the country. His Collected Poems are still in print, and his poetry for both adults and children is regularly anthologised and appears on English Literature examination papers. Scannell died in 2007, and Walking Wounded draws on his personal diaries, poems, and other writings to offer the first detailed study of this complex, controversial, and occasionally tragic life. For the first time, the women who loved him tell their stories; his children describe growing up with a father who was funny, affectionate, sometimes violent, and often not there at all; and his fellow poets, including Seamus Heaney, Anthony Thwaite, Alan Brownjohn and Kit Wright, speak of the dedicated stylist, assured performer, and occasionally roistering drunk that they knew. Scannell was seriously wounded in Normandy shortly after D-Day, but the book looks at the deeper, mental scars from the War that he bore all his life, and of the suffering they caused to him and the people who loved him. It is an important book about an important poet, which investigates where poetry comes from, and the terrible price that sometimes has to be paid for it. ...Show more

Letters of Ted Hughes by Ted Hughes

$39.99 AUD

Category: writing poetry literature

At the outset of his career Ted Hughes described letter-writing as 'excellent training for conversation with the world', and he was to become a prolific master of this art which combines writing and talking. This selection begins when Hughes was seventeen, and documents the course of a life at once reso lutely private but intensely attuned to other lives (including a readership comprising both adults and children); a life pared down to essentials and yet eventful, peripatetic, at times publicly controversial. ...Show more

Latest Readings (HB) by Clive James

$27.99 AUD

Category: writing poetry literature

In 2010 Clive James was diagnosed with terminal leukemia. Deciding that "if you don't know the exact moment when the lights will go out, you might as well read until they do," James moved his library to his house in Cambridge, where he would "live, read, and perhaps even write." James is the award-winni ng author of dozens of works of literary criticism, poetry, and history, and this volume contains his reflections on what may well be his last reading list. A look at some of James' old favorites as well as some of his recent discoveries, this book also offers a revealing look at the author himself, sharing his evocative musings on literature and family and on living and dying. As thoughtful and erudite as the works of Alberto Manguel, and as moving and inspiring as Randy Pausch's The Last Lecture and Will Schwalbe's The End of Your Life Book Club, this valediction to James' lifelong engagement with the written word is a captivating valentine from one of the great literary minds of our time.   ...Show more

Being There by David Malouf

$22.99 AUD

Category: writing poetry literature

Words, music, art and performance. The stuff of a satisfying life. After exploring the idea of home, where and what it is in A First Place, what does it mean to be a writer and where writing begins in The Writing Life, David Malouf moves on to words and music and art and performance in Being There. With pieces on the Sydney Opera House - then and now - responses to art, artists and architects, and including Malouf's not previously published libretti for Voss and a translation of Hippolytus, this is an unmissable and stimulating collection of one man's connection to the world of art, ideas and culture. ...Show more

Play All: A Bingewatcher's Notebook by Clive James (Abridged by)

$33.99 AUD

Category: writing poetry literature

A world-renowned media and cultural critic offers an insightful analysis of serial TV drama and the modern art of the small screen Television and TV viewing are not what they once were--and that's a good thing, according to award-winning author and critic Clive James. Since serving as television columni st for the London Observer from 1972 to 1982, James has witnessed a radical change in content, format, and programming, and in the very manner in which TV is watched. Here he examines this unique cultural revolution, providing a brilliant, eminently entertaining analysis of many of the medium's most notable twenty-first-century accomplishments and their not always subtle impact on modern society--including such acclaimed serial dramas as Breaking Bad, The West Wing, Mad Men, and The Sopranos, as well as the comedy 30 Rock. With intelligence and wit, James explores a television landscape expanded by cable and broadband and profoundly altered by the advent of Netflix, Amazon, and other "cord-cutting" platforms that have helped to usher in a golden age of unabashed binge-watching. ...Show more

The Cambridge History of Australian Literature by Peter Pierce

$85.00 AUD

Category: writing poetry literature

The Cambridge History of Australian Literature is the most comprehensive volume ever written on Australia's national literature. This authoritative guide spans Australian literary history from colonial origins, encompassing indigenous and migrant literatures, as well as representations of Asia and the P acific and the role of literary culture in modern Australian society. Bringing together a distinguished line-up of contributors, this volume explores each of the literary modes in an Australian context, including short story, poetry, children's literature, autobiography and fiction. This book is an essential reference for general readers and specialists alike. ...Show more

The Triumph of Typography : Culture. Communication. New Media by Henk Hoeks

$145.00 AUD

Category: writing poetry literature

Typography rules the world, but in what way does a typographical text still form the fundamentals of public life in an era of digitalism and interactivity? In The Triumph of Typography a number of professionals investigate the cultural revolution caused by new media and digitalisation. With contribution s by Willem Frijhoff, Gererd Hadders, Ellen Lupton, Jack Post, Rick Poynor, Jose Teunissen and Wouter Weijers. ...Show more

Horizontal Lightning by Marty Branagan

$32.99 AUD

Category: writing poetry literature

A Little History of Literature by John Sutherland

$35.99 AUD

Category: writing poetry literature | Series: Little Histories Ser.

This 'little history' tackles a very big subject: the glorious span of literature from Greek myth to graphic novels, from The Epic of Gilgamesh to Harry Potter. John Sutherland is perfectly suited to the task, having researched, taught and written on every area of literature. His infectious passion for books and reading has defined his own life. Now he guides young readers and adults on an entertaining journey revealing how literature from across the world can transport us and help us to make sense of what it means to be human. Sutherland introduces great classics in his own irresistible way, enlivening his offerings with humour as well as learning: Beowulf, Shakespeare, Don Quixote, the Romantics, Dickens, Moby Dick, The Waste Land, Woolf, 1984 and dozens of others. He adds to these a less-expected, personal selection of authors and works, including literature usually considered well below 'serious attention' - from the rude jests of Anglo-Saxon runes to The Da Vinci Code. With masterful digressions into various themes - censorship, narrative tricks, self-publishing, taste, creativity and madness - Sutherland demonstrates the full depth and intrigue of reading. ...Show more

The Writing Life by David Malouf

$19.99 AUD

Category: writing poetry literature

Who else, but a writer, is really able to interrogate the work of other writers? From Christina Stead, Les Murray and Patrick White to Proust, Shakespeare and Charlotte Bronte, David Malouf reads and examines the work of writers who have challenged, inspired and entertained us for generations. He also e xplores his own work and the life of the writer, where the ever-present danger is spending too much time talking about writing and not enough doing it. These alternative views of some of our best-loved writers and readers will send us scurrying back to read Jane Eyre, Such is Life, Kipling and of course, David Malouf. ...Show more