Opinion

Colin Steele

Vacant real estate on our wrists

Posted: 04 Mar 11 | Is the watch destined for the same graveyard as vinyl records or the horse-drawn carriage? |

Comments (0)

Sex meets gore in hardcore study

Posted: 09 Feb 11 | Academics are exploring pornographic adaptations such as Lord of the Cockrings (2002) and The Lord of the G-Strings: The Femaleship of the Ring (2003). |

Comments (0)

Colin Steele: Elizabeth I to Jane Austen

Posted: 01 Feb 11 | Colin Steele trawls lists of great British women and best American presidents; looks at book theft and sex in comics, and investigates the fight to save British libraries. |

Comments (0)

Colin Steele: British Library launches app

Posted: 17 Jan 11 | Colin Steele takes a look at books that can save your life, the digital afterlife, the future of urban transportation, explosions in literature, the British Library's new app and bookstore cats. |

Comments (0)

Downton Abbey vs Upstairs Downstairs

Posted: 12 Jan 11 | Colin Steele is back with his first blog of 2011, examining everything from technology trends and British costume drama to John Lennon's tea-making philosophy. |

Comments (0)

Do 3-D glasses work on cats?

Posted: 22 Dec 10 | Reader questions that Slate felt either ill-equipped or unwilling to answer in 2010 included: Do 3-D glasses work on cats? Are all languages equally lip-readable? Why are large, extensive tattoos always Asian-themed? Why do soup and other cans have ridges on the inside surface? |

Comments (1)

The first Buffy-loving queen

Posted: 13 Dec 10 | Waity Katy, as the red-tops liked to call the ever-patient Kate Middleton, used to keep a poster of Prince William in her room when she went to Marlborough College - directly adjacent to one with Sarah Michelle Gellar and Anthony Stewart Head. |

Comments (0)

The most sexist TV show you don't know about

Posted: 30 Nov 10 | Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders: Making the Team, is in its fifth season of documenting the team's brutal audition process. |

Comments (1)

Lesbian oyster girls and Anne Boleyn as a bug-eyed sparrow on speed

Posted: 22 Nov 10 | The writer and reporter, Vanora Bennett, chooses her top five historical novels on the Five Books website – sleigh rides in the snow, murder in a monastery, grisly 17th-century dissections, lesbian oyster girls and Anne Boleyn as a bug-eyed sparrow on speed. |

Comments (0)

Prime Minister's Literary Awards 2010

Posted: 15 Nov 10 | In his 100th post for The Canberra Times, Colin Steele blogs on the Prime Minister's Literary Awards, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and the adoption of obsolete words among other tidbits. |

Comments (0)

Slate Magazine celebrates Doonesbury at 40

Posted: 11 Nov 10 | Doonesbury is turning 40, and Slate has published the cartoon strip's 200 Greatest Moments to celebrate. |

Comments (0)

Blair favourite for Bad Sex Award

Posted: 05 Nov 10 | I needed that love Cherie gave me, selfishly ... I devoured it to give me strength, I was an animal following my instinct, knowing I would need every ounce of emotional power and resilience to cope with what lay ahead. |

Comments (0)

Decline in antiquarian bookselling continues

Posted: 25 Oct 10 | Colin Steele reflects on the decline of publicly available second-hand and antiquarian bookshops continues apace in the face of the growth of the Oxfam/charity shop bookshops in Britain. |

Comments (1)

Tanner's last official function with Temple

Posted: 23 Sep 10 | Lindsay Tanner was in conversation with Peter Temple at the Melbourne Writers' Festival hours before he quit on Friday September 3. |

Comments (0)

Colin Steele: Great literary love affairs

Posted: 01 Sep 10 | Great ego, but most especially two great egos, makes for the most entertaining stories of narcissism and passion best played out behind closed doors, often in the bedroom. |

Comments (0)

For your eyes only

Posted: 25 Aug 10 | A new study has found that 88 per cent of "major female characters" in Bond films engaged in some form of sexual activity with 007. |

Comments (0)

Colin Steele: Why Obama has fallen short

Posted: 10 Aug 10 | Only Hollywood might have the power to create a superhero who could fulfill the messianic dreams kindled by Barack Obama's presence and rhetoric, maintain the riveting drama of his unlikely ascent, and sustain the national mood of deliverance that greeted his victory. |

Comments (0)

Rushdie takes on the Wombles

Posted: 03 Aug 10 | Salman Rushdie will have some stiff competition when he appears at the Wimbledon Bookfest in October: The Wombles. |

Comments (1)

Precious Ramotswe returns

Posted: 27 Jul 10 | As Colin Steele reports in his blog this week, Alexander McCall Smith has talked of his detective's latest case, The Double Comfort Safari Club. |

Comments (0)

For the Love of Reading

Posted: 15 Jul 10 | "Do you love reading or do you love books? To answer this question for herself, City University of New York dean Ann Kirschner set out to read the Charles Dickens classic Little Dorrit four ways – as a paperback, on her Kindle, on her iPhone and as an audio book. |

Comments (0)

1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | next >

Colin Steele is Emeritus Fellow at ANU, having been University Librarian 1980-2002. He has a long standing interest in books and communication issues. He believes that information provision and science fiction are rapidly merging.