So what are the essential qualities of the Bond girl? First and foremost she is beautiful, but not merely according to a physical stereotype. Bond girls have been variously fair or dark, tall or short, curvaceous or slender. They have come from all over the world including Africa, Japan, Poland, Russia, India, China, Yugoslavia, Malaysia, Ireland, America, Israel and more. The Bond girl is typically independent, resourceful, mysterious and very, very dangerous.

Over the years Bond girls have set hearts aflame the world over".

Here are their ten favourites.

Professor Richard Dawkins plans to find out if stories like Harry Potter have a "pernicious" effect on children says the UK Telegraph

"The prominent atheist is stepping down from his post at Oxford University to write a book aimed at youngsters in which he will warn them against believing in "anti-scientific" fairytales. Prof Dawkins said: "The book I write next year will be a children's book on how to think about the world, science thinking contrasted with mythical thinking."I haven't read Harry Potter, I have read Pullman who is the other leading children's author that one might mention and I love his books. I don't know what to think about magic and fairy tales." Prof Dawkins said he wanted to look at the effects of "bringing children up to believe in spells and wizards"...

Prof Dawkins is targeting children as the audience of his next project because he believes they are being "abused" by being taught about religion at school and labelled Christian, Jewish or Muslim from a young age".

What Publishing Can Learn From Music according to the Huffington Post blog

Hugh McGuire says "The modern publishing business has been in existence since about 1800, but things are not looking so rosy in the ink-stained world. The publishing business is scared: if stagnating book sales and the creeping digital shakeup were not enough, the market meltdown has many tightening their belts while trying to figure out the future.Still, there is no indication that books are going away, or are any less useful, needed or wanted now than they were 200 years ago. Books are still essential. People still love them.The book publishing business has a great advantage over other big media industries. For various reasons, publishing is late to the digital party. So it can look to all the many mistakes the music business made in the past decade, and decide how to move into the uncertain future. Here is some unsolicited advice to ponder while ignoring the Dow"...

Amongst his suggestions is one that we should think beyond digital rights management (DRM).

"Big media has reacted to the web with alarm and terror, and their favorite answer to the challenges of the future has been digital rights management (DRM). This has been a disaster for media customers, and it's not doing much good for the music business, is it? Have you heard any happy reports about how DRM is saving music? Nope. In the case of book buyers, DRM stops many people from embracing e-books, because it makes things too complicated, and limits what you can do with them. We want to read our books on different devices, how and when we want. We don't want to be treated like criminals, or told what devices we're allowed to read on. Experiment a little, make some gambles, see what works best. Try it without DRM, you might like it".

Australian author Steve Toltz apparently came third in the Booker

"Steve Toltz's A Fraction of the Whole came in third (and also prompted tears from the male members of the judging panel during discussions)."

Strange Book Signings - no cat naps!

The following quote from Michael Greenberg’s “Freelance” column in the Times Literary Supplement. Greenberg is the author of the much-celebrated new memoir “Hurry Down Sunshine,” and is writing about his book tour, which includes a stop at a bookstore in southern California:

“Five people show up for the reading, including an elderly woman who spends the entire time drinking from a Santa Claus mug (on sale downstairs), and reading a book called ‘Dewey’ about a kitten who was dropped in the after-hours book return box of a small Iowa library, enriching the librarian’s life.”

Food for thought

A book of insect recipes has been published by the Japanese writer Shoichi Uchiyama, whose edible bug of choice is spring-cicada larva: “They have a slightly nutty flavour, but the texture when you bite into the body is like that of a good prawn.”

The English faculty at Cambridge University in the (Miltonic) dark

The faculty has recently staged a twelve-hour reading of John Milton’s “Paradise Lost” in a dark studio “with an absolute minimum of visual stimulus, allowing listeners to remember Milton’s own blindness and to relate it to the kinds of darkness-moral and visible-which he imagines in the poem.”

Elmore Leonard wins the F. Scott Fitzgerald Literary Award

Leonard, known in recent years for such popular books-turned-movies as "Get Shorty" and "Be Cool," will come to Montgomery College-Rockville on Saturday to accept the 13th annual F. Scott Fitzgerald Literary Award for outstanding achievement in American literature during the F. Scott Fitzgerald Literary Conference.

Japanese game show "Silent Library" sold to six European countries

2waytraffi c has sold the Japanese game show format "Silent Library" in six European countries. The Dutch company, acquired in June by Sony Pictures Entertainment, has the non-English speaking rights to the format from Nippon Television Network Corporation.Games take place in a library setting. Teams perform pranks and punishments on each other while trying to remain as quiet as possible.

Ian Fleming's letters to the real Miss Moneypenny

The UK Telegraph reports "A society hostess who dazzled James Bond creator Ian Fleming with her wit and beauty has emerged as the true inspiration for Miss Moneypenny. Fleming was so enamoured of the Duchess that he gave her name to Bond's secretary in the original 007 novels.One is signed S.W.A.K. (sealed with a kiss). Loelia Ponsonby, wife of the 2nd Duke of Westminster, and a leading Bright Young Thing of the 1920s, was a close friend of the author.

Letters written by Fleming to the Duchess have just come to light, and the flirtatious manner in which he addresses her - with jokey declarations of love - is mirrored in the fictional exchanges between 007 and M's no-nonsense secretary.Fleming was so enamoured of the Duchess that he gave her name to the secretary in the original 007 novels, including Diamonds Are Forever and From Russia With Love, replacing her with Mary Goodnight in On Her Majesty's Secret Service. The character was renamed Moneypenny in the films.

The two met some time before the Second World War and became firm friends although, as with Bond and Miss Moneypenny, they are not believed to have been lovers. The four letters, which are to be auctioned at Christie's in London, are not dated but their subject matter places them in the 1940s, by which time the Duchess had separated from her husband."

Memorabilia Auctions in Australia

The sales of memorabilia have been booming as these sort of items seem to hold up well in a economic downtimes. Charles Leski Auctions in Melbourne have had some recent notable successes. Their sale of 24th/25th September saw Doug Walters' Australian baggy green test cap go for $10,000 above its estimate of $15,000 while a Fender guitar signed by the Rolling Stones reached $3,500.Their upcoming auction of 5 and 6 November has some delightful items, ranging from autographs of Greta Garbo and Buffy the Vampire Slayer cast, to Richie Benaud's Australian Baggy Green Test Cap, estimate $20-25,000.

Another leading firm, Bonhams & Goodman, in their Auction News for October 2008, have their collectables sale in Melbourne on 30 November, which also includes Wally Grout's Baggy Green Test Gap, estimate $10-15,000 to a copy of Marvel Comics's Amazing Fantasy #15 of 1962, which has the first appearance of Spiderman (estimate $1,200 - $1,800).

Terry Pratchett. Out of this World

My review of Terry Pratchett's latest books appeared recently in the Panorama literary section of the Canberra Times. A much longer article by me appeared in the October/November issue of the Rare Book Review on Pratchetts' work and the value of his first editions. Entitled 'Not the End of Discworld', the text is not yet available online except to subscribers but the cover and details of the journal can be found at the RBR website. I will place the article in due course in the ANU Demetrius website but in the meantime, herewith some extracts.

"The Carpet People, despite being the first Pratchett book, is not the Pratchett book that brings the highest prices, partly because of its larger print run, although if one were to find the several copies in which Pratchett hand-coloured the illustrations, they would certainly give the prices of his Discworld first editions a run for their money...

I bought a signed copy of the 1971 first edition of The Carpet People in 1997 from a Blue Mountains bookshop in Australia. This was advertised as a signed copy, but the signature bore no resemblance to the Pratchett signatures in my other signed books. I therefore contacted Pratchett and faxed him a copy of his signature in that book.

His response of September 9 1997 is as follows: “looks pretty much the way my signature used to look…this was probably signed more than ten years ago when I had time to shape every vowel! Andromeda Books in Birmingham have a visitors book signed by me twice a year since the mid 80s and its chilling and instructive to see how my sig has simplified over the years.” Pratchett then sent another e-mail saying “I’ve looked through some old stuff and this may be one of the ones gined back in the 70s.

In his early Discworld signings, Pratchett signed in full and often embellished his signature with a caption, a drawing, and often for younger readers, a Pratchett stamp on the title page. Pratchett had his own “library” stamp which he carried around in a pouch. These were perhaps more enjoyable signing times for him in that he had more time to chat. In more recent years it’s often been head down and fast signings, although to give Pratchett his due, he often rarely baulked at the vision of unkempt youths approaching him with large collections of paperbacks.

Pratchett e-mailed me on 6 November 2007, "I think the key drawback of signing tours is that they put you, via jetlag, missed meals, suitcase living and randomised stress in a situation where you fall prey to any bug going. And then you sit in front of a line up of 300 fans, who breathe foreign germs all over you".

Pratchett’s illness has prevented him coming to Australia in 2008, as part of the 25th Annual Discworld Tour. This has prevented him signing my collection of Pratchettiana which has accumulated since his last visit. He responded to my query about signing bookplates: “I appreciate your dogged determination to have every printed item of mine, but I really hate signing bookplates and bits of sticky paper. These seem to me to negate the very basis of book signing. I like to sign for people where I can see the whites of their eyes.”..

We arranged a literary lunch, but the majority of the audience were somewhat bemused as his then publisher publicity was billing Pratchett as a mixture of Evelyn Waugh and P.G. Wodehouse! Pratchett is a wonderful speaker, but he was not the suave English gentlemen that the ladies who lunch quite expected! On future occasions, Pratchett and I, whenever possible, talked on stage at the Australian National University. These regularly attracted audiences of over 600 people,the capacity of the lecture theatre.

We even managed to persuade the British High Commission to hold two receptions, one under the banner of Pratchett being a major British export earner, which indeed he is. This latter reception was hosted by a rather bemused Sir Alastair Goodlad, the then British High Commissioner, who clearly had not heard of Pratchett before his briefing.

Pratchett gave a condensed version of his 2004 World Science Fiction Convention speech about a recent operation and his waking on the operating table shouting for sandwiches - what Pratchett called “a near sandwich experience”. Pratchett’s English humour seemed to leave a number of foreign ambassadors, especially the French Ambassador, somewhat bemused, but it did not prevent many of the guests forming an impromptu book signing queue afterwards."

The UK Rare Book Review website also suggests that readers should "Fly South for Winter"

Dominic Winter will hold two sales this week that offer a wide range of high-quality material including a fine set of Mathews' Birds of Australia (£7,000-10,000), and an extensive section of Maps & Prints. The Wednesday sale offers a particularly strong historical autographs section with good autographs by The Beatles, John Constable, an important Reginald Farrer archive, Charles II & other Restoration period royalty autographs and documents, Horatio Nelson, Ernest Shackleton, plus diaries and ephemera of interest to collectors of Americana, Napoleon, TE Lawrence, Imperial Russia, Northwest Passage, Travel, Military, etc.

The Thursday highlights include a very fine copy of a first edition of Darwin's Origin of Species (£30,000-40,000) and a first English two-volume edition of Newton's Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy with an unrecorded cancel leaf (£7,000-10,000). There are close to 1500 lots of books, paper collectables and much more, from prehistory to modern times!

For more information, contact chris@dominicwinter.co.uk, or visit: http://www.dominic-winter.co.uk/< p>

The UK Independent earlier this year highlighted some literary hotels

In Canberra, University House has an enviable reputation with authors such as Christina Stead spending considerable periods in accommodation there. When the National Word Festival was a regular occurrence in Canberra, many authors stayed there such as Doris Lessing and William Gaddis. For the Bruce Bennett 'Festschrift' literary seminar recently held at the National Library, a number of authors such as Helen Garner stayed there. The Independent selection included

The Hotel Pont Royal, Paris

"Camus, Sartre and Joyce checked into this Left Bank hotel, as has García Márquez. It is a few steps away from the literary elite's haunt, the Café de Flore. Although the wood-panelled rooms and library remain, the modern and luxurious bedrooms bear little resemblance to those that the literati would have been familiar with; nor would they have savoured the delights of Joël Robuchon's on-site restaurant. Hôtel Pont Royal, 7 rue de Montalembert, Paris (00 33 1 42 84 70 00; www.hotel-pont-royal.com). Doubles from €395 (£304), room only."

With prices like this and the declining Australian dollar against the Euro and the pound, (for reasons which are only partly understandable), only best selling authors will be able to stay there.

The Cadogan, London On ritzy Sloane Street, The Cadogan features light, floral decor, damask wallpaper, silk trimmings and afternoon tea served in the drawing room. Yet things weren't always so refined. Lillie Langtry, mistress of the future King Edward VII, would conduct her trysts here. But most notable was the arrest of Oscar Wilde here in 1895. The Cadogan, 75 Sloane Street, London SW1 (020-7235 7141; www.cadogan.com). Doubles start at £194, room only.

Full list here.

Is reputation obsolete?

Judith Donath from the Berkman Center for Internet and Society ponders the fact that in the past that "most conversations were ephemeral: spoken words quickly slipped into the past, resurrected only if a listener later repeated them from memory. Today, many discussions and transactions live on indefinitely. Online conversations are often permanently archived and events in the face-to-face world are frequently recorded".

My Beautiful Novelette

The New Yorker on-line blog recently asked its readers to e-mail them their text-message versions of great works of literature. "We couldn’t quite decipher all the entries we received, despite consulting individuals half our age, but there were a number of laudable efforts. Among our favorites was this distillation of Herman Melville’s tale of the proto-slacker Bartleby the scrivener, penned-er, thumbed?-by Kate Laubach, of upstate New York. Note the woeful exclamation points:

Bartleby prfrs nt 2. B frm DedLetrOfice. !B! !Humanity!

Will (no last name proffered), of Brooklyn, while noting that his usual text messages were “in full sentences and take about twenty minutes to write,” entered the fray with this supremely abbreviated “Waiting for Godot”:

W8ing 4 GDot

2 erly 4 mtg… …what mtg?? WTF?! LOL…

And then brought to heel the mammoth “Ulysses”:

UlisEs

IRl& 6-16-04:

DDlus@home, @wrk, @sea.

LBlum: 1dering ju, crzy odSE 2.

MBlum: yes

CliffNotes, en garde."

The ECAR Study of Undergraduate Students and Information Technology, 2008

Previous weekly blog entires have covered the changing nature of information access by the current generation of undergraduates and the impact on research methods, essay writing and reading.

The US ECAR study has just released its fifth study of undergraduate students and information technology, the EDUCAUSE Center for Applied Research (ECAR) seeks to more fully understand today’s undergraduate students’ varied use of skills and experiences with IT. "The ECAR Study of Undergraduate Students and Information Technology, 2008 analyzes the responses of 27,317 freshmen, seniors and community college students at 98 colleges and universities from a Web-based survey, as well as findings from focus group discussions.

Among the findings:

More than 80 percent of respondents own laptops, 53.8 percent own desktops, and one-third own both a laptop and a desktop.

Laptop ownership increased from 65.9 percent in 2006 to 82.2 percent in 2008. Freshmen respondents are entering college with new laptops in hand-this year 71.1 percent have a laptop less than one year old. Ownership of Internet-capable cell phones is also on the rise, now owned by 66.1 percent of respondents. Most respondents, however, do not yet take advantage of the Internet capability, citing high cost, slow response and difficulty of use as primary reasons. Despite barriers to use, almost one-fourth of respondents access the Internet from a cell phone or PDA at least monthly, and 17.5 percent do so weekly or more often.

Respondents report spending an average 19.6 hours per week actively doing online activities for work, school or recreation, and 7.4 percent spend more than 40 hours per week doing so. Almost all students surveyed use the college or university library Web site (93.4 percent) and presentation software (91.9 percent). Also used by most students are spreadsheets (85.9 percent), social networking sites (85.2 percent), text messaging (83.6 percent) and course management systems (82.3 percent). About one-third of respondents report using audio-creation or video-creation software and 73.9 percent use graphics software (Photoshop, Flash, etc.). Almost one-third engage in online multiuser computer games (World of Warcraft, EverQuest, poker, etc.) and about 1 in 11 respondents (8.8 percent) report using online virtual worlds (Second Life, etc.). Students are interactive on the Web, with more than one-third contributing content to blogs, wikis, and photo and video Web sites. Over 85 percent of respondents report using social networking sites. The striking change over the last two years was in how many respondents now use social networking sites on a daily basis, from 32.8 percent in 2006 to 58.8 percent in 2008".

ODD BOOK TITLE

I knew 3,000 lunatics by Victor Small. New York. Farrar and Rinehart 1935

This is not quite the book, reports Libraries Australia but "an interesting result all the same".

QUOTE OF THE WEEK

"It takes a great deal of history to produce a little literature". Henry James.

Perhaps relevant to the recent literary history wars!