It’s an emotional moment enhanced by the knowledge that we are mingling with fellow bookmen; that marvelous fellowship of addicts pursuing its harmless and comparatively inexpensive drug - the printed word. No computer could ever replace this venerable pleasure".

Some choice items for sale include, from The Grisly Wife Bookshop, a previously unrecorded privately printed

Australian children's story published in 1888,a collection of all Vogel prize-winningnovels,and "a stunning selection" of David Malouf works signed by the author.Michael Treloar Antiquarian Booksellers will feature signed items from the pioneer aviators Alcock and Brown, G.B. Shaw,Ransome and Tolkien, and an important archive relating to the creation and sale of John Olsen artworks. The feature item from Camberwell Books is a complete set of The Australasian Sketcher, from #1 (April 1873) to #252(December 1889). This "gorgeous item is a virtual window into the rich and burgeoning times in Australia rolling on from the wealth of the goldfields". Christopher Saunders, on his first selling trip to Australia, is offering one of the famous Beldam prints of Trumper, signed by Beldam and Trumper; letters from Bradman, Ponsford,Oldfield and Noble, plus numerous other letters, autographs andphotographs. Non-Australian crickethighlights include a copy of the first Wisden (1864), and first editions of Felix on the Bat (1845) and Nyren's Young Cricketer's Tutor (1833).

More bookseller fare here as well as links to booking etc

I wish I was able to get there but it clashes with the Bruce Bennett Colloquium at the National Library - Oh for a star trek type transporter between the two venues!

Helen Mirren: 'I knew I would never have as great a role as Elizabeth I again'

Mirren is here in video conversation with Chris Worwood about her autobiography, released last week in paperback.

Apple's iPhone Takes Lead in e-Book Reader Race according to Forbes

"Apple's iPhone is now a more popular e-book reader than Amazon.com's Kindle. And the iPhone may just be getting warmed up. A free application called Stanza -- designed by a company called Lexcycle and made available through Apple's iPhone App Store -- has been downloaded 395,000 times since it was released in July. That's already enough to outpace the 380,000 Kindles that are expected to sell this year, according to Forbes. But the rate of Stanza downloads is steadily increasing, so the iPhone e-readers could be far more common than Kindle users by the end of 2008".

Medieval Imaginations: Literature and Visual Culture in the Middle Ages

Medieval Imaginations: Literature and Visual Culture in the Middle Ages is a website created and maintained by the University of Cambridge’s Faculty of English. The purpose of the site is to provide access to the "images corresponding to the main episodes dramatized in the English Mystery Plays, because these present the medieval view of human history from the Creation to the Last Judgement.' This website is extremely well organized and provides multiple ways of finding images...Visitors can move around from the 12th-16th and once they have chosen a century, they will see a list of clickable images that correspond with the major works of literature of the century. The dates of the image and the medium of the visual (i.e. stained glass, manuscript, etc.) are also included. Visitors can also search via episodes of the English Mystery Plays by using the tool found in the middle of the home page. Once an episode chosen visitors will see, in chronological order, all the images related to that Mystery Play. If you want to read what story a Mystery Play tells, click on “Mystery Plays” at the bottom of the page. From there you can read the story, and also view all of its corresponding images.

Will Le Clézio's Nobel prize cut America down to size?

Asks John Sutherland in the UK Guardian

"The judges of the Nobel prize for literature struck a blow against Coca-colonisation? Google-news sweep reveals that first reaction in America is that the Nobel committee, in line with their prize-awarding colleagues in other fields, now see it as their God-given mission to cut the world's only remaining superpower down to size. To prevent in literature what has happened in film (a cultural field in which Sweden and France were once world players - but no more). Or even in science. This year's laureates are notably de-Americanised: most spectacularly with the award to Luc Montagnier and Francoise Barre-Sinoussi for their discovery of the Aids virus. The hidden agenda there was that the US virologist, Robert Gallo, had been wrongly credited as the first to do so".

The Booker's Big Bang

The Booker Prize, awarded on 14 October, is 40 years old, but it wasn't always the 600lb gorilla of literary prizes.

John Sutherland, this time in the New Statesman, "recalls how a demure award came to embrace the values of the Thatcherite Eighties. Middle age is a useful summing-up point. Are these prizes, and specifically the supercasino regime (one winner, many losers), good for that most civilised product of our civilisation - its literature? A couple of years ago in the Observer, Jason Cowley, now the editor of the New Statesman, queried the "economy of prestige" (that is to say, free-marketisation) that the Booker and the profusion of wannabe-Bookers had introduced into the British book world.

On the whole, Cowley concluded, the risks to creativity were real but the "jamboree" or "fun" element made it worthwhile. Just. It would be interesting to know if he still thinks so. More so as the larger climate seems to be changing. In a thoughtful piece in the Independent recently, Boyd Tonkin diagnosed a slump in the sales even of Booker finalists. Were the brut alities of the big-prize system stifling what Goff, decades earlier, had hoped to nurture with his innovation: the quality novel?

My own feeling is that, like much else in British life, the Man Booker is imperfect but nonetheless works as well as anything could with a product as slippery, and resistant to even-handed competition, as high-grade fiction. At least, for now it works". More at

What to read when you're ... tempted by infidelity

Justine Picardie in the UK Telegraph tackles this subject with aid of Evelyn Waugh

"All this fuss about sleeping together' wrote Evelyn Waugh in Vile Bodies. 'For physical pleasure I'd sooner go to my dentist any day.' He may or may not have been teasing, but a reading of his later novel, A Handful of Dust, is enough to put anyone off having an affair, however great the temptation.

Waugh wrote the book in the aftermath of the collapse of his first marriage to Evelyn Gardner (their friends called them He-Evelyn and She-Evelyn), when he was feeling utterly humiliated by his wife's affair with a writer named John Heygate.'Evelyn's defection was preceded by no kind of quarrel or estrangement,' Waugh wrote in a letter to his parents. 'So far as I knew we were both serenely happy.'

The shock of this sudden betrayal permeates A Handful of Dust, a novel described by his friend Harold Acton as 'written in blood', in which a faithless wife, Brenda Last, cuckolds her husband Tony with a worthless lover, also called John. Even Brenda admits that John Beaver is dreary - 'he's second-rate and a snob and... cold as a fish' - but she nevertheless deserts her husband for him.Even worse, when her son - another John - is killed in an accident, Brenda reveals herself to be more concerned about her lover than her only child.

By the end of the novel, the affair has fizzled out; Brenda remarries one of her husband's friends, while Tony is imprisoned in the South American jungle by the sinister Mr Todd, and condemned to an endless re-reading of Dickens.

Unlike Dickens's tales, there is to be no happy ending; this is as bleak as Waugh gets (hence his use of T. S. Eliot's lines from 'The Waste Land' in the novel's title and epigraph, 'I will show you fear in a handful of dust…').

Waugh converted to Catholicism and his second marriage lasted a lifetime; but Evelyn and John Heygate were divorced in 1936. Both remarried, though Heygate's life and career as a novelist seem to have been overshadowed by his part in Waugh's divorce. Some years later, Heygate wrote to Waugh asking for his forgiveness. His answer came in a postcard: 'OK - EW.' John Heygate shot himself in 1976."

The Guardian blog muses on poets and driving

"I was told recently of a poet who was listing all the poets in his university department who were non-drivers. When he came to the sole member who could drive, he noted: "Of course, he can but he shouldn't be allowed to." That should probably stand as a universal instruction to us all, in case we miss what Larkin calls the "frail travelling coincidence" that lies just outside the window".

Floored by a good lunch! Kevin Spacey and Sir Alan Ayckbourn

The UK Evening Standard reports at the Old Vic recently, "spectators witnessed artistic director Kevin Spacey flooring playwright Sir Alan Ayckbourn.As the audience were giving the cast a deserved standing ovation at the end of the Norman Conquests trilogy, Spacey led Sir Alan on to the stage by the hand. AA walks unsteadily with a stick after a serious stroke in 2006.

AA, in typically humble form, didn't want to take bow alone, so walked off stage as the cast left, to be greeted by Spacey attempting to give him a high 10 (two hands). That not being possible for a man with a stick, Spacey then gave the very reserved Ayckbourn a huge bear hug that went a bit topply, then a bit wobbly, then - bang! AA fell heavily backwards on the floor with Spacey sprawled on top of him. Several members of the audience ran, first to peel Spacey off him, then carefully lift the poor septuagenarian to his feet. It appears Spacey had had a good lunch".

And Parky thrown to the Wolves!

Sir Michael Parkinson may have retired from the television screens but he is daunted by the task of touring the country flogging his memoirs. "I had a bad experience promoting a previous book in Wolverhampton," he confides.

"I've never associated Wolverhampton with books and when I got to the bookshop and asked them if they sold lots of books they said: 'Yes.' But then when I asked what sort they said: 'Maps, mostly.'

Then I did the signing session and somebody asked me to sign the New Testament and when I told them I didn't write it they replied: 'I'm not daft you know.' Finally, I was told I had a fan club of four people outside the bookshop. They hadn't bought a book but I thought I had better go and say hello. They stared at me and one said to the other: 'He doesn't suit daylight, does he?'"

Les Murray turns 70

Black Inc.is "congratulating" Les Murray on his 70th birthday on 17 October. Murray is still Australia's best bet for another literary Nobel Prize?

A N Wilson pays tribute to the skill involved in turning books into film

"Addicts, not merely of Evelyn Waugh's masterpiece, but also of the 1981 Granada Television version of Brideshead Revisited can only look forward to the new screen version with diluted enthusiasm.... Still, it would be stuffy to say that no one should ever be allowed to adapt our favourite books for cinema or television. Think of the number of enjoyable Sherlock Holmes films, for example, starring Basil Rathbone, which bear only small relation to the books.

The reason Jane Austen films are so deadly is that they remove the chief attraction of the books - which is Jane Austen's own voice. Without the jokes in Pride and Prejudice, there is a sort of inevitability that you will end up with the flavourless Keira Knightley as Elizabeth Bennet.Something of the same kind operates with Dickens. It takes real skill to adapt him, since there is so much more in the books than just the "characters".

The best Dickens adaptation, however, is also my favourite film - it is Christine Edzard's Little Dorrit, with its total faithfulness to the book, and its extraordinary line-up of great actors, including the totally unknown Sarah Pickering as the child-woman".

Philip Horne explores 22 professor movies!

"The 'professor movie' as such is perhaps not as common a generic label as the private eye, cop, gangster, spy, cowboy, ancient warrior or space movie. To be frank, it's statistically negligible; but that's not to say that the cinematic archetype of the academic is without its attractions - probably because the role of professor provokes a far-reaching ambivalence about the importance of education, knowledge and intelligence.

The very name of 'professor' seems to involve an element of pretension, of 'professing' or pretending to a superior wisdom that may not be well-founded (whereas 'Reader', which is the next rank down in Britain, sounds like the real thing). It didn't take Richard Hofstadter's brilliant book Anti-Intellectualism in American Life (1963) to tell us that social and political distrust of intellectuals and academics - not all of it misplaced, of course - has driven the Anglo-American world for centuries. So Biros at the ready: here's a 22 image lesson in big screen dons"

Federico Garcia Lorca

Rare Book Review reports that "Spain’s most celebrated poet and playwright has been shrouded in mystery after having vanished 72 years ago, it is thought his remains are contained in a mass grave, killed in the Spanish Civil War of 1936-9. The descendants of Lorca have objected to the unearthing of the mass grave until now, but new efforts are being made to find out what happened to those killed in the Spanish Civil War and to determine exactly where Lorca died.

The family would have preferred the exhumation not to have gone ahead, doubting that it would provide any useful information, but Lorca scholars think differently: ‘This is one of the happiest days of my life’, said Irish author Ian Gibson, a leading Lorca scholar, 'Lorca is the most famous victim of the civil war. It's a huge step in the right direction…I think Lorca can be a symbol for reconciliation of the civil war.'

Lorca was hauled out and shot after being denounced as a Republican, a Communist and a homosexual. He became a martyr to the Republican Left and the latest moves to discover the fate of those who disappeared have sparked fury among Spanish conservatives, who claim that history is being rewritten by those who lost the civil war. What the unearthing will reveal is yet to be discovered, but the fear and controversy surrounding the issue is as much at large as ever".

Amazon UK launches POD service - UK Bookseller

Amazon has launched a print on demand (POD) programme in the UK. Amazon.co.uk said that the service would mean it could rapidly print and ship an individual book following a customer order. It would also allow it to bring previously unavailable titles, such as out of print books or foreign language editions, into print in the UK, it said.

Among the publishers who have joined the programme are Faber, John Wiley & Sons, HarperCollins UK, Cambridge University Press and Allen & Unwin Australia. Amazon said it would be able to print books in both full colour and black and white and said the books would be "virtually indistinguishable" from traditionally printed titles.

Christopher North, vice president of media at Amazon.co.uk, said: "Working with publishers, we hope to bring hundreds of thousands of books to Amazon.co.uk’s customers that might never have otherwise been available. POD not only enables publishers to keep more titles in-stock at Amazon, but it also makes possible innovative new approaches to publishing."

For a limited time, Amazon.co.uk said it would provide free setup for publishers with POD-ready PDF files.Amazon.co.uk will be providing the service from its fulfillment centre in Marston Gate near Milton Keynes. North said that Amazon would be consulting with its US POD company Booksurge for their "expertise and experience" offering the service.

Amazon.com caused controversy in the US earlier this year when it demanded that publishers use BookSurge for their print on demand needs, or supply Amazon.com with five copies of each title for its warehouse. However, North stressed that Amazon.co.uk would not require publishers to use its POD service exclusively. "We are offering titles that are being produced by other print on demand providers," he said.

It is unclear whether this move will affect terms negotiations with publishers. North refused to comment adding "we are launching something brand new and we hope it will create savings that will benefit everybody". "Our focus is demonstrating we can provide a highly reliable, high quality channel that wasn’t previously available," he said.

Ten of the best incestuous relationships from John Mullan in The Guardian

Oedipus Rex by Sophocles

This is where it starts. Thanks to Freud, the story of the young man who unwittingly kills his father and marries his mother has long been treated as an expression of every male child's unconscious desires. In the actual play, it is Oedipus's desire to "find the truth" that is fatal, with everyone else (including mother Jocasta) advising him to stop probing. Best not to know.

Metamorphoses by Ovid

There are plenty of nasty couplings in this collection, and none more disturbing than the story of Myrrha, who lusts for her father Cinyras. To frustrate her passion she tries to hang herself. A maid saves her and helps her consummate her desire with her drunken father. When he chases her from his court, the gods turn her into the eternally weeping myrrh tree.

Ian Rankin's pad

Ian Rankin OBE, 48, is one of Britain’s best selling crime writers and lives with his wife and two sons in Edinburgh.

"We live in a three-storey Victorian villa and part of the appeal was that it’s detached; it’s the first time my family and I have ever lived in a detached house. And it’s in an area of town where my elder son, Jack, goes to school. What’s more, my younger son, Kit, is in a wheelchair and we were looking for somewhere with a lot of rooms on the ground floor. And when we saw it about five years ago it was in the process of being gutted and renovated by developers. So we did a deal with them and were consequently able to have each room arranged as we wanted" .

Kathy Lette now touring Australia talks to the UK Telegraph

Why is Kathy Lette, doyenne of the chick-lit novel and groansome wordplay, so determined not to be taken seriously? She talks to Lucy Cavendish in the UK Telegraph

"The novelist Kathy Lette comes to her door armed with shortbread biscuits and a man in tow. 'Look at this!' she says in her Australian accent, motioning at the poor photographer's assistant blushing behind her. 'Isn't he cute?' Then she links her arm in mine, marches me into her kitchen - not too grand, not too messy - and makes some coffee.

I am sure this is what television producers want from Lette - someone who will give a mouthy quote but is up on politics and social issues, a bit like an easy-to-digest Germaine Greer in a tight designer dress and dyed red hair. It helps that she and her husband, the Left-wing human-rights lawyer Geoffrey Robertson, know just about everyone. She is a long-time friend of Gordon Brown's wife Sarah ('He is a masterful man and great fun - their house is like a nursery'), she is a close friend of Sir John Mortimer and regularly has Salman Rushdie round for dinner. 'He loves to dance,' she says about the latter. 'He's great company.'

This is the other thing about Lette - she is a great gossip. She loves nothing more than dressing up in Moschino, putting on heels and meeting girl friends such as Maureen Lipman or the television presenter June Sarpong for a spot of lunch and a lot of chat. She knows who has had Botox - 'Everyone apart from me,' she says, 'and I'm 49' - and who has left who for whom, and it's all very entertaining. 'Yes, but serious,' she says. 'It's my research - what happens to all of us in our lives.' She says she doesn't use friends in her books, just situations that are common to us all. 'Have you noticed this trend for men to leave their wives when they all get in to their forties and fifties? What's a woman to do? Trade down, I say. Go and pursue younger men. Have endless unadulterated sex, or maybe adulterated sex if you are still married"

James Baldwin & Barack Obama

Colm Tóibín writes on them in the October 23, 2008 issue of The New York Review of Books.

"It seemed important, as both men set about making their marks on the world, for them to establish before anything else that their stories began when their fathers died and that they set out alone without a father's shadow or a father's permission. James Baldwin's Notes of a Native Son, published in 1951, begins: "On the 29th of July, in 1943, my father died." Baldwin was almost nineteen at the time. Barack Obama's Dreams from My Father, published in 1995, begins also with the death of his father: "A few months after my twenty-first birthday, a stranger called to give me the news."

Both men quickly then established their own actual distance from their fathers, which made their grief sharper and more lonely, but also made clear to the reader that they had a right to speak with authority, to offer this version of themselves partly because they themselves, through force of will and a steely sense of character, had invented the voice they were now using, had not been trained by any other man to be the figure they had become.[1] "I had not known my father very well," Baldwin wrote.We got on badly, partly because we shared, in our different fashions, the vice of stubborn pride. When he was dead I realized that I had hardly ever spoken to him. When he had been dead a long time I began to wish I had.

Of his father, Barack Obama wrote:

At the time of his death, my father remained a myth to me, both more and less than a man. He had left Hawaii back in 1963, when I was only two years old, so that as a child I knew him only through the stories that my mother and grandparents told.Both men then, using photographs and memories, commented on their fathers' blackness. In both cases it seemed important to state or suggest that the father was more black than the son".

Witness to poverty: a tale with modern echoes -William Woodruff

"Bookshops across Britain this week sold out of The Road to Nab End, the bestselling autobiography of historian William Woodruff, who has died at the age of 92. The book tells of his impoverished childhood in the Lancashire cotton town of Blackburn in the 1920s and there could be no better primer for life in the credit crunch age. Anyone who feels poor today should measure themselves against Woodruff - and see what he made of himself".

ODD BOOK TITLE

Italian without words by Don Cangelosi Meadowbrook Press 1989 -available here

QUOTE OF THE WEEK

"Laugh and the world laughs with you. Snore and you sleep alone". Anthony Burgess.