Category Archives: Book Review

Book Review: My Stroke of Insight

Many people are familiar with the TED (Technology Entertainment Design) talk given my Jill Bolte Taylor – a brain scientist who experienced a massive stroke in 1996. What made her experience unique was not only that she was experiencing what … Continue reading

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Book Review: The Slap

I heard the buzz about this book. It was making the rounds of all my friends and the reviews were positive. So, it was a good push for me to give Tsiolkas another try, I’d read “Jesus Man” and found … Continue reading

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Book Review: Mary Oliver, New and Selected Poems, Volume Two

  For someone who has written two books of poetry, I am, perhaps, not as regular a reader of poetry as I should be. I do not keep track of the many vibrant internet publications, nor read literary journals regularly. … Continue reading

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Book Review: Kyung Ran Jo’s Tongue

“Tongue” is Kyung Ran Jo’s first novel to be translated into English, but she’s the author of four short story collections, another novel and a collection of essays. The scuttlebutt on the book is that the author was a judge … Continue reading

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Book Review: Best American Poetry 2010

I’ve always enjoyed the Best American Poetry series – I’m pretty sure my friend, journalist John Reed, turned me onto them when I lived in Brussels in the mid-90s. Since then, I’ve inconsistently picked them up, but when I have, … Continue reading

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Paris to the Moon: A Book Review of Sorts

Three of my great pleasures in life: Travel. Eating. Reading. These coalesced in the most fantastic of ways in Paris, on this last trip in March 2011. I’d finished the wonderful Australian classic novel, “Cloudstreet” by Tim Winton and was … Continue reading

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Book Review: Automaton Biographies

I’ve just finished reading Larissa Lai’s first full-length poetry collection, Automaton Biographies. I’ve worked with Larissa before, some of her wonderful poems were included in “Swallowing Clouds: An Anthology of Chinese-Canadian Poetry”, and I’ve read her amazing novel, “When Fox … Continue reading

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The Books I Read in 2010

The books I read in 2010 (it seems to have been a good year for reading) – the two bolds are my top recommendations for the year: Jee Leong Koh’s Equal to the Earth (Poetry) Eli Jaxon-Bear’s The Enneagram of … Continue reading

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A few words on "Out of the Box"

I finally finished reading “Out of the Box: Contemporary Australian Gay and Lesbian Poets” edited by Michael Farrell and Jill Jones, having received my contributor’s copy a little before the Sydney launch as part of the Queer Thinking event at … Continue reading

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Book Review: The Lost Library

Books are years in the making, and it was a few years ago that Tom Cardamone, asked whether I’d be interested in contributing an essay to a collection about favourite gay books that were out-of-print. Tom and I had connected … Continue reading

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