Our picks from the internet this week.
Guardian Australia launch
There’s been a huge buzz this week about the much-anticipated launch of Guardian Australia, which finally happened on Monday. Original Australian content includes David Marr’s first piece as staff writer, reporting on George Pell’s testimony on the issue of abuse in the Catholic church.
Elmo Keep has been vocally arguing against the Guardian’s reposting content from a selection of Australian websites without paying the original writers (which is not unique to the Guardian, we should say), and has pointed interested readers to her recent article on the problems with the free economy.
Amazon one-star reviews of famous novels
This collection of one-star Amazon reviews of books in Time magazine’s 100 best novels of all time is hilarious …Of Joseph Heller’s Catch 22, the reviewer says, ‘Obviously, a lot people were smoking a lot of weed in the ’60s to think this thing is worth reading.’ John Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath is incredulously dismissed as ‘about dirt!’. And someone writes of William Golding’s Lord of the Flies: ‘I am obsessed with Survivor, so I thought it would be fun. WRONG!!!’ This was our favourite, though, on C.S. Lewis’s The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe:
I bought these books to have something nice to read to my grandkids. I had to stop, however, because the books are nothing more than advertisements for ‘Turkish Delight’, a candy popular in the U.K. The whole point of buying books for my grandkids was to give them a break from advertising, and here (throughout) are ads for this ‘Turkish Delight’! How much money is this Mr. Lewis getting from the Cadbury’s chocolate company anyway? This man must be laughing to the bank.
Jessica Francis Kane: How to be a publicist
We serendipitously stumbled on this beautifully written, wryly funny little memoir essay about working in publishing in New York, by writer Jessica Francis Kane, yesterday. It’s a delicious trip down the memory lane of the recent past, when press releases were faxed and phone calls were the main method of communication (not an email in sight). And it’s the all-too-familiar story of a book-loving English graduate who wants to be an editor, but falls into publicity instead. Jessica Francis Kane is now the author of the novel The Report and the short-story collection The Close.
When I’m home, all the friends and neighbours who have heard I work in publishing think I’m an editor. Explaining to each of them what a publicist does is tiring. After a few glasses of wine, however, it gets easier. It’s a bit like be