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  1. Writing, Language & Reference

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  • Writing, Language & Reference

Writing, Language & Reference

Large 9781509881581

A Place for Everything - The Curious History of Alphabetical Order by Judith Flanders

$19.99 AUD

Category: Writing, Language & Reference

From a New York Times-bestselling historian comes the story of how the alphabet ordered our world.   A Place for Everything is the first-ever history of alphabetization, from the Library of Alexandria to Wikipedia. The story of alphabetical order has been shaped by some of history's most compelling char acters, such as industrious and enthusiastic early adopter Samuel Pepys and dedicated alphabet champion Denis Diderot. But though even George Washington was a proponent, many others stuck to older forms of classification -- Yale listed its students by their family's social status until 1886. And yet, while the order of the alphabet now rules -- libraries, phone books, reference books, even the order of entry for the teams at the Olympic Games -- it has remained curiously invisible.   With abundant inquisitiveness and wry humor, historian Judith Flanders traces the triumph of alphabetical order and offers a compendium of Western knowledge, from A to Z. A Times (UK) Best Book of 2020 ...Show more

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Large 9781593765897

Who We're Reading When We're Reading Murakami by David Karashima

$0.00 AUD

Category: Writing, Language & Reference

How did a loner destined for a niche domestic audience become one of the most famous writers alive? A rare look inside the making of the "Murakami Industry"--and a thought-provoking exploration of the role of translators and editors in the creation of global literary culture. Thirty years ago, when Haru ki Murakami's works were first being translated, they were part of a series of pocket-size English-learning guides released only in Japan. Today his books can be read in fifty languages and have won prizes and sold millions of copies globally. How did a loner destined for a niche domestic audience become one of the most famous writers alive? This book tells one key part of the story. Its cast includes an expat trained in art history who never intended to become a translator; a Chinese American ex-academic who never planned to work as an editor; and other publishing professionals in New York, London, and Tokyo who together introduced a pop-inflected, unexpected Japanese voice to the wider literary world. David Karashima synthesizes research, correspondence, and interviews with dozens of individuals--including Murakami himself--to examine how countless behind-the-scenes choices over the course of many years worked to build an internationally celebrated author's persona and oeuvre. His careful look inside the making of the "Murakami Industry" uncovers larger questions: What role do translators and editors play in framing their writers' texts? What does it mean to translate and edit "for a market"? How does Japanese culture get packaged and exported for the West? ...Show more

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Large 9781925713220

Literary Lion Tamers: Book Editors Who Made Publishing History by Craig Munro

$29.99 AUD

Category: Writing, Language & Reference

'Writers, their friends, enemies, editors, and publishers began to materialise out of the library's archive boxes, and I found myself setting off in search of these elusive, eccentric, and often quarrelsome characters.' In this unique and entertaining blend of memoir, biography, and literary detective w ork, highly respected former fiction editor Craig Munro recreates the lives and careers of Australia's most renowned literary editors and authors, spanning a century from the 1890s to the 1990s. Famous figures featured in this book include A.G. Stephens, who helped turn foundry worker Joseph Furphy's thousand-page handwritten manuscript into the enduring classic Such Is Life; P.R. Stephensen, who tangled with the irascible Xavier Herbert, working closely with the novelist to revise his unwieldy masterpiece Capricornia; Beatrice Davis, who cut Herbert's later novel Soldiers' Women in half, and whose lively literary soirees were the talk of Sydney; and award-winning fiction editor Rosanne Fitzgibbon, who was known as a friend and champion to her authors, including the prodigiously talented young novelist Gillian Mears. Throughout it all, in beguiling and elegant style, Craig Munro weaves his own reminiscences of a life in publishing while tracking down some of Australian literature's most fascinating and little-known stories. Literary Lion Tamers is a delight for anyone interested in the wild outer edges of the book world. ...Show more

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Large 9781760990046

How to Be an Author: The Business of Being a Writer in Australia by Georgia Richter; Deborah Hunn

$34.99 AUD

Category: Writing, Language & Reference

Georgia Richter and Deborah Hunn look at the business of becoming an author. In a friendly, informative and practical way they share all you need to know about inspiration and research, preparing to submit to a publisher, creating an author brand, legal, ethical and moral considerations, pitching and ef fective social media and much more. ...Show more

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Large 9780008361884

Genius and Ink - Virginia Woolf on How to Read by Virginia Woolf

$19.99 AUD

Category: Writing, Language & Reference

FOREWORD BY ALI SMITH WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY FRANCESCA WADE Who better to serve as a guide to great books and their authors than Virginia Woolf? In the early years of its existence, the Times Literary Supplement published some of the finest writers in English: T. S. Eliot, Henry James and E. M. Fors ter among them. But one of the paper's defining voices was Virginia Woolf, who produced a string of superb essays between the two World Wars. The weirdness of Elizabethan plays, the pleasure of revisiting favourite novels, the supreme examples of Charlotte Brontë, George Eliot and Henry James, Thomas Hardy and Joseph Conrad: all are here, in anonymously published pieces, in which may be glimpsed the thinking behind Woolf's works of fiction and the enquiring, feminist spirit of A Room of One's Own. Here is Woolf the critical essayist, offering, at one moment, a playful hypothesis and, at another, a judgement laid down with the authority of a twentieth-century Dr Johnson. Here is Woolf working out precisely what's great about Hardy, and how Elizabeth Barrett Browning made books a "substitute for living" because she was "forbidden to scamper on the grass". Above all, here is Virginia Woolf the reader, whose enthusiasm for great literature remains palpable and inspirational today. ...Show more

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Large 9781644210215

Pity the Reader - On Writing with Style by Kurt Vonnegut; Suzanne McConnell

$34.99 AUD

Category: Writing, Language & Reference

Kurt Vonnegut used to like to say, "Practicing an art form is a way to grow your soul." He would screw up his lips into a prune face after he said this because of how important he believed this idea to be. Pity the Reader is the very embodiment of that idea, a book about writing and life and why the two go together.It includes rare photos and reproductions, Vonnegut's own account in his own words of how he became a writer and why it matters, and previously untold stories by and about Vonnegut as teacher and friend.   It turns out he was generous to a fault about students' writing, idiosyncratic, a bit tortured and always creative as a teacher, and here in this book that portrait becomes our gateway into getting to know Kurt Vonnegut better than we ever have before as a human being.   Vonnegut recounts that his favorite work of art among all those his children produced "so far" is a letter his daughter Nanette wrote to a disgruntled customer, after he had tormented a new waitress at the restaurant where she had just started working, and then he shares the letter with us. Thus he illustrates his first writing rule: "Find a subject you care about." This book is full of such rare, intimately teachable moments, and they add up to something special. Pity the Reader indeed. ...Show more

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Large 9780262539494

The Storm of Creativity by Kyna Leski; John Maeda (Foreword by)

$29.99 AUD

Category: Writing, Language & Reference | Series: Simplicity: Design, Technology, Business, Life Ser.

The stages of the creative process--from "unlearning" to beginning again--seen through examples from the practice of artists, architects, poets, inventors, scientists, and others. Although each instance of creativity is singular and specific, Kyna Leski tells us, the creative process is universal. Artis ts, architects, poets, inventors, scientists, and others all navigate the same stages of the process in order to discover something that does not yet exist. All of us must work our way through the empty page, the blank screen, writer''s block, confusion, chaos, and doubt. In this book, Leski draws from her observations and experiences as a teacher, student, maker, writer, and architect to describe the workings of the creative process. Leski sees the creative process as being like a storm; it slowly begins to gather and take form until it overtakes us--if we are willing to let it. It is dynamic, continually in motion; it starts, stops, rages and abates, ebbs and flows. In illustrations that accompany each chapter, she maps the arc of the creative process by tracing the path of water droplets traveling the stages of a storm. Leski describes unlearning, ridding ourselves of preconceptions; only when we realize what we don''t know can we pose the problem that we need to solve. We gather evidence--with notebook jottings, research, the collection of objects--propelling the process. We perceive and conceive; we look ahead without knowing where we are going; we make connections. We pause, retreat, and stop, only to start again. To illustrate these stages of the process, Leski draws on examples of creative practice that range from Paul Klee to Steve Jobs, from the discovery of continental drift to the design of Antoni Gaudí''s Sagrada Familia. Creativity, Leski tells us, is a path with no beginning or end; it is ongoing. This revelatory view of the creative process will be an essential guide for anyone engaged in creative discovery. The Creative Process Unlearning Problem Making Gathering and Tracking Propelling Perceiving and Conceiving Seeing Ahead Connecting Pausing Continuing t accompany each chapter, st accompany each chapter, she maps the arc of the creative process by tracing the path of water droplets traveling the stages of a storm. Leski describes unlearning, ridding ourselves of preconceptions; only when we realize what we don''t know can we pose the problem that we need to solve. We gather evidence--with notebook jottings, research, the collection of objects--propelling the process. We perceive and conceive; we look ahead without knowing where we are going; we make connections. We pause, retreat, and stop, only to start again. To illustrate these stages of the process, Leski draws on examples of creative practice that range from Paul Klee to Steve Jobs, from the discovery of continental drift to the design of Antoni Gaudí''s Sagrada Familia. Creativity, Leski tells us, is a path with no beginning or end; it is ongoing. This revelatory view of the creative process will be an essential guide for anyone engaged in creative discovery. The Creative Process Unlearning Problem Making Gathering and Tracking Propelling Perceiving and Conceiving Seeing Ahead Connecting Pausing Continuing t accompany each chapter, s Problem Making Gathering and Tracking Propelling Perceiving and Conceiving Seeing Ahead Connecting Pausing Continuingt accompany each chapter, she maps the arc of the creative process by tracing the path of water droplets traveling the stages of a storm. Leski describes unlearning, ridding ourselves of preconceptions; only when we realize what we don''t know can we pose the problem that we need to solve. We gather evidence--with notebook jottings, research, the collection of objects--propelling the process. We perceive and conceive; we look ahead without knowing where we are going; we make connections. We pause, retreat, and stop, only to start again. To illustrate these stages of the process, Leski draws on examples of creative practice that range from Paul Klee to Steve Jobs, from the discovery of continental drift to the design of Antoni Gaudí''s Sagrada Familia. Creativity, Leski tells us, is a path with no beginning or end; it is ongoing. This revelatory view of the creative process will be an essential guide for anyone engaged in creative discovery. The Creative Process Unlearning Problem Making Gathering and Tracking Propelling Perceiving and Conceiving Seeing Ahead Connecting Pausing Continuing Problem Making Gathering and Tracking Propelling Perceiving and Conceiving Seeing Ahead Connecting Pausing Continuing>Gathering and Tracking Propelling Perceiving and Conceiving Seeing Ahead Connecting Pausing Continuing Problem Making Gathering and Tracking Propelling Perceiving and Conceiving Seeing Ahead Connecting Pausing Continuing ...Show more

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Large 9780691210148

How the Classics Made Shakespeare by Jonathan Bate

$34.99 AUD

Category: Writing, Language & Reference | Series: E. H. Gombrich Lecture Ser.

From one of our most eminent and accessible literary critics, a groundbreaking account of how the Greek and Roman classics forged Shakespeare's imagination   Ben Jonson famously accused Shakespeare of having small Latin and less Greek. But he was exaggerating. Shakespeare was steeped in the classics. Shaped by his grammar school education in Roman literature, history, and rhetoric, he moved to London, a city that modeled itself on ancient Rome. He worked in a theatrical profession that had inherited the conventions and forms of classical drama, and he read deeply in Ovid, Virgil, and Seneca. In a book that combines stylistic brilliance, accessibility, and extraordinary range, acclaimed literary critic and biographer Jonathan Bate, one of the world's leading authorities on Shakespeare, offers groundbreaking insights into how, perhaps more than any other influence, the classics made Shakespeare the writer he became. ...Show more

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Large 9781925367669

Aussie Slang by Lolla Stewart

$17.99 AUD

Category: Writing, Language & Reference

The ever popular and thoroughly entertaining, Aussie Slang Dictionary (13th edition), is back to help you decipher and speak the true local language. Full of dazzling definitions from true-blue Aussies, you'll never be lost for words with this collection of colourful sayings. From 'aerial ping-pong' (A FL) to 'on the wrong tram' (to be following the wrong train of thought) and finishing up with some verbal diarrhoea (never-ending blather), your mind will be brimming with useful (and not so useful!) sayings for your next run-in with a true Aussie character. ...Show more

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Large 9781615933235

The Writer's Journey - 25th Anniversary Edition - Mythic Structure for Writers - Library Edition by Christopher Vogler

$49.99 AUD

Category: Writing, Language & Reference

Originally an influential memo Vogler wrote for Walt Disney Animation executives regarding The Lion King, The Writer's Journey details a twelve-stage, myth-inspired method that has galvanized Hollywood's treatment of cinematic storytelling. A format that once seldom deviated beyond a traditional three-a ct blueprint, Vogler's comprehensive theory of story structure and character development has met with universal acclaim, and is detailed herein using examples from myths, fairy tales, and classic movies. This book has changed the face of screenwriting worldwide over the last 25 years, and continues to do so. ...Show more

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Large 9781529311518

Word Perfect: Curious Coinages and Etymological First Aid For Every Day of the Year by Susie Dent

$32.99 AUD

Category: Writing, Language & Reference

'Susie Dent is a one-off. She breathes life and fun into words and language' Pam Ayres 'Susie Dent is a national treasure' Richard Osman Welcome to a year of wonder through the English language with Susie Dent, lexicographer extraordinaire and queen of Countdown's Dictionary Corner. From Turning a Blind Eye (Nelson putting the telescope to his missing eye to ignore the order to stop fighting) to why May Day became a distress call; from stealing someone's thunder to the real Jack the Lad, from tartle (forgetting someone's name) to snaccident (unintentionally eating a whole packet of biscuits), WORD PERFECT is her brilliant linguistic almanac full of unforgettable true stories tied to every day of the year. You'll never be lost for words again. ...Show more

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Large 9780226155036

Jane Austen's Cults and Cultures by Claudia L Johnson (Princeton?University, USA Princeton University Princeton?University, USA Princeton?University, USA Princeton?University, USA Princeton?University, USA Princeton?University, USA Princeton?University, USA Princeton?University, USA Princeton?University, USA)

$47.95 AUD

Category: Writing, Language & Reference

Jane Austen completed only six novels, but enduring passion for the author and her works has driven fans to read these books repeatedly, in book clubs or solo, while also inspiring countless film adaptations, sequels, and even spoofs involving zombies and sea monsters. Austen's lasting appeal to both po pular and elite audiences has lifted her to legendary status. In "Jane Austen's Cults and Cultures," Claudia L. Johnson shows how Jane Austen became "Jane Austen," a figure intensely--sometimes even wildly--venerated, and often for markedly different reasons.Johnson begins by exploring the most important monuments and portraits of Austen, considering how these artifacts point to an author who is invisible and yet whose image is inseparable from the characters and fictional worlds she created. She then passes through the four critical phases of Austen's reception--the Victorian era, the First and Second World Wars, and the establishment of the Austen House and Museum in 1949--and ponders what the adoration of Austen has meant to readers over the past two centuries. For her fans, the very concept of "Jane Austen" encapsulates powerful ideas and feelings about history, class, manners, intimacy, language, and the everyday. By respecting the intelligence of past commentary about Austen, Johnson shows, we are able to revisit her work and unearth fresh insights and new critical possibilities. An insightful look at how and why readers have cherished one of our most beloved authors, "Jane Austen's Cults and Cultures "will be a valuable addition to the library of any fan of the divine Jane. ...Show more

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