I recently saw an article about a French intelligence agent who escaped from a militant Islamic terror group that was holding him hostage in Mogadishu, Somalia.

The article can be read here: www.theaustralian.news.com.au/sto...html

This comment reportedly made by the escaped man caught my eye: "You have a choice", he said. "Either you wait and be killed, or you try and be free."

That is a comment that could have been lifted from a book written by the ... read more

Interesting news for us Venice lovers - Venice has its first professional female gondolier, apparently the first one ever (and Venice has been there for 900 years or so). See the picture of Giorgia Boscolo, aged 23, a mother of two, and the daughter of a gondolier in a trade that is usually passed from father to son. You can read about Giorgia and her views on her new profession here:www.ansa.it/site/notizie...26369254.html [ANSA NEWS, ITALY]

The wei... read more

I walked into what is probably Melbourne's largest bookstore, physically speaking, earlier today, to find a display of books on 2012, the last year of the Mayan calendar. The year 2012 has inspired some interesting books. All of the books that I picked up to look at had references to things like UFOs. An "end of the world" vibe was pretty strong in a lot of these books.

The book I ended up buying was The Mayan Prophecies for 2012 by Gerald Benedict, which is a commentary on the calend... read more

Who writes those blurbs you see on the back of books? Have you ever wondered? What about those quotes from reviewers? How are they chosen? I had to write a book blurb recently. I opted for a 'sober assessment' style. But some blurbs and quoted reviews that I have read recently have made me think twice about this approach.

In James Hawes' biography of the great German-language novelist, Franz Kafka, "Excavating Kafka", Hawes describes the reviewers' quotes printed in a newspaper advert... read more

We imagine things. And we experience emotions. And we experience real emotions because of our imaginary experiences. So, is the world of the imagination part of the real world or not? This is the psychological basis of fiction and drama and comedy - to create an imagined world in which we have real emotions. We enter into the world created by the author. We feel angry, sad, happy, the whole range of human emotions, as we participate in the 'life' of the characters we observe. We don't... read more