• About
  • The Red Witch: A Biography of Katharine Susannah Prichard
  • My novel: The Fur

Nathan Hobby, a biographer in Perth

~ The life of Katharine Susannah Prichard, the art of biography, and other things

Nathan Hobby, a biographer in Perth

Tag Archives: Lionel Shriver

Lionel Shriver on Literature and Religion

20 Thursday Feb 2014

Posted by Nathan Hobby in Uncategorized

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

atheism, Christianity, Lionel Shriver, Perth Writers Festival, speeches

Tonight I attended the Perth Writers Festival opening address from novelist Lionel Shriver on Literature and Religion. I have long wanted to hear more about Shriver’s thoughts on religion, knowing that she is an atheist with a father who is a prominent theologian.

I had imagined she had at least had a period of belief in her childhood and youth only to reject it; but by her own account, she never believed. She began questioning Christianity by the age of eight and at thirteen had to be pulled (by her hair, she adds) to church.

For her, religious belief is incomprehensible, and that has why she has almost never written about it. (Her one sympathetic religious character, the elderly Gabriel in So Much For All That, loses his faith in God over the course of the novel.) While I feel atheism makes far more sense to me than to most people of faith (as in, I get why people are atheists), her lack of any belief in the possibility of God ever is a little incomprehensible to me, especially when she was brought up in a home steeped with God-talk.

She remarked at one point that religion takes away the ambiguity of the world, the mystery of existence, which is one of the pleasures of life. Of course, faith should have its own mystery and ambiguity. And her atheism could be seen to lack these qualities.

Shriver disproves a theory I’ve harboured in my mind: that it’s unintelligent fundamentalism which produces atheist children; her parents are both intelligent, engaged people, with, she says, high IQs. The moderate Presbyterian faith they brought her up in was not a fundamentalist one.

I was unsurprised by Shriver’s stridency against religion. Her writing is always strident, always serious (even when it’s trying not to be), and often didactic. She was all these things tonight. She also lived up to the strengths of her fiction – insightful and even generous as she spoke of the common ground she has defined between the way her father has lived his life and the way she’s lived hers.

[Book Review] Lionel Shriver’s Take on Death and Money

24 Monday May 2010

Posted by Nathan Hobby in book review

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Lionel Shriver

So Much For That, Lionel Shriver (2010)

Lionel Shriver’s new novel is getting mixed reviews. It will inevitably be compared unfavourably with her most successful novel, We Need To Talk About Kevin, a comparison she’ll be living down for the rest of her life.

I finished it on Saturday, and think it’s a flawed, overly long and harrowing read, but also compelling and insightful. The main character is Shep Knacker, who sold off his business ten years ago with the intention of moving to a third world country and living cheaply off the proceeds for the rest of his life. Right when he decides to make an ultimatum to his wife Glynis – come with me or I’ll go by myself – she reveals she has mesothelioma. Shep is a good man, and abandons his hope of his ‘Afterlife’ to care for his wife. Her treatment absorbs all his money, even with the health insurance provided by the job he hates.

Until its rather dissonant, almost comic ending, it is an unrelentingly bleak novel, the sort of story to make you wonder what the point of life is. Not only is the treatment futile and awful, but the supporting characters are Shep’s best friend Jackson and his wife Helen with their daughter who has a rare degenerative disease which makes her life a constant miserable trial. Shriver constantly indulges Jackson’s rants about the state of America. They become repetitive and spin the novel out a long way, and they’re also a little annoying – he is not as articulate as Shriver writing in her own voice in her very interesting newspaper columns and doesn’t hold as nuanced opinions. Yet it is also a book filled with insights into money, work, marriage and conduct of life.

In Lionel’s apparent act of revenge against her Presbyterian theologian father, Shep’s Presbyterian minister father loses his faith in God at the end of his life. I hate to think what Donald Shriver thinks of that. Or maybe he and Lionel can laugh about it. (I doubt it.) It stung me reading that; imagine losing one’s faith in the face of death? It would make a lot of your life feel wasted, particularly in his – or my – case.

There are too many secondary characters who are too nasty or too selfish – Shep’s boss, his sister, ‘s family. Subtley is really important in dealing with such heavy subjects, and this novel has very little subtlety. But it does have a compulsive narrative – I wanted to know what was going to happen and I cared about the characters, even and especially as the book enveloped me in the dread-filled fog of death.

Lionel Shriver on holidays

05 Friday Feb 2010

Posted by Nathan Hobby in autobiographical

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

holidays, Lionel Shriver

i just returned from a great holiday, but even it wasn’t completely free of my ambivalence about holidays. I hate packing, I hate unpacking, I find it stressful choosing somewhere to stay, and I often wonder what I should be doing. (I don’t like having to answer what I did on a holiday, because I generally like to do not much at all. Not this frantic activity some require, see at least three sights a day.)

I liked discovering a kindred soul (besides my wife) in Lionel Shriver, who has outright hatred of the idea of a holiday. She writes excellently as always in her anti-holiday rant.

She has a new novel due out next month, which has already attracted some unfriendly reviews on goodreads.com. I wonder if it was people who had seen an advance copy, liars or confused readers. They didn’t sound like proper reviewers who I would bother sending an advance copy to.

[Thursday 3pm #32] The week in texts

05 Thursday Nov 2009

Posted by Nathan Hobby in film review

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

Don Watson, Lionel Shriver, nonfiction, Paul Auster

On Saturday night I saw The Imaginarium of Dr Parnassus, famous for being Heath Ledger’s final film. (Interestingly, to me at least, my cousin is married to his cousin.) I’m always disappointed by Terry Gilliam films – they promise a lot, have fascinating moments and concepts, but are undisciplined, unfocused. The struggling travelling caravan of the immortal Dr Parnassus making its way around London is fascinating and the strange worlds of people’s fantasies as they enter his mirror are enjoyable. Just don’t expect too much sense.

On Tuesday night I watched Darren Aronofsky’s 2008 film The Wrestler. I was underwhelmed. It’s a well directed, well acted drama about a washed up wrestler who has nothing to live for but his wrestling, with a parallel drawn between his physical performance in the ring and those of his stripper friend. It is strongly realist, in stark contrast to his other films, Pi, Requiem for a Dream and Fountain, all of which are surreal.

On Wednesday I read in The Australian Literary Review with great interest a writer I like a lot – Lionel Shriver – writing about my favourite writer, Paul Auster. She claims to know his work quite well, and praises him as a great storyteller. She puts her finger on one important quality of his work:

The word “readable” doesn’t do this quality justice. Auster has such a sweet, clear, inviting voice that his novels go down like lemonade. While his characters are vivid, his genius is plot, of which readers of literary fiction are too often starved.

But she thinks he falls short of Philip Roth; unlike Roth, one comes away from Auster – she contends – with an ‘absence of an intellectual, psychological or political souvenir’. His stories are just stories – no meat, just lemonade.

Hmmm. I think she’s wrong. At his best, Auster has a lot of psychological insight into the way we live our lives, the way we respond to choices and circumstances. His souvenirs – for me – are existential, clues to the conduct of life. A sense that someone else lives in the kind of world I live in. But I think I know what she means.

All through the week I’ve been reading Don Watson’s book about America. I’ve been dissatisfied, even a narrative like this is no substitute for reading a novel at the same time. (I had just given up on Geraldine Brooks’ People of the Book; I found her prose too annoying, slipping between colloquial and formal, and the feel of popular fiction, with its cliches and a certain kind of first person voice.) I have been thinking about moving to nonfiction for my next book after the library novel. I think it may bring together the two sides of my personality/ interests better than fiction – the researcher in me. But it wouldn’t be the kind of book Watson is writing. It would be less personal, and not have opinions in it.

Watson’s is a rambling travelogue, beautifully written, that keeps recurring around the centrality of fundamentalist Christianity to the experience of living in America. I have an endless fascination and horror with fundamentalist Christianity, and so I find this interesting, all the things he hears on the radio and sees on the telly, all the signs he sees about Jesus. There’s a lot more to it, of course, it’s just as much about politics and history and travel.

Enter your email address to follow this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

Join 269 other subscribers

Nathan on Twitter

My Tweets

Categories

  • academic (9)
  • archives and sources (8)
  • autobiographical (58)
  • biographers (10)
  • biographical method (24)
  • biographical quests (16)
  • biographies (16)
    • political biography (1)
  • biographies of living subjects (2)
  • biographies of writers, artists & musicians (11)
  • biographies of writers, artists and musicians (20)
  • biography as a literary form (8)
  • biography in fiction (2)
  • biography in the news (2)
  • books (229)
    • authors (19)
    • book review (167)
    • reading (23)
  • creative nonfiction (9)
  • daily life (2)
  • Daily Prompt (2)
  • death (21)
  • digital humanities (3)
  • fiction (6)
  • film and television biographies (5)
  • film review (48)
  • found objects (3)
  • historical biographies (1)
  • history (20)
  • In the steps of KSP (4)
  • Katharine Susannah Prichard (97)
    • My KSP biography (23)
  • Katharine Susannah Prichard's associates and connections (14)
  • Katharine Susannah Prichard's writings (33)
  • libraries (4)
  • life (20)
  • link (22)
  • links (39)
  • lists (28)
  • local history and heritage (1)
  • media (4)
  • memes and urban myths (1)
  • memoirs (9)
  • meta (2)
  • music (18)
  • news (9)
  • news and events (27)
  • obituary (1)
  • Old writing found on a floppy disk (1)
  • poetry (5)
  • politics and current affairs (24)
    • climate change (1)
  • prologues and introductions (2)
  • psychological aspects of biography (3)
  • quotes (22)
  • R.I.P. (9)
  • reading report (3)
  • religion (1)
  • religious biography (1)
  • research (5)
  • role of the biographer within the biography (2)
  • Series: A-Z of Katharine Susannah Prichard (26)
  • Series: Corona Diary (1)
  • Series: Saturday 10am (14)
  • Series: Short Stories (2016) (6)
  • Series: The Tourist (2013) (6)
  • Series: Thursday 3pm feature posts (2009) (35)
  • structure of biographies (3)
  • technology and the digital world (2)
  • television (3)
  • the nature of biography (4)
  • this blog (10)
  • Uncategorized (31)
  • Western Australia (26)
  • writing (41)

Archives

Recent Comments

Harold Coppock on Wandu, the lost manor in …
Faith Peters on Used tea bags for missionaries…
The Red Witch: A Bio… on Signed copies of The Red Witch…
Seasons Greetings, 2… on An A to Z of Katharine Susanna…

Bookmarks

  • Adventures in Biography
  • ANZ LitLovers LitBlog
  • Bernice Barry
  • It only goes up to your knees
  • Jane Bryony Rawson
  • Jenn Plays Recorder
  • Katharine Susannah Prichard Writers' Centre
  • Laura Sewell Matter: Essayist and Biographer
  • Mutually said: Poets Vegan Anarchist Pacifist
  • Resident Judge
  • Speaking Thylacine
  • The Australian Legend
  • Timothy Parkin Poetry
  • Treefall Writing – Melinda Tognini
  • Whispering Gums
  • Wrapped up in books: the home of Guy Salvidge

Top Posts

  • Paul Auster's Moon Palace : an overview
  • Reader's Digest Condensed Books: 'as difficult to dispose of as bins of radioactive waste'
  • [Thursday 3pm #4] The tragedy of Robert Wadlow, world's tallest man?
  • About
  • Elizabeth Macarthur: A Life at the Edge of the World by Michelle Scott Tucker

Blog Stats

  • 161,107 hits

Tag Cloud

9/11 19th century 33 1920s 1921 1930s 1950s 1970s 1971 1981 2000s 2004 2011 2015 2017 20000 Days on Earth A.S. Byatt Aboriginals activism Adam Begley Adrian Mole adultery afterlife Agatha Christie Alan Hollinghurst Alberto Manguel Alfred Deakin Amazing Grace Americana Amy Grant An American Romance Andre Tchaikowsky Andrew McGahan angela myers anne fadiman Anne Rice Arabian Nights archives art arts funding A Serious Man Ash Wednesday ASIO atheism Atonement Australia Australian film Australian literature Australian Short Story Festival autism autobiography autodidact Barbara Vine beach Belle Costa da Greene Bell Jar best best-of Bible Big Issue Bill Callahan biographical ethics biographical quest genre biographies birthday birthdays Black Opal Bleak House Blinky Bill blogging blogs Blue Blades Bodega's Bunch bog Booker book launch booksale Borges Brenda Niall Brian Matthews Brian McLaren Britney Spears Burial Rites Burke and Wills buskers C.S. Lewis C.S. Lewis canon capitalism Carol Shields Carson McCullers Catcher in the Rye Catholicism celebrities Charles Dickens Charlie Kaufman childhood Child of the Hurricane children's books Choir of Gravediggers Christianity Christian writing Christina Stead Christmas Christopher Beha Cinque Terra Claire Tomalin classics cliches climate change Coen brothers coincidence Collie Collyer coming of age Communism concert Condensed Books consumerism Coonardoo Cormac McCarthy Corrections cosy fiction Dara Horn David Copperfield David Ireland David Marr David Suchet death Death of a president definition demolition Dennis LeHane dentist diaries divorce doctorow Doctor Who documentaries donald shriver Don DeLillo Don DeLillo Donna Mazza Donna Tartt Don Watson Dostovesky doubt drama dreams of revolution Drusilla Modjeska E.M. Forster ebooks editing Eichmann Eisenstein Elizabeth Kostova email empathy ensmallification existentialism faith Falling Man fame families fantasy fiction film and television folk football Frank Barscombe Fremantle Press G.K. Chesterton Gabrielle Carey Gallipoli genealogical fiction Genesis Geoff Nicholson George W. Bush Gerald Glaskin Gilead Golden Miles Goldfields Trilogy Graham Greene grandad great novels Greenmount Guinness World Records Guy Salvidge Hannah Arendt Hannah Kent Hans Koning Hans Koningsberger Harper Lee Haxby's Circus Hazel Rowley He-Man headers heaven Heidegger hell Henrietta Lacks Henry Morton Stanley Herman Hesse heroes Hey Dad! historical fiction history Holden Caulfield holidays Homer & Langley Home Song Stories House of Cards house of zealots House of Zealots Hugo Throssell humour Ian McEwan In between the sheets Indonesia Infamous Inside Llewyn Davis interstellar interview Intimate Strangers Invisible Ireland ISBNs Ishiguro itunes J.D. Salinger J.M. Coetzee J.S. Battye Janet Malcolm Jennifer Egan JFK JFK assassination Joanna Rakoff Joel Schumacher John Burbidge John Fowles John Howard John Kinsella John Updike John Updike Jonathan Franzen journal writing JSB Judgment Day Julia Baird Julian Barnes Kafka Kalgoorlie Kate Grenville Katherine Mansfield Kevin Brockmeier King's Park KSP Writers' Centre language last ride Laurie Steed Left Behind Leonard Cohen Leo Tolstoy Libra Library of Babel Library of Babel Lila Lily and Madeleine links lionel shriver Lionel Shriver lists literary fiction literature Lleyton Hewitt lost book Louisa Louisa Lawson Louis Esson louis nowra love letter Lubbock Lytton Strachey Madelaine Dickie Man Booker man in the dark Margaret Atwood Margaret River Press Marilynne Robinson mark sandman meaning of life Melbourne Mel Hall meme memorialisation memory MH17 Michael Faber Mike Riddell Miles Franklin mining boom missionaries moleskine Moon Palace morphine Mother Teresa movies Music of Chance My Brilliant Career names Napoleon Narnia narrative Narrow Road to the Deep North Narziss and Goldmund Natalie Portman Nathaniel Hobbie national anthem Nick Cave Nina Bawden non-fiction nonfiction noughties novelists novels obituaries obscurity On Chesil Beach Parade's End Paris Hilton Passion of the Christ past patriotism Paul Auster Paul de Man Perth Perth Writers Festival Peter Ackroyd Peter Cowan Writers Centre phd Philip K. Dick Philip Seymour Hoffman pierpontmorgan poetry slam politics popular fiction popular science Possession postapocalyptic postmodernism Pride prophetic imagination publications Pulp Purity Queen Victoria Rabbit Angstrom radio Radio National Randolph Stow rating: 5/10 rating: 6/10 rating: 7/10 rating: 8/10 rating: 9/10 rating: 10/10 ratings reading fiction autobiographically reading report Rebecca Skloot recap red wine reincarnation juvenile fiction rejection review - music reviewing rewriting Richard Flanagan Richard Ford Rick Moody Roaring Nineties Robert Banks Robert Hughes Robert Silverberg Robert Wadlow Robinson Crusoe Rolf Harris romance Rome ruins Russell Crowe Ruth Rendell Sarah Murgatroyd scalpers science fiction Science of Sleep secondhand books Secret River sermon illustration sex short stories Silent Woman Simone Lazaroo Simpsons Siri Hustvedt slavery Smashing Pumpkins social interactions social justice some people i hate sources South Australia souvenirs speculation speech speeches sport status anxiety Stephen Lawhead Stranger's Child subtitles Subtle Flame Sue Townsend suicide Surprised By Hope Suzanne Falkiner Sylvia Plath Synecdoche TAG Hungerford Award tapes teabags Ted Hughes The Children Act The Cure The Fur The Imitation Game theology The Pioneers The Revolutionary Thomas Disch Thomas Hardy Thomas Henry Prichard Thomas Mann thriller time Tim La Haye Tim Winton Tolstoy Tom Wright top 10 Towering Inferno Tracy Ryan Trove Truman Capote tshirts TS Spivet Twelve Years a Slave underrated writers Underworld unwritten biographies urban myth USA vampires Venice Victoria Cross Victoriana Victorian era Victorianism Victoria Park video Voltron w Wake in Fright Walkabout Walter M. Miller war War and Peace war on terror Water Diviner Wellington St Bus Station Westerly Western Australia West Wing What Happened to Sophie Wilder? Whitlams wikipedia Wild Oats of Hans William Wilberforce Winston Churchill Witches of Eastwick Working Bullocks workshop World War One writers writing Writing NSW youth Zadie Smith Zeitgeist Zelig

Enter your email address to follow this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

Join 269 other subscribers

Pages

  • About
  • My novel: The Fur
  • The Red Witch: A Biography of Katharine Susannah Prichard

Categories

  • academic (9)
  • archives and sources (8)
  • autobiographical (58)
  • biographers (10)
  • biographical method (24)
  • biographical quests (16)
  • biographies (16)
    • political biography (1)
  • biographies of living subjects (2)
  • biographies of writers, artists & musicians (11)
  • biographies of writers, artists and musicians (20)
  • biography as a literary form (8)
  • biography in fiction (2)
  • biography in the news (2)
  • books (229)
    • authors (19)
    • book review (167)
    • reading (23)
  • creative nonfiction (9)
  • daily life (2)
  • Daily Prompt (2)
  • death (21)
  • digital humanities (3)
  • fiction (6)
  • film and television biographies (5)
  • film review (48)
  • found objects (3)
  • historical biographies (1)
  • history (20)
  • In the steps of KSP (4)
  • Katharine Susannah Prichard (97)
    • My KSP biography (23)
  • Katharine Susannah Prichard's associates and connections (14)
  • Katharine Susannah Prichard's writings (33)
  • libraries (4)
  • life (20)
  • link (22)
  • links (39)
  • lists (28)
  • local history and heritage (1)
  • media (4)
  • memes and urban myths (1)
  • memoirs (9)
  • meta (2)
  • music (18)
  • news (9)
  • news and events (27)
  • obituary (1)
  • Old writing found on a floppy disk (1)
  • poetry (5)
  • politics and current affairs (24)
    • climate change (1)
  • prologues and introductions (2)
  • psychological aspects of biography (3)
  • quotes (22)
  • R.I.P. (9)
  • reading report (3)
  • religion (1)
  • religious biography (1)
  • research (5)
  • role of the biographer within the biography (2)
  • Series: A-Z of Katharine Susannah Prichard (26)
  • Series: Corona Diary (1)
  • Series: Saturday 10am (14)
  • Series: Short Stories (2016) (6)
  • Series: The Tourist (2013) (6)
  • Series: Thursday 3pm feature posts (2009) (35)
  • structure of biographies (3)
  • technology and the digital world (2)
  • television (3)
  • the nature of biography (4)
  • this blog (10)
  • Uncategorized (31)
  • Western Australia (26)
  • writing (41)

Archives

Recent Comments

Harold Coppock on Wandu, the lost manor in …
Faith Peters on Used tea bags for missionaries…
The Red Witch: A Bio… on Signed copies of The Red Witch…
Seasons Greetings, 2… on An A to Z of Katharine Susanna…

Bookmarks

  • Adventures in Biography
  • ANZ LitLovers LitBlog
  • Bernice Barry
  • It only goes up to your knees
  • Jane Bryony Rawson
  • Jenn Plays Recorder
  • Katharine Susannah Prichard Writers' Centre
  • Laura Sewell Matter: Essayist and Biographer
  • Mutually said: Poets Vegan Anarchist Pacifist
  • Resident Judge
  • Speaking Thylacine
  • The Australian Legend
  • Timothy Parkin Poetry
  • Treefall Writing – Melinda Tognini
  • Whispering Gums
  • Wrapped up in books: the home of Guy Salvidge

Top Posts

  • Paul Auster's Moon Palace : an overview
  • Reader's Digest Condensed Books: 'as difficult to dispose of as bins of radioactive waste'
  • [Thursday 3pm #4] The tragedy of Robert Wadlow, world's tallest man?
  • About
  • Elizabeth Macarthur: A Life at the Edge of the World by Michelle Scott Tucker

Blog Stats

  • 161,107 hits

Tag Cloud

9/11 19th century 33 1920s 1921 1930s 1950s 1970s 1971 1981 2000s 2004 2011 2015 2017 20000 Days on Earth A.S. Byatt Aboriginals activism Adam Begley Adrian Mole adultery afterlife Agatha Christie Alan Hollinghurst Alberto Manguel Alfred Deakin Amazing Grace Americana Amy Grant An American Romance Andre Tchaikowsky Andrew McGahan angela myers anne fadiman Anne Rice Arabian Nights archives art arts funding A Serious Man Ash Wednesday ASIO atheism Atonement Australia Australian film Australian literature Australian Short Story Festival autism autobiography autodidact Barbara Vine beach Belle Costa da Greene Bell Jar best best-of Bible Big Issue Bill Callahan biographical ethics biographical quest genre biographies birthday birthdays Black Opal Bleak House Blinky Bill blogging blogs Blue Blades Bodega's Bunch bog Booker book launch booksale Borges Brenda Niall Brian Matthews Brian McLaren Britney Spears Burial Rites Burke and Wills buskers C.S. Lewis C.S. Lewis canon capitalism Carol Shields Carson McCullers Catcher in the Rye Catholicism celebrities Charles Dickens Charlie Kaufman childhood Child of the Hurricane children's books Choir of Gravediggers Christianity Christian writing Christina Stead Christmas Christopher Beha Cinque Terra Claire Tomalin classics cliches climate change Coen brothers coincidence Collie Collyer coming of age Communism concert Condensed Books consumerism Coonardoo Cormac McCarthy Corrections cosy fiction Dara Horn David Copperfield David Ireland David Marr David Suchet death Death of a president definition demolition Dennis LeHane dentist diaries divorce doctorow Doctor Who documentaries donald shriver Don DeLillo Don DeLillo Donna Mazza Donna Tartt Don Watson Dostovesky doubt drama dreams of revolution Drusilla Modjeska E.M. Forster ebooks editing Eichmann Eisenstein Elizabeth Kostova email empathy ensmallification existentialism faith Falling Man fame families fantasy fiction film and television folk football Frank Barscombe Fremantle Press G.K. Chesterton Gabrielle Carey Gallipoli genealogical fiction Genesis Geoff Nicholson George W. Bush Gerald Glaskin Gilead Golden Miles Goldfields Trilogy Graham Greene grandad great novels Greenmount Guinness World Records Guy Salvidge Hannah Arendt Hannah Kent Hans Koning Hans Koningsberger Harper Lee Haxby's Circus Hazel Rowley He-Man headers heaven Heidegger hell Henrietta Lacks Henry Morton Stanley Herman Hesse heroes Hey Dad! historical fiction history Holden Caulfield holidays Homer & Langley Home Song Stories House of Cards house of zealots House of Zealots Hugo Throssell humour Ian McEwan In between the sheets Indonesia Infamous Inside Llewyn Davis interstellar interview Intimate Strangers Invisible Ireland ISBNs Ishiguro itunes J.D. Salinger J.M. Coetzee J.S. Battye Janet Malcolm Jennifer Egan JFK JFK assassination Joanna Rakoff Joel Schumacher John Burbidge John Fowles John Howard John Kinsella John Updike John Updike Jonathan Franzen journal writing JSB Judgment Day Julia Baird Julian Barnes Kafka Kalgoorlie Kate Grenville Katherine Mansfield Kevin Brockmeier King's Park KSP Writers' Centre language last ride Laurie Steed Left Behind Leonard Cohen Leo Tolstoy Libra Library of Babel Library of Babel Lila Lily and Madeleine links lionel shriver Lionel Shriver lists literary fiction literature Lleyton Hewitt lost book Louisa Louisa Lawson Louis Esson louis nowra love letter Lubbock Lytton Strachey Madelaine Dickie Man Booker man in the dark Margaret Atwood Margaret River Press Marilynne Robinson mark sandman meaning of life Melbourne Mel Hall meme memorialisation memory MH17 Michael Faber Mike Riddell Miles Franklin mining boom missionaries moleskine Moon Palace morphine Mother Teresa movies Music of Chance My Brilliant Career names Napoleon Narnia narrative Narrow Road to the Deep North Narziss and Goldmund Natalie Portman Nathaniel Hobbie national anthem Nick Cave Nina Bawden non-fiction nonfiction noughties novelists novels obituaries obscurity On Chesil Beach Parade's End Paris Hilton Passion of the Christ past patriotism Paul Auster Paul de Man Perth Perth Writers Festival Peter Ackroyd Peter Cowan Writers Centre phd Philip K. Dick Philip Seymour Hoffman pierpontmorgan poetry slam politics popular fiction popular science Possession postapocalyptic postmodernism Pride prophetic imagination publications Pulp Purity Queen Victoria Rabbit Angstrom radio Radio National Randolph Stow rating: 5/10 rating: 6/10 rating: 7/10 rating: 8/10 rating: 9/10 rating: 10/10 ratings reading fiction autobiographically reading report Rebecca Skloot recap red wine reincarnation juvenile fiction rejection review - music reviewing rewriting Richard Flanagan Richard Ford Rick Moody Roaring Nineties Robert Banks Robert Hughes Robert Silverberg Robert Wadlow Robinson Crusoe Rolf Harris romance Rome ruins Russell Crowe Ruth Rendell Sarah Murgatroyd scalpers science fiction Science of Sleep secondhand books Secret River sermon illustration sex short stories Silent Woman Simone Lazaroo Simpsons Siri Hustvedt slavery Smashing Pumpkins social interactions social justice some people i hate sources South Australia souvenirs speculation speech speeches sport status anxiety Stephen Lawhead Stranger's Child subtitles Subtle Flame Sue Townsend suicide Surprised By Hope Suzanne Falkiner Sylvia Plath Synecdoche TAG Hungerford Award tapes teabags Ted Hughes The Children Act The Cure The Fur The Imitation Game theology The Pioneers The Revolutionary Thomas Disch Thomas Hardy Thomas Henry Prichard Thomas Mann thriller time Tim La Haye Tim Winton Tolstoy Tom Wright top 10 Towering Inferno Tracy Ryan Trove Truman Capote tshirts TS Spivet Twelve Years a Slave underrated writers Underworld unwritten biographies urban myth USA vampires Venice Victoria Cross Victoriana Victorian era Victorianism Victoria Park video Voltron w Wake in Fright Walkabout Walter M. Miller war War and Peace war on terror Water Diviner Wellington St Bus Station Westerly Western Australia West Wing What Happened to Sophie Wilder? Whitlams wikipedia Wild Oats of Hans William Wilberforce Winston Churchill Witches of Eastwick Working Bullocks workshop World War One writers writing Writing NSW youth Zadie Smith Zeitgeist Zelig

Blog at WordPress.com.

  • Follow Following
    • Nathan Hobby, a biographer in Perth
    • Join 269 other followers
    • Already have a WordPress.com account? Log in now.
    • Nathan Hobby, a biographer in Perth
    • Customize
    • Follow Following
    • Sign up
    • Log in
    • Report this content
    • View site in Reader
    • Manage subscriptions
    • Collapse this bar