Text Publishing will launch a series of ‘Australian Classics’ with 30 titles in May. The books, which contain new introductions from various well-known writers, will be priced at $12.95, with 28 of the 30 launch titles to be available as $12.95 ebooks too.
Text publisher Michael Heyward told Bookseller+Publisher ‘we set the price for Text Classics at $12.95 because we want readers to surrender to their impulse to curl up at last with The Women in Black or A Difficult Young Man.’
‘In a world of virtual infinite availability, curatorship is everything in publishing and bookselling. That’s why we are rushing back to the future in which the independent bookstore on the corner will thrive. We all want people we trust to help us make our choices in life, and especially so with books because a huge part of the pleasure of reading is the pleasure of talking about the book afterwards with our friends. Great booksellers all know this and that’s why they take the curatorship of their bookshops so seriously.
A signature series like the Text Classics, in which every book has been handpicked, will allow booksellers to offer their readers something new and something trusted in a collectible edition which is going to be pretty close to the cheapest thing in the bookstore.’
As for the design, Heyward said design director Chong Weng Ho ‘was part of the discussion from the start. ‘We wanted the covers to be like light bulbs in a dark room,’ said Chong. ‘We wanted readers to be cheered up by a good prospect. We wanted to give them art.’
The full list of launch titles is:
- The Commandant (Jessica Anderson, intro by Carmen Callil)
- Homesickness (Murray Bail, intro by Peter Conrad)
- Sydney Bridge Upside Down (David Ballantyne, intro by Kate De Goldi)
- A Difficult Young Man (Martin Boyd, intro by Sonya Hartnett)
- The Australian Ugliness (Robin Boyd, intro by Christos Tsiolkas)
- The Even More Complete Book of Australian Verse (John Clarke, intro by John Clarke)
- Diary of a Bad Year (JM Coetzee, intro by Peter Goldsworthy)
- Wake in Fright (Kenneth Cook, intro by Peter Temple)
- The Dying Trade (Peter Corris, intro by Charles Waterstreet)
- They’re a Weird Mob (Nino Culotta, intro by Jacinta Tynan)
- Terra Australis (Matthew Flinders, intro by Tim Flannery)
- My Brilliant Career (Miles Franklin, intro by Jennifer Byrne)
- Cosmo Cosmolino (Helen Garner, intro by Ramona Koval)
- Dark Places (Kate Grenville, intro by Louise Adler)
- The Watch Tower (Elizabeth Harrower, intro by Joan London)
- The Mystery of a Hansom Cab (Fergus Hume, intro by Simon Caterson)
- The Glass Canoe (David Ireland, intro by Nicolas Rothwell)
- The Jerilderie Letter (Ned Kelly, intro by Alex McDermott)
- Bring Larks And Heroes (Thomas Keneally, intro by Geordie Williamson)
- Strine (Afferbeck Lauder, intro by John Clarke)
- Careful, He Might Hear You (Sumner Locke Elliott, intro by Robyn Nevin)
- Stiff (Shane Maloney, intro by Lindsay Tanner)
- The Middle Parts of Fortune (Frederic Manning, intro by Simon Caterson)
- The Scarecrow (Ronald Hugh Morrieson, intro by Craig Sherborne)
- The Dig Tree (Sarah Murgatroyd, intro by Geoffrey Blainey)
- The Plains (Gerald Murnane, intro by Wayne Macauley)
- The Fortunes of Richard Mahony (Henry Handel Richardson, intro by Peter Craven)
- The Women in Black (Madeleine St John, intro by Bruce Beresford)
- An Iron Rose (Peter Temple, intro by Les Carlyon)
- 1788 (Watkin Tench, intro by Tim Flannery).

Eric Knight writes that instead of focussing on the details of a problem with a metaphorical magnifying glass, readers should step back and reframe the issue in order to see the bigger picture and all the complicated, contributing factors that are often overlooked. Knight’s blend of sociology, politics and economics forms the basis for this Freakonomics-style book. By reframing the issue, Knight attempts to untangle such thorny subjects as climate change scepticism, terrorism, the Global Financial Crisis and American immigration. Battling terrorism, argues Knight, is about much more than killing terrorists; it requires a strategy of counterinsurgency tactics to shift local alliances away from terrorists. Knight has worked as a lawyer and studied climate change at Oxford. His political ideology could be described as centrist, but he writes without bias in this well-researched book. Reframe seeks to educate readers by offering a broader understanding of the world and its seemingly irrational people. While Knight is an Australian writer, his book focuses on global rather than specifically Australian problems, but these can be used as a template for local issues. Reframe is written in a positive, fresh voice that is accessible to a wide audience, including those new to politics.
In Melbourne, author Eleanor Catton and I appeared in a session called ‘New New Zealand Fiction’. If the session’s blurb in the program is anything to go by, the festival organisers envisioned us talking about our own work and its relationship to broader national themes. I don’t think they expected us to be grilled by the chair, expatriate Kiwi Sue Green, about why most New Zealand books ‘just aren’t any good’ (I did my best to disabuse her of this notion) and why Australians don’t read New Zealand writers and vice versa.








The death of political writer and renowned athiest Christopher Hitchens received considerable media coverage over the weekend, with two of Hitchens’ books–his memoir
As the year draws to a close, publications are looking back at 2011 and compiling lists of the best books of the year. For a round up of the ‘best of 2011′ lists see 



