Booktopia is having a Sale: what to pick? what to pick?

Posted on February 10, 2010 by BooktopiaBookGuru

There are so many books to choose from in Booktopia’s 6th Birthday Sale, making a choice can be daunting.

Take my hand and let me lead you through the aisles.

I’m a bit of a fiction addict so we can start there.

We can drift down the Crime aisle and pick up a Peter Robinson, an Ian Rankin, flick through a James Patterson and then pop a couple of Michael Connelly’s into our basket, as well.

Did I move too quickly? Sorry, did you want to select a couple of Crime Classics? Your wish is my command, we shall return whence we came – here is Agatha Christie, Ngaio Marsh and Arthur Conan Doyle.

We turn a corner and come across the Fantasy Books – everything from Tolkien to Christine Feehan, from Stephen King to Stephen Donaldson. No rush. Let’s take our time.

From Fantasy to Romance is no great leap… look, our imaginations have beaten us there. Quickly, take up a few unfamiliar names and sit by me on the floor. I’ve never read Deirdre Purcell, have you? You have? Well then, in my basket goes Tell Me Your Secret on the strength of your recommendation.

Katie Fforde looks like fun, as does Tasmina Perry… and I’m going to get some of my old favourites, too – Anita Shreve (great value!), Jackie Collins and Daphne Du Maurier.

Is your Basket full? No!?

Okay, there is still time, though keep in mind the stocks are being whittled away as we go.

Jack Higgins, Patrick O’Brian, Bernard Cornwell, Anne Tyler, Charlotte Bronte into my basket they, too, go!

All the sale books are so inexpensive!

Tomorrow we’ll be back for more!

Promise me you’ll come again.

I haven’t even taken you through the Non-Fiction Aisles! or the Kids and Teens section! or the Manga range!

Return soon – stocks are moving so quickly – if you hesitate, you will miss out!

Filed under: Bargains, Booktopia, Children's Fiction, Crime/Thriller, Fantasy, Fiction, Literature, Romance, Young Adult | Tagged: , , , , , | Leave a Comment »

Booktopia is Six!

Posted on February 9, 2010 by BooktopiaBookGuru

Australia’s Largest Online Bookshop is Celebrating it’s

6th Birthday this Week!

Six short years ago when creative businessman, Tony Nash, decided he wanted to open an online bookshop, his brother and business partner, Simon Nash, set him this challenge - ‘You can start it but you have to get it up and running on a $10 a day budget… AND you have to work on it outside of normal working hours.’

You see Tony and Simon and their brother-in-law, Steven Traurig, were already running one of Australia’s leading internet marketing consultancies.

Booktopia was successful. Very successful. Soon Tony needed his brother and brother-in-law’s help and had to convince other members of their family to join them as well. They shut down the marketing business, hired more staff and soon the Booktopia engines were roaring.

Every day brought more challenges. There were teething problems in every aspect of the business. And as neither brother had much experience in the book trade, everything had to be learnt from scratch. But they were willing to work hard and were up for the challenge. In fact, they revelled in it.

The secret of their initial success?

They were willing to obtain books other book shops  thought were too difficult to obtain.

More and more publishers opened their doors to Booktopia – publishers great and small – and soon Booktopia’s website could boast of listing 1 million books!

Then Toni Whitmont jumped on board and launched Booktopia’s monthly newsletter – Booktopia BUZZ – which highlighted the best books of the month and prophesied, with great accuracy, the best books of following months. The BUZZ soon became the industry standard, helping many readers navigate the vast shelves of modern publishing with confidence. (Soon Booktopia BUZZ soon spawned the Romance BUZZ, SciFi & Fantasy Buzz, Zero to Five Buzz, Six to Twelve Buzz, Food & Drink Buzz and Craft Buzz, each with their own specialist editors.)

This was the tipping point for Booktopia.

Booktopia seemed to come upon readers like a lightning bolt, for suddenly everyone seemed to be talking about ordering books online from Booktopia or were telling friends to buy online with Booktopia.

Word was out – Pssst… Booktopia is the place for the best books at bargain prices. Pass it on…

Tony Park - author of Ivory and friend of Booktopia

Booktopia had single-handedly energised the online book industry.

But the biggest changes at Booktopia have come in the last twelve months.

In 2009 Booktopia moved to their new home – an enormous, modern warehouse in Lane Cove West, Sydney.

Booktopia soon had an army of helpers and a new streamlined systems for handling the ever increasing number of orders.

More orders meant more leverage in the market and more leverage meant further discounts for Booktopia’s customers.

More also means faster. Booktopia ships books all over the world and can demand bulk rates and faster service from shipping companies and book suppliers. The bigger Booktopia becomes the sooner Booktopia’s customers can expect to receive their books.

Mia Freedman - author of Mama Mia and friend of Booktopia

Tens of thousands of books pass through Booktopia’s modernised warehouse to be packed in the best quality packaging to ensure Booktopia’s customers receive their books in perfect condition, every time.

And Booktopia’s grand new warehouse allows Booktopia to carry more stock, too.

All in all, Booktopia’s 6th Birthday is not only a celebration of the past six years, of where Booktopia has come from, it is a celebration of Booktopia today, of where Booktopia is going.

The best qualities of Booktopia’s past have been retained but Booktopia has undergone so many improvements in the last year that it feels like a better, brighter, more confident, more competitive company and wants to be judged from this moment.

Booktopia has come of age.

Filed under: Fiction | 2 Comments »

Save the Planet – Don’t Travel – Read!

Posted on February 9, 2010 by BooktopiaBookGuru

‘If you stay at home, read the best travel books, and watch TV selectively, you can have nearly all the pleasures of travel without ever having to stand in line at the check-in counter. A flick of the page, and you are off that Patagonian Express and on to that Mississippi barge – pour yourself a coffee and there is the Snow Leopard before your eyes – a martini or two, and all the sensualities of the East will be there around you, scented and salacious in your very apartment! (Almost all, anyway.)

Great minds have been fostered entirely by staying close to home. Moses never got further than the Promised Land. Da Vinci and Beethoven never left Europe. Shakespeare hardly went anywhere at all – certainly not to Elsinore or the coast of Bohemia. Actually, there is a great deal to be said, even by a professional travel writer like me, against travelling at all.’ Jan Morris.

Filed under: Biography/Memoir, Non Fiction | Leave a Comment »

Love is All Around: Let Me Count the Ways – Part Four

Posted on February 8, 2010 by BooktopiaBookGuru

There is a moment in the film Love Actually when the old rocker, Billy Mack, played by Bill Nighy, realises that the greatest love of his life is his manager, Joe. And he tells him so.

This is a surprising admission, it surprises Joe, but it is also a wonderfully perceptive admission, because Billy Mack, peering through a cloud of silly prejudice and customary social expectations, has discovered the truth – Joe is the love of his life.

Finding the truth is something very few of us do.

What is more surprising is that, try as hard as I might, I cannot recall an occasion like it in any of the books I have read.

We know so many occasions when it might have happened – think of Frodo and Sam in The Lord of the Rings. There was ample opportunity for these two friends to realise the true nature of their relationship and express it as completely as Billy Mack. Each is more important to the other than anyone else is or could be.

Think of the many missed opportunities - Don Quixote and Sancho Panza, Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson, Herbert Pocket and Pip, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, Asterix & Obelix, Carrie, Miranda, Samantha and Charlotte, Noddy and Big Ears…

Love is all around us but because we are so intent on finding love, we sometimes don’t see it.

This Valentine’s Day might just be the day when you open your eyes and see that George Clooney, or that Victoria’s Secret model you’ve set your sights upon, is not and never will be your true love.

And instead, you come to accept the fact that your smelly flatmate or your ethically challenged business partner, or your boorish best friend or your garage band’s tone deaf lead singer is, in truth, your true love and deserves to know exactly how you feel.

True Love: it’s never where you think it is.

Filed under: Children's Fiction, Fiction, Literature, Young Adult | Tagged: , , , | Leave a Comment »

No Worries, Mate…

Posted on February 5, 2010 by BooktopiaBookGuru

Australian crime writing is unique.

There is a casual quality to any violence it depicts.

It is not callous, nor is it without emotion but it seems to be taken lightly. A kind of fatalism seems to prevent the characters (and the reader) from over-analysing a violent act. It quickly becomes a fact, a piece of history and as such, useless.

Could this be a throwback to a time in Australian history when necessity forcibly moved us on? When the harsh climate and empty landscape of Australia made loitering dangerous?

In many ways Australia still is a brutal country – out beyond the picket fences and McMansions survival is everything. At any moment this Australia may require you to kill your best mate or abandon your family to starve or push a pregnant woman over a cliff. And you do these things because you have to. You don’t dwell on them; it’s just a fact of Australian life.

It is hard, it is dry, it is unforgiving.

Even if an aspiring Australian crime writer has modelled their style on their favourite US or UK writer’s work, even if they have set their novel overseas, somehow this disturbing pragmatism sneaks in and reveals the true origins of the work.

I believe this is why so many Australian crime novels can generate, without even seeming to try, an all-pervading sense of dread. Suburbia suddenly resembles an abattoir – the silence of pristine Tasmanian forest is broken by a sound you cannot account for – a Kings Cross brothel becomes the home you never had.

In Australian crime fiction the extraordinary becomes ordinary, and is  more chilling because it is ordinary.

Just like the time you discovered your neighbour had been chopping up bodies and boiling them in vats in his back shed, but you didn’t dob him in straight away because he was the captain of the local footy team and it was the weekend of the final…

Australian crime writing, out of all the crime writing I have read over the years, is the most disturbing for this  reason – it’s very, very ordinary.

Filed under: Crime/Thriller, Fiction, Literature | Leave a Comment »

Still Coming Soon – Let Me Count the Ways – Part Four

Posted on February 5, 2010 by BooktopiaBookGuru

On Valentine’s Day we can celebrate love, but there will always those who use the day to remember those they once loved but now revile.

When I Loved You

When I loved you, I can’t but allow
I had many an exquisite minute;
But the scorn that I feel for you now
Hath even more luxury in it!

Thus, whether we’re on or we’re off,
Some witchery seems to await you;
To love you is pleasant enough,
But oh! ’tis delicious to hate you!

Thomas Moore (28 May 1779 – 25 February 1852)

Filed under: Fiction, Literature | Tagged: | Leave a Comment »

The Lost Man Booker Prize

Posted on February 4, 2010 by BooktopiaBookGuru

A quick look at the list of Man Booker Prize Winners is enough to convince anyone that it is the premier literary award.

Peter Carey, Margaret Atwood, Ian McEwan, Salman Rushdie, Hilary Mantel, William Golding, Arundhati Roy to name but a few winners…

And yet we can always come up with the names of authors who are not listed and we believe should be.

Well, recently the Man Booker has made a startling admission – they missed a year.

Our favourite author may still have a chance to win!

Here’s what they had to say:

‘In 1971, just two years after it began, the Booker Prize ceased to be awarded retrospectively and became, as it is today, a prize for the best novel in the year of publication. At the same time, the date on which the award was given moved from April to November. As a result of these changes, there was whole year’s gap when a wealth of fiction, published in 1970, fell through the net. These books were simply never considered for the prize.’

They go on to offer us a long-list of eligible titles:

Quite a list, really. Many great names, but some which would not, I think, be included on a proper list today.

Shall we put on our cynic’s spectacles? Let’s!

We can begin shortening the list by removing those who may be considered too successful (ie: popular) for the Booker judges – Ruth Rendell, Reginald Hill, Len Deighton and Patrick O’Brian… Easily done.

Now we may look again… Oh no, there are a few names which won’t be instantly recognisable to contemporary intellectuals (ie: 15 year old TV journalists). They must go. Bye, Bye, Nina Bawden, H.E. Bates, Christy Brown, Elaine Feinstein, Brian Aldiss, Francis King, Margaret Laurence, Shiva Naipaul and Mary Renault.

Oh, and some have already won the Man Booker or other prestigious awards – that will not do… Ciao, Patrick White, J.G.Farrell, Muriel Spark and Iris Murdoch (dead people never come to award ceremonies anyway).

We can omit Melvyn Bragg because, well… you know… he’s been on the telly. Susan Hill can be eliminated, she isn’t consistently literary. And Joe Orton would be too obvious.

We are left with Shirley Hazzard and David Lodge. What a final!

In conclusion, having thought long and hard, I think Patrick O’Brian should get it.

Filed under: Booktopia, Fiction, Literary Prizes, Literature | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a Comment »

Coming soon – Let Me Count the Ways – Part Four

Posted on February 3, 2010 by BooktopiaBookGuru

‘Some cynical Frenchman has said that there are two parties to a love-transaction: the one who loves and the other who condescends to be so treated.

Perhaps the love is occasionally on the man’s side; perhaps on the lady’s.

Perhaps some infatuated swain has ere this mistaken insensibility for modesty, dulness for maiden reserve, mere vacuity for sweet bashfulness, and a goose, in a word, for a swan.

Perhaps some beloved female subscriber has arrayed an ass in the splendour and glory of her imagination; admired his dulness as manly simplicity; worshipped his selfishness as manly superiority; treated his stupidity as majestic gravity, and used him as the brilliant fairy Titania did a certain weaver at Athens.

I think I have seen such comedies of errors going on in the world.

But this is certain, that Amelia believed her lover to be one of the most gallant and brilliant men in the empire: and it is possible Lieutenant Osborne thought so too.’

William Makepeace Thackeray – Vanity Fair

Filed under: Fiction, Literature | Tagged: , | Leave a Comment »

Booktopia on Twitter!

Posted on February 3, 2010 by BooktopiaBookGuru

Booktopia is on Twitter!

It is the place to keep up-to-date with the latest news in the world of books.

Booktopia has been busily spreading book news of our own on Twitter and also meeting great Australian authors along the way.

Join Twitter, follow Booktopia and join in the fun.

Mia Freedman, author of Mama Mia is on Twitter, and so is Maggie Alderson, author of Pants on Fire, How to Break Your Own Heart and many more…

That wonderfully funny curmudgeon, John Birmingham, famed author of He Died With a Felafel in His Hand and Without Warning, is also on Twitter…

…as is Australia’s favourite crime writer, Tara Moss, whose latest book Siren is setting new standards in Australian fiction.

Every day more and more writers turn to Twitter – some for simple distraction, some to promote a new book, some to rant and rave, some to talk directly to their fans…  some turn to Twitter to avoid doing work and some turn to Twitter as it is cheaper than therapy!

So don’t miss out, jump on board Twitter and join the conversation about books, stuff and life with Booktopia and hundreds of writers and their fans.

Filed under: Book retailing trends, Booktopia, Crime/Thriller, Fiction, Literature | Tagged: , , , , | Leave a Comment »

The Australian Book Review’s Favourite Australian Novels

Posted on February 2, 2010 by BooktopiaBookGuru

A new poll by The Australian Book Review suggests that Australians have great taste when it come to choosing books written by fellow Australians!

Congratulations Australia!

Each one of these books is a ‘must read‘.

I’m very, very excited to see so many great names on the list – including my favourites, Christina Stead and Henry Handel Richardson.

Maybe it’s time to republish some of Australia’s great writers?

Huh? Huh?

Click here to read The Australian Book Review PDF.

The Top Ten (Too Brilliant for Words!)

  1. Cloudstreet
  2. The Fortunes of Richard Mahony
  3. Voss
  4. Breath
  5. Oscar and Lucinda
  6. My Brother Jack
  7. The Secret River
  8. Eucalyptus
  9. The Man Who Loved Children (no Aust. Ed. Available… Shame! Australia! Shame!)
  10. The Tree of Man

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