Read in a Single Sitting

A book review site dedicated to short, sharp reads. Visit the Read in a Single Sitting website. Visit Read in a Single Sitting on Facebook.

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Underrated books - tomorrow's cult classics (MUBA speech transcript)

The Most Underrated Book Award 2013, which I helped judge, was announced on Friday at the close of…

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Christmas Press heralds a return to traditional picture book publishing in Australia

“There’s not a lot of traditional material for kids being produced in Australia,” says Sophie…

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I used to be very into clothes.

I began hand-sewing clothing in high school; at 17, my mom gave me her sewing machine. I made clothes. I hunted thrift stores for clothes. I bought and sold vintage clothing online. Eventually, I had to expand to two closets to hold my wardrobe. I. Loved. Clothes.

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A 40-year-old orangutan has developed an unnerving obsession with Pride & Prejudice. 

Albert, a 200lb (91kg) primate reads up to 50 pages a day of Austen’s book.

And he’s so gripped that unless he’s had at least half-an-hour of Elizabeth Bennet’s travails with Mr Darcy, he won’t sleep at night. 

Michael Krause, Albert’s keeper at Gdansk Zoo, in Poland, revealed: “Albert’s favourite book is Pride & Prejudice while his partner Raya likes German fiction. But they both like cookery books.

“When we’re doing dramatic readings they like me to act out all the movements.”

The bedtime stories came about because the pair would not settle down at night.

Mr Krause said: “If you gave them a fruit snack they’d throw it around, if you tried to wear them out with play, they’d just get hyper.   “I didn’t know what to do until I pulled out a book I was reading during a break and within a couple of minutes they were trying to read over my shoulder.   “Now they go to bed quietly and peacefully as long as they get their stories.”

[annetdonahue]

This is all I care about now. Goodbye.

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Hi all, I'm currently working on a project I'm calling "Flip Cards", and I'd love to get some feedback from teachers, educators, and other savvy individuals as I go about it. If you'd like to sign up for notifications about the project, or to offer your help/expertise, you can do so via the Google form link. :)

Flip Cards will be a deck of full-colour playing cards designed to help senior school students analyse texts from a social justice perspective. The cards are intended to encourage students to think about issues of inequality and typecasting by "flipping" certain elements in their assigned reading texts.

The product will incorporate:

-52 playing cards divided into four thematic suits Questions to help students consider issues of gender, class, ethnicity, heternormativity, ableism and stigma -Critical vocabulary -A "timeline" design element on the picture side of the card presenting students with historically significant figures, quotes, or subversive/non-normative images and icons.

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Cover designs inspired by art: Wally Lamb's We Are Water and Rhein II by Andreas Gursky

  When browsing through my many bookish newsletters today I came across an ad for Wally Lamb’s…

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[digg]

A humpback whale jumps to the surface of the Pacific Ocean at the Uramba Bahia Malaga natural park in Colombia, on July 16, 2013.  (LUIS ROBAYO/AFP/Getty Images/Newscom)

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Giveaway: Tampa by Alissa Nutting

    If I were to peg a book as 2013′s most controversial release, Alissa Nutting’s Tampa, would…

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An Ode to Book Snobs

Some months ago, during my efforts to seek climate-controlled asylum from Melbourne’s oppressive…

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I'm expecting cool things to come out of this:

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Entrepreneur? Smartypants with an idea? Just like to hang out with tech people? Silverpond has launched an uber-cool program where you can sign up to kickstart your project over a 48-hour period. Bottomless coffee and extensive nerdery included, because sleep and social skills are for the weak.  You are  An entrepreneurial type wanting to take a start-up idea beyond the concept stage, or someone within a larger organisation looking to put together, expand, or improve an existing project.  You get  A prototype, a product or a solidly fleshed-out plan to take back to your investors, colleagues or the other VIPs in your life. And of course an undeniable sense of achievement.  What's involved  Two days of intensive planning, workshopping and development with Silverpond’s best and brightest. 

www.silverpond.com.au

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Ideological silos, blocking people on Twitter, and Elizabeth Gaskell's North and South

A week or so ago, I read with distinct amusement the commentary of two Twitter friends who were…

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Interview: Pierre Proske on the Unfinished Phrase iPhone App

  If you were to ask me to name one of the more unusual collocations in the English language,…

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Dan Dalton on Creatavist and multimodal story-telling

Late last year I attended a lecture with David Shields, author of Reality Hunger and ardent and…

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Event Summary: Carlos Ruiz Zafón in conversation at the Wheeler Centre

    On Monday I popped along to the Wheeler Centreto see Barcelona-born, LA-based author Carlos…

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In praise of Creatavist

Creatavist is a digital publishing platform from the team that brought us long form non-fiction publisher/app The Atavist.

I managed to swing myself an invite to the Beta version, and last week I used the platform to publish a short story.

I’m not easily impressed (something to do with copious amounts of self-loathing) but I’ve been running round like a giddy schoolgirl all week telling everyone who will listen how great Creatavist is. Let me explain why.

The platform allows content creators - writers, photographers, filmmakers - to easily publish multimedia stories for apps, ebooks, and the web.

Their tagline is ‘Storytelling without limits’ and after playing with the software for five minutes it’s easy to see why. Firstly, It’s simple to use.

Secondly; the finished product looks pretty fucking spiffy.

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Hipsters, irony and The Myth of Sisyphus by Albert Camus

Hipsters, irony and The Myth of Sisyphus by Albert Camus

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On Sisyphus, Camus, knowledge and Chaim Potok’s In The Beginning

  Of late it seems that I am being haunted by intertextuality. Each book that I pick up seems to…

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