Significant Objects (and how they got that way) “invite[s] several dozen authors to make up interesting stories about random objects picked up at thrift shops, post[s] them on eBay, and let[s] consumer fetishism take it from there.” * C-MONSTER.net, “where high gets low”, an arts blog. * Australian writers furious at moves to loosen book import rules. Removing restrictions on importing books will ‘destroy our hard-won literary culture’, says Society of Authors. (certain there’s a joke to be made here – Australia & “literary culture”?) * Michael Kimball writes Tao Lin‘s life-story on a postcard (more Kimball on Dogmatika) * The Village Voice meet up with Nick Laird and his dog. * In Reason, the life & legacy of J.G. Ballard (via A&L Daily) * ISM along with the Hibbleton Gallery pay tribute to Polaroid with an exhibition & limited edition book: Instant Gratification. * Issue 1 of Loops (previously mentioned here), the journal of music & writing is now on the stands. Read Richard Milward‘s piece on Elliott Smith on-line. * Ben Myers has some tips on making a living as a music journalist in Drowned in Sound. * And Ben’s recipe for nettle tea. * TONY talk to “genteel Anglophile and self-described pervert” Jonathan Ames. * “It is easy to see Byron as a cad, a narcissist and, at bottom, a misogynist. But that would be unfair. Byron’s great insight, in an era where women were expected to be placid and insipid (not that they were!), was to see that women were much like men: They wanted sex and went after it eagerly, if secretly.” Slate on Edna O’Brien‘s Byron in Love. * Continuing his brief survey of the short story, Chris Power reads Ray Bradbury: “For a writer who can justly be accused of sentimentality, Bradbury is very good at imagining nasty situations and playing them through to a bitter end. One of his masterpieces, ‘The Long Rain’, does just this; its Venus-stranded astronauts driven mad or to suicide by the pummelling downpour. His narration is strikingly pitiless.” * ‘Speechless’, BibliOdyssey share scans from a book on graphic novels.
