Showing all posts about books
The Long Night, the new Christian White novel, October 2025
14 July 2025
Victoria based Australian author, Christian White, that raconteur of the redirect, that teller of tantalising thrillers, has a new novel, The Long Night, being published on Tuesday 28 October 2025. His publisher, Affirm Press, describes White’s fifth book, as his “darkest” yet:
Em has lived a quiet life with her complicated mother and is now looking for love and a potential escape from her small hometown. When a masked man kidnaps her in the dark of night, though, she is drawn into a terrifying world.
Jodie has been trying to forget a troubling time in her life, pouring her trauma into her work and out of her mind. Until one night her daughter is kidnapped and Jodie is dragged back into the violence.
As Em and Jodie race into the darkness, the agony of the past rushes up to meet them. It will take all their devotion and courage to escape this night alive.
Here’s hoping White’s good run of form continues. I’ve read all of his novels except (so far) Wild Place, and will be looking out for The Long Night later this year.
RELATED CONTENT
Australian literature, books, Christian White, novels
Limit AI use Colleen Hoover, Dennis Lehane, others, ask book publishers
10 July 2025
Colleen Hoover and Dennis Lehane are among American authors who have signed an open letter to book publishers including Penguin Random House, HarperCollins, and Hachette, asking them to extensively limit their use of AI. The authors are requesting no AI generated work be published, and publishing company staff are not replaced, either partly or wholly, by AI technologies.
The authors demands are reasonable, to a degree. Any AI created works of fiction will most certainly contain the literary DNA of previously published writers, given the quantity of novels that have been used to train AI models. I believe though reputable publishers would think twice about publishing books one-hundred percent generated by AI. But I’m not sure the authors’ expectations that the roles of employees be guaranteed is realistic, well intentioned as it is.
AI is here to stay. Attempting to create AI-free sanctuaries in workplaces is pointless. AI will impact on everyone’s work one way or another. What we need to do is adapt. The matter that really needs to be addressed, is the issue of writers’ works being used to train chatbots without permission or recompense. Maybe the letter will draw further attention to this problem.
RELATED CONTENT
artificial intelligence, books, publishing, technology
The Top 100 bestselling books of 2025, as of July
10 July 2025
As complied by indie online book marketplace Bookshop.org. I’ve only read one title on the list, Careless People, by former Facebook Director of Public Policy, Sarah Wynn-Williams.
I used to read three to four books a month, but with the day work, and since ramping up what I do at disassociated a few years ago, book reading has taken a backseat.
But what can you do; there’s only so many hours in a day. I like the idea of publishing a list like this at the half year mark, all the year end editions can be overwhelming.
RELATED CONTENT
Emulate Wes Anderson with Shoot Like Wes, a book by Adam Woodward and Liz Seabrook
3 July 2025
Perhaps the world is still sufficiently pre-peak the work of American filmmaker Wes Anderson, to the point that photographers still want to emulate his style in their work. If you believe the former, and are among the latter, then Shoot Like Wes, a book by British journalist and film critic Adam Woodward, and London based photographer Liz Seabrook, might be for you.
Inspired by the distinctive vision of director Wes Anderson, Shoot Like Wes is packed with rich imagery and in-depth analysis of the auteur’s remarkable body of work. This is the only guide you’ll need to create your own cinematic masterpiece, transforming everyday scenes into vibrant, storytelling moments worthy of the big screen.
RELATED CONTENT
books, film, photography, Wes Anderson
Authors take to TikTok to prove they are not using Generative AI
20 June 2025
Alana Yzola, writing for Wired:
Criticism and warnings of Gen-AI authors snagging coveted deals are flooding both Threads and TikTok, with writers and readers sometimes flinging around accusations when they suspect someone is using AI as part of their creative process. Now, Aveyard and other prolific authors are not only calling out people who use AI to write, they’re also posting livestreams and time-lapses of their writing processes to defend themselves against such complaints.
The camera never lies. But will that be enough to convince book readers who otherwise suspect some authors are using AI tools to assist them write?
RELATED CONTENT
artificial intelligence, books, novels, social media, writing
Pictures of You, a collection of short stories by Tony Birch
7 June 2025
Hailing from Melbourne, Australian author Tony Birch has been writing books since 2006. Pictures of You, being published on Tuesday 30 September 2025, is a retrospective of his best short stories written over the last twenty years. I should think that will be quite a few.
Cherrypicking from across his oeuvre, this anthology showcases his skills at finding the extraordinary in ordinary lives, and the often-unexpected connections and kindnesses between strangers. His work is by turns poignant, sad, profound and funny — and always powerful. Throughout this stellar collection, Birch’s preoccupation with the humanity of those who are often marginalised or overlooked, and the search for justice for people and the natural environment shines bright.
RELATED CONTENT
Australian literature, books, fiction, literature, short stories, Tony Birch, writing
Theory & Practice by Michelle de Kretser wins 2025 Stella Prize
24 May 2025
Sydney based author Michelle de Kretser has been named winner of the 2025 Stellar Prize, for her 2024 novel, Theory & Practice, a novel Stella judges say does not read like a novel:
In her refusal to write a novel that reads like a novel, de Kretser instead gifts her reader a sharp examination of the complex pleasures and costs of living.
The novel that does not read like a novel, is indeed a curious work:
It’s 1986, and ‘beautiful, radical ideas’ are in the air. A young woman arrives in Melbourne to research the novels of Virginia Woolf. In bohemian St Kilda she meets artists, activists, students — and Kit. He claims to be in a ‘deconstructed’ relationship, and they become lovers. Meanwhile, her work on the Woolfmother falls into disarray. Theory & Practice is a mesmerising account of desire and jealousy, truth and shame. It makes and unmakes fiction as we read, expanding our notion of what a novel can contain.
Established in 2013, the Stellar Prize, which is awarded annually, honours the work of Australian women and non-binary writers.
RELATED CONTENT
Australia, Australian literature, books, literary awards, Michelle de Kretser, Stella Prize
Should cook book writers sue each other for plagiarism or AI chatbots?
22 May 2025
Malcolm Knox, writing for The Sydney Morning Herald, regarding accusations of plagiarism made by Sydney based Australian cook Nagi Maehashi against Brisbane counterpart Brooke Bellamy:
Nagi and Brooke will be out of their jobs when Microsoft, Google, Meta and the rest of big tech develop AIs to deliver the same caramel slice recipe, at zero cost, provided by an “author” whose personality combines the best of Julia Child, Margaret Fulton, Yotam Ottolenghi, even Nagi and Brooke.
Knox has a point. Perhaps the cooks should be more concerned about the mass appropriation of copyrighted material, without permission or recompense, rather than the alleged wrongdoing of one person, which may be near nigh impossible to prove. Not that the odds of prevailing against big tech would be any better.
I write this in the wake of another AI chatbot surge of activity on this website a few nights ago. Several hundred posts were presumably indexed in a matter of minutes, in the name of machine learning. Sometimes if something I posted here has been used as the basis for a question posed to an AI bot, a link to the source material is supplied with the answer generated.
At least I score a visit or two out of it all.
RELATED CONTENT
artificial intelligence, Australian literature, books, technology
Nam Le wins 2025 NSW Literary Awards Book of the Year prize
21 May 2025
Vietnamese Australian lawyer turned writer Nam Le has won the Book of the Year Award prize, with 36 Ways of Writing a Vietnamese Poem, a collection of poetry, in the 2025 NSW Literary Awards.
Earlier, Le was named recipient of the Multicultural NSW Award. Winners of the NSW Literary Awards, previously known as the NSW Premier’s Literary Awards, which span eleven categories, including the people’s choice prize, were announced at the Sydney Writers’ Festival, on Monday 19 May 2025. The Book of the Year recipient is selected from the winners of the Award’s other categories.
Other recipients include Fiona McFarlane, who won the Christina Stead Prize for Fiction with Highway 13, and Emma Lord, who took out the Ethel Turner Prize for Young People’s Literature prize for her debut novel Anomaly. The full list of 2025 winners can be seen here.
RELATED CONTENT
Australian literature, books, literary awards, literature, novels
disassociated is listed in the Internet Phone Book: call me on 492
19 May 2025
Image courtesy of Ana Šantl.
disassociated has been included in the inaugural edition of the Internet Phone Book, a directory of over seven-hundred personal websites and blogs, compiled by Kristoffer Tjalve, and Elliott Cost.
An annual publication for exploring the vast poetic web, featuring essays, musings and a directory with the personal websites of hundreds of designers, developers, writers, curators, and educators.
You don’t read a great deal of poetry on my website, but Tjalve and Cost offer a definition of poetic in this interview with Meg Miller of Are.na, publishers of the book.
Being a phone directory, each listed website naturally comes with a “phone number”, a three digit code allocated by the authors, a kind of short-cut link, that lets you “call” through, I’m on 492.
As of the time I type, the book has sold out through the publisher’s website (I think another print is in the works), though it is available from selected stockists across Europe, and in South Korea.
RELATED CONTENT