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Keywords: Reader

There are more than 200 results, only the first 200 are displayed here.

  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Remembering the many-sided Brian Doyle

    • Philip Harvey
    • 28 May 2018
    3 Comments

    The evidence, from one line onwards, was unmistakeable Doyle. Imitation was impossible, self-parody ditto. Gore Vidal loved to say that Tennessee Williams knew how to do only one thing, but he did that thing better than anyone else. Brian Doyle's poetry was a bit like that.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Confronting fear on the cusp of manhood

    • Tim Kroenert
    • 09 May 2018
    2 Comments

    The boys conquer one hazardous feat after another: entering the ocean via rocky cauldrons; sharing waters with a mythic giant shark; tackling waves that rear up over a deadly shallow reef. In so doing they confront their fears: of physical peril; of failing, or failing to meet the expectations of the group; of existential ordinariness.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Remembering my friend Beverley Farmer

    • Gillian Bouras
    • 26 April 2018
    8 Comments

    Australian writer Beverley Farmer died on 16 April. She and I had been friends, albeit usually long-distance ones, for more than 30 years. It seems to me now that we had so much in common that friendship was almost inevitable: it was just a matter of timing that first meeting.

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  • ENVIRONMENT

    Abbott spruiking coal is a win for renewables

    • Greg Foyster
    • 13 April 2018
    16 Comments

    Every time the self-appointed Ambassador for the Little Black Rock fronts up to the cameras he reinforces the message that coal power is the technology of a bygone era. The Coalition old guard's thinking hasn't changed since Abbott's 'carbon tax' sloganeering of 2012 and 2013. But the landscape has changed considerably.

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  • RELIGION

    Clerical culture produces poor fruit

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 11 April 2018
    59 Comments

    In a recent article I remarked that in the Catholic Church clericalism is a pejorative term. Some readers criticised me for focusing on individuals and not the more insidious culture of clericalism. The criticism was justified, and in this article I shall reflect on the culture and its byproducts.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Books saved from waste extend the story cycle

    • Julie Perrin
    • 03 April 2018
    7 Comments

    Jill Allan wants to see good stories in circulation. As she holds a book in her hands she asks herself, 'Would a child want this?' She's been a children's librarian for years, she's read the research. The number of books in the home is a crucial factor influencing language and literacy outcomes.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Staring down literary criticism's gender bias

    • Neve Mahoney
    • 30 January 2018
    6 Comments

    In literature, young adult fiction and romance are frequently looked down upon. It's no coincidence that such books iare often written by and for women and girls. Even women's literary fiction can't escape the blowback of 'Goldfinching', whereby a previously acclaimed book that has become popular with women is taken down a peg.

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  • MEDIA

    How political correctness kills language freedoms

    • David James
    • 25 August 2017
    21 Comments

    The push for politically correct language may be well intentioned enough, but its consequences are often appalling. It can rob us of one of the most important of all human freedoms: the right to use words to mean what we want them to mean.

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  • RELIGION

    Confessions of a literature addict

    • Gillian Bouras
    • 14 August 2017
    12 Comments

    Was Harry Potter’s 20th birthday to blame? Or the 200th anniversary of Jane Austen’s death? Or merely the ageing process? It’s hard to decide, but in a life quite possibly ruined by literature, I have started remembering some of the books I read in childhood.  

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  • PODCAST

    ChatterSquare: Osmond Chiu on navigating post-GFC polarisation

    • Podcast
    • 18 July 2017

    When UK Labor leader Jeremy Corbyn appeared to some acclaim at Glastonbury Festival, it triggered some amount of pining in Australia. Why do we not have someone like that? With Osmond Chiu, the Secretary of the NSW Fabians and Deputy Editor of Challenge magazine, we unpack what this sentiment is about and whether it gets to the heart of what is wrong with our current politics.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Reimagining work is a project for the unemployed, too

    • Susan Leong
    • 23 June 2017
    4 Comments

    When I wrote recently that the future of work lies in understanding work as 'pleasure in the exercise of our energies', one reader noted 'these discussions have little meaning when you are poor or dispossessed'. Spending your life doing what you are competent at pales into insignificance when set against the prospect of a life engrossed in one's passions. That is a decision that every worker has it within their power to make. And as it turns out, it should be a concern of the unemployed, too.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    At an angle to the universe: Remembering Brian Doyle

    • Gillian Bouras
    • 30 May 2017
    14 Comments

    Brian's work was notable for its firm yet subtle control, the great tumbling yet disciplined lists of adjectives, the elevation of the quotidian, the appreciation of the natural world and its creatures, the sheer love of life. Re-reading one recent piece I find the references to the 'lovely bride' and 'the house wolf' almost unbearably touching. One reader wrote he was not initiated into Brian's 'grand mysteries', but that the joy and awe conveyed rang out with love and goodwill. How very true.

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