How to live

‘Montaigne liked to present himself as an ordinary man, distinguished from others only by his habit of writing things down’. I am halfway through Montaigne’s essays  and recommend them as great reflections to keep on your bedside table. If you are interested in the seismic shifts we have experienced in our hyperconnected age – the rise of the web, mobile devices and what ubiquitous social media has done to facilitate the... Read More

Reading…

I can still see the poster on my own childhood primary school classroom wall: Kids who read succeeed The Conservative politician and current British Secretary of State for Education, Michael Gove, has recently said that, ‘children should read 50 books a year’. Who could possibly disagree? In my (not so) humble (on this issue) opinion our Australian community has very low expectations of how much a child or teenager should read. The issue... Read More

Twitter Literati for English Teachers

Australian English teachers have not flocked to twitter in the way I envisaged back in early 2008. I have been guilty of spamming email distribution lists, evangelising at conferences and publishing traditional print based articles in professional journals, all with very limited success in convincing my colleagues, in any great numbers, to tweet. There are some notable exceptions, tweeple I admire greatly, like Kelli McGraw, Troy Martin, Bianca... Read More

My Spines

@LiteraryMinded asked about ‘our spines’ today and I have obliged below. However, it is my Kindle that has the most titles, especially chapter samples to read. 11 pages of titles to sample or read  Read More

Whatever Happened to the Book is Happening Now!

At great risk of appearing unneccesarily sycophantic, I need to say that Mark Pesce‘s post, Whatever Happened to the Book,  is clever, unusually clever, even for Mark. Everything that currently intellectually interests (read obsesses me) about literature and our hyperconnected age is explored. Please read it closely and tell your friends, especially if they are teachers still learning. Here’s a taste, I particularly enjoyed the third... Read More

Anthill: A Novel

“The cycles of other species can be destroyed, and the biosphere corrupted. But for each careless step we take, our species will ultimately pay an unwelcome price – always” EO Wilson I have just finished Anthill, set mostly in Alabama and occasionally underground, by two times Pultizer Prize winner and first time novelist, aged 81, E.O. Wilson. Pre-ordered ages ago, it arrived on my Kindle Monday and was enjoyable enough that... Read More