The link below is to an article that takes a look at how to give an ebook as a gift.
For more visit:
http://www.adweek.com/galleycat/how-to-send-an-e-book-as-a-gift/114274
Category Archives: Article
Giving Books as Gifts
The links below are to articles that take a look at giving books as gifts and how to prepare them as gifts.
For more visit:
– http://www.readitforward.com/give-a-book-as-a-gift/
– http://www.readitforward.com/5-creative-ways-to-wrap-a-book/
Summer reading guide from The Conversation’s economists
Charis Palmer, The Conversation and Helen Westerman, The Conversation
Challenging, inspiring and funny: a handful of our economics writers share the favourite books they read this year.
Rodney Maddock, Adjunct Professor of Economics, Monash University
The Courage to Act by Ben Bernanke
Ben Bernanke’s The Courage to Act gives a wonderful insight into the problems he faced in trying to deal with the crisis, around legislative restrictions, and blame shifting amongst the various regulators.
Doing Good Better by William MacAskill
William MacAskill’s Doing Good Better is a great read about the problems with international charities and on ways in which we can do better in providing assistance.
The Heart Goes Last by Margaret Atwood
Margaret Atwood’s The Heart Goes Last was my best novel of the year: she is simply a wonderful writer and this one extrapolates ideas about how a prison might be run for profit, posing a possible end state of privatisation.
Resurrection Bay by Emma Viskic
Emma Viskic’s Resurrection Bay is the perfect holiday detective story set; perfect for aeroplanes or the beach.
Janine Dixon, Senior Research Fellow, Victoria University
Creating Cities by Marcus Westbury
Marcus Westbury, founder of Renew Newcastle, identified a problem and set about trying to fix it. An economist would hardly credit the idea that the main street in the CBD of a major Australian town could lie mostly empty, while at the same time property owners were declining genuine offers of business. Without being an economics textbook, Creating Cities gives us insight into the market incentives that lead to this sub-optimal allocation of resources. The book takes the reader on a fascinating journey through the process of renewal of an urban centre. Westbury describes the failure of large, centrally-led projects (think monorail) to revive Newcastle, and the surprising success of individuals and small enterprises in breathing life into the once empty shopfronts.
Melbourne University Publishing
City Limits by Jane-Frances Kelly and Paul Donegan
“A higher proportion of Australians live in cities than almost any other country, and most of our national wealth is generated in them.” There is no question that well-functioning cities are a great enabler of economic activity and provide residents with a high standard of living. However, in cities a diverse range of individuals and agencies operate and respond to incentives which are not always in the interests of the greater good. This book gives detailed and informative descriptions of the state of many Australian cities, and explores the many challenges faced by city planners, residents and businesses alike.
The Economics of Just About Everything by Andrew Leigh
I’ve been lucky enough to hear Andrew Leigh speak on a couple of occasions and he tells a great yarn. His message is clear – economics is about incentives – and he illustrates his point over and over with interesting data and stories to go with it. He dispels the myth that economists are only interested in money. I’ve got this one for my 14-year-old nephew for Christmas this year.
Stephen King, Professor, Department of Economics, Monash University
From Protection to Competition by Kerrie Round and Martin Shanahan
I reviewed this book for an international competition law journal earlier this year. It is a great little book that provides a history of Australia’s attitudes to competition and our competition laws from 1788 to 1974 (the end date is when our current competition laws were introduced). It is a comprehensive work of economic history and also a great “story”. It is easy to forget that for most of Australia’s history businesses happily and legally formed cartels to prevent “undesirable” competition and to harm consumers. It is also interesting to see government responses (e.g. having government owned businesses to try and increase competition – they usually failed). It is a gem that I referenced in my most recent article on The Conversation.
Deborah Ralston, Professor of Finance, Monash University
Melbourne University Publishing
Advanced Australia by Mark Butler
Much of my research over recent years has been on post-retirement and I think this book is a really accessible discussion of the issues involved. Although a sitting member, Butler seems to take a pretty balanced view of how the ageing population is impacting on the economy. His track record as Minister for Mental Health and Aged Care through a period of considerable reform to aged care gives him a fairly authoritative point of view. I really enjoyed his speech on this topic to the National Press Club recently.
Ross Guest, Professor of Economics, Griffith University
Real-world Economic Policy by Jan Libich
This is the best book for me this year. Succinct contributions on a range of topical themes from economists from various fields and persuasions.
Richard Holden, Professor of Economics, UNSW Australia
Zero to One by Peter Thiel
Paypal founder and noted venture capitalist Peter Thiel discusses how monopoly is essential for innovation, not the terrible thing economists have always told you.
Destiny and Power by Jon Meacham
Biography of George Herbert Walker Bush (aka Bush 41).
Crippled America by Donald Trump
Just because…
America’s Bank by Roger Lowenstein
How challenging it was to create the US Federal Reserve system.
Catherine de Fontenay, Associate Professor, Melbourne Business School
Poor Economics by Abhijit V. Banerjee and Esther Duflo
In the last decade, development economics has undergone a revolution, led primarily by Esther Duflo, an intense young Frenchwoman who is a professor at MIT. The new approach emphasises using randomised control trials (similarly to medicine) to test the efficacy of different policies, and to build a more accurate picture of the economic challenges of the bottom billion (the poorest billion people on earth). The insights garnered are simply amazing, and will lead to changes in policy that will have a profound effect on the condition of the poor for many decades.
Tim Harcourt, J.W. Nevile Fellow in Economics, UNSW Australia
Why Australia Prospered by Ian McLean
Ian McLean turns economic history conventional wisdom on its head in this thought provoking book.
Why Nations Fail by Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson
Why did the USA succeed while Mexico struggled? Same with Argentina or Australia or Botswana and Sierra Leone? The role of institutions matters. A country needs well defined property rights and democratic rights to succeed.
Korea: The Impossible Country by Daniel Tudor
How South Korea went from one of the world’s poorer nations to an OECD nation in five decades.
Australia’s Second Chance by George Megalogenis
Even better than his first book. Megalogenis looks at the role of immigration in Australian economic development.
The Story of Australia’s People by Geoffrey Blainey
Australia is 50,000 years old, not 230, and Geoffrey Blainey tells us why. Amazing stories of indigenous history and innovation.
Charis Palmer, Deputy Business Editor, The Conversation and Helen Westerman, Business + Economy Editor, The Conversation
This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.
Let’s allow parallel book imports, and subsidise Australian publishing
Jeff Borland, University of Melbourne
It’s hard to imagine that too many economists in Australia will receive Christmas cards from book publishers this year. A long campaign of lobbying, culminating with the recent Harper review into competition policy, has resulted in the Commonwealth government deciding to remove restrictions on the parallel importation of books.
To most economists this is a long-overdue reform that will increase efficiency. A group of ten prominent Australian economists today signed an open letter calling on the federal parliament to follow through on lifting the restrictions.
To Australian book publishers, and some noteworthy authors, it is an act of public vandalism, threatening the future viability of their industry.
As an economist who loves reading books, I’ve always taken a keen interest in the debate over parallel import restrictions. And I’ve always thought that there was a fairly straightforward solution – which I am going to describe and argue for in this article.
Why Australian book publishing needs support
It is easy to make the argument that books by Australian authors make a big contribution to our lives. By having an Australian outlook or content, they don’t just provide entertainment or learning, they do it in a way that has a particular interest and relevance to us.
But just because something is good doesn’t mean it needs government support. An economist starts from the position that if a product is good, plenty of people will buy it, which gives an appropriate return to its supplier. Only if the market is failing to deliver a return to the supplier that reflects the full benefit to society from the product, do economists believe that the government might need to intervene.
In the case of Australian books, I believe that such an argument does exist. Here I give two reasons why the market may not get it right – and why government support may therefore be needed.
First, the knowledge about Australian public affairs that is contained in books, and the expertise that authors develop by writing those books, allows for a more informed and productive public discourse on government policy making. This is not a benefit that anyone pays for when they buy a book – but it is a benefit to Australian society all the same.
In my own area of economics, recent books by Ross Garnaut and John Edwards on the coming decade in the Australian economy, and historical perspectives by Ian McLean and George Megalogenis, have all been important source materials for debate on what policy makers should be doing.
Second, much of our thinking about Australian identity and values is formed through the perspectives and stories that are expressed in books – whether it be novels or history or biography.
There is no single book that does this. Rather, it is the putting together of the whole of what is being written about and by Australians that enables us to do this thinking. This is a collective benefit from having an Australian book industry – and as such will always be undervalued in the market.
Why parallel import restrictions should be removed
Parallel import restrictions provide the original publisher of a book with the exclusive right to bring that book into Australia for commercial purposes. This allows publishers to treat Australia as a separate market from the rest of the world, and increases their market power compared to book buyers in this country.
The result is that (due to the smaller scale of market and our high average income level) publishers charge higher prices for books in Australia than in most other countries. This addition to book prices in Australia is a cost borne by book buyers. Publishers argue it is a necessary cost to ensure there is a strong local publishing industry.
But there is a problem with this argument. The parallel import restrictions mean that we pay more for every book we buy, not just Australian titles. Suppose that 20% of the volume of book sales in Australia is by Australian authors.
This implies that (roughly speaking) for every A$200 extra we pay in prices for books that goes to Australian authors and their publishers, we are also providing A$800 extra to international authors.
In other words, parallel import restrictions are poorly targeted, and hence an expensive way for Australian consumers to support the local publishing industry.
A better policy
If our objective is to give extra funding to Australian authors and their publishers, why not do this via subsidies or direct payments to them? With such a policy it would be possible to provide the same level of support to the Australian book industry as it receives from parallel import restrictions, but without supporting international authors and their publishers.
Of course, subsidies and payments to the book industry already happen through bodies such as the Australian Council. What I am suggesting is that there should be an increase in the extent of this funding of the book industry to compensate for the removal of parallel import restrictions.
It should be possible to work out the current value that the Australian book industry derives from the import restrictions, and when the restrictions are removed, to increase the amount of funding to the industry by that amount.
That would leave the Australian book industry just as well off as before the removal of parallel import restrictions, and Australian book buyers would be better off as a result of lower prices.
Heading in the wrong direction
The Commonwealth government has announced that it will implement the Harper committee recommendation to remove parallel import restrictions for books. Unfortunately, at the same time, it is removing funding to the Australian book industry.
Instead of increasing funding to compensate for the removal of parallel import restrictions, this week another round of cuts (including the abolition of the Book Council of Australia) was announced.
There can be no doubt of the outcome from this policy mix. Removing import restrictions together with decreasing government funding will unambiguously reduce the size of the Australian book industry; and with that we will lose the many associated benefits to Australian society.
Jeff Borland, Professor of Economics, University of Melbourne
This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.
10 Reasons for Buying a Book
The link below is to an article that looks at 10 reasons why this writer might buy a book.
For more visit:
http://bookriot.com/2015/12/18/10-reasons-ill-buy-book/
10 great books that all children should read
Belle Alderman, University of Canberra
The books we remember strongly as adults are often the ones we read as children. Not only do we remember particular books, but the emotions we experienced.
Children’s books are reread and remembered over a lifetime, and many authors believe their best writing is for children.
Rereading favourites is a good thing. With each rereading, deeper meanings emerge and understanding becomes richer.
Reading books aloud, and being read to, is also important, with research pointing to enhanced levels of brain activity for children who are read to before bed. Some research even recommends reading to a child from birth to help stimulate brain development and build language, literacy and social-emotional skill.
For young people, reading fiction can provide excellent training for developing and practising empathy and understanding how others feel and think.
Here is a selection of some of the best books to share with your child over the festive season on the topic of family and friends:
1. Ten Little Fingers and Ten Little Toes by Mem Fox and Helen Oxenbury
(Penguin Books Australia, 2008)
Age: 0-2 years
Fox’s exuberant rhythm, rhyme and repetition feature in a short 148-word story, making it perfect read to aloud for babies. The book features eye-catching watercolour illustrations and a series of fun activities, including counting fingers and toes and an end game of a kiss on the nose.
2. Over the Hills and Far Away: A Treasure of Nursery Rhymes from Around the World by Elizabeth Hammill
(Frances Lincoln Children’s Books, 2014)
Age: 0-6 years
A collection of nursery rhymes should be in every home. They are perfect for dipping into from birth and throughout the preschool years. This one features a multitude of enticing brief stories from different cultures, rhymes honed to perfection, and rich illustrations by 77 of the world’s best illustrators.
3. Bear and Chook by Lisa Shanahan
(Hodder Headline Australia, 2002)
Age: 2-5 years
Bear and Chook are close friends, loving and patient with each other’s eccentricities. Bear is adventurous and accident-prone. Chook is cautious and careful. As friends, they have an immense respect for each other. A perfect combination of rollicking, rich and enticing read-aloud language and humorous, touching illustrations.
4. The Lion and the Bird by Marianne Dubuc
(Enchanted Lion Books, 2013)
Age: 3-7 years
The text says little. The illustrations are minimal. Yet we experience an immense satisfaction in this deep friendship between Bird and Lion. Lion nurses Bird back to health after an injury, and they share winter together. With spring’s return, Bird must leave and Lion is alone again. The illustrations convey the seasonal cycle, and we cheer as Bird returns. A powerful story of friendship with perfect images that linger.
5. The Day the Crayons Quit by Drew Daywalt
(HarperCollins, 2013)
Age: 4-10 years
A highly original, quirky and funny story for sophisticated readers. Duncan reaches for his crayons, but instead finds they have left him handwritten letters. They have quit their jobs as crayons and complain bitterly. Purple laments Duncan colouring outside the lines. Grey is tired of colouring large objects like elephants. Black wants to be more than an outline. Duncan finds a clever solution to remain friends with his crayons.
6. Herman and Rosie by Gus Gordon
(Penguin Books Australia, 2012)
Age: 4-10 years
An unlikely pair explore the meaning of friendship, loneliness and life in the big city in this unforgettable, multi-layered picture book. Herman, a crocodile, and Rosie, a deer, each lives alone on different floors of the same New York apartment block. They do not know each other, but they have common interests in music and both love films about the sea. Music brings them together when each loses their job. This story reveals the importance of friendship and belonging in understated elegance with quirky, whimsical illustrations.
7. My Two Blankets by Irena Kobald
(Little Hare Books, 2014)
Age: 4-10 years
A young girl arrives in Australia unable to speak English. She wraps herself in her familiar blanket woven with cultural familiarities. A girl in the park befriends her and together they share experiences and language. Gradually she relinquishes her blanket, realising that her culture comes from within. A moving story for exploring cultural similarities and differences.
8. Animalium by Katie Scott and Jenny Broom
(Five Mile Press, 2014)
Age: 5+
Animalium explores the animal kingdom with clarity, precision, excitement and highly detailed illustrations. Excellent features include its large size, sumptuous layout, tantalising questions and answers, clever analogies, multi-layered information and detailed index. Seven sections cover brief differences and commonalities, environment, food and behaviour. A perfect coffee table book for sharing among the family.
9. Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone (illustrated edition) by J K Rowling
(Bloomsbury, 2015)
Age: 6+
Harry Potter appeals to all ages, making the series of seven books an ideal family sharing experience. The unique aspect of this book is its copious illustrations, which capture mood, magical moments, unique characters and above all a sense of other-worldliness. This illustrated edition is the perfect opportunity for families to share a reading aloud experience with bonus images.
10. His Dark Materials trilogy by Philip Pullman
(Scholastic Books, 1995)
Age: 10+
His Dark Materials trilogy is a contemporary epic high-fantasy adventure with lyrical writing, highly original, memorable characters and a story with dazzling originality. It is the perennial story of pure evil and angelic good, of bravery and courage and inventive ideas rarely explored with such conviction and believability. A great book to share with the family.
Belle Alderman, Emeritus professor of children’s literature, University of Canberra
This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.
Bah, humbug: the misery of Christmas in classic literature
Michelle Smith, Deakin University
Every festive season guarantees a television re-run of the National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation, with the deflating turkey, incinerated tree, and extreme Griswold household lighting display that is now sufficiently commonplace for the joke to be compromised.
Most modern Christmas films angle for comedy with a touch of sentimental schmaltz. In contrast, literary Christmases frequently tap into the anxiety and sadness that often accompany the “happiest time of year”.
Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol (1843) is the quintessential Christmas tale. Even for those who have never read any Dickens, the miserly Ebeneezer Scrooge has permeated our culture, from 1940s Scrooge McDuck cartoons to the Muppets adaptation of A Christmas Carol in 1992.
Money-lender Scrooge’s greed extends to denying the pleasures of Christmas to himself and his employees. The ghosts of Christmas Past, Christmas Present, and Christmas Yet to Come aid Scrooge in reconciling his pain at the loss of a past love and redeeming himself among the living, so that he can find a welcoming place in the world on Christmas day.
As Tara Moore explains, Dickens and other writers in the Victorian period shaped “a certain version of urban Christmas—plum pudding, mourning the lost, holly and hearth-love” that we continue to idealise and reproduce.
Truman Capote’s autobiographical short story A Christmas Memory (1956) transports the theme of mourning happier times and beloved people from the snowy cobblestone streets of London to small-town Alabama.
The seven-year-old narrator, Buddy, describes the pleasures of a poor – but loving and inventive – Christmas with his elderly cousin, complete with scandalous nips of whisky after baking fruitcakes.
This is Buddy’s last Christmas with her, as he subsequently moves to military school. As time passes, dementia erases the cousin’s memories of Buddy and a November finally arrives,
when she cannot rouse herself to exclaim: “Oh my, it’s fruitcake weather!”
Other literary Christmases struggle to even find a bittersweet strand to the holiday. Dostoyevsky’s A Christmas Tree and a Wedding (1848) is a disturbing story in which the narrator recalls a past Christmas party in which a male landowner watches a rich girl playing with a doll.
The landowner calculates that when the girl is old enough marry that her dowry will total half a million roubles; he attempts to kiss the girl and extract a promise of love from her. The wedding of the title, which the narrator has just attended, is revealed to be that of the landowner and the rich girl, held five years after their Christmas meeting.
Clement Clarke Moore’s poem ’Twas the Night Before Christmas (1823) popularised an idyllic children’s vision of Christmas rendered magical by Saint Nicholas and his flying reindeer. In several of Hans Christian Andersen’s fairy tales with festive settings, however, he does not soften his trademark melancholy for the sake of Christmas cheer.
Author provided
In the little-known story The Fir Tree (1844), a tree is impatient for the day when it will be tall enough to take the exciting journey that other trees in the forest enjoy each December.
The fir tree is blissful when he is felled, transported, and decorated with candles and a gleaming star for a family’s Christmas Eve celebrations. He is then discarded in the household attic and eventually chopped to pieces and tossed on a fire. “Past! past!” the tree cries as he burns, realising that he should have taken pleasure during his lifetime in the forest, rather than eyeing an unknown future.
The Little Match Girl (1845) is similarly heart-rending, as a hungry, barefooted girl attempts to sell matches on snowy streets on New Year’s Eve.
She lights several matches to warm herself and is comforted by a series of visions, including a Christmas scene with a tree shining with “thousands of candles” and a stuffed goose that jumps from its dish,
and waddle[s] along the floor with a knife and fork in its breast, right over to the little girl.
The girl freezes to death on the street. As is typical of Andersen, her lonely death is intended to be a happy ending, as she will join with her grandmother and God in heaven.
Christmas is a backdrop for confronting feelings of isolation, strangeness and escalating family tensions in a range of fiction. Peter Carey’s Oscar and Lucinda (1988), set in the 19th century, is a striking example of Christmas serving as a lightning rod for intergenerational conflict.
Oscar’s father, Theophilus, is a fundamentalist Christian preacher who shuns Christmas feasting and celebration as pagan in origin. The servants covertly cook a plum pudding for Oscar, but his father catches him eating the “fruit of Satan” after one life-changing spoonful.
Theophilus strikes his son, forcing him to spit out the forbidden pleasure. Oscar, seeking a divine sign, asks God “if it be Thy will that Thy people eat pudding, then smite him!”. His father is soon bleeding with an injury and Oscar’s rejection of his father’s religion is set in motion.
In literature, as in our lived experiences of Christmas, the expectations of family, togetherness, and plenitude can heighten a sense of loneliness, loss, and conflict.
While there are many cheerful stories of Christmas, for children in particular, a significant number of literary Christmases scratch away at its twinkling veneer of tinsel and goodwill.
There’s an element of humbug in the mythology of Christmas, as Scrooge would have it, after all.
Michelle Smith, Research fellow in English Literature, Deakin University
This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.
Gifts for the Harry Potter Fan
The link below is to an article that takes a look at gifts for the Harry Potter fan.
For more visit:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com.au/entry/gifts-for-harry-potter-fans_566f295de4b011b83a6c252f
Short shelf life: the Book Council of Australia is stuffed back on the rack
Stuart Glover, The University of Queensland
In the 2006 throwaway romantic comedy Failure to Launch, Matthew McConaughey plays a funny, handsome, promising man who, deep into his thirties, just can’t leave home. Eventually, it turns out that he had suffered a calamitous loss many years before when his fiancée died. He was doomed from the outset; after the bad start, his pecker and promise are all gone.
So it is with the Book Council of Australia (BCA), which was long dreamed of – since 2010 in fact – by a kabal of publisher, bookseller, agent, and author organisations, and eventually endorsed by Labor, and then announced by Tony Abbott at last year’s Prime Minister’s Literary Awards.
Caleb Roenigk
But the day after this year’s PM’s Awards, the A$6 million to fund the BCA for its first three years has slipped back into general revenue as part of the MYEFO budget statement. The BCA, rather than launching, has been sent back to hangar.
The Council’s fate was perhaps soured from the start when – against industry wishes – it was funded by A$6 million taken from the budget of the Australia Council.
It was dirty money, and it became dirtier still when it turned out that this was just a precursor to Senator George Brandis’s A$104.7 million attack on the Australia Council budget in May in order to establish a ministerial National Program for Excellence in the Arts.
Eventually, in September, when Brandis, in one of his dying acts as arts minister, empanelled a Book Council Board, under the chairpersonship of Melbourne University Press’s director Louise Adler, further indignity was heaped upon the BCA.
Melbourne literary activist Sam Twyford-Moore engineered an industry campaign against the Council’s provenance, structure, and board appointments. Louise Adler in particular was targeted. Twyford-Moore called out the big guns: John Coetzee and Nick Cave, alongside 350 others, signed a public letter of opposition.
Since then nothing official has been heard about the BCA until the one-line detail in the MYEFO papers today. But few seem to be mourning its passing.
Former President of the Australian Publishers Association Peter Donoghue seemed to sum up industry feeling in a Facebook post today:
The now abolished Book Council of Australia was always a bullshit organisation of dubious “industry policy” Kim Carr provenance, funded with stolen money, and a play pen for your standard book trade enmities – big players versus small; established versus emerging; local versus global; authors versus everybody else, etc – so I for one rejoice in its demise. The pity is the money wasn’t returned to its rightful owner, the Australia Council.
The demise of the BCA leaves government policy in the literary sector uncertain. Arts Minister Mitch Fifield is promising to “consult widely with the literary community about alternative sector-led mechanisms for representation and promotion”, but for now conservative governments are leaving behind them a trail of acts that some interpret as hostile to literature, including:
- the cutting of funding for literary awards in Queensland
- the removal of territorial copyright protections
- cuts to the Australia Council
- and industry reports of imminent cuts to small literary organisations in WA.
At the very least the conservatives seem ambivalent about supporting literature’s potential to arm any of their opponents in the renewed culture wars.
The BCA was probably doomed the moment Tony Abbott announced its creation out of Australia Council funds. But whether government-funded or otherwise, the sector, after the demise of the Literature Board in 2014 and the BCA today, still badly needs a body to advocate for literature and to advise government on policy settings.
Stuart Glover, Senior Lecturer, Creative Writing, The University of Queensland
This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.
Things Found in Library Books
The link below is to an article that looks at things found in library books.
For more visit:
http://bookriot.com/2015/12/14/surprises-found-library-books-libraries-part-deux/
At the BookShelf 
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