cread | read & see

New media, in the hand of entrepreneurial tech-savvy individuals, is finding its way into every avenue of life and reading is no exception. ReadCloud was founded in 2009 by Jeremy LeBard and is “the world's first social eReading software.” It recently signed with publisher, Macmillan, lifting its tally of eBooks to 75,000. It offers three products globally: Social eReading software for schools and book clubs which allows for sharing of annotations directly inside eBooks as well as easy distribution of eBooks to school laptops and tablets A white-label eBooks platform with tablet applications allowing physical bookstores to hacve their own digital bookstore selling eBooks from major international and Australian publishers. Course material encryption and distribution for corporate training and university course notes. The social platform syncs all connected ReadCloud apps (PC, Mac, iPhone, iPad, Android) such as within an educational institution, to the cloud – internet data

We're back with week two of Creview, reviewing the weekend reviews of another three newspapers. This week in honour of Melbourne Writers Festival we feature The Age , along with the UK's The Independent , and the Los Angeles Times .(And list the LA Time's bestsellers.) Nine Days by Toni Jordan was reviewed by Thuy On of The Age , who considered the use of nine characters' perspectives spanning a four generation time frame, a tad ambitious: “The novel feels like a series of postcards that offer colourful but tantalisingly brief episodes in the lives of nine individuals.” Kate Holden, also of The Age , reviewed Our Kind of People: Thoughts on the HIV/AIDS Epidemic by Uzodinma Iweala. Holden calls it a  “passionately argued lecture on survival, stigma, African (read: human) dignity and misconceived Western attitudes.” She comments on how it challenged her with its cranky tone while praising its beautifully drawn portraits of people of the people of whom Iweala write

I began reading Thomas Keneally's The Daughters of Mars while travelling in Europe, a deliberate plan to bring alive both the landscape and text. In a very Australian way, this is one of the attractions of the many world war books that we consume - they reflect back to us the experiences our parents and grandparents and our own pilgrimages to those distant shores. Just as sisters Sally and Naomi Durance walk the narrow streets of Rouen, wondering at the cathedral and the place where Joan was martyred, or travel to Paris through Gare du Nord, or feel afraid in Amiens, so too countless Australians will be instantly drawn back to their own moments in these locations. And all the more along the shores of Gallipoli where the sisters from the Macleay Valley, NSW, begin their WWI nursing services on the hospital ship Archimedes. It's not just a tourist's "I've been there", it's more the feeling that we share a common legacy and longing in these far-from-ho