cread | read & see

While visiting a remote village in the central mountainous region of Bali that could only be reached by foot and hair-raising motorbike ride, the presence of two things surprised me. In a place where there was no running water, sewerage, electricity or proper roads, we visited a substantial Christian church built of concrete and tiles on the side of a mountain. And among the baskets of chillies and other crops being prepared for market, young people were fiddling with their mobile phones. This picture - of the phone use at least - is repeated across the developing world where cheaper, basic phones such as per-paid Samsungs, Nokias and Blackberries are prolific and now a new book reading app has been developed to bring free books to these millions of 'feature phones'. Worldreader Mobile, operating on the  biNu platform, has just moved out of the beta phase and already 10 per cent of biNu's 5 million users have accessed the app - about 107,000 in India, 60,800 in Nig

The idea of fascinating times, as author and social commentator Mal Fletcher explains, can inspire thoughts of exciting possibilities or simply exhaustion. The supposed Chinese curse goes, 'May you live in fascinating times'. Maybe this is an indication that as much as we tell ourselves we are up for an adventure, really we just want to be left alone doing what we've always done. Judging by the subject matter of Fletcher's new book, Fascinating Times , sitting quietly is hardly likely to be an option, at least not all of the time. His collection of essays and commentary from recent years is like an omnibus of the major forces sweeping across our lives and generations, whether we like it or not. And given our propensity at times to want to ignore things we don't like, don't understand or simply don't agree with, we can be thankful that Fletcher has done the hard yards of pulling these topics together and providing thoughtful, reasoned commentary. At

An Australian ad company, BMF ,  has developed an innovative book mailing product that will hopefully lead to many more good quality books being donated to reading programs for disadvantaged people. Mailbooks for Good is like an 'inbuilt' book mailing envelope that is part of the cover of the book and which can be folded out to encase the book with address and postage included to a chosen book charity or program. Mailbooks for Good is being trialled now with five Random House titles available from Gleebooks in Sydney with the beneficiary being The Footpath Library . The current Mailbooks for Good titles, selected in cooperation with Random House, are Crack Hardy by Stephen Dando-Collins, Wanting by Richard Flanagan, And Now for Some Light Relief by Peter Fitzsimons, The Fix by Nick Earls and Bureau of Mysteries by HJ Harper. The idea is that customers see a book they like in a bookstore and realise that not only can they read it, but can easily send it on to

Many new readers of Woo l are turning pages, rather than flicking screens, as the self-published science fiction dystopia finds a mass market in book stores alongside author Hugh Howey's Amazon success. If you follow Howey on Amazon you are probably well and truly into the Wool prequels, First Shift , Second Shift and Third Shift and waiting for the release of Dust. Meanwhile traditional readers are buying up the Wool omnibus (books one to five) and waiting for the Shift omnibus (books six to eight) . Which says a lot about the diversity of modern publishing and, I think, Howey's penchant for boring titles. But with a breakthrough best-seller on his hands even before traditional publishers got involved in the paper version, more power to him! [ Click cover to buy from Booktopia ] If you have managed to continue reading through my compulsive need to tidy up the state of play regarding Wool , let's get down to the story. In a classic dystopian setting, the worl

'I hope this book will reach people around the world, so they realise how difficult it is for some children to get access to education. I want to tell my story, but it will also be the story of 61m children who can't get education. I want it to be part of the campaign to give every boy and girl the right to go to school. It is their basic right.' The next episode in the amazing life of Malala Yousafzai is about to occur with the 15-year-old Pakistani girl reportedly signing a £2mbook deal with UK publisher Weidenfeld & Nicolson, part of Hatchette UK. And this instantly recognisable event from her life is just one reason why the new book, to be known as I am Malala is destined to be a best-seller: 'In October last year, gunmen boarded a school bus and asked: "Which one of you is Malala? Speak up, otherwise I will shoot you all". When she was identified, a gunman shot her in the head and the bullet passed through her head, neck and embedded itself i

The words of people living with dementia are being turned into poetry by actor and writer Susanna Howard. As part of of program taking place in the UK, Howard develops a trusting relationship with people with dementia and their families before recording their words for poetry. 'Living Words works with individuals who have dementia. Once a relationship is established through active listening, every word spoken is written and recorded,' the Living Words website explains. 'These words are then sculpted in to poems before being put in to individual books. The books are kept with each person and can help further bond the person with their carer and help a relative see the identity of their loved one; who they are now .' The results are described as 'poignant and profoundly emotional' by The Independent. Here are two examples: Number 65 This chair – it’s so dirty feeling I’m not in a running order Where do you go to when you Go out? I keep out of wa

About two years ago I started working with HammondCare, having been unfamiliar with the name and the story behind it. I was aware of a Sydney suburb called Hammondville which often appeared in traffic reports, something like - 'traffic is banked up all the way to the Hammondville toll'. I was also very familiar with Arthur Stace, the man famous for writing his one-word sermon, Eternity, around Sydney and beyond hundreds of thousands of times from the 1930s to 1967 when he died - at Hammondville. I had always thought his life one of Sydney's great stories and a powerful touch point of faith and culture, recognised also by those who have written about him in poems and songs, created paintings, produced documentaries and operas and even featured his word in the millennium fireworks and the Sydney Olympic opening ceremony. What I have discovered, as is revealed in Faith in Action HammondCare , is that the story of Rev Bob Hammond and the charity he founded is just as

After reading the disturbing psychological thriller Gone Girl , reassurance that the world is not totally devoid of reason is immediately found in the Acknowledgements. [Click cover image to purchase ] Author Gillian Flynn, after creating a world of dysfunction, proceeds to thank her family and friends who sound remarkably normal and nice. Maybe it was 'author's guilt' being appeased - borrowing from the foibles of her family in her fiction but wanting to distance them from the story of Amy and Nick and Go and Desi and the Elliots. Or perhaps it is a further play with reality. The reader having been led through the deepest places of a deception possible in the human psyche, is deceived one more time into thinking Flynn comes from the perfect world. After all, as the cover tag reads, 'there are two sides to every story...'. The fact that this conjecture is even occurring, tongue-in-cheek as it may be, shows the power of Gone Girl in creating characters

Please click on any book cover to purchase or pre-order   Having killed Lincoln and Kennedy in previous books, US Fox News anchor and best-selling author Bill O'Reilly has announced his next book, Killing Jesus to be published on September 24. As the calendar approaches Easter, there will no doubt be the usual flurry of new Jesus books released and discussed but ironically the timing of O'Reilly's new title is aimed at the biggest bookselling season of them all, Christmas. And while O'Reilly as an author is relatively unknown outside North America, as are his books, he still ranks as the world's sixth richest author grossing $24 million last year. But Killing Jesus may well gain him a broader, global audience and no doubt that is part of his motivation in writing the book. His now tried and true formula is to allow co-author Martin Dugard to do the pain-staking work of research around the killing of a famous historical figure while he comes on board

Cross Roads by William Paul Young was a Christmas present for my 22-year-old son and while he takes time to get around to it, I've leapt in for the purposes of review. Cain by Jose Saramago had earned a 'staff recommendation' tag at Better Read than Dead in Newtown, Sydney, and so I took their lead and bought it on a lazy Sunday afternoon. For a time I read them side by side, a literary juxtaposition : Cross Roads by a US Christian novelist famous for writing the bestseller, The Shack , who offended some religious sensibilities in the process. Events in his new novel are based inside someone's being, located in his home state of Oregon.   Cain by a Nobel-prize winning, deceased Portuguese author also known for offending religious sensibilities and being a self-confessed communist, atheist and pessimist. Events in this his last book are seen through the eyes of the first child of Adam and Eve and occur at the beginning of time and space. Both tell a mess

Author of Dare to Discipline , Bringing up Boys and about 30 other titles has written his first fiction book, Fatherless , with co-author Kurt Bruner. Released last month, Fatherless is a dystopia likened by the publisher, Faithwords (Hatchette) to 1984 and Brave New World . Conservative US media personality, Glen Beck, likened the book to Uncle Tom's Cabin , Harriet Beecher Stowe's classic that contributed to the start of the American Civil War and the end of slavery in that country. While interviewing Dobson recently, Beck held up both Uncle Tom’s Cabin and Fatherless , and said, 'This, uh, many believe, is this. This will wake people up.' Wake people up, in Dobson's words, to the 'redefining of life' through a growing normalisation of abortion, euthanasia and infanticide. The book opens in 2041 with a 'volunteer' submitting to an ending of life or 'transition' for the good of family and country. It continues by exploring this

This week author Markus Zusak addressed 400 fans at the Highland Park Literary Festival and recalled that his very first reading of one of his works at a library near his home in Australia was attended by... nobody.  “But the librarian still made me read from my book – just to her.” She may have realised Zusak would be thankful for the practice in the future - now that he is in demand globally. Starting as a writer for young adults The Book Thief has charmed readers of all ages. But what does a typical Gen Y reader from Zusak's hometown think of the highly acclaimed novel? Let's see...                                                               Click cover to buy>> Why am I reading The Book Thief? The Book Thief by Markus Zusak is a good novel. 1. It is situated in history. The majority of the book is set between 1939 and 1942 in Nazi Germany. The fictional town of Molching just outside the city of Munich has in it a Himmel Street, where such despair and love an