Magdalena Ball's Blog
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Feb.15.2012
Hello wonderful fellow bookworms. I'm very excited to report that my new novel Black Cow is about to be released on February 24th. To celebrate we've got lots of fun events. For starters, there's a brand new video (to the left). We've also got a bookalicious book tour...
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Sep.28.2011
Banned Books Week runs from Sept. 24 – Oct.1, when readers around the world are encouraged to celebrate books that often get banned in various places around the world. There are other books that have been banned more often than Catch-22, but it's Catch-22's 50th anniversary,...
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Aug.25.2011
“We shouldn’t teach great books; we should teach a love of reading.” - B.F. Skinner
Last week, in the Chronicle of Higher Education Alan Jacobs raises the old "nature versus nuture" chestnut by stating that it's impossible to teach children to love reading. Taken at face value, Jacobs may...
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Dec.22.2010
Two thousand Cicadas overwhelm the air as the temperature pushes one hundred degrees farenheit. It's beginning to feel a lot like Christmas. Christmas in Australia that is, where the summer solstice has just passed and Christmas means time on the beach. As I grew up in the Northern Hemisphere,...
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Jul.29.2010
I wanted to manufacture a memory knit with organic yarns of kid mohair, boucle, alpaca in colours like blue sky, mulberry, ecru, lime knubbly and pathological wrought with nostalgia and wrung through time’s dryer waving and flapping cobblestones and chimney path in the tired hours when your eyes...
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Jan.29.2010
I came to Ruiz Zafón late - beyond the tremendous hype that surrounded The Shadow of the Wind. Many reviewers have panned the sequel, The Angel's Game, as a weak follow-on to its much greater predecessor, but as I haven't read The Shadow of the Wind, I read The Angel's Game with fresh, unbiased...
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Jan.06.2010
At the tail end of mercybiting, fightingsorespun parchmenteyes its creatorwith contempt.
On the spurof warmthvast cloud of cold gaseverywhere elsemaking, remakingdestroyingbuilding again.
No one would chooseto call this workno pay could compensateno goal lofty enoughno endeavour eversuccessful.
Its...
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Dec.10.2009
Walking the fuzzy linebetween deference and defiancea cold wind opens the dooryou slideinto frictive fictivepresent.
Holding onto your absent bodytoo tightly I find somethingtangiblea heart once brokenbeats beneath my own chest.
The snarl of your lipagainst kindness in your eyeshow odd to find...
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Aug.25.2009
How do we distinguish between good and bad poetry? There are plenty of people who will say that it’s impossible to judge – that quality is a subjective thing and that one man’s literature is another’s junk. As a book reviewer who spends many hours a week judging the quality of a range of books,...
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Aug.15.2009
Attention spans are shortening. I hear it all the time, and don’t doubt it either. People are bombarded with fast-paced moving imagery on television, in computer games, in media of all types and we scan, cram, multitask, grab a quick bite and move on. From a literary perspective, Noah Lukeman...
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Feb.02.2009
Let me start by saying, right up front, that publishing poetry is generally not a road to riches. Most of us write poetry for reasons other than its hot selling power. Of all genres, poetry is probably the hardest to sell. I’m not entirely sure why this is the case, but I’ll hazard an educated...
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May.30.2008
Hi everyone, I'll be doing a public chat on LibraryThing from the 23rd of June to the 4th of July and I'd love you to come and throw me your gnarliest questions! Go on -- there's nothing I won't answer (and if you don't believe me, just check out a few of my past interviews!). Just drop byhttp...
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May.13.2008
The Compulsive Reader Talks has 2 new shows -- one with Julie Mars, author of Anybody Any Minute, and one with Aaron Lazar, author of Tremolo. Drop by and hear both authors read from and talk about their latest novels. Speaking of radio shows, I just had the opportunity to sit in the other chair,...
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Apr.20.2008
Every day there seems to be a new author putting his or her hand up and admitting to lying about their identity or memoir. It's as if we were at a 12-Step meeting for authors and one man's confession produced a wave of copycats. Why are authors faking their memoirs rather than writing fiction?...
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About Magdalena
Magdalena Ball runs The Compulsive Reader. She is the author of the novels Black Cow and Sleep Before Evening, , the poetry books Repulsion Thrust and Quark Soup, a nonfiction book The Art of Assessment, and, in collaboration with Carolyn Howard-Johnson,...
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