The Shining? •    Jodi Picoult harms children. •    “Oh, we all hated Holden in my class. We just wanted to tell him, ‘Shut up and take your Prozac.’ ” •    Ever wondered what Wikipedia would look like as a regular encyclopedia? Me neither. Protip: It’s a half-metre thick and only contains 0.014% of the online [...]

On the Road By Jack Kerouac Published: 1957 320 pages At face value, On the Road is little more than a run-of-the-mill travel memoir.  But place this novel in its historical context, and you’ll realise that On the Road was, and still remains, and incredibly important and influential piece of literature. Stylistically, Kerouac inspired New [...]

Despite some stiff competition, Tim Winton was announced as the winner of the 2009 Miles Franklin Award last night.  He collects a $42,000 prize for his novel, Breath. Here is what the judges had to say: “Breath is a searing document about masculinity, about risk, and about young people’s desire to push the limits. Winton [...]

A trailer for the upcoming documentary Bad Writing • The New York Times ponders: Can writing actually be taught? More intriguing than it sounds… • A simple and hilarious guide for deciphering all those wanky literary terms. • A group of American Christians are suing for the right to burn a book they view as [...]

Back in May, we offered Nile customers copies of High Fidelity for only 0.99c as part of our Book Club promotion.  I’m pleased to say that this particular book has attracted some interesting discussion over on the forums.  With next month’s book already out for the offering, I thought I’d recap what happened last month [...]

Every month, the esteemed judges at TheNile will be selecting the finest book review submitted that month – and awarding its writer a $50 voucher! In order to submit your review, simply sign in with your Nile account, search for the book in question, scroll down to the bottom of the page and select leave [...]

Michael Thomas’ debut novel, Man Gone Down, has taken out the world’s most lucrative book prize.  The novel’s unnamed narrator is a black New Yorker who is forced to scrounge up a large amount of money in a short time in order to redeem himself in the eyes of his estranged family.  “We never know [...]

Boring books can also be… scary… really freakin’ scary… • According to some Texans, the English language now contains over a million words. Hooray! But wait until you see what the millionth word was… • (1 + 1 = 3) = 1984 = 60 = We? • Pristine first-edition print of James Joyce’s  oft derided [...]