News & Blog by Brett Osmond
Read the latest news and bulletins, essays, features, opinions from our bestselling authors. Find out what's being said, debated, and discussed in the world of books and ideas.
I can’t resist the urge to talk about this incredible novel even though it doesn’t release in English until May. HHhH won the prestigious Prix Goncourt du Premier Roman in 2010. Mario Vargas Llosa, 2010 winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature describes it as, ‘Magnificent … unsurpassable … told with grace and elegance … exerts a hypnotic sway over the reader...
I reluctantly started reading Maggie McKellar’s memoir, WHEN IT RAINS, on our publishing director’s recommendation. Although this was an important and big book for us at Random House I was hesitant because on the face of it this sounded like a really sad story and I didn’t know if that’s what I felt like reading. How wrong was I. WHEN IT RAINS is a magnificent,...
Can a sophisticated algorithm be as helpful as a person inside a bricks and mortar bookshop?
by Brett Osmond on 28 July 2011
I was at the Australian Book Industry Awards on Monday night when I heard that Di Gribble was unwell. Di’s incredible contribution to book publishing in this country is phenomenal. I don’t know Di personally but so many wonderful reading memories come from books McPhee Gribble published back in the 1980s, authors of the ilk of Helen Garner, Murray Bail, Tim Winton and many other Australian authors...
I wanted to write about ebooks, social media and the impact and opportunities digital is having on book publishing in general in this blog, all of which consume a lot of my working day but my mind is lost at the moment, it’s preoccupied with a book I’m reading; INTO THE SILENCE by Wade Davis. I can only write about this today. http://www.randomhouse.com.au/Books/INTO-THE-SILENCE/9781847921857/Trade-Paperback The...
[caption id="attachment_2277" align="alignleft" width="215" caption="Erin Morgenstern, author of The Night Circus"][/caption] I am very excited about a particular book we will publish later this year called The Night Circus. I am one of just a few people who has had the privilege of reading an early manuscript. In a few weeks we will have unedited proof copies to give to more staff, booksellers...
When I read a novel that I love, I often don’t go back and read the author’s previous books, preferring instead to wait for the new book to come out. I can’t really explain why but it’s a thing I do. I love William Boyd’s books for instance, but haven’t read anything published before Brazzaville Beach. With Murakami my first was South of the Border, West of the Sun - so that’s probably why I resisted...
Some of my best reading experiences have been on the great adventures of my life: OUT OF AFRICA in Kenya, A PRAYER FOR OWEN MEANY in India, THE DIARY OF ANNE FRANK in Amsterdam, OBSESSION, read while trekking in northern Sumatra. But my most favourite reading experience of all was CATCH 22 - read in a hurricane shelter on a small island off the coast of Honduras. I’d picked it up from another traveller...
