thebooksdesk.bsky.social - Profile | ThreadSky | a Reddit-style client for Bluesky

God this is euphoric in the way that only things that are also unbearably sad can be. Click play on this and start your day with all the feelings ❤️

submitted 2 days ago • 7 comments

Denmark says "Post-editing of machine translated books should not be called translation."

submitted 1 day ago • 1 comment

A little dose of the Antipodes to tide me over before I make landfall again (courtesy of the old firm, Readings Books)

submitted 1 day ago • 0 comments

early warning ... @minorliteratures.bsky.social will open for fiction submissions for the month of August

submitted 2 days ago • 3 comments

"As a lyricist, Stipe is a truly unique & v effective communicator, considering that ppl tend to go on at length abt the inscrutability of some of his lyrics. I'd argue that there’s not a more efficient & direct communicator in the history of rock’n’roll frontmen” www.theguardian.com/music/2025/m...

submitted 2 days ago • 0 comments

Didn't know about this one: Sebald scholar Uwe Schütte has a new book on Bowie and Gugging, the asylum in Austria he visited in 2005 – renowned for fostering its patients' artistic work. And a personal dimension of course too: his half-brother Terry www.starfruit-publications.de/buecher/ster...

submitted 2 days ago • 0 comments

Cassocks are red Conclaves are dope Wake up babe we got a

submitted 3 days ago • 1556 comments

Watch this space for little pollinations and other printed matter!

submitted 3 days ago • 0 comments

An offer of publication, but from a publisher you don’t like much anymore? Send them your second-best story instead! Kafka’s “First Sorrow”, published in the magazine “Genius” in 1922

submitted 6 days ago • 0 comments

youtu.be/YDLwivcpFe8?...

submitted 3 days ago • 0 comments

'Divertimento' by Julio Cortázar is finally getting translated into English, published next January. Vintage UK also bringing a few of his books back into print with new covers:

submitted 3 days ago • 3 comments

"(Vortex)...took shape in 2021 when Rodney Hall found 18 pages of a novel he had abandoned in 1971. “At long last I could see what I had been aiming for when I was a young man. 15 of the 18 pages went straight into the project.” www.theage.com.au/culture/book...

submitted 3 days ago • 0 comments

So so thrilled for Rodney Hall and his utterly deserved Age Book of the Year win with Vortex!! This was an utterly electrifying novel, the outstanding OZ fic of 2024 imo, from an author who, even at age 89, remains absolutely at the height of his powers! www.theage.com.au/culture/book...

submitted 3 days ago • 0 comments

Got a "tour-de-force....no" on a sub this week, so reposting this for old time's sake! #agentlife

submitted 3 days ago • 0 comments

Everyone, meet Beefcake. 🐸 She's a glorious 396 grams of toad and she brings me immense joy. Even when she pissed all over my boots. I ❤️ Beefcake. #wildoz #TCZ

submitted 4 days ago • 3 comments

How I admire people who can write like this.

submitted 4 days ago • 1 comment

"In spite of all this, at no time over the last 18 mths have I felt that writing fiction was a waste of time". Finally got to @lukehorton.bsky.social's great essay on meaningfully engaging with this world through writing (& reading) overland.org.au/2025/05/book...

submitted 4 days ago • 1 comment

"Two local real estate agents shake hands, fill their pockets with rocks, and walk into the nearby lake. The innkeeper curses himself for spending so much coin on his new signage: THE NUCLEAR ARMS is now a deeply stupid name" Vintage @cormacmccafe.bsky.social! yeahnah.substack.com/p/the-libera...

submitted 4 days ago • 1 comment

"Salvage is an incredible novel of great imagination and prescience that asks how we might live in the wake of ecological collapse, and - more importantly - what we might live for. Jennifer Mills is the real deal: an author who never loses sight of what it means to be human, even when writing a

submitted 4 days ago • 1 comment

I’ve donated one of my precious author copies of Salvage to this auction for Palestine. Pre-release and signed! Lots of good things on offer, please bid if you can afford it & share around. Grateful for all the solidarity in a time of devastating news. airauctioneer.com/authors-and-...

submitted 5 days ago • 1 comment

Really sad to hear that the Oz author and academic Tracy Sorensen passed away in recent days. Beautiful that she still managed to publish this before she passed www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle...

submitted 4 days ago • 2 comments

Such amazing advance praise for Lucy Nelson's debut Wait Here, now up on the @summitbooksaus.bsky.social website! Out in June... www.simonandschuster.com.au/books/Wait-H...

submitted 5 days ago • 0 comments

I only just realised that “Muesli” is the Swiss-German diminutive of “Mus”, ie “mush” or “puree”.

submitted 5 days ago • 5 comments

“I think it was the Commonwealth Prize where there were four of us shortlisted for best book, and they slipped a note under our door at the hotel saying, “It’s not you. The dinner’s tonight, please still come, but it’s not you.” newsroom.co.nz/2025/05/07/c...

submitted 5 days ago • 0 comments

Such amazing advance praise for Lucy Nelson's debut Wait Here, now up on the @summitbooksaus.bsky.social website! Out in June... www.simonandschuster.com.au/books/Wait-H...

submitted 5 days ago • 0 comments

And you may find yourself living in a thatched-roof hut And you may find yourself living in the Holy Roman Empire And you may find yourself negotiating with your lords And you may find yourself in a beautiful hall, with a beautiful wife And you may ask yourself, "Well, how did I get here?"

submitted 5 days ago • 52 comments

"@catherinechidgey.bsky.social's The Book of Guilt is phenomenal. I couldn't put it down.' – @clairemabey.bsky.social on the money here! www.rnz.co.nz/national/pro...

submitted 5 days ago • 0 comments

Cute: memories of @catherinechidgey.bsky.social from her creative writing teachers & fellow students in the 90s. A great last word from @pacificraft.bsky.social: "Our job was simply to keep her company while she wrote her book." newsroom.co.nz/2025/05/06/c...

submitted 6 days ago • 0 comments

Wim Wenders' new short film The Keys to Freedom, upon the 80th anniversary of the end of WW2 www.youtube.com/watch?v=slcN...

submitted 6 days ago • 1 comment

"...although the Down Under presence in Berlin is noted by anyone who enjoys Nick Cave or avocado toast or Berlin Atonal (or deals ketamine in Neukölln), one seldom finds explicit discussions about what this long-distance relationship means" @ajbwells.bsky.social www.the-berliner.com/books/down-u...

submitted 6 days ago • 0 comments

An offer of publication, but from a publisher you don’t like much anymore? Send them your second-best story instead! Kafka’s “First Sorrow”, published in the magazine “Genius” in 1922

submitted 6 days ago • 0 comments

Oh cool, @squigglyrick.bsky.social got his visa, so now even more mischief to be had when visiting @meganclement.bsky.social next in Paris! rick-morton.ghost.io/the-funny-th...

submitted 6 days ago • 1 comment

Well aren’t you folk blessed! The opening pages of @catherinechidgey.bsky.social’s extraordinary new novel The Book of Guilt free to read online today! newsroom.co.nz/2025/05/05/c...

submitted 7 days ago • 1 comment

Perfect pub reading. PM Press doing more vital work with their "Kelman Library", this time with nearly 100 of his v short stories from across five decades

submitted 7 days ago • 0 comments

No one thinks the Harry Potter series will be some TERF parable. That's not the objection. People don't like the idea of further enriching an obsessive anti-trans weirdo who will spend her money attacking trans rights and trans people worldwide.

submitted 7 days ago • 8 comments

Yes, we received that email. Courage and strength to all our fellow small, independent presses doing the important work of celebrating diverse and original voices, whether its poetry or nonfiction, translated or not. Literature is not going anywhere.

submitted 8 days ago • 3 comments

And now the culture wars have failed, can the government grow some gonads and reinstate Khaled Sabsabi?

submitted 7 days ago • 13 comments

there is no word intellectuals like better than “palimpsest.” They will use it on the barest of pretexts, no matter the theme they will find a way to say it. It is simply their favorite word

submitted 8 days ago • 165 comments

Everyone’s acting shocked that the election’s been called before 8:30pm but two and a half hours is plenty of time to roast a potato

submitted 8 days ago • 7 comments

Perhaps Albo will feel secure enough to start growing a spine now.

submitted 8 days ago • 142 comments

Just got a message from a mate: “Can Peter Dutton get a ‘Goodbye From Country’?” 😂

submitted 8 days ago • 62 comments

To express how big this is: I just spoke to someone who has worked in migration services in Germany for several years, and their immediate reaction was to burst into tears of relief. Yes, this news has come late: but at least it is here. There is now no legal doubt about who and what the AfD are.

submitted 9 days ago • 16 comments

A lovely election-day launch in Albury's gorgeous independent bookshop, Booktique, with my great friend and co-conspirator Jane Rawson.

submitted 8 days ago • 0 comments

Blinder of an OZ election day short story in @thesaturdaypaper.com.au by @jake-dean.bsky.social! www.thesaturdaypaper.com.au/culture/fict...

submitted 8 days ago • 1 comment

Now listening!

submitted 9 days ago • 1 comment