Martin Shaw
@thebooksdesk.bsky.social
Literary agent @shawliterary.bsky.social, formerly head book buyer at Readings Books, Melbourne. Kafka, Sebald, the Antipodes.
Reposted by Martin Shaw
Poor @thebooksdesk.bsky.social he just wants to be at home with some red wine...
December 5, 2025 at 4:51 PM
Poor @thebooksdesk.bsky.social he just wants to be at home with some red wine...
Friday evenig motets in the Thomaskirche, Leipzig
December 5, 2025 at 4:43 PM
Friday evenig motets in the Thomaskirche, Leipzig
Hilarious: Guy Rundle with outtakes from the Mushroom Tapes... open.substack.com/pub/guyrundl...
The Mushroom Tapes Outtakes
Commentary from a radical and pluralist perspective on Australian and world affairs.,
Culture, satire and the occasional breaking story
open.substack.com
December 5, 2025 at 1:57 PM
Hilarious: Guy Rundle with outtakes from the Mushroom Tapes... open.substack.com/pub/guyrundl...
"On a closer, slower read, the poems reveal themselves. Their depths, it turns out, are camouflaged by how sonically seductive they are". Andy Jackson on @benwaltez.bsky.social's debut volume of poetry, Lithosphere www.thesaturdaypaper.com.au/culture/book...
Lithosphere
I’m told humans can only genuinely experience a natural environment by staying still for at least 10 minutes. Only then do birds and other animals begin to emerge from their cautious retreat. There’s ...
www.thesaturdaypaper.com.au
December 5, 2025 at 1:48 PM
"On a closer, slower read, the poems reveal themselves. Their depths, it turns out, are camouflaged by how sonically seductive they are". Andy Jackson on @benwaltez.bsky.social's debut volume of poetry, Lithosphere www.thesaturdaypaper.com.au/culture/book...
Reposted by Martin Shaw
me and my buddies are all wide awake and calculating our volume
December 3, 2025 at 8:02 AM
me and my buddies are all wide awake and calculating our volume
Not for the first time, Guy Rundle so on-point re: the SLV guyrundle.substack.com/p/hell-and-h...
Hell and Hijinx at the Victorian State Library
Taking the biscuits, experience engineers, animated Ned Head, having a Gandel at the librocide
guyrundle.substack.com
December 4, 2025 at 11:28 AM
Not for the first time, Guy Rundle so on-point re: the SLV guyrundle.substack.com/p/hell-and-h...
Looking forward very much to a new Lucy Nelson short story, out in the summer edition of @themonthly.com.au! www.themonthly.com.au/december-202...
Lady Jack Black
A new story from the author of Wait Here, about a holiday with friends, a new relationship and a struggle with a liquor cabinet
www.themonthly.com.au
December 4, 2025 at 8:01 AM
Looking forward very much to a new Lucy Nelson short story, out in the summer edition of @themonthly.com.au! www.themonthly.com.au/december-202...
Reposted by Martin Shaw
A lovely shout out for Salvage here.
“The perfect book to read on your summer holidays. It’s pacey and keeps you turning the pages, while you reflect on how you’re cooking on a heating planet”
theconversation.com/best-books-o...
“The perfect book to read on your summer holidays. It’s pacey and keeps you turning the pages, while you reflect on how you’re cooking on a heating planet”
theconversation.com/best-books-o...
Best books of 2025: our experts share their picks
We found out the favourite 2025 books of 35 expert readers – and the Books & Ideas team shares our own picks, too.
theconversation.com
December 4, 2025 at 2:17 AM
A lovely shout out for Salvage here.
“The perfect book to read on your summer holidays. It’s pacey and keeps you turning the pages, while you reflect on how you’re cooking on a heating planet”
theconversation.com/best-books-o...
“The perfect book to read on your summer holidays. It’s pacey and keeps you turning the pages, while you reflect on how you’re cooking on a heating planet”
theconversation.com/best-books-o...
Reposted by Martin Shaw
Haven't read 'Aubade' in a few years and just did so on the link below. Astonishing how many of its phrases have entered my own way of thinking and expressing myself. And if there's a more perfect, devastating, beautiful ending to a poem, I need to know.
Philip Larkin started writing ‘Aubade’ in 1974, & finished it in 1977 after his mother’s death. It was published in the TLS on 23rd December, apparently ruining a number of people’s Christmases. Larkin, terrified of death all his life, died on this day 1985.
www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/48422/...
www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/48422/...
Aubade
Not in remorse —The good not done, the love not given, time Torn off unused—nor wretchedly because An only life can take so long to climb Clear of its wrong beginnings, and may never; But at the total...
www.poetryfoundation.org
December 2, 2025 at 1:11 PM
Haven't read 'Aubade' in a few years and just did so on the link below. Astonishing how many of its phrases have entered my own way of thinking and expressing myself. And if there's a more perfect, devastating, beautiful ending to a poem, I need to know.
Reposted by Martin Shaw
Calling all Australian writers, musicians, film-makers & artists of every kind! Sign the new Open Letter about catastrophic crises at the State Library of Victoria, written by Gideon Haigh, Graeme Davison & Clare Wright. Text of letter & instructions on my Facebook page & Insta @reallykazcooke.
December 2, 2025 at 1:29 AM
Calling all Australian writers, musicians, film-makers & artists of every kind! Sign the new Open Letter about catastrophic crises at the State Library of Victoria, written by Gideon Haigh, Graeme Davison & Clare Wright. Text of letter & instructions on my Facebook page & Insta @reallykazcooke.
"It is powerfully emetic stuff": a line I suspect unlikely to appear in the endorsements pages of subsequent eds! But really I don't feel TD is meant to be the object of critical scrutiny? Seems to me he's a popular fiction writer a la Bryce Courtenay www.australianbookreview.com.au/abr-online/c...
James Ley reviews ‘Gravity Let Me Go’ by Trent Dalton
Before writing this review, I reread Catriona Menzies-Pike’s award-winning essay ‘Critic Swallows Book’ (2022), a rare piece of Australian literary criticism with a claim to definitiveness, as it was ...
www.australianbookreview.com.au
December 2, 2025 at 12:00 PM
"It is powerfully emetic stuff": a line I suspect unlikely to appear in the endorsements pages of subsequent eds! But really I don't feel TD is meant to be the object of critical scrutiny? Seems to me he's a popular fiction writer a la Bryce Courtenay www.australianbookreview.com.au/abr-online/c...
Lovely to see Lucy Nelson’s debut story collection Wait Here considered one of the year’s books of the year (“Nelson gives moments such as these – daily submerged flutters of the heart – their due, without being loud about it”) www.australianbookreview.com.au/abr-online/c...
Books of the Year 2025
Amanda Lohrey My novel of the year is Italian writer Vincenzo Latronico’s Perfection (Text Publishing), a slyly political novel about a cool young couple in Berlin whose good intentions are undermined...
www.australianbookreview.com.au
December 1, 2025 at 8:20 PM
Lovely to see Lucy Nelson’s debut story collection Wait Here considered one of the year’s books of the year (“Nelson gives moments such as these – daily submerged flutters of the heart – their due, without being loud about it”) www.australianbookreview.com.au/abr-online/c...
Nuremberg comes to Leipzig! @derbren.bsky.social
December 1, 2025 at 11:06 AM
Nuremberg comes to Leipzig! @derbren.bsky.social
Reposted by Martin Shaw
Der Bundeskanzler setzt seine erfolgreiche Auslandsreise fort.
November 29, 2025 at 1:04 PM
Der Bundeskanzler setzt seine erfolgreiche Auslandsreise fort.
Great idea for an article (nb/ @pipadam.bsky.social introduced me to Womb, which I will be forever grateful for!) thespinoff.co.nz/books/27-11-...
Eight New Zealand novelists on the music they write to
From one song played masochistically on repeat to a sprawling 12-hour playlist, this is the music behind the books.
thespinoff.co.nz
November 28, 2025 at 8:01 AM
Great idea for an article (nb/ @pipadam.bsky.social introduced me to Womb, which I will be forever grateful for!) thespinoff.co.nz/books/27-11-...
Reposted by Martin Shaw
the arc of tension throughout- from the beginning to the end - of Lisa Robertson’s The Baudelaire Fractal:
“It was the month of June in 1979. I was looking for Beauty. I didn’t exactly care about art, I simply wanted not to be bored and to experience grace. So I thought I would write.”
“It was the month of June in 1979. I was looking for Beauty. I didn’t exactly care about art, I simply wanted not to be bored and to experience grace. So I thought I would write.”
November 27, 2025 at 6:47 PM
the arc of tension throughout- from the beginning to the end - of Lisa Robertson’s The Baudelaire Fractal:
“It was the month of June in 1979. I was looking for Beauty. I didn’t exactly care about art, I simply wanted not to be bored and to experience grace. So I thought I would write.”
“It was the month of June in 1979. I was looking for Beauty. I didn’t exactly care about art, I simply wanted not to be bored and to experience grace. So I thought I would write.”
Takes you back to European history at uni!
November 27, 2025 at 4:33 AM
Takes you back to European history at uni!
Yoon’s back!! 👍
“Music is the mirror of what is lost.”
— Pascal Quignard, Abysses
(trans. Chris Turner)
— Pascal Quignard, Abysses
(trans. Chris Turner)
November 26, 2025 at 7:47 PM
Yoon’s back!! 👍
"The danger of being overlooked is inseparable from the potential of being recognised..." Jaimee Frances Edwards on the work of @sjxsjc.bsky.social sydneyreviewofbooks.com/reviews/irri...
Irritating, Stimulating | Sydney Review of Books
Australian writer Shane Jesse Christmass has a cult following, but his work attracts little attention in Australia itself. What does his fringe status reveal about the forces driving and shaping liter...
sydneyreviewofbooks.com
November 26, 2025 at 6:31 PM
"The danger of being overlooked is inseparable from the potential of being recognised..." Jaimee Frances Edwards on the work of @sjxsjc.bsky.social sydneyreviewofbooks.com/reviews/irri...
Reposted by Martin Shaw
Somebody just liked me on a dating app and then asked me to review his book. I am aghast.
November 26, 2025 at 5:15 PM
Somebody just liked me on a dating app and then asked me to review his book. I am aghast.
Reposted by Martin Shaw
My novel is coming out with Melville House next year and I’m very excited to share it with you!
November 26, 2025 at 1:05 PM
My novel is coming out with Melville House next year and I’m very excited to share it with you!
Reposted by Martin Shaw
A guest staying for a few days should navigate around them. A guest special enough to stay for a few weeks deserves not only to have them moved but read aloud to them over a leisurely breakfast.
November 26, 2025 at 10:56 AM
A guest staying for a few days should navigate around them. A guest special enough to stay for a few weeks deserves not only to have them moved but read aloud to them over a leisurely breakfast.
Guest arriving tomorrow & staying for a few weeks. The question is: do the books on the sofa (“the pile”) have to make way? #BookManners
November 26, 2025 at 10:09 AM
Guest arriving tomorrow & staying for a few weeks. The question is: do the books on the sofa (“the pile”) have to make way? #BookManners
Reposted by Martin Shaw
And that, folks, was that:@shawliterary.bsky.social's 2025 season! There was so much satisfaction for me this year, with some absolute blinders both on debut & from some old hands! It's always lovely to have some Kiwi authors in the mix, too. Thanks so much then everyone for all your support!
November 25, 2025 at 7:24 PM
And that, folks, was that:@shawliterary.bsky.social's 2025 season! There was so much satisfaction for me this year, with some absolute blinders both on debut & from some old hands! It's always lovely to have some Kiwi authors in the mix, too. Thanks so much then everyone for all your support!
Reposted by Martin Shaw
If I had to pick two? @pipadam.bsky.social's Audition www.theatlantic.com/books/archiv...
A Novel That Reimagines the Meaning of Outer Space
In Pip Adam’s extraordinary, humane book Audition, the stars are both a dystopian place and a site of uncharted possibility.
www.theatlantic.com
November 25, 2025 at 4:25 PM
If I had to pick two? @pipadam.bsky.social's Audition www.theatlantic.com/books/archiv...