In honour of Valentines Day—and in the absence of reviews to post—we’re spreading the link love around!

Lovely book things

First, a big congratulations to the City of Sydney librarians who put together an excellent Library Lovers event at Customs House last Thursday. I’m told the event was booked out. Rather than hiring professional actors, library staff did the readings—from Greek poetry to an excerpt from Kiss Me, Annabel by Eloisa James to one of my favourite poems, Close Reading, which we were lucky enough to be able to publish here at Book Thingo last year.

The Australian Romance Readers Association today launched its new website designed by Australian author Paula Roe. If you’re an ARRA member, the newsletter also came out today and in my column I talk about why I like reading the end of the book first. Also, it looks like the Annual ARRA Readers Awards Dinner is set for May 15 in Sydney. No details on the venue yet.

If you only have a couple of minutes, check A Regency Romance in 2 minutes (more)

Swan & Edgar bar (via the Booktagger blog)

First things first: Happy Mother’s Day to all you mums, nannas and mums-to-be! I hope you enjoyed a good breakfast in bed and that the kids’ arts and craft project churned out something useful or appealing or edible or easy to hide. :-D

Apologies for slacking off last week with the Bizzo, but this one is absolutely chockers with good romancey stuff, so I hope it’s worth the wait.

ARRC09 audio recordings

Audio recordings from the Australian Romance Readers Convention in February are now available. Click here for more information and an order form.

International Association for the Study of Popular Romance

The IASPR is offering yearly, 5-yearly and lifetime memberships. Click here for more information. The IASPR, University of Queensland, Queensland University of Technology, and the Romance Writers of Australia are sponsoring an academic conference on Popular Romance Studies. (more)

Novel Idea Book Vending Machine

Book vending machines come to Australia

Earlier this week, the Novel Idea Vending launched its first book vending machine at Circular Quay. According to Franchising magazine, Booktopia and Dymocks have expressed interest in the concept. According to the article: “Typical outlets for the purpose built vending machines which offer a range of bestselling paperbacks, packed in presentation boxes, are likely to include airports, colleges, schools, hospitals, hotels and military bases” and selling an average of 8 books a day is enough to make the business viable.

Romance Writers of Australia website revamp

RWA launched its new look website on April 1. Go check it out. It has a much more elegant, more contemporary feel than the old one. I wish they had a media mailing list or RSS feed for press releases. It would make it much easier to find new info.

Booktopia does romance

Online bookseller Booktopia now has a dedicated newsletter for romance readers. (more)

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies by Jane Austen and Seth Grahame-Smith

Are zombies the new vampires?

If you’re over vampires and werepeople and, yes, even angels, the new trend in paranormal romances may well be … zombies! A book titled Pride and Prejudice and Zombies (US | UK) is due for release on April 1. The tag line is: The Classic Regency Romance – Now with Ultraviolent Zombie Mayhem! You can read an interview with co-author Seth Grahame-Smith here (the other author being, of course, Jane Austen). Says Grahame-Smith:

when you take a look at the original book, it’s almost as if, subconsciously, Jane Austen is laying out the perfect groundwork for an ultraviolent bone-crushing zombie massacre to take place.

…there’s this zombie onslaught that’s been going on for years and Elizabeth Bennett has spent her whole life training to become a highly efficient killer of the undead, as has Darcy. It’s more about a love story between two headstrong independent zombie slayers. (more)

Lost in Austen (DVD)

Pride and Prejudice time travel shenanigans

Tomorrow night, ABC1 will screen the first part of Lost in Austen, a British mini-series in which a 21st-century reader swaps places with Elizabeth Bennet and finds herself inadvertently changing Jane Austen’s story. It sounds fabulously fun, and the SMH provides some background to the series. Lost in Austen has become one of Britain’s best selling DVDs, with talks of a film adaptation. Click here to watch a preview of the show.

Ebooks in Australia

Thinking of buying an ebook? David Frith at Doubleclick has a good round-up of ebook options for Australians. The BeBook seems to be the cheapest option, although Frith seems to have missed the products sold by DA Direct (which, according to a reader at ARRC, will be selling more ebook readers through their Melbourne store). (more)

This is a round-up of ARRC09 and is not in chronological order. If you want to read more anecdotes, check out the liveblog. Click here for a list of ARRC09 posts and liveblogs .

Ebooks

I missed the speeches on Sunday morning because we had an informal Cellie breakfast at the cafe next door. It was a lovely way to start off the day, and I was told of a ubiquitous photo on the Lora Leigh forums that I must go and check out, but NOT while I’m at work. The search term is “King Neptune”, in case you’re curious.

The morning panels all sounded really good, so I had a difficult choice to make. In the end, I opted for the ebook panel since I had friends going to the others. The session was sponsored by Torquere Press, and the panelists were Helen Woodall, Jordana Ryan and Jess Dee. Most of the discussion was around the benefits of ebooks and the publishing process. It kind of felt more author-focused than reader-focused, but it would’ve been useful for readers who were thinking about writing for an epublisher. (more)

This is a round-up of ARRC09 and is not in chronological order. If you want to read more anecdotes, check out the liveblog. Click here for a list of ARRC09 posts and liveblogs .

Gala dinner

I wasn’t sure what to expect at the gala dinner, but there had been some discussion in the ARRC Lounge as to what people were wearing. Opting for a little black dress, I arrived just as the entrees were being taken away. Oh, well. I didn’t have much time to nibble, anyway, because as soon as I sat down I was immersed in book conversations left, right and centre.

I was seated with Vassiliki, my librarian and my fellow blogger Marg from Reading Adventures. Also at our table were authors Jess Dee and Lexxie Couper, two readers from Sydney, one from Malaysia, and another lady who was too far away for me to have a proper conversation with. Obviously, we mostly talked about books. I was seated next to an erotic romance reader, so I asked her for recs. I think she said Anya Bast, and possibly a few others that I can now no longer remember. (more)

MOO cards (see Flickr for more)

I totally forgot to announce this before I left for ARRC, but we had some MOO cards made to give away to people we met. Wandergurl was very good at handing hers out, whereas I kept forgetting. So anyway, here they are in case you missed  out. (If you want one, let me know!)

ARRC Round-up

More ARRC round-ups are appearing on the blogs, and I’ve collated links that I know of:

Gnomeangel — Adventures with a bleeding heart
Reading Adventures — Reminiscing about ARRC09 – Saturday
Tez Says — Tez in the City, Part II

Bronwyn Parry — ARRC09
Desirabelles — The Australian Romance readers conference 2009
Erica Hayes — tha kikass convenshun, we haz it
Paula Roe — Aussie Romance Readers Convention ‘09

Publishers Weekly — This, that and the Other Thing Monday (more)

This is a round-up of ARRC09 and is not in chronological order. If you want to read more anecdotes, check out the liveblog. Click here for a list of ARRC09 posts and liveblogs .

I’d love to say that ARRC09 started off with a bang, but true to form, I had barely brushed my teeth when Maggie Nash made her welcome address. I had hoped that Wandergurl would be there–particularly since we were supposed to be liveblogging the event–but she sent me an SMS to say that she registered then went back to bed. We are not morning people. Wandergurl did catch the tail end of MaryJanice Davidson’s keynote speech and said that she was funny.

What do academics really think about romance fiction?

I was eager to hear the panel discussion on what academics think about romance, but I only caught the tail end of the Q&A. The panel included Karen Simpson Nikakis, author of the Kira Chronicles and Head of Program of NMIT’s new Bachelor of Writing and Publishing degree. (more)

This is going to be a very short Bizzo because I’m still in Melbourne and hotel Internet plans in this country are prehistoric. Might have to duck into Maccas for free WiFi. Anyway…

Book Thingo guest blog

I’m a guest blogger over at Erotic Horizon, so please check out the post and say hi to EH. She gave me some great questions and I had heaps of fun answering them. I’ve just discovered her blog, but I’m enjoying it a lot.

ARRC Round-up

ARRC09 was a rousing success, and we’re doing a round-up of posts here at Book Thingo over the next few days. For a full list of ARRC posts, including the liveblogging, click here.

You can also read other bloggers’ experiences at The Good, The Bad and The Unread (more)