Express Media – We're here for young writers

For those writers and artists who like Moleskines, and I've noticed there are a few of you.  The Sketchbook Project is an opportunity to take part in a touring exhibition in the US. Sign up by 31 October 2010 and you'll be sent a Moleskine to transform, return it and it'll tour the US next year. Sketchbooks specifically tour Brooklyn NY, Austin TX, San Francisco CA, Portland ME, Atlanta GA and Chicago IL. There is a small fee for the Moleskine and the shipping, but it might be a small price to pay for international fame.

I was perusing the shelves of my local op shop this afternoon and in between eyeing a giant poster of a young Brad Pitt and several framed Eschers, I found a colourful novel. I did something that we’re repeatedly told not to do, but which books themselves rely on to be picked up of book shelves – I judged a book by its cover. The hand drawn illustrations of Tom Adams leaped from the cover of Farewell to the King (1970) by Pierre Schoendoerffer and into my hands. It wasn’t until I was at my keyboard with the official site in my view that I knew I’d seen the colourful hand of this artist somewhere before. It was at the end of an episode of Doctor Who not less. The Unicorn and the Wasp is among my favourite David Tennant episodes and not just for its 1920s set and costume design. The episode was about Agatha Christie meeting a giant wasp-like alien, which subsequently appeared on the cover of Death in the Clouds. Death in the Clouds, among others of Christie’s novels, was illustrated by Tom Adams. It was the same cover which Tennant held up in the concluding minutes of the Unicorn and the Wasp. I ended up reading the well preserved jacket of Farewell to the King and discovering a post colonial epic set in war torn Borneo of 1942 which I will now read in my study break. Stay tuned for the possible joys/sorrows of picking a book at random and then reading it... will judging a book by its cover, and running with it, stack up against sticking to the canon? I hope to answer this question soon. And others, such as should we read what we’re told? I.e. should we follow the big old Harold Bloom cannon? Or should we just jump right in and risk getting bitten by a big alien wasp?