Jason Steger, literary editor for "The Age", writes of his experiences reading the latest HP novel. He set himself the task of reading the book straight through without a break. Seems like he'll now need a massage, a cup of tea and a good lie down. He also does the right thing and doesn't give away any revelations from the book.
I went along to Continuum 3 on the weekend, as did Helen Razer from "The Age". Her piece is a bit too heavy on the "sci-fi" side of the line (the accepted abbreviation is "sf" - must write something on that some day), but she generally does a good job describing the situation. Neil Gaiman was certainly popular - he had a huge line waiting for his book signing on Saturday afternoon - which led to the convention being one of the biggest general sf cons held in Australia, outside the three Worldcons. I certainly can't remember hearing of a bigger convention that wasn't an Australian National SF Convention.
I was talking to someone about the con organisation over the weekend and said that I was pretty impressed with what I saw. All convention organising should appear like a duck swimming - there can be all sorts of activity under the surface, but on top it has to look calm and serene. Continuum 3 seemed, at least to this observer, as if it was gliding along quite well.
