Germaine Greer has always made me think about things in a different way.  I like her iconoclastic style, and I like her dry, witty humour.

I like Shakespeare too.  I love the Sonnets.  My favourite plays are all the well-known ones, the ones I’ve seen performed: Hamlet, King Lear, Macbeth, The Tempest, Midsummer Night’s Dream, The Merchant of Venice, Julius Caesar, Henry IV Part 2, and The Taming of the Shrew (I’ve only seen that one on screen).  But I’ve never been much interested in all the speculation about authorship and whatnot, so I wasn’t too sure that I would enjoy Greer’s analysis of the representation of Ann Hathaway in Shakespeare’s Wife.

I needn’t have worried.  Greer systematically unpacks what purports to be scholarly argument in favour of Ann-as-Shrew and tears the claims to shreds.  Not a shred of evidence for that, she says, demolishing some hapless scholar’s magnum opus.  Nonsense, no way…

Germaine Greer’s contribution to the Melbourne University Press Little Books on Big Ideas series is called On Rape; the series is complementary to their Little Books on Big Themes (of which I have reviewed two: David Malouf’s On Experience and Susan Johnson’s On Beauty.

This is the blurb:

“It’s time to rethink rape. Centuries of different approaches to rape—as inflicted by men on women—have got us nowhere”.

Rape statistics remain intractable: one woman in five will experience sexual violence. Very few rapes find their way into court. The crucial issue is consent, thought by some to be easy to establish and by others impossible.
Sexual assault does not diminish; relations between the sexes do not improve; litigation balloons.

In On Rape Germaine Greer argues there has to be a better way.”

For a such a little book it has created quite a furore: it’s only 92 pages, of which…

Barbara Jefferis (1917-2004) was an Australian author.  She was married to the journalist John Hinde, a fact which is relevant to her profile because he established the $50,000 Barbara Jefferis Award in her memory, with prize criteria that were dear to her heart.  It’s an award that is made to the author of the best novel written by an Australian author that depicts women and girls in a positive way or otherwise empowers the status of women and girls in society.  Both he and she, I suspect, would have been disappointed by the remarks of this year’s chief judge, Sandra Yates, who was reported in the SMH as saying of the entries that a surprising number featured domestic violence, death or the subjugation of women and that the first three books [she] read from the longlist saw one woman burnt at the stake, one woman pushed off a cliff…

It’s time for my August contribution to the Insecure Writer’s Support Group blog.  The question my fellow writers have been asked to answer this month is: What pitfalls would you warn other writers to avoid on their publication journey?

Be sure to click on the #IWSG icon at the end of my post and check out the responses from dozens of interesting writers.

This month’s question specifically asks about the pitfalls faced on my publication journey, and not on my writing journey.  The two are vastly different. Writing is challenging, but it’s fun and exciting. Publishing is also challenging, but not so much fun.

I chose early on to self-publish.  I’d read horror stories about the vast amount of time spent writing query letters, chasing agents and publishers.  I understood the clear advantages of traditional publishing, but preferred to write at my own pace and select my own genres and…