Two things have me very worried:

1. When will poor John and Alison get together and form a Book Club in South Canberra? Each has been advertising for months, if not years ... two poor lonely little people not connecting.

2. I feel that far too many books are being published. (Is this treason, or disloyalty to all writers?) I walk into large bookshops and the array of books is overwhelming - and I usually know what I'm looking for. Okay, the answer is buy gr and be choosy. But seriously, to see the large tables full of reduced price publications soon after their first appearance, and to read remainder lists, one has to wonder. I am involved in a great deal of research and I am bewildered by the number of books, particularly biography, which differ only in the title and cover with no new information or interpretation.

In spite of this I still buy, beg and borrow books, and my faith in gr is such that I changed my subs from half-yearly to yearly recently!

Best wishes

Janet Peters
Kincumber, NSW
via email

You'll be pleased to know that Alison of Canberra has found her group and is no longer advertising! As to your second point, it's a topic we intend to address in a future issue. - Ed.

When I read Ronald Wright's A Short History of Progress a few months ago, shortly after reading parts of Jared Diamond's Collapse, I became very worried about the future of the Earth. Not that I hadn't been before, but these two books in particular, from eminent scientists, brought home the message that we cannot go on consuming and reproducing at our present rate without dire consequences. I interviewed Ronald Wright during my trip to Canada, and his important message can be read on page 10.

Everybody who has read Pat Barker's Regeneration trilogy about the First World War will know the power of the final book, The Ghost Road, the one that ends in the slaughterhouse that was the unnecessary British advance on the Sambre and Schledt Rivers on the Western Front in November 1918 and won her the Booker Prize. Jane Gleeson-White talked to Pat Barker about using war as a subject for literature, and their conversation starts on page 16.

In a lighter vein, I was lucky enough to talk to Lynne Truss, queen of the comma and monarch of manners, in London. We sat in her new flat round the corner from the British Museum (courtesy of the success of Eats, Shoots and Leaves) and Lynne told me about the amazing changes to her life that little book on punctuation has brought: money, fame and almost constant travel (she made 45 flights last year, and started to count how many beds she'd slept in but had to stop at 70 as she couldn't bear it). But she remains, and always will be, one suspects, a warm, friendly and utterly unassuming person, happy to write, feeling lucky and secure after years of precarious freelancing. Our talk was punctuated by much laughter, and I came away feeling that success couldn't have come to a nicer person. Read what Lynne had to say on page 22.

As summer comes bouncing in and thoughts turn to holidays and perhaps foreign fields, two timely pieces this month take us to la belle France (page 20) and the glorious Himalayas (page 46). Enjoy the ride!