53 ratings | 53 reviews
avg rating: 3.13

(since July 07)

Adam's bookshelves

read (53)
currently-reading (5)
to-read (29)
read-2008 (21)
read-2007 (20)
australianauthors (16)
comics (8)
annoying (7)
freaks (7)
scifi (7)
nonfiction (6)

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Adam's friends (22)

	Nocheevo 132 books 3 friends
	Kevin Fanning 353 books 57 friends
	Jane 52 books 15 friends
	Michael 41 books 27 friends
	Anna 326 books 8 friends
	Jeffrey 44 books 89 friends
	Don 236 books 88 friends
	jonathan 143 books 29 friends
	Joshua 15 books 9 friends
	Anna 17 books 3 friends
	Lia 32 books 7 friends
	Millie 649 books 26 friends
	Wendy 133 books 19 friends
	Jane 125 books 17 friends
	Pete 106 books 35 friends

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Adam Ford

author profile

born

May 12, 1972

gender

male

website

http://www.labyrinth.net.au/~adamford

genre

Literature & Fiction, Poetry, Science Fiction & Fantasy

influences

James Tate, Nick Earls, Stephen Dobyns, Earl Mac Raunch, Wes Anderson, Grant Morrison, Bernard Cohen, Jas H Duke, Matt Fraction, Kylie Tennant

about this author

edit data

Adam Ford was born in Ballarat, lived in Melbourne and moved to a small town called Chewton to live with his wife, their daughter, five chickens and a cat.

He has edited various literary journals including Going Down Swinging, overland express, &, moments, Voiceworks, and the zine anthology Chimp Frenzy.

His poems and stories have appeared online and in print journals including cordite, Normal Service Will Resume, the Sleepers Almanac, pindeldyboz, elimae and Daikaiju! Giant Monster Stories.

He has published a bunch of zines and comics including What Astronauts Wear, Rude Boy, Duck Fat and The Book of Job.

upcoming events

event: How I Became a Writer
date: August 26, 2008 10:00AM
location: Federation Square, Melbourne, Australia
description: Discussion panel on "How I Became a Writer" with Alice Pung, Alexandra Adornetto and me. Part of the 2008 Melbourne Writers Festival schools program.

event: Poetry & performance - Moving people with words
date: August 27, 2008 10:00AM
location: Federation Square, Melbourne, Australia
description: Poetry performance and discussion of performance techniques featuring US poet Tracie Morris and me. Part of the Melbourne Writers Festival schools program.

books by Adam Ford

combine editions
avg rating: 3.80 | 5 ratings | 2 distinct works

	Man Bites Dog (Paperback) by Adam Ford (goodreads author!) avg rating 3.67 — 3 ratings — published 2005	my rating:
	Not Quite the Man for the Job (Paperback) by Adam Ford (goodreads author!) avg rating 4.00 — 2 ratings — published 1998	my rating:

* Note: these are all the books on Goodreads for this author. To add more, perform a search.

Adam is currently reading

	05/26 Adam is currently reading: The Cult of the Amateur: How Today's Internet Is Killing Our Culture and Assaulting Our Economy (Paperback) by Andrew Keen bookshelves: currently-reading	my rating:
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	05/10 Adam is currently reading: Gilgamesh (Hardcover) by Stephen Mitchell bookshelves: classics, currently-reading	my rating:
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	05/10 Adam is currently reading: Fatal Shore (Paperback) by Robert Hughes bookshelves: currently-reading, historical	my rating:
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Adam's recent updates (rss)

July 10

Adam marked as to-read:
The Great Constitutional Swindle: A Citizen's View of the Australian Constitution (Hardcover)
by Peter Botsman
bookshelves: to-read

my rating:

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June 28

Adam gave

to:
Tales from Outer Suburbia (Hardcover)
by Shaun Tan
bookshelves: australianauthors, comics, picturebooks, read-2008, short-stories

my rating:

recommended for: lots of people
read in June, 2008

Adam said: "I feel kind of bad that I wasn't as wowed by this book as I had hoped to be - after the amazing The Arrival and in the wake of how impressed I was by The Rabbits (written by John Marsden and il...more "

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June 06

Adam gave

to:
Super #1 Robot: Japanese Robot Toys, 1972-1982 (Paperback)
by Matt Alt
bookshelves: formative, picturebooks, read-2008, scifi

my rating:

recommended for: geeks and kids
read in June, 2008

Adam said: "Just bought this book this morning at a library fundraiser sale for a dollar. Best dollar spent this week. Two hundred pages of glossy photos of Japanese toy robots from the 70s and early 80s. Be still my 8yo heart. Want. Want v bad. You have no idea...more "

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Adam marked as to-read:
The Omnivore's Dilemma (Hardcover)
by Michael Pollan
bookshelves: to-read

my rating:

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Adam marked as to-read:
American Home Life (Perfect Paperback)
by David Barringer
bookshelves: to-read

my rating:

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May 30

Adam gave

to:
The Australian Popular Songbook (Paperback)
by Wearne, Alan
bookshelves: annoying, australianauthors, poetry, read-2008

my rating:

recommended for: no-one
read in May, 2008

Adam said: "Yeah, I really didn't like this book. The three main reasons are:

One. The stuff Wearne writes about in this book is too specific to its subject matter, which leaves no way in for a reader who doesn't know anything about the cultural references be...more Yeah, I really didn't like this book. The three main reasons are:

One. The stuff Wearne writes about in this book is too specific to its subject matter, which leaves no way in for a reader who doesn't know anything about the cultural references being made. Two-thirds of the book is either poems in response to songs and poems about places in Australia synonymous with events that happened there. Wearne's poems give no clues about these songs or places to readers not familiar with them, making them little more than poetic in-jokes, which isn't a particularly open or welcoming approach to poems that are supposedly intended for a wide audience. And if they're not intended for a general audience, it begs the question why publish them at all?

Two. A lot of these poems have things like epigrammatic explanatory notes about the voice of the poem's narrator, or dedications, or are given further explanation in the appendix in the back of the book. I'm of the opinion that a poem should contain within itself any information needed to make sense of it, and footnotes, epigrams and dedications feel to me like artefacts that stand outside a poem. Add to that the fact that these "extras" didn't shed too much light for me about what the poems were trying to say (what does it contribute when you say that a poem is set in the voice of an Essendon footballer from the 1930s?), and the exercise seems lacking something crucial.

Three. The reasonably strict rhyme that Wearne uses in the majority of these poems strains the credibility of his language. The example of this that sticks in my mind the most is his use of the clumsy reworking of "parlez vous" to read "vous err parlez?" so that it can rhyme with the word "Bali". It's not a good look.

The third section of these poems is a single, longer, more free-verse piece telling the story of a school teacher who's also a member of the Communist party, convincing a young admirer of the less-than-glamorous nature of his past involvement with The Party. This poem feels a lot less forced, less like a party trick or an in-joke than the rest of the book, but it's not enough to undo the disappointment of what has come before....less "

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May 28

Adam gave

to:
The Spider-Man Omnibus vol. 1 (hardback)
by Stan Lee, Steve Ditko
bookshelves: classics, comics, read-2008

my rating:

recommended for: everyone
read in May, 2008

Adam said: "This is where it all started. This is Stan Lee's attempt to inject a bit of humanity into the by-then (ie, the 1960s) hackneyed concept of the superhero by creating a flawed character, full of doubts and vulnerabilities; a hero who was less than hero...more This is where it all started. This is Stan Lee's attempt to inject a bit of humanity into the by-then (ie, the 1960s) hackneyed concept of the superhero by creating a flawed character, full of doubts and vulnerabilities; a hero who was less than heroic, who made mistakes and didn't always come out on top. These days the unhappy hero is a cliche and Spider-Man himself is more often than not an ungainly emo parody of himself. But back then it was something unexpected, something new. That sense of newness, of exploration and adventure is still evident in these comics even when they're read today.

It's a big book - over 1000 pages in total, and reading 1960s pulp magazines in a single hardback volume that weighs as much as this beast does, can remove something from the visceral experience of reading comics - especially when the between-page margins are so narrow that you have to kind of tilt the thing to read parts of it. It's a small issue and not really a problem at all, but I thought it was worth mentioning.

To be honest, Lee's scripts veer into melodrama and pomposity at times, but when he was writing these early issues of Spider-Man he hadn't yet become as formulaic and easy to parody as he would within ten years.

Ditko's art is the selling point - to have so many pages of his work (one thousand and eighty-eight!) on such beautiful glossy paper in a single volume is simply a delight. Reading from start to finish, you can see his artistic style develop, becoming bolder and more confident with every issue. There's a nice essay by Ditko expert Blake Bell right at the end of the volume, and some scans of original art as well, which are nice little DVDesque extras.

This collection gets right to the heart of what made Spider-Man so popular with its young readers. The excitement, the fast-paced scripts; the spectacular, dramatic, colourful art; the innocence and joy that permeates the work, which should only be expected from two people trying something a little bit new and unexpected and succeeding beyond their wildest dreams. ...less "

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May 26

Adam gave

to:
Turtle Diary (Picador Books)
by Russell Hoban
bookshelves: inspiring, read-2008

my rating:

recommended for: everyone
read in March, 2008

Adam said: "Aw. Just... aw.

As I mentioned in the comments to this review, I picked this up as an antidote to the bleak and violent stuff I'd been reading of late. I think it's important to have a certain amount of happy-ending stories in your reading pile, a...more "

2 comments

Adam is currently reading:
The Cult of the Amateur: How Today's Internet Is Killing Our Culture and Assaulting Our Economy (Paperback)
by Andrew Keen
bookshelves: currently-reading

my rating:

add a comment

New comment on Kevin Fanning's review of Buffy the Vampire Slayer: No Future For You (Season 8, Vol. 2)

Adam wrote: "Hey yeah i've been really liking this comic, much more than i thought i would. now hanging out for t...more "

Adam's bookshelves

Adam's friends (22)

Adam Ford

author profile

upcoming events

books by Adam Ford

Adam is currently reading

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Adam's friend comments