The winner of the Australian Booksellers Association's poll to find Australia's favourite bookshop raised eyebrows. That's because it turned out to be Booktopia, the online bookseller. Perhaps it had something to do with the poll, including the word bookshop, from which it might be inferred the winner would be a books-and-mortar outlet. But ABA chief executive Joel Becker doesn't find Booktopia's win odd. ''The poll was open to all our members and it was an online competition,'' he says. ''Booktopia does what it does very well.'' Becker says he had heard critical comments from some shops about Booktopia's win, but also received laudatory remarks. ''We probably won't be doing it again next year. It was really an opportunity to have members engage with their communities. About 20,000 people had their say. We didn't have capacity for people to leave slips of paper at shops.'' Becker says National Bookshop Day last Saturday was very positive and he expects it to take place again on the second Saturday of August next year.

Soapie pint is a low point

You can read more about Boris Johnson on page 26. It's clear from Stephanie Bunbury's interview that he has a way with words - writing and delivering them. But not on all occasions. About four years ago, he made a fleeting appearance in the BBC soap opera EastEnders, when he popped into the Queen Vic for a pint. Apparently, his performance elicited critical comment from none other than Arnold Schwarzenegger. Johnson struck back, according to The Wit and Wisdom of Boris Johnson: ''It was a low moment, my friends, to have my rhetorical skills denounced by a monosyllabic Austrian cyborg.'' Judge his delivery for yourself when he opens the Melbourne Writers Festival on Thursday.

You've gotta laugh

Last year's Big Issue fiction edition had a story by Hollywood star James Franco. This year's could invite the scrutiny of ABC TV's Media Watch. That's because one of the stories in the issue, which asked for submissions that would make the reader smile, is by editor Alan Attwood's son, Max. But before Paul Barry jumps up and down, it should be pointed out that the stories were all judged anonymously, and Max Attwood has a track record at the Melbourne Comedy Festival of making people laugh. The new Big Issue, which went on sale yesterday and is available for only two weeks, has 16 more pages than the regular one and includes 13 stories under the title ''Make me Smile''. Attwood senior writes in his editorial: ''It reflects a frustration I have felt for some time; a feeling that many people apparently believe that to be taken seriously as a writer you have to write very serious stories. This isn't true, of course.'' Among the writers picked are Jude Bridge, who featured in last year's fiction edition. A Melbourne Writers Festival event will be on September 1.

United by an age of anxiety

Alexander McCall Smith, creator of The No.1 Ladies Detective Agency books, received a letter years ago from Edward Mendelson, W.H. Auden's literary executor and great exponent of his work, saying he thought Mma Ramotswe and Auden would have agreed 100 per cent of the time. McCall Smith, a great Auden enthusiast, was delighted and promptly asked Mendelson if he could include him as a character in a novel. He appeared in The Comfort of Saturdays, an Isabel Dalhousie book, giving a lecture in Edinburgh on Auden's sense of neurotic guilt. About a year later, McCall Smith invited the real Mendelson to deliver the same lecture at the University of Edinburgh. Now McCall Smith has himself written a book about Auden. What W.H. Auden Can Do For You will be published by Princeton University Press in October. And guess who has written a blurb? Mendelson calls it a valuable and memorable book. ''This is not only a convincing account of W.H. Auden's poetry and life. It is also a self-portrait of McCall Smith himself and a testimony to the wisdom and courage he has found in Auden's poems.''

Good and evil en masse

One of the most popular annual events at the Melbourne Writers Festival is the reading of one poet's work organised by Ellen Koshland. During the past few years, people have thronged to hear work by the likes of W. H. Auden or Anna Akhmatova, read by festival guests. This year, the Poet's Voice has commissioned eight riffs on Dante's Purgatorio to comment on good and evil today. Among those taking part are John Clarke, Jennifer Maiden, Emily Ballou and Chris Wallace-Crabbe. It's at St Michaels on Collins, 120 Collins Street on August 25. Bookings through mwf.com.au.

Channelling Morrison

The popular Liner Notes event returns on Friday with ''a lysergic road trip with Jim Morrison'' in a celebration of the Doors' LA Woman. So who's doing what? Andy Griffiths is tackling Love Her Madly, George Megalogenis Crawling King Snake, Jane Caro Been Down So Long, Sean M. Whelan and Emilie Zoey Baker Cars Hiss By My Window and … Missy Higgins will get to grips with Riders on the Storm. It's at Northcote's Regal Ballroom on August 23 at 9pm. Bookings through mwf.com.au.

Dollars in dirty deeds

In coming up with its annual list of the world's top-earning authors, Forbes reckons it's not enough to write a bestseller - you have to churn them out like a conveyor belt. Thrillers and romances are the go, apparently, and fantasy does even better. And then you could be E.L. James and hit the spot with erotica. The author of Fifty Shades of Grey earned $US95 million in the year to the end of June, which put her at No.1 on the list, $US4 million ahead of serial bestseller and the man behind a veritable factory of bestsellers, James Patterson. The secret to James' remarkable success was the speed with which her trilogy rushed off the shelves: in the first eight months in the US, more than 70 million copies were snapped up.

POETRY

Selfie

a story about
someone else's life took
off and became a self help
book after that it became
a city
besides i worry that i'm starting
to sound like the city and
the city sounds like a python hissing
some seductive code
i'd like to remain idle like goethe
or the clouds
as they molest
each other over the ocean
i'd like to offer the city a little possum
with pink eyes
and dancing how many
mirrors do i owe you what are my
limits again will i find new ones
in some ridiculous gesture like
a death stare or does it exist
on a bike pedalling out against
the bay with no limit in sight besides
a lens with its magnetic finger
pointed straight at you

Oscar Schwartz

Events

TODAY
Barry Dickins discusses Lessons in Humility: 40 Years of Teaching. 1pm.  Richmond Library, 415 Church Street. Bookings: yarralibraries@yarracity.vic.gov.au; 1300 695 427.

Doug Hall launches Tony Woods: Archive. 2pm. Blockprojects, 79 Stephenson Street, Cremorne.

Bruce Postle on his retrospective Bruce Postle: Image Maker. 2.30pm. Union Bank Art Studio, 22 Fraser Street, Clunes.

WEDNESDAY
Peter Rose, Mike Sheahan, Geoff Slattery and Caroline Wilson on football and words. 6pm. My Bookshop, 513 Malvern Road, Hawksburn. $20. Bookings: events@mybookshop.net.au

Alice Pung discusses Her Father's Daughter and her father's journey  from Cambodia to Australia. 6.30pm. Twilight School, Salesian College Rupertswood, 1 Macedon Street, Sunbury. $10/$5. Bookings: blettieri@scr.vic.edu.au

Maria Takolander discusses The Double (and Other Stories) with Craig Sherborne. 6.30pm. Readings Carlton, 309 Lygon Street. Bookings: 9347 6633.