The Long Blinks

Battle of the Outfits - Week Ten

2009-12-18T15:21:00.003+11:00

Miss Scarlet In the Library With The Nunchuks versus Free The Sandwiches

Word clouds

2009-12-08T12:49:00.004+11:00

Yesterday I came across a very cool post on Scott Westerfeld's blog, which was his 27th tip for NANOWRIMO. I was already familiar with word clouds, but rather stupidly it had never occurred to me to use one to check for overused words in my writing.

Recently I've been using the`Find' function in Word to replace overused words in my novel, but that relies on me already being aware of the trouble word or phrase. I've found I overuse some unexpected words: scan, flick, and attention, to name a few. But a word cloud will tell you which are your most frequently-used words at a glance. Character names are to be expected; others may surprise you.

Read Scott's original post for his excellent description of how to best use word clouds for this purpose.

The other reason to love word clouds is that they sometimes highlight subconscious ideas or obsessions that you didn't even know were in your writing. Today I dug up a forgotten short story for publication, and while I was at it, plugged it into Wordle, and found my word cloud was chock-full of every single body part I could name. Make of that what you will.

I Call Him Herbie

2009-12-07T19:47:00.003+11:00

If Housemate Three can blog about goat skulls, and display photos of himself in the bath, then surely I can post about anthropomorphic fruit.

Here is a strawberry. We stuck eyes on it. That is all.

Good Fruit Bad Fruit

2009-11-28T19:24:00.005+11:00

Today I bring you two fascinating examples of fruit and vegetable branding from my very own kitchen. While thinking about this post I couldn't really think of any examples of branded fruit and veg, other than the eco-banana, and then unfortunately my brain slipped into an endless loop of the Ba Na Na Na Na Na Na Na Na song.

YUMIONS. Really? That was the best you could do? Yumions?

But oh yes, Pineapple - King Of Fruit. Supreme ruler of all the fruit. They even have a spiky green crown.

Battle of the Outfits - Week Nine

2009-11-20T13:47:00.002+11:00

Earthcore 1997 versus Alice & The Caterpillar

Battle of the Outfits - Week Eight

2009-11-03T10:52:00.002+11:00

Princess Leia Teenage Delinquent versus Extreme Sports Calendar Model

Mister Jelly Wobble and the Magic Pencil

2009-10-16T21:32:00.007+11:00

Recently I uncovered a stash of old exercise books from my youth. When I was in Prep my family and I travelled around Europe for three months in a campervan. During this time (no doubt due to the sheer boredom of rattling around in the back of the van for hours at a stretch), I taught myself to read and write. I filled many exercise books with noughts and crosses, word searches, hangman, lists, equations, and many of my very first short stories (almost all of which were illustrated).

Here are two of the stories I wrote when I was six. I have had to finish the first one (in italics) as it was incomplete.

JELLY

One summer morning Mr Jelly Wobble got out of bed and wobbled himself down the steps and had breakfast he had for breakfast a place of biscuits and a cup of coffee then he wobbled himself out the door then went to the club where he wobbled and wobbled and then he had more biscuits

THE STORY OF THE MAGIC PENCIL

there was a boy called Andrew. he was six years old. One day he asked his mother can go to the pencil shop and get some pencils there yes said his mother so he quickly ran down to the pencil shop carrying a large tin of pencils. but one of them was not a pencil. But it was a magic pencil. The end.

This is admittedly a bit of an abrupt ending. If I was going to re-write it I would go for something like:

The magic pencil could draw the future and anything it drew even spaceships and ice-cream came true. The end

Andromeda Klein and the beauty of wacky, rambling narration

2009-10-06T17:36:00.003+11:00

I have just finished the extremely excellent Andromeda Klein by Frank Portman. I ordered the hardcover from the US, because I was too impatient to wait for it in a local or paperback edition. Frank Portman's first book King Dork is a favourite of mine, and I have been waiting eagerly for years for him to write another.

So I was shocked when I struggled to get into the first few chapters of the book, and then relieved when I eventually fell in love with it somewhere around the fourth chapter. Appropriately enough, Chapter Four begins with this sentence: `Most magical writing is deliberately obscure, designed to hide crucial matters from the uninitiated, yet reveal them to those who know how to read the texts properly.'

And that's a pretty good description of the adorable Andromeda Klein's character. AK is written in the third person, but the reader only gets an internal insight into the main character, Andromeda (Wiki has just told me this is called `third person limited' - I'm not great at the different narrative modes). Andromeda is a hard-of-hearing and occult-obsessed teen who nurtures her own lexicon of mangled and misheard phrases, and refers constantly to a large number of esoteric texts, theories and historical personages. She keeps most people at a safe distance with this kind of constant and compulsive occult nerdery, despite wishing she could fit in more.

This kind of narration can be pretty frustrating at first, but once you get it, once you're in there with the nerdy Ms. Klein, you never want to leave! She is a superb character: funny, tender-hearted and borderline delusional. The events of the book unravel in a seemingly haphazard and confused rollercoaster that only begins to make sense towards the end (a bit like the teenage years in general). I think of this book as being kind of like muesli slice (let's bear in mind here that I love muesli slice) - a dense and chewy treat that takes time to consume.

I often hear comments that YA books have to grab teenagers attention and hold it with fast-moving plots, and clarity and neat conclusions.* But I think always taking that approach underestimates teenagers, and neglects the beauty of obfuscation and taking a little time zig-zagging from Point A to Point B. Andromeda Klein - read it!

* I think I can hear my editor screaming.

Battle of the Outfits Outtakes

2009-10-02T18:25:00.008+10:00

Battle of the Outfits - Week Seven

2009-10-02T10:01:00.004+10:00

Luchador Mexicano Parado versus Grey Gardens

Battle of the Outfits - Week Six

2009-09-26T15:30:00.002+10:00

Crocodile Tears versus Voodoo Babysitter

Freeeeeaaakky dream

2009-09-23T07:23:00.003+10:00

It can be quite boring listening to people describe their dreams. It's like when people reenact funny scenes from a TV sitcom - it's only a pale imitation of the genuine experience. However, this one was so weird I have to record it for posterity, even if it's just my own personal posterity.

I was on some sort of archaeological dig. I can't remember if I was wearing Indiana Jones-style clothing, but I really hope I was. I think I was at least wearing dusty headgear of some kind. I was led into a cave to view the latest find: an ancient and mysterious creature.

The creature was languishing in a rusty metal bathtub. It was large enough to fill the entire bathtub, it was shaped like an electric shaver and it was covered in a thick layer of primordial slime. The longer I looked at it (from a safe distance) the less sure I was that it was animal and not machine. The head of the animal/machine was bulbous and dark, and covered in slime/glass like a cockpit. Inside the head was a small white spaceman floating around in black space.

When the creature saw me it began to thrash around wildly. I waved hello, matching its excitement so it wouldn't get offended and attack me. The head/cockpit split open and the spaceman floated out towards me. When it got closer and removed its helmet I realised it was a woman with curly red hair. She seemed a practical, scientific sort. She explained to me that I was special and they wanted to make me the first person to be physically modified so that I emitted no carbon at all. I was quietly excited to be chosen; I felt like I could be at the forefront of human evolution.

Cut to some sort of archaeological staffroom: I was told that the creature was extremely dangerous, and that the operation they suggested was surely going to kill me. It was suspected that the creature was part of an alien cult. I was alarmed: how was I going to get out of the operation without raising the ire and the vengeance of the slimy primordial creature/machine?

Slash and burn

2009-09-23T07:07:00.003+10:00

Several of my friends have asked me how my meetings with my publisher are going, and I've intended for weeks now to write about this. I've only had two meetings: the first with several editors and publishers, and the second just with my editor.

I was extremely nervous before that first meeting. I probably couldn't have even told you exactly why I was so anxious. I might have been worried that I was about to be told truths about my writing I couldn't handle. I've never been part of a writing group, or done a writing course, so I am quite unused to direct and rigorous critique. When I have shown my writing to friends, they have usually been so supportive I've had to beg them to say something (anything!) negative.

It turns out I shouldn't have worried. Sitting around with a group of adult professionals discussing my novel was one of the strangest and most gratifying experiences I've ever had. Nice things were said. Constructive things were said. Wild suggestions were made regarding which voice I should write in, and the relevance of whole chapters were questioned. The entire thing was picked at until it felt there was little that shouldn't be changed. It was great! Everyone on the room was taking my writing seriously enough to discuss it. The characters and place that had lived only in my head and on my laptop for so long suddenly had a life outside of me. It felt for the first time like there was a chance that these characters could be real for other people in the way that they are entirely real people to me.

Since then I have been slashing and burning and re-writing left, right and centre. It was like I was waiting for permission to shake things up. Rather than being painful it has been a real relief to take a hammer and chisel to my manuscript, like I'm freeing something that's still half-buried under rubble.

Battle of the Outfits - Week Five

2009-09-21T08:05:00.002+10:00

I Am p(O)ET versus Invisigirl and Invisidog Save North Fitzroy

Battle of the Outfits - Week Four

2009-09-14T08:04:00.003+10:00

Bad Wedding versus Oh Karen aka Safety Butterfly

My Favourite Dinosaur

2009-08-17T20:57:00.004+10:00

...is the Plesiosaurus. It has a long neck and little head, four flippers and a big old tubby belly. Wiki says that the plesiosaurus is a Mesozoic reptile, and not actually a dinosaur, but I choose to maintain its saurusnessness.

I imagine the plesiosaur would have been very graceful twisting and turning and diving through the ocean, and sometimes stopping to poke its little head jauntily out of the water.

Battle of the Outfits - Week Three

2009-08-15T17:13:00.004+10:00

Mourning Mime aka Hell's Beekeeper versus Labyrinth Redux

You Probly Think This Song Is About You

2009-08-11T10:54:00.003+10:00

Yesterday I wore Housemate Andrew's skinny red jeans to work as his birthday present. While he was having National Take A Skull To Work or School Day, I was having Red Jeans Day. Granted, it was a strange birthday request, but I obliged, because even talking about it made him titter like a six year-old girl. And because I have a habit of saying yes to most unusual requests, figuring that it might be the only time in my life that a person asks me to do that particular thing, and if I say no, then I will never get to have that experience.

So I believe the theory behind the jeans was that they would be tight and lairy and slightly porno (as they are when Andrew wears them), and as I work in a very busy bookstore climbing up ladders and alphabetising and lugging boxes, it would cause me quite a nice amount of humiliation to have to wear them in public. Unfortunately we did not factor in that Andrew is a man (albeit a very skinny one), and I am a woman, and the jeans were not tight on me at all. In fact they drooped around me in a very bad 90's jeans sort of way (does anyone remember the brief and bad 90's phase of coloured jeans in very heavy chunky denim? In hues of bottle green and wizard purple, to be worn with a wide leather belt and Harley Davidson belt buckle? That was me yesterday).

I looked bad. I looked unfashionable. And I found out something about myself - I am really vain. It was unbearable having people look at me wearing such dorky pants. I felt self conscious walking to get my coffee. I hid in young adult fiction whenever handsome men entered the shop. I wanted to yell out: I am stylish normally! Really! These jeans are a joke! I don't normally dress like this!

I thought I was fairly accepting of public humiliation. I like to take photos of myself wearing stupid outfits for the amusement of my friends. I am the first person to don a costume for a costume party (as an aside: we all know that most people dress for themed parties in a way that makes them appear as if they don't care and as if they are making fun of themselves, but in reality they are always trying to look HOT. Wrong-hot). Sometimes I wear very idiosyncratic clothes, purely because I feel like it, because I feel as if it expresses some inner state of mine, even though I know I may look a bit weird on those days.

But this. This was out of my control. I didn't choose the jeans. The jeans were not being worn on my own terms. And it was very, very uncomfortable. I learnt that I don't deal well with not being in control of how I present myself to the world. Oh, vain, vain, vain!

Battle of the Outfits - Week Two

2009-08-07T15:34:00.005+10:00

Korean Fairytale

Disco Roman

Battle of the Outfits - Week One

2009-08-07T15:28:00.004+10:00

Camden Leisure Pirate

Forest Casual

Reprazent

2009-07-25T08:30:00.005+10:00

For weeks I have been intending to write about the cover of Strange Angels by Lili St Crow, and make a comment about how often cover models don't match the characters inside books. In this case, the tangle-haired Glamazon cover model looks nothing like the fabulously grouchy, dirty, pimply, bruised, tomboyish Dru Anderson that lives inside. But I'm going to let that slide. Because a related brouhaha has arisen over the US cover for Justine Larbalestier's Liar, which features a white girl coyly hiding behind her hair; a strange choice by her publishers when the main character describes herself as nappy-haired and African American.

There has been a proliferation of blog posts, statements and opinions about the issue of race and book covers, all of which make thought-provoking and important reading. No doubt there are countless PhD's to be written on the subject. Justine Larbalestier's original post is here, and fellow YA author E.Lockhart has also described her own cover struggles, with the conclusion (which I second), that publishers need to be braver. Anecdotally, I think that (white) people's reluctance to buy `ethnic' book covers may be overstated slightly; a good seller at my work is Dragonkeeper by Carole Wilkinson, which I am pleased to see often in the hands of teenage boys who definitely cannot identify themselves on the cover.

So I'm going to drop my cover discussion, as it is already being discussed rigorously elsewhere, with far more eloquence than I can muster and on far more critical grounds than Glamazon vs. tomboy. But some of the comments made about the Liar cover have made me think about the issue of representation on book shelves. Larbalestier herself made the point that black teens are hardly going to feel welcome in the YA section of a bookstore/library if all the covers feature white teens.

I've blogged before about Adrian Tomine's work, and how comforting I find it to see Asian faces depicted in his work. I don't need all the books I read to have Asian themes or covers or characters (in fact, I'm used to the majority not being so), but it is nice to stumble across someone who resembles myself occasionally. Everyone likes to see themselves represented on the pages of a novel. It might be their experiences or emotions represented, or it might be their appearance, racial identity or sexual orientation. I think this is particularly important in the teenage years, when identity feels like a very fluid and confusing concept, that needs to be explored, experimented with and in some cases battled.

I was very interested in JJ's post on the matter (which I stumbled across in a very roundabout fashion via a comment on a Twitpic), not least because she had a slightly different reaction to the cover than others, and because we share a similar ethnic background (half-Asian, raised in a mostly whitebread fashion). JJ feels most drawn to books which are `incidentally' ethnic, and I think my preference falls in line with hers. Which is not to say that there isn't a place for books that place ethnicity and race and racial identity very firmly at the centre of the action.

The one thing that really discomfited me in Strange Angels was the Eurasian character, Graves. I should be pleased about my kind being in there, right? Yet I felt uncomfortable with the constant references to Grave's appearance and ethnicity. Repeated references to the`epicanthic folds' of his eyes and the `ethnic boy' just felt plain awkward, and at times, a bit - I struggle for a word here - rude? blunt? I wondered whether perhaps there's a cultural difference between the words Americans and Australians use to denote race? In any case, writers no doubt constantly visualise their characters and have very clear ideas on appearance and ethnicity. How to indicate that subtly in their prose is a very difficult, and probably quite thankless, task.

Hannah

2009-07-04T18:22:00.004+10:00

Hannah took Mr Dino and Master Robot to Ulan Bataar to great effect. Robot looks scared to be in Mongolia; Dino just can't wait for that sweet, sweet souvlaki. She certainly did exemplary work with, uh whatever computer program it is that you use to colour in. What technomological prowess!

Genevieve

2009-07-04T18:17:00.003+10:00

Genevieve (who I suspect may be related to G-Awesome) presented a very appealing dinosaur in many shades of brown. The addition of various types of body and facial hair (moustache, chest hair, snail trail) added to the realism, and the leopard-print g-string protected the modesty of the aforementioned dino nicely. The robot though, it must be said, looks mighty psychotic.

Nicci

2009-07-04T18:14:00.003+10:00

Nicci wins the award for best use of teal feathered mohawk on a dinosaur. She did some excellent work with paint, glitter, texta and pencil. I'm not sure why we were in the Philippines, but the horny factory robot was a nice touch. As was the spilt martini. As was the poor milk-drinking dinosaur's rejection by the vegan community. An excellent all-round colouring package.

Anon

2009-07-04T18:13:00.005+10:00

Anon demonstrated a strong commitment to a complex visual language of leopard print, cut-out technique, cryptic textual codes - and a complete lack of colouring in. Compelling. Mysterious.

G-Awesome (real name...?)

2009-07-04T18:08:00.004+10:00

G-Awesome's entry was a riot of colour and glitter and I believe I can almost smell the martinis on it. Anorexic, psychedelic, apron-wearing, Kiss-tongue-toting dinosaur on a flying carpet, uhhh, tears falling from sky, bow-tied robot, ummm, let's just leave it at that.

Natasha

2009-07-04T18:04:00.003+10:00

Natasha's entry was very firmly in what I call the `trad classic' school of colouring in. Strong use of colour, shading, blending, contrast, and always neatly within the lines. Assured, contained, classic - somewhat like the lady herself. Her canny choice of colours to create a juxtapostion between the living, organic dinosaur, and the metallice, non-organic robot evidences her strong theme of opposition of nature and science.

Kara (entries x 3, only 1 shown here)

2009-07-04T09:14:00.006+10:00

Kara's entries demonstrated the joyous lack of attention span that should be present in all good colouring in. She has a certain got-bored-in-the-middle-of-this-section-and-just-stopped technique. However her entries had liberal application of glitter, stamps, paddlepop sticks, fur, toothpicks, and other accoutrement, testament to a strong artistic vision of `more is definitely more.'

Emah

2009-07-04T09:11:00.005+10:00

Emah displayed a very controlled colouring in technique, and we must be nice to her because she is of no fixed abode.

I believe she provides the best example of Solid Block of Colour, which is the colouring-innering equivalent of Wall of Sound.

Esther

2009-07-04T09:08:00.003+10:00

The only entrant to work predominantly in paint, Esther's innovative potato stamp technique, created what I thought was very realistic mottled technicolour dinosaur skin.

Winner of the foot category (no actual prize awarded)

2009-07-04T09:05:00.003+10:00

Tim.

The rocket.

Why?

Runner-Up

2009-07-04T08:52:00.004+10:00

The runner-up in any competition, especially Miss Universe, occupies the worst position in the placings. So close! So far! At least in this case Hank can cry foul that no one understands his revisionist anarchic colouring-innering style. That the judge clearly felt constrained by the boundaries of conventional colouring-innering, and in fact was AFRAID OF HIS ART.

Hank was low on actual application of solid blocks of colour, but high on crossbones, death trance, peg leg, and a jacket I'd really like to own if only it existed beyond the realm of paper. Very piratey.

Congratulations Hank!

And the winner is...

2009-07-04T08:46:00.004+10:00

Belinda, who possibly could be disqualified for being a professional artiste, if anyone wishes to file a formal protest, elite-sports-style.

Belinda's entry demonstrates all the hallmarks of truly masterful colouring-innerering: use of every colour in her pencil case, extreme coverage of surface area, variety of technique, and obsessively compulsive attention to detail.

Her compelling manifesto: `Won't, want, wank, bank' certainly didn't hurt.

Congratulations Belinda!

Judgement Day

2009-07-02T17:55:00.003+10:00

Hello friends,

I have been quite slack, and so have you. Y'all are express posting last-minute colouring in entries to me! And I have failed to judge - yet. But I will be judging all entries this weekend via a rigorous three-stage process, involving multiple criteria and a complex, um, what's that thing you do when you fit scored onto a curve? That thing. And a bottle of whisky. Or at least a few stolen nips of Andrew's whisky. Standby for judgement.

If a tree falls in the forest and no one Twitters about it, does it really happen?

2009-06-30T18:13:00.004+10:00

I had a lovely day today. I went to Healesville with my work compadre Margaret, and we wandered about near the rainforest-y Badger Creek and Badger Weir before retiring to Giant Steps/Innocent Bystander for food-sweet-food. I did intend to take Housemate Andrew's digital camera, but was disorganised about the whole thing and forgot to ask him last night if he could leave it out. It's a pity I didn't get the opportunity to snap Margaret wearing a yellow rain poncho, posing touristically and awkwardly inside a hollow tree (that would have made me chuckle no end), but I wasn't too troubled about it. I have always maintained that tis better to have your head and eyes and nose and ears right in the moment, observing the leaf litter and the strange fungi and the lichen that grows beard-like on tree ferns, rather than be stuck behind a camera recording the hell out of the moment you just missed.

So many people live like this these days, in a state of recording and documenting rather than experiencing (says me, with my blog and my facebook et cetera). After a particularly ill-fated and misguided excursion to the yoof full Fashion Keyboard about two years ago, I coined the term `digital tourettes' to refer to the youngsters seeming lack of control over their perpetually flashing digicams.

But as I have just this week stepped out onto the edge of the slippery Twitter slope, it did amuse me to imagine tweeting from the middle of the forest.

`Just saw most amazing tree ever #amazingtreefernsoftheworld.'

`This mushroom has a hole in the top! So do the others. I wonder what that's about.'

`Margaret's poncho is so yellow. So very yellow.'

Lag? Clag? Drag?

2009-06-25T21:13:00.003+10:00

I have been watching a lot of Gossip Girl lately, after having been urged to do so by a few of the DVD purveyors in my life. I am really enjoying it, although I would struggle to explain/justify why. But I am well aware that a good part of it is enjoyment at the many fancy and over-the-top outfits worn by the teens on the show. Big pussy bows, ultra-bright tights, high heels with short tartan skirts, chunky gold bling, ridiculous headbands and flouncy capes and coats. I'm only watching the first season so the fashion is a little out of date, but very pleasing nonetheless in its sheer ridiculousness.

It strikes me that this sort of hyper-luxe, exaggerated, highly-stylised dressing (which I think Gossip Girl has adopted very cannily and successfully from Sex and the City), is a type of drag. I've been trying to find a good definition of drag on the internets, but all the definitions I can find focus on adopting the clothes of another gender. But it's more than that, isn't it? It's also exaggerating and distorting the markers of gender for what? Entertainment, critique, subversion. I ain't a cultural studies academic so I'm hoping maybe Mel or someone will help me out here. This is only my layperson's feeling about drag.

I think the characters on Gossip Girl are wearing a type of luxe drag (lag?). Or designer drag. Or class drag (Clag?). No one actually believes the costume designers on the show are choosing what Upper East girls really wear on a daily basis, no more than we believe Carrie Bradshaw could afford her outfits on a journo's salary. And I don't think the GG costume designers are simply making use of designer freebies to create aspirational looks for viewers. I feel like it's more than that. What it feels like to me is a distortion and inflation of luxury clothing into a cartoonish beast. A very, very enjoyable cartoonish beast.

Att: Friends Who Like Fun...

2009-06-24T07:57:00.002+10:00

...your Friday colouring in deadline is looming. Hup to it! I know those renegade martini colour innerers have been busy. Tash went quiet for a whole hour and has now submitted her entry. I noticed she has a very nice set of Derwents. And her pencils aren't bad either. Esther has been trash talking like Ali about how magnificent her entry is. You know what you have to do...

Cultural cringe (and other random corollaries)

2009-06-23T15:13:00.004+10:00

I was pretty proud of myself the other day, for reading a book by an Australian author, a female Melbourne author, what's more. There's always something quite pleasurable for me in reading books set in Melbourne. I love the instantaneous and deep recognition of cultural references that are possible in local books, and I love knowing the streets and places where the action is set.

But then right after finishing that book, I made a beeline for (yet) another American book. It had a pink guitar on the cover! And it was set in L.A! L.A!

I am a sucker for American and British books. Unfairly or not, I do regard books written by overseas authors as more exciting, and more current than local ones. I'm pretty sure I should feel bad about this; there's something a bit self-hating (not to mention untrue) about thinking all that's local is globally irrelevant, uninteresting or inward-looking. After hearing John Green speak recently, I became aware that Australian children's literature has an extremely good reputation overseas, so I can't plead any quality issues.

But I think part of it can be explained away by my motivation for reading. Arguably, if I was reading solely for recognition and connection, then I would go for Australian writing. But I think I read largely for escape*, in which case I am naturally going to head for those books set in New York City, or mediaeval England, or a futuristic North America, or another planet entirely.

But it's also not that simple. It in fact might be easier for me to relate to a foreign city-dwelling character than it is for me to relate to an Australian character that lives in the desert, or lived a hundred years ago. Western cities are so alike these days, and the lives of their inhabitants are so similar, that maybe it's only natural that I look to writing from other similar Western nations. Throw into that my preference for young adult fiction, and you have a real mess. Why would I choose to constantly read about characters who are at a completely different stage of life than me?

Anyway, I don't have an answer for this vexing tendency of mine. I'm not even sure I should be worried about it, although I do like the theory of supporting local industry. Perhaps the answer lies in balance: consuming a wide range of literature from Australia and overseas. In which case I think I should probably read more Australian books.

On another related matter, I always used to feel terribly guilty that most of my favourite authors were male. This gender bias always puzzled me. It felt accidental. Or subconscious. I couldn't explain it. The feminist in me was v.vexed. (I do wonder if any men I know ever worry that they don't read enough female-authored books - do they? Men, do you?) Ever since I have started to read almost exclusively books for children or young adults, thankfully my gender pendulum has swung right back to the middle. I feel happiest in the middle.

* I may yet blog about my worry that I don't read widely enough, that I don't challenge myself enough with a varied literary diet. That I read more for entertainment than intellectual stimulation. I've been worried about this, and I've been worried about what stories I am going to attempt to write in the future, ever since hearing Mal Peet talk about `chicken nuggets' at the Reading Matters Conference. I don't want to read fast food writing. I don't want to write in a fast food fashion.

Devil's Kiss - Sarwat Chadda

2009-06-17T07:31:00.008+10:00

It's been a while since I've done a book review, so I'd better pull my socks up and get on with it. It's not as if I haven't been reading - I have. In spades. Or is it buckets? I've read the new Meg Rosoff, the second Hunger Games book Catching Fire (oh, don't even get me started, better than the first if you can believe it), City of Glass (none of which I can't blog about due to extreme excitement, awe and inability to say anything sensible about such great books), Wicked Lovely and Ink Exchange by Melissa Marr, Wings by Aprilynne Pike (hereby referred to as my `faerie phase'), the second Mac Slater I Heart NY, all the books I read in preparation for the Reading Matters conference, and so on and so forth. It's easy to see I am failing to read more middle fiction this year, as so far it's been YA all the way.

So what have I chosen to review? Devil's Kiss by Sarwat Chadda. And why? Due to the outlandish marketing assertion on the back that `Buffy and Lara pale into comparison next to BILLI SANGREAL, the FEISTY, WEAPON-WIELDING HEROINE of the series'. And yes, the whole marketing spiel was full of these ridiculous capitalisations. Now I don't know much about Lara. Say Lara Croft to me and I just think `BOOBIES' (caps that, marketers!)*. But I have recently started watching Buffy and Angel in order from the beginning with Housemate Andrew. I've come in as an adult Buffy virgin, which I am quite pleased about. And I started watching the series long after reading all the Twilight books, thereby saving me from entering the whole Buffy v. Bella debate.

So, Devil's Kiss. Billi, a 15 year-old British schoolgirl, is the first female in the Knights Templar. The Knights Templar by this stage is a small ragtag bunch of older men who consider it their ongoing duty to protect the world from evil forces; far from their days of glory, the Order has slid into anachronism. Billi is an extremely reluctant recruit; she's been allowed in the Order purely because her father is the Grandmaster and they need every pair of hands they have. Billi's life is grim and not one of her choosing. She spends her time training to fight demons rather than more normal teenage pursuits. Her father is a distant and cold character; focussed only on the needs of the Order. What sets this book apart for me is the interesting combination of Christian and Islamic iconography and mythology that arises due to Billi's mixed heritage, and the positioning of the very old school Knights against a modern London landscape.

Billi is a great character. I wouldn't go so far as to say Buffy pales in comparison (the author is a big Buffy fan himself, so I'm sure he'd cringe himself at the comparison), but Billi definitely holds her own as FEISTY and WEAPON-WIELDING. Writing this post made me think about what it is we require from our modern fantasy heroines. We need them to be fighters in the physical sense, not with superhuman strength or strength that's unrealistic for a young woman, but we need them to be willing to enter the fray and use whatever skills they have at their disposal.

But most of all I think we require our heroines to battle emotional demons as much as physical ones. In this book Billi struggles constantly to cope with her father's lack of interest in her as anything other than a foot soldier of the Order. This is handled extremely well I think. The other hallmark for a fantasy heroine is a little bit of Wrong Love. The love that the reader/viewer feels deep down in their hearts and pants as much as if the love was their own, but which everyone knows is wrong, wrong, wrong. The love that is both destined and destined to never work out. Devil's Kiss has this in both Kay, Billi's longtime friend and Oracle, and Michael, the ultimate tattooed buff honeypot. Thinking of all the (dare I say it, I guess it's bandied about as a genre so I can) urban fantasy books I've read in the past year, faerie ones included, they have all contained their own versions of Wrong Love for their female heroines.

* Please note that I think the back cover guff was written by UK marketers. Who, I am sure, have not the grammar nor spelling skillz of Australian ones.

Funerals

2009-06-15T17:50:00.004+10:00

I went to a funeral today. I hate funerals and I avoid them where necessary. This one was a bit fraught because it involved people that I have mixed feelings about. But I decided to go in the end because I wanted to support my oldest childhood friend, and because this 93 year-old woman had written me birthday and Christmas cards for years and years when I was young, and she had always given me thoughtful nanna-ish presents such as handkerchiefs and mini sewing kits.

Anyway, the funeral was OK. It was quite religious, which was a little bit uncomfortable for an agnostic-rapidly-heading-towards-atheist such as I. I told my sister I was going to sing the hymns loudly and lustily, but when it came time to do so, they were too high and I didn't know the melodies. My aim at funerals is to hold it together and not cry, and I did manage to do that. I also remembered all the names I should of, and made polite conversations of appropriate lengths.

But I did have an odd experience on the way home. An elderly gentleman who had attended the funeral took the tram with my sister and I, and conversed with us, and then me alone after my sister got off the tram. This elderly gentleman was most dapper. He had clearly been very successful in his former work life, was handsome in a silver-haired sort of way, very faintly roguish, and had very charming old-fashioned manners. I rather think he enjoyed talking to a young, female stranger. And I equally enjoyed talking to a man who was at a very different stage in his life. I was quite looking forward to reading my book on the tram, but soon found myself enjoying conversing with a stranger. He was from interstate, and had come to Melbourne for the funeral because his late mother had been pen friends with the lady whose funeral it was.

When we came to saying goodbye, he revealed an extraordinary amount of personal information about his life to me in the matter of seconds. We exchanged email addresses and went our separate ways. I felt bad that I hadn't agreed to have a cup of tea with him, but I wanted to get home and do some yoga after what had been a difficult day. I'm not the sort of person who changes their plans on a whim; sometimes I wish I was that sort of person. I wondered why he felt he could tell me those things. I wasn't worried that he had, in fact I felt privileged that he would entrust those details to me. I guess funerals put people in a vulnerable state, the kind of state where they seek connections with other people. It was a day of family skeletons and private sadnesses.

Jaypeg

2009-06-12T14:50:00.004+10:00

By the power of greyskull, and thanks to the mad computer skillz of A.R. McDonald...here is a jpeg of aforementioned blank-canvas masterpiece DESWBR.

The Inaugural Long Blinks Colouring Competition

2009-06-12T08:43:00.008+10:00

Sharpen your pencils people, check which of your textas haven't been left in the drawer without their lids on - it's colouring time!

Welcome to the inaugural Long Blinks colouring competition for adult people. For the origins of the competition, please see below.

You've got two weeks to colour in a masterpiece. I don't want to be too prescriptive, but the kids in my work colouring competition were big on glitter and stickers and smudging and random heart-sprinkling and watercolour and full-page-colouring-in-WALL-OF-COLOUR extravaganzas. You've got some big shoes to fill.

The prize will be tailored to the winning entry/ies. As I work in a bookstore it will involve a book. And as it's gonna be a cold, hard winter it will also involve alcohol.

OK, there is nothing more to do than to unveil the masterpiece you will colour: Dinosaur Eats A Souvlaki Watched By A Robot. Unfortunately the unveiling is metaphorical as it is extremely difficult to publish PDFs on Blogger. Instead email me to be sent this wonderful blank canvas for your work.

Entries due by Friday 26th June 5pm. Email them to me at leannemhall@hotmail.com, or post them to me (you all know where I live, but if you don't, then email me and I'll assess your stalking capabilities).

Very Hungry Caterpillar

2009-06-10T18:30:00.004+10:00

Today Margaret and I commandeered the boardroom at work, and undertook the very serious and important task of judging the hotly contested (105 entries!) Very Hungry Caterpillar colouring competition. Believe me, I felt a massive responsibility in this role, as all the kids had put in such a lot of effort, and the prize was two suitably awesome mutant plush VHCs almost two metres in length.

Margaret, our arts and design buyer, thankfully has extensive experience in judging school art competitions, and quite early on stated her possibly controversial theory that she preferred entries with a `creative approach' rather than ones that strictly coloured within the lines. I entered many colouring competitions in my yoof, and I never won a single one, and now I know why. I was one of those kids that thought it was all about colouring perfectly within each section. Silly me. But really, it was quite uncanny to see the varieties of approaches the kids took. I think you can tell a lot about a kids personality by their predilection for colouring within, or with blatant disregard for, the lines. We had to engineer a complex six-stage judging process, with some built-in safeguards to combat our natural predilection for all things, random, scribbly and `creative.'

Housemate Andrew kindly Twittered about our judging, complete with photos of favourite entries and our comments. Now, I am a bit of a Twitter virgin - I don't understand it, I don't pretend to understand it - but I was amazed to see how many people were viewing and commenting on our colouring competition. Maybe they were at work and maybe they were bored, but it was like people had been waiting all their life to talk about colouring in! I must admit organising this competition has been one of the most fun things I've done in my 2 1/2 years of bookshop work. Why does a colouring competition cause people to get so excited? Is it nostalgia? Does it connect us to our younger, scribblier and more individualistic creative selves?

To this end I am going to hold my very own colouring competition. Tash and Andrew, as the only regular readers of this blog, you can just post your entries under my bedroom door. I expect you to enter. And because no one else reads my blog, I am going to email my friends that I consider to be Friends That Like Fun, and insist they enter. If you are one of these friends and you are subsequently reading this post, and you do not enter my colouring competition, please understand that I will now consider you to be a Friend That Does Not Like Fun.

But first I have to draw the picture for you all to colour in.

Standby for further details.

Maturity, Angst, Getting Older

2009-06-03T19:24:00.006+10:00

We were listening to Joan as Police Woman's Real Life album at work today, and I was really listening to it as if for the first time, on account of shelving the new release non-fiction right near a big speaker, and on account of having nothing to do but alphabetise and listen. And it struck me that a lot of JAPW's songs were about being content and in love and happy and having found what she wanted/needed/was looking for.

I'm so used to hearing young female singers singing about angst, heartbreak, lack of control, despair, masochism etc. that it was refreshing to hear this strength in her music. I think it is much easier to be creative about negative experiences and feelings rather than positive, but it's more imaginative and interesting to look past the end of your own nose. The word I thought of that in that moment that best described her music was `mature.' I'm avoiding reading her lyrics online before I write this post, because the important thing for me was how the songs made me feel, rather than the precise meaning.

Once upon a time I would have regarded the adjective `mature' as a bit staid and insulting. But I've been thinking a bit about maturity recently, in fact ever since I turned 30 a year-and-a-half ago. Getting old is a strange thing. Conversations about babies or property that would have caused me to mime the gag reflex five years ago are now par for the course. I had a conversation with my yoga car pool buddies last night, where the (40-year-old) driver described how she has happily and willingly let go of all ambition and drive for success now that she's getting older. That she realises she could do or be anything, and ultimately it won't make a great difference to her contentment or happiness. And I thought: that sounds nice, but I'm not there yet. I will be there, but not before time. Listening to her comments I thought, no, I'm still burning. There are still so many things I want to achieve.

I have had quite a few short stories published, but I have always missed out on being mentioned in reviews. Every time an anthology or journal I have a piece in is reviewed I eagerly scan it for mention of my work. And I am always disappointed. Well, the moment finally arrived (the Sleepers Almanac was reviewed in ABR, and my story was name-checked), and I couldn't quite figure out what the reviewer meant by her comments. She said something favourable about my story (that it was emotionally honest), and then made some more general comments about how she was a little sick of navel-gazey female protagonists that wafted about noticing cracks in the pavement.

My first reaction was: fair enough. I know the sort of protagonist she means, and I know the kind of writing she means. I think my protagonist probably did fall into that category, and I'm fine with that. I wrote that story about a very specific time in my life, my tortured mid-twenties. And the reviewer, as an older woman, didn't really connect with it. I think my story reflected the concerns of me, at my age, in my particular circumstances. What I would be concerned with is if I am still writing those sort of characters in ten years time. I am really looking forward to turning my writer's eyes further outwards as I get older. I imagine it will be quite liberating to forget myself and work towards something a bit more universal, or at the very least, well outside my own experiences. Perhaps as I get older my writing will hinge less on pure emotions, and more on ideas?

What is the appropriate collective noun for ginger beards?

2009-05-28T18:35:00.006+10:00

I ask you. I'm not sure if it's because I was recently trawling for old-fashioned sponge cake recipes (the kind that Nanna used to make for the cake stall at school fairs), and came across a recipe for Ginger Fluff Sponge, but I can't stop thinking about ginger beards. The best sort of ginger beard is the ginger beard that lives on an otherwise brunette man. This sort of man can't help but look genuinely and permanently surprised at the colour of his facial hair. All this thought led me to wonder: what is the appropriate collective noun for ginger beards?

Here are my best attempts:
A blink of ginger beards.
A flurry of ginger beards.
A crackle of ginger beards.
A flame of ginger beards.

A boris of ginger beards.

I have provided a visual aid.

Suggestions are most welcome.

Worldshaker - Richard Harland

2009-05-08T16:53:00.003+10:00

There are many (great) things I could say about Worldshaker, which is a fantastically rolicking steampunk novel for young adults. Personally I am just feeling happy to tuck something of the steampunk genre under my belt. My lack of steampunk experience was starting to weight heavily on my conscience. There was steam! There were pistons! Cranes! Tailcoats!

But one of the things I enjoyed most about this book was the inventive names Harland came up with for all his characters. Really, they were things of beauty! Not only did they tumble pleasantly from my tongue, but they gave all sorts of clues as to personality and class.

Here are some faves:

Ebnolia Porpentine

Sephaltina Turbot

Wisley Squellingham

And then right down at the bottom of the class hierarchy (clearly they could not afford many letters for their names):

Riff

Padder

Fossie

And the outright bestest Worldshaker name, for a much put-upon Menial, is: Wicky Popo. Wick-ee Po-Po.

I think he might have taught me contract law at Monash University back in the early 00's.

Old dog, old tricks

2009-04-20T18:49:00.004+10:00

With the onset of the slightly colder weather, and the attendant need to use my heater, I have been happy to observe Minnie (now thankfully sans bucket after 6 weeks of R&R) up to her old trick of making a doggie tent when I dry my bath towel. Incidentally, I can highly recommend the technique of heating your towel before getting in the shower. Mmm cosy....

City of Ashes - Cassandra Clare

2009-04-17T15:20:00.005+10:00

I put off reading the Mortal Instruments trilogy for so long. I think I feared that it was going to be too similar to what I'm trying to achieve in my own writing and I didn't want to be influenced too heavily. But now I have read City of Bones and City of Ashes and I am completely hooked. I am carefully reserving City of Glass for my writing week holiday, in the same way that I am still hoarding my Easter eggs, trying to eke out their goodness for just a little bit longer...

Much to my pleasure I have also got work Kevin hooked as well, and we have being having frantic, excited conversations about it in between answering phones and shelving books. My reasons for loving these books are many, but they can be summarised as follows:

1) There are gays - hooray! My favourite character is Magnus Bane, the glittery, queeny warlock. What's more, the gay romances and desires in the plot are given as much weight as the straight ones.

2) I love the idea of Marks, and the idea of tracing elaborate runes on the skin that leave pale scars when they fade. I think this is a pretty clever idea as it taps into the current fascination with tattooing. Honestly, in my yoga class you're in the minority if you're not tattooed.

3) Clare has a wonderfully elegant way of writing, and the books are full of beautiful descriptions of the sky and rivers and streets of New York.

4) It has some seriously strong incestuous vibes. If it's good enough for George Lucas then it's good enough for me. I actually like things that make me go eeww! a little bit. I know people who have a major problem with the kissing cousin relationship in Meg Rosoff's How I Live Now, but please. It was wartime and everything was out of whack. Similarly in Clare's books there are extenuating circumstances. Jace and Clary ain't no Jenny and John Deaves.

Kevin has also just finished City of Ashes so we've made some predictions and a wish list for the final book. Firstly, as enjoyable as the incestuous undertones have been, it's not going to be a surprise when it is revealed that Jace and Clary are not in fact brother and sister. Or when (maybe?) Luke and Clary's mum hook up. But our most fervent, fervent wish is that Magnus Bane and Alec have a Big Fat Gay Wedding, which of course will feature very amazing costumes, lots of vamps and werewolves and fairies, and plenty of glitter.

Strange Fruit: Australian Finger Lime

2009-04-14T10:53:00.005+10:00

One of my oh-so-many missions this year will be to eat more strange fruit. It has only just dawned on me that this is a mission. Last year Naz introduced me to the joys of longan, and Tash got me into mangosteens (steens? No idea what the plural should be for any of these fruit). This year I've already given honey plums and persimmon a go. So why not make Strange Fruit a project?

In a way any fruit could be strange if you've never seen it before. I gave my nephew Archie a fig for his birthday a month or so ago, and it was as if I'd handed him the Holy Grail. He cradled that fig carefully in one hand for the entire time we were at Collingwood Children's Farm. And, according to my sister, for quite a few days after. What a funny little man he is! Figs strike me as a disturbingly voluptuous fruit, but I've gotten used to them now that we have a tree and I pluck one every morning for breakfast.

So yea verily thus - I present to you the Australian finger lime.

I first saw these in the lovely fruit shop just down the road from my work, staffed by the lovely and informative Loretta, who told me that there are about four different types of indigenous limes in four different colours. I couldn't help but buy one. Admittedly their exterior is somewhat turdlike and unpromising. But inside..! Inside are tiny ultra-sticky green pearls separated into orderly compartments by membranes, just like in regular citrus fruit. When you put these pearls in your mouth they explode, releasing a juice that is deceptively mild at first, but which soon hits you with cheek-puckering sourness. Mmmmm mmmm. I scooped them into my laksa, but apparently they go a treat in a G&T...

The Australian Finger Lime.

The Afterlife

2009-04-14T09:19:00.003+10:00

If there's a heaven - and unfortunately I'm pretty sure there's not - this is what it would be like:

Heaven would be a bed, a king-sized bed with crispy, cotton sheets; plump, squishy pillows and a light-as-air doona. And everyone would be wearing stretchy velvet hoodies and big satin shorts. And there would be a never-ending supply of piping-hot milky sugary tea served in satisfyingly large chunky mugs. And there would be buns. So many yeasty, spicy hot cross buns slathered with butter. And I would be right in the middle of reading a book I couldn't put down. And there most absolutely would not be a frigging annoying Weimaraner with abandonment issues next door barking his guts out.

Why I Like Adrian Tomine*

2009-03-28T08:19:00.005+11:00

1) Mmm his drawings are just so black-and-white clean.

2) There's always one or two Asian/Eurasian characters in there.

3) I can relate to his characters: they're always stumbling about unable to get over past loves or meet new ones. But -

4) His characters are severely fugged-up to an extent that I (hope) I will never be fugged-up. They have no self-knowledge, they never transcend their problems, and they are hopelessly, irretrievably emotionally disconnected. So while I can relate to them, I still get to feel slightly superior.

* Housemate Andrew and I are debating the pronunciation of his surname. Is it To-Meen? Or (and this possible given his Japanese-American background), To-Mee-Ne??

Lovely Words With Ugly Meanings # 1

2009-03-24T09:29:00.005+11:00

Palaver n.

1. A discussion or conference, especially a long or tedious one.

2. Any talk or activity regarded as unnecessary or too lengthy.

My Shane Warne Drink Coaster

2009-03-19T20:16:00.005+11:00

The last thing I want to do - in a year where he even has his own musical - is to give Shane Warne any more free publicity, however...
Last year as part of my publishing course, we had a guest lecturer talk about book marketing in all its varied and lovely forms. Most of our guest lecturers brought booty along for us: logoed pens, sample chapters, bookmarks, reading copies. However the marketing lecturer gave us something that has really gone the distance: a Shane Warne coaster advertising his biography Spun Out.
It's a cheap crappy cardboard coaster, but it sits proudly on my desk a year later. I like to place cups of tea upon Shane's squinting, blonde-tipped head. I don't know why I like this coaster so much. Possibly it's the quote on the back:

`He is a walking paradox.

He is supremely confident,

yet profoundly insecure.

He is brilliant

but also a buffoon.

He is generous and thoughtful,

but utterly self-obsessed...'

WHO IS HE?

If I Stay - Gayle Forman

2009-03-18T17:39:00.003+11:00

It's a problem for me that my job involves writing reviews. Because I often say everything I want to say about a book in a work review and then have no steam left to even talk about the book with my friends. Then again, I can hardly be critical in work reviews, or bawdy, or use made-up words, so there's always hope.

So while I raved about If I Stay by Gayle Forman in a work review, saying I loved it (which I did), and that it's fantastic (which it is), what I didn't get to say was this: it had one of the hottest and most romantic sex scenes I've ever read. Don't think those Carlton mums would be buying it for their teenage daughters if I did say that!

I suppose it's a bit wrong saying that about a sex scene involving two seventeen-year-olds, but part of the reason it was so, ummm effective, was that the two characters were both complete beginners, and were really making it up as they went along. And shouldn't it be like that: as if every time is the first time? The two teenagers in question are both musicians (him rock, her classical - oh it's just like all the dance movies where the hip-hop guy falls for the ballet girl, such a good formula) and they're both so nervous to be alone in a bedroom together that they decide to pretend that each other is their chosen instrument to play. It's funny and awkward and sexy and very very sweet.

Of course there's so much more to this book, but when writers so often get sex scenes wrong, it's always good to notice when they get it right.

Ugly Words With Ugly Meanings #1

2009-03-17T11:56:00.001+11:00

Cloaca, n.
1. A sewer.
2. The common cavity into which the intestinal, urinary and generative canals open in birds, reptiles, amphibians, many fishes and monotremes.

Tightarse 2009

2009-03-15T18:23:00.003+11:00

Fun Ways to Save Money in 2009
1. Use coupons. I was so excited by the discovery of the mum's Entertainment Guide, and attendant vouchers to things like Sovereign Hill, Greater Onion and the Pancake Parlour, that I started a Facebook group called Coupon Madness. But then I was so embarassed I didn't invite anyone to join. As a person of semi-Asian extraction I can say this: Asians love coupons, so maybe I am not totally comfortable with my ethnicity. Or something.
2. Indulging my op-shopping mania. I'm thinking about resurrecting my ramekin collection.
3. Barter with people. We have figs, pomegranates, lemons, plums and pears in our back garden - surely someone wants to swap something with us? Also I make really great hot cross buns, and I am good at whipping people's writing into shape.
4. Utilise my whole free-ticket-at-the-Nova deal more often.
5. Utilise the very sweet borrowing CD's and DVD's arrangement at my work.
6. Go to the library.
7. Become lawless and learn how to sneak into gigs and festivals and other ticketed events.
8. Stay in and cook elaborate feast-like dinners.
9. Continue to grow my hair. This project never lasts past my ears. After that it will convert to: let my (non-hairdressery and usually drunk) friends cut my hair.

Ways I Will Not Be Saving Money In 2009
1. Buying Vitasoy instead of Bonsoy.
2. Drinking cheap whiskey.
3. Forgoing cafe brunches or takeaway when hungover and/or miserable and/or overworked.
4. Forgoing my occasional pummelling at the Sparkly Bear chinese massage place.
5. Not replacing my tatty underwear. Double negative - that's confusing.

Buckethead (non-G&R reference)

2009-03-13T12:02:00.003+11:00

The poor buckethead dog is bowing and scraping her way around the backyard, dragging her humiliating plastic collar around with her. I think the Elizabethan dog bucket is the canine equivalent of orthodontic head gear for humans. I once watched a group of dogs at the park completely ostracise another dog who was wearing one. Plastic bucket collar. Not orthodontic head gear.

Handling the Undead - John Ajvide Lindqvist

2009-03-10T10:04:00.008+11:00

At last! People are reading, or wanting to read, and talking about, one of my favourite books from last year - Let the Right One In. The movie version is currently showing at the Nova, probably causing the renewed interest. The film was great - except for one laughable scene involving a very-taxidermied-cat attack. But alas, I'm already onto Lindqvist's next book Handling The Undead. Let The Right One In was about vampires, Handling The Undead is about zombies, and apparently Lindqvist's latest book (published in Sweden, but yet to be translated into English) is about two teenage ghosts who ride motorbikes around town, quoting Smiths lyrics along the way! I do love this guy.

However...I had to stop reading HTU, only forty pages or so from the end. It was quite frankly doing my head in! I used to be the type that soldiered on to the end of any book or movie, out of a displaced sense of duty or perseverance, but fortunately I've grown out of this tendency (except for stupidly taking time out from the music at ATP to watch Kim Ki Duk's The Isle all the way through, including all the fish hooks in vagina bits and thereby ruining me for the rest of the day). It's not that the book is bad - it's great in fact - but it was just growing too depressing and painful for me to read. Some of that may have to do with my current mental state; there are times when it's wise to surround myself with only frothy, happy cultural products. This may well be one of those times.

I looked for reviews of HTU online, but I haven't been able to find anything considered or extensive. I was hoping someone could give me a reason to keep continuing, to show me the very dim light of hope that might be hiding somewhere in the book. But maybe it's not there. Lindqvist (in a rare interview) said of Let The Right One In that he was trying to imagine the reality of being a child vampire, that is would be `miserable, gross and lonely.' And I think that's exactly what he's doing in this second book.

It's not a zombie novel in the schlock horror sense (there's no braiiiinnnzzz going on), rather a very successful attempt to imagine how it would really be if everyone that had died in the Stockholm area in the previous two months, were to one day suddenly come back to life or re-animate. The book takes a two-pronged approach: on one level it follows a handful of characters whose loved ones return to them and examines their personal, individual reactions, and on the other level it examines how the state structures (the police, the military, the government) respond to a social emergency. It's fascinating and thought-provoking, with religion and philosophy and ethics and emotions all called into play....But...

I just find myself getting so panicked and depressed reading it! I'm not sure where Lindqvist or any of his characters stand on the nature of the soul, and its relation to the physical body. His very clearly drawn images of decaying bodies, with some minor aspects of the dead person's personality and memory still residing in there, leave me feeling really disturbed. It's not so much that I want people's souls to go somewhere after we die, it's more that I find the idea that they are not set free in a cease-to-exist-at-all way even more disturbing. Does that make any sense? This book has got me all confused!

On writing

2009-03-06T12:05:00.001+11:00

I told my writerly and readerly housemate Andrew the other day that I had been writing in my journal a lot this week instead of working on my novel. He said, `Yeah, but it's still writing, isn't it?' And I guess it is. Anything that flexes the writing muscles on a daily basis has to be a good thing, right? Except, if I think of myself as a writer, I conceive of myself as more of an ancient, clunky, rusty metal machine that badly needs an oil change and service. Not a smooth Olympic athlete at all.

Sometimes I feel a writing impulse and don't quite know where to direct it. It used to be, do I work on a short story, or my novel? Do I compose a lovely eloquent email to an overseas friend? Now I seem to be adding outlets; I've started this blog (which may or may not go anywhere) and I've started writing in my journal again.

I have kept some of my journals over the years, and turfed others. My teenage diaries were so angst-ridden and heartfelt that I couldn't bear for them to even be sitting silently in a box in my bedroom. So I threw them out. Now of course I regret it deeply. Unfortunately my journal writing mostly seems to happen at crisis times, not happy times, giving a slightly skewed version of my past.

I am fascinated with one story about my childhood home. For the first ten years of my life I lived in a lovely old rambling house in Box Hill. The house was full of dark nooks and crannies; it had an attic leading down to a steep staircase that my sisters and I liked to surf down on cushions. It was a very mysterious house full of secrets and stories and hiding places.

Years after we moved out my dad told me this story. The man who lived in the house prior to us disappeared under strange circumstances. Apparently this man had accidentally hit a young boy with his car and killed him. Understandably he didn't seem to be able to get over this incident. He retreated to his house in the mountains (I seem to remember winter and snow as part of the details here), and was never heard of again, despite extensive searches. When my family moved into the house my dad found a small diary pushed high up in one of the chimneys. My dad kept the diary and pulled it out and showed me. It was small and had a black cover. The man had only written in the diary for two weeks, and once I read the diary I understood that this man had written the diary in maybe the worst two weeks of his life. I could also tell from the handwriting, and the man's grammar and spelling that he was not a writing man, that he rarely wrote anything down, let alone his feelings. Strangely, the diary entries weren't about the young boy and the accident. They were about his wife and his daughter.

I'm going to finish now. The dog is yelping quietly in her sleep.

Wakeup

2009-03-03T08:42:00.000+11:00

I woke up to the beautiful sound of rain today. Or rather, not really the sound of rain actually falling, but all the muted, whooshy sounds of wet weather. Who would have thought a grey sky could be so welcome?