Review: The Interrogation of Ashala Wolf by Ambelin Kwaymullina

Have I really not blogged for six months? Gosh. I know I'm slow, sporadic, spotty in my blogging, but that's a long time.

Then again, I moved house in the second week of December, after culling, packing & sorting my belongings, and arranging things at my new (old) home. (old as well as new because I've moved to my late mother's house, where I lived in my teens and early twenties)

I didn't read very much last year, and did even fewer reviews, but am getting back into reading, and recording my responses, now that I'm semi-settled into my new home (still a few boxes to unpack, which the cats think is a Good Thing).

Here are my thoughts about The Interrogaton Ashala Wolf (Tribe #1) by Ambelin Kwaymullina:

The Interrogation of Ashala Wolf by Ambelin Kwaymullina

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


very cleverly written novel, with layer after layer of the puzzle being gradually revealed. I thought it was a bit slow to start with, and thought the world-building and exposition were a bit clumsy, but that might actually have been intentional - it's a first-person narration by the central/titular character, and she's not feeling too well at the start, and the way she is thinking is affected.

and at some points I was thinking "oh no, not that YA romance trope of the central character hating another character but really underneath it all...", but even that was a nifty part of the puzzle.

I've seen this categorised as fantasy, but it's mostly dystopian SF young adult lit. the familiar tropes - young people with abilities, persecuted by an oppressive state - are given a different twist in this story. the state is trying to maintain the Balance, to keep society in harmony with itself and with its environment.

some very interesting echoes of contemporary Australian life - fear of the other, detainees being portrayed as a threat to "normal" people.




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So much happening, so little blogging...

I called my blog The Best Audience Award because, as well as feeling "not good enough" as a maker (writer, photographer, whatever I might otherwise post) I do actually believe that being an audience, understanding and appreciating (or disliking, or being puzzled by) natural wonders, the peculiarities of societies, and the amazing things that people make, is actually a virtuous thing to do.

The act and process of creation have meaning in themselves, but surely there's much more point to creating art if other people get to see and respond to it. Certainly it can be very valuable to learn another language, write essays, and study various subjects, but what about just taking the time to have a chat, listen to the radio, or read a book?

And sitting quietly and gazing into space is fine too. Restfulness (not just sleep, but being at ease and stopping for a while) is also necessary for our physical and mental health, as well as work, and play, and learning, and creativity, and interacting. I strongly believe this.

Since my last post on this blog in early December, I've:
done lots of baking (in December) for the first time in about six years - might post some pics of the biskits, Ninjabreadmen, and banana chocolate cashew loaf that I made;
my sister was seriously ill and I spent time taking her to a local hospital for intravenous antibiotics twice a day, often waiting for an hour or two, then the IV could take a while, as well as doctors being intrigued by the unusual tropical fungal infection with secondary bacterial infection that she had (in January);
then going op shopping (looking at clothes, books & knick-knacks in thrift/charity shops) with my sister when she was well enough (in February), and observing a Mental Health Connect course, preparatory to being a co-trainer of the course (also Feb, and I want to post about that in more detail); and now it's March.

For many of us, we have been taught to think that only making and doing are good, that appreciating something, whether natural or created (watching telly, listening to the radio, watching snow) is bad. And putting off doing things we need to do is very bad.

So I was very interested to read this blog post about why people procrastinate, by David Cain.

Cain argues that procrastination isn't caused by laziness or apathy, but is a protective strategy unconsciously used by people who are anxious about doing "well enough". See what you think...

Genetic Cause For An Addiction to Fiction?

I've long thought that I have an addiction to fiction. Between reading lots of prose fiction and writing a little, watching drama & comedy films and TV, day-dreaming as much as I can, and having long, involved stories in my sleep-time dreams, I spend a large proportion of my life absorbed in tales that I or someone else has made up.

Personally, I think that's a good thing. There are lots of respectable ways of saying this - it's part of human nature to want to tell and hear stories; reading or watching fiction about other people's lives helps us develop understanding and compassion; we can learn a lot, educate ourselves, by reading well-researched fiction... I agree with all of those, as well as thinking that, for me at least, losing myself in a good story is an addictive behaviour. It soothes me, cheers me, distracts me; I get edgy if I can't do it most days; when I'm doing it, I lose my sense of time and often my awareness of what's going on around me, or even in my own body - fatigue, thirst, needing to go to the loo - everything fades away except the fictional world, if it's really gripping. Good thing I have cats, then, as they are very effective at bringing me back to the real world with their demands for food, attention, action.

Not surprisingly, I own quite a few books (rough estimate, somewhere around 1500 - 2000) in many genres and for all ages, as well as a lesser but still goodly number of film & TV DVDs (about 500 +/-). Probably my books are about 85% fiction, 15% non-fiction. Very few of my DVDs are documentaries (although those docos are fab - Simon Schama's A History of Britain, George Gittoes' Soundtrack to War, series of Who Do You Think You Are?).

So I'm surprised that six out of the thirteen books I bought at/just before the recent Sydney Writers' Festival, by authors who I planned to hear speaking or ones who I was enthused by after hearing them, were non-fiction. Most of those, though, are memoirs or biographies, so I guess I'm sticking with stories about people, even if some of those stories are about scientific learning as much as about the individuals involved.

I've been hugely enjoying novellist Hilary Mantel's memoir, Giving up the Ghost, while also finding her experiences as a young child very moving, particularly her puzzlement at how and why school does what it does to children - very reminiscent of my own bewilderment as a four year old. At least I had my dad, who told my teacher that if his daughter wanted to read instead of watching TV with the other children, she should be able to, even if she wasn't supposed to have learnt yet. Hilary didn't get into trouble for being an early reader - she found Dick and Jane too boring to be enthused about - but her spontaneous creativity when reciting rote lessons angered the teacher, who asked what was obviously a trick question, "Do you want me to hit you with this ruler?".

But because I wanted to start reading all the books, all at once, soon after starting Giving up the Ghost I leapt into another memoir, by Russian Jewish journalist Masha Gessen.

Masha Gessen's memoir Blood Matters is chock full of information garnered from Gessen's interviews and personal experiences with geneticists, oncologists, genetic counsellors, economists (she consulted a professor of economics about using economic theory to help her decision-making about having prophylactic surgery to prevent breast and/or ovarian cancer), genealogists, DNA analysts, match-makers, rabbis, historians... She is impelled to learn about genetic medicine and inheritable diseases, and breast & ovarian cancer, their treatments and survival rates, when she tests positive for the BRCA1 gene mutation.

Along the way, she hears about the genetic evidence that present-day Jewish men who identify as Cohanim (belonging to the priestly caste of Cohens, descended from Aaron, brother of Moses) do carry a particular Y-chromosome gene that apparently originated with one man whose Y-DNA haplotype shows he lived in the Middle East around 2650 years ago, give or take a few hundred years. She has a harrowing conversation with the sole survivor of a Nazi-run "home" for disabled children (reading the description of what the doctors did to the children at the Spiegelgrund nearly made me throw up). And she meets Miriam, mother of Yehuda, who has a system of hand-written file-cards recording prospective brides for her son; considerations include personality, religiousness, appearance, family occupation, inheritable illnesses.

Some of the stories, whether of people with Huntington's disease (in a chapter justifiably called The Cruellest Disease), or women who have lost all their female relatives over 20 to cancer, are heart-breaking, but I'm still reading, partly because it is fascinating and eye-opening, and also because I haven't yet reached the chapter where Masha decides what she will do - whether to have either or both operations, and what else instead, or as well.

On a much lighter note, I'd like to know if there is a genetic cause of my addiction to reading stories. My father was adopted by a loving, hard-working family who didn't read books. (Later, when I was a teenager, my ever-generous Nana would offer me a "book" to read, meaning Woman's Day or another magazine.) Once he was in a position to buy books, and stay up late reading them, my dad did both, sometimes to excess. In adulthood, he met his birth mother, who turned out to also have a staying-up-late-reading habit. My sister and I had little chance of avoiding this inheritance, if it does have a genetic origin, as our mother too was an inveterate book-buyer and would often be caught up in a good story and lose all sense of time while reading.

My darling ma, reading, with cats

SF Mistressworks - a reading meme

This list was created by reviewer and author Ian Sales, in response to the Gollancz SF Masterworks series.

Ian explains:

"[These are all by women,] science fiction only, no fantasy; and no YA or children’s works. One work per author... Arbitrary end date of 2000.
For trilogies or series, I’ve listed the first book but put the trilogy/series name in square brackets afterwards. Asterisked titles are in Gollancz’s SF Masterworks series. And if the Masterworks series is allowed an anthology, so am I: hence the inclusion of Despatches from the Frontiers of the Female Mind. I’ve also sneakily included one or two collections, for those writers best known for their short fiction.

The list is in order of year of publication.

You know how it works: bold those you’ve read, italicise those you own but have not read. (If you’ve read the entire named series, you can even emboldenize that as well.)"

The titles bolded below are ones that I (Deborah) have read - some many times, some only once. I might also add some titles to Ian's list (or replace some, if I stick to the 'one title by each author' rule). And maybe get started on a Fantasy Mistressworks list :-)

1 * Frankenstein, Mary Shelley (1818)
2 * Herland, Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1915)
3 Orlando, Virginia Woolf (1928)
4 Lest Ye Die, Cicely Hamilton (1928)
5 Swastika Night, Katherine Burdekin (1937)
6 was deleted cos Francis Leslie Ashton is male (1951)
7 The Sword of Rhiannon, Leigh Brackett (1953)
8 Pilgrimage: The Book of the People, Zenna Henderson (1961)
9 Memoirs of a Spacewoman, Naomi Mitchison (1962)
10 Witch World, Andre Norton (1963)
11 Sunburst, Phyllis Gotlieb (1964)
12 Jirel of Joiry, CL Moore (1969)
13 Heroes and Villains, Angela Carter (1969)
14 Ten Thousand Light Years From Home, James Tiptree Jr (1973)
15 * The Dispossessed, Ursula K Le Guin (1974)
16 Walk to the End of the World, Suzy McKee Charnas (1974)
17 * The Female Man, Joana Russ (1975)
18 Missing Man, Katherine MacLean (1975)
19 * Arslan, MJ Engh (1976)
20 * Floating Worlds, Cecelia Holland (1976)
21 * Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang, Kate Wilhelm (1976)
22 Islands, Marta Randall (1976)
23 Dreamsnake, Vonda N McIntyre (1978)
24 False Dawn, Chelsea Quinn Yarbro (1978)
25 Shikasta [Canopus in Argos: Archives], Doris Lessing (1979)
26 Kindred, Octavia Butler (1979)
27 Benefits, Zoe Fairbairns (1979)
28 The Snow Queen, Joan D Vinge (1980)
29 The Silent City, Élisabeth Vonarburg (1981)
30 The Silver Metal Lover, Tanith Lee (1981)
31 The Many-Coloured Land [Saga of the Exiles], Julian May (1981)
32 Darkchild [Daughters of the Sunstone], Sydney J van Scyoc (1982)
33 The Crystal Singer, Anne McCaffrey (1982)
34 Native Tongue, Suzette Haden Elgin (1984)
35 The Handmaid’s Tale, Margaret Atwood (1985)
36 Jerusalem Fire, RM Meluch (1985)
37 Children of Anthi, Jay D Blakeney (1985)
38 The Dream Years, Lisa Goldstein (1985)
39 Despatches from the Frontiers of the Female Mind, Sarah Lefanu & Jen Green (1985)
40 Queen of the States, Josephine Saxton (1986)
41 The Wave and the Flame [Lear's Daughters], Marjorie Bradley Kellogg (1986)
42 The Journal of Nicholas the American, Leigh Kennedy (1986)
43 A Door into Ocean, Joan Slonczewski (1986)
44 Angel at Apogee, SN Lewitt (1987)
45 In Conquest Born, CS Friedman (1987)
46 Pennterra, Judith Moffett (1987)
47 Kairos, Gwyneth Jones (1988)
48 Cyteen , CJ Cherryh (1988)
49 Unquenchable Fire, Rachel Pollack (1988)
50 The City, Not Long After, Pat Murphy (1988)
51 The Steerswoman [Steerswoman series], Rosemary Kirstein (1989)
52 The Third Eagle, RA MacAvoy (1989)
53 * Grass, Sheri S Tepper (1989)
54 Heritage of Flight, Susan Shwartz (1989)
55 Falcon, Emma Bull (1989)
56 The Archivist, Gill Alderman (1989)
57 Winterlong [Winterlong trilogy], Elizabeth Hand (1990)
58 A Gift Upon the Shore, MK Wren (1990)
59 Red Spider, White Web, Misha (1990)
60 Polar City Blues, Katharine Kerr (1990)
61 Body of Glass (AKA He, She and It), Marge Piercy (1991)
62 Sarah Canary, Karen Joy Fowler (1991)
63 Beggars in Spain [Sleepless trilogy], Nancy Kress (1991)
64 A Woman of the Iron People, Eleanor Arnason (1991)
65 Hermetech, Storm Constantine (1991)
66 China Mountain Zhang, Maureen F McHugh (1992)
67 Fools, Pat Cadigan (1992)
68 Correspondence, Sue Thomas (1992)
69 Lost Futures, Lisa Tuttle (1992)
70 Doomsday Book, Connie Willis (1992)
71 Ammonite, Nicola Griffith (1993)
72 The Holder of the World, Bharati Mukherjee (1993)
73 Queen City Jazz, Kathleen Ann Goonan (1994)
74 Happy Policeman, Patricia Anthony (1994)
75 Shadow Man, Melissa Scott (1995)
76 Legacies, Alison Sinclair (1995)
77 Primary Inversion [Skolian Saga], Catherine Asaro (1995)
78 Alien Influences, Kristine Kathryn Rusch (1995)
79 The Sparrow, Mary Doria Russell (1996)
80 Memory [Vorkosigan series], Lois McMaster Bujold (1996)
81 Remnant Population, Elizabeth Moon (1996)
82 Looking for the Mahdi, N Lee Wood (1996)
83 An Exchange of Hostages [Jurisdiction series], Susan R Matthews (1997)
84 Fool’s War, Sarah Zettel (1997)
85 Black Wine, Candas Jane Dorsey (1997)
86 Halfway Human, Carolyn Ives Gilman (1998)
87 Vast, Linda Nagata (1998)
88 Hand of Prophecy, Severna Park (1998)
89 Brown Girl in the Ring, Nalo Hopkinson (1998)
90 Dreaming in Smoke, Tricia Sullivan (1999)
91 Ash: A Secret History, Mary Gentle (2000)

you can read more about this list on Ian Sales' blog

I read about it first on Tansy Rayner Roberts' blog

Street Cat Diaries

hello blog! sorry I haven't spoken with you in ages (and that I keep drafting posts and then leaving them unpublished because I am Filled with Doubt).

tonight as I drove home along the City West link I was amazed and delighted to see what looked like a huge rising crescent moon, but was actually the full moon in almost total eclipse, golden against the lilac sky, and perfectly poised, from my perspective, centred above the arch of the Sydney Harbour Bridge.

it was a gorgeous sight, but no less thrilling to me than seeing the street cats in Marlowe Street a little earlier this evening.

'Street Cat Diaries' was the name suggested by Facebook friend Tim Roberts for a blog about Sandy and the other street cats of Marlowe Street Campsie, who I got to know in September 2009. I didn't actually blog about the kittehs, only posted about them on Facebook a lot, which I now regret, cos it'll be hard to retrieve all the status updates and comments to put the story back together.

wow, it's just struck me that Sandy befriended me more than 15 months ago now. and I first glimpsed her and her five sisters in February/March 2009, when they were probably two or three months old.

in the interim, I began feeding them occasionally; gradually got to know them; gave them names (who knows what their real names are? but I named them for my convenience, and so my friends would know who I meant more easily than if I said "the other short-haired blonde one, not the really friendly one"); bought more and more cat food so I could feed the six sisters and various toms every night; was banned from feeding them on the property (I was renting a flat in a small block where the 90-year-old woman who'd had the flats built 40 years ago still resided, and the property manager, her daughter, visited once or twice a week); realised the catlings were going to be reproducing soon; started to trap, desex & release them; and became firmly attached to one of the second generation kittens, who befriended me despite his mother being so frightened of and hostile towards humans that the neighbours across the road called her Hissy, and I called her Dragon.

friendly, brave Treasure and his at-first frightened sister Rosy now live with me, in a pet-friendly flat that I moved to after the younger landlady gave me notice, as does their cousin, Sandy's daughter Fern.

... (intervening chapters to be compiled/written later) ...

anyway, today was an amazing, intense day in many ways. I hadn't seen Tabby or her daughter Shadow for ages, and was really worried that something bad had happened to Shadow (e.g. dog attack or hit by a car), because she'd seemed in good health, and usually came running to greet me and ask for food whenever I visited Marlowe Street. So when I pulled up by the park in Marlowe Street and saw first Sandy, then Tabby, then Shadow, I was thrilled!

the three cats gulped down a 400g tin of Whiskas between them, and had some dry food too. Sandy was happy to play & smooch with me, Shadow let me stroke her (as long as I stroked her when she had her back to me - seeing a hand come towards her scares her too much), and Tabby even let me stroke her once (but I desisted after that, cos it obviously upset her).

while I was feeding those three, a woman stopped to admire the cats, and asked me about them. I told her that the cats had been born in 'that backyard over there', and the people living there had sort of fed them, but then left them behind when they moved out. the woman was impressed that I had fed them every night for six months or so while living nearby, and that I came to Campsie every week or two to feed them since I'd moved away (personally I feel privileged to know the kittehs, and I miss Sandy a lot).

we had a great discussion about how animals have feelings too, cats being related to lions and leopards (who can run very fast) and that cats aren't obedient like dogs, but they can still be very loving. the kittehs meanwhile were eating, washing, looking at me for more food, playing (in Sandy's case), and taking cover in the nearby 'jungle garden' when other people walked by, specially if there were several people at once, or a dog being walked.


Shadow eating - pic taken in early November, when she still had her winter coat, so wasn't quite so obviously thin.








the woman was so moved by seeing the skinny, scared cats eating and letting me stroke them, that she gave me a packet of frozen coconut juice, which she explained to me was frozen fresh in Thailand, shipped to Australia, and only available in Chinese food stores. I was very touched, and thanked her - not sure if coconut would agree with me (does anyone know what the salicylate level of coconut is?) but can give it to someone - and it was handy to use as a cold pack, given that I was about to go shopping for things including perishables. we bowed to each other, and she continued on, while I stayed and played with Sandy some more, then went looking for Smoky, who had had the flu the last couple of times I saw her.

there's now only one house out of the three that the cats used to live around that still welcomes them (and me when I come to feed them), so I went to their backyard and called Smoky. Sandy of course came too, so when Smoky appeared, I gave her as much of the sachet of wet food as I could, while giving Sandy little bits, and stroking her to distract her. I know Sandy could've done with more too, but Smoky hadn't had any, and my darling Sandy is a bit of a mean girl even when she's not starving, and all her sisters are wary of her smacking them, even Smoky, who is the next toughest of the litter. one of the guys came out of the house just as Smoky was finishing the last remnants of fishyness, and she and Sandy both bolted - I guess not all the current human residents are on good terms with the kittehs.

After that I went to the post office and picked up lots of lovely goodies from my PO box:
a CD of Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy from a friend (thank you, Andrew!); two books from Twelfth Planet Press that I'd bought online in their 12 Days of Christmas Sale - two novellas in one volume, Siren Beat by Tansy Rayner Robers and Roadkill by Robert Shearman, and a collection of short stories by Deborah Biancotti, A Book of Endings; a tiny wee teddy bear figurine that my sister bought for my aunt & had posted to Campsie to make sure she could get it before Xmas; sundry newsletters, catalogues & appeals from charities; and a Christmas card from a friend in Wales.

my favourite chicken shop is in Campsie too, Lefkas Chicken on Beamish Street, where I bought the last half chicken (phew! my kittehs at home would not have been pleased if I'd come home from Campsie without chicken!), and the lovely proprietor Joanne wished me a merry Christmas "and your mum and your sister too", and said if we wanted a chook for Xmas, we'd need to order it (note to self: check with Becca; probably order chicken).

Rebecca has planned a yummy menu of things that will be pretty and easy for our mum to eat (Mama only likes soft food now), so I went to World of Fruit in search of white sweet potato, then wandered around Woollies for ages getting lots of groceries, and finding other ingredients for a red, white & green salad for Xmas lunch - Becca is very creative with food. actually, Becca is very creative generally. have a look at her dolls' house blog http://rebeccascollections.blogspot.com/

I'd already spent much longer in Campsie than I'd planned, but Shadow, Smoky and Tabby were waiting by my car when I got back from shopping, so I gave them some more dry food, and one of the wet food sachets I'd just bought on special at Woollies, and spoke with a teenage boy who was fascinated by the cats. I wondered if perhaps he was autistic, as he was mostly not speaking or making eye contact, and focussed a lot on picking up twigs from the ground and breaking them into same-sized pieces. He watched the cats, and listened when I told him how the cats were related, and agreed when I said that they were very hungry, and quite scared of people, but that one (Shadow) might let him stroke her while she was eating. he stroked her very gently, and let Smoky and Tabby eat in peace. he was still crouching by the cats and breaking twigs when I drove off.

when I got home I thought about going out again to watch the full moon and the eclipse some more, but was tired and wanted to get the cats indoors, feed them, feed me, ring Mum & Rebecca, and ring my potential flatmate about the house we've applied to rent. Treasure and Fern were very happy to come inside (Trezh especially once he smelled the chicken) but Rosy was flitting about in the garden and had no intention of being shut indoors. so Trezh and Fern and I had chicken, I rang Mum and Becca, then my friend who I've been flat-hunting with rang me.

She is feeling very unsure about the place that we've been offered. I am still half-disbelieving that I've finally found somewhere to move to when my lease is up in a few weeks. after two months of looking, hundreds of listings viewed online, scores of details read and photos examined (did you know that 'neat and tidy' means small, and 'original condition' means needing repairs?), about a dozen properties visited, and four applied for, I'm in! except that my friend is blind, and therefore moving is a Very Big Deal for her; anywhere she lives has to be close to public transport; and she doesn't have to move right now, as I do, just wants to be closer to lively cafes and interesting shops than where she is now. As the cute, semi-detached house we've applied for is not particularly close to the station or the local shops and cafes (of which there are a good number), she's not sure if she wants to move at all. But she kindly agreed to co-sign the lease this week, without which I'd have no hope of getting the place, and continue to think about the move over the next week or so. if she decides to move, great; if not, she'll let me know so I can start looking for another flatmate, and hopefully not have to pay the whole rent for too long.

After that, I just wanted to go to bed, but went outside to look for Rosy, who was still having fun romping around in the garden. at least this time she rolled on the ground to invite a tummy rub, rather than running of somewhere I couldn't catch her. I obliged with a tummy rub (she has gorgeous soft fur), and just as I picked her up to bring her in, my landlord let his collie out for her night-time wee, and she rushed barking at me and Rosy. Rosy struggled to get free and run, I hung on and ran for the door to my flat, Rosy scratched me but I managed to get her inside and slam the door shut, and turn to say "no!" firmly to Nessie the lovely collie. Nessie was very disappointed not be able to play with (read: chase and possibly bite) Rosy, but happy to have a scratch around the ears from me. Rosy was relieved to get away from the Big Barking Dog, resigned to being inside, and very happy to have some chicken.

if you're still reading this, well done! you have great stamina :-)
I enjoy blogging, but am not much given to short, frequent posts (as you can probably tell) - despite being tired and planning to go to bed early, I'm still up at one in the morning. That's the trouble with blogging - it's writing, which I love, and which has a similar effect on me to reading a good book - everything else recedes into the distance, bodily sensations such as hunger or fatigue become unimportant, and the words and the world they conjure are everything.

Pitfalls for young readers

"Look at that view!"
"Yes, it's very picture-skew, isn't it?"
"What?!"

I don't know if this conversation ever happened when I was a child, but it could easily have. As with many kids who learn a lot of words through reading them rather than hearing them, I had a great vocabulary at a young age, but was often a bit off with the pronunciation.

I knew that "queue" was pronounced 'kyoo' (now how's that for unlikely pronunciation?), and was familiar with the word 'picture', so when I encountered the word 'picturesque' I heard it in my head as 'pikshaskyoo', and worked out that it meant 'pretty as a picture'.

And a tall, impressive, good-looking woman was 'statyooskyoo', meaning 'impressive like a statue'. If ever I want to write the word, I have to look 'statuesque' up in the dictionary to be sure of how to spell it - knowing that it's supposed to be pronounced 'statyooesk' doesn't tell me whether there are two 'e's in the middle (one for 'statue' and one for 'esque') or one, or none.

I don't have a clear memory of when I could first read words, but I do have a vivid memory (as well as remembering it as a story told in the family) of sitting in the drawing room with my mother (who was reading), my father (who was reading), and my older sister (who was reading), and being very frustrated because at not quite four I couldn't read yet. Fortunately I did learn to read soon after, first in English (Ant and Bee and Kind Dog) and then some French (Pierre Lapin - which is as far as I ever got).

I also remember being so absorbed in reading that I didn't hear Mum calling me. She thought I was deliberately ignoring her, but I really was deaf to the world - something that still happens now when I'm absorbed in reading, which is apparent to me when I come out of a book and hear that my iTunes has moved on through more than half an hour of a playlist without my hearing a thing.

These thoughts were inspired by reading this post, http://stilllifewithcat.blogspot.com/2009/07/help.html, which for some reason I can't link to.

subjectivity - or why authors need good readers

Now that I have vast hordes of people following my blog - eight at last count! - it seems like a good idea to post more often. hello, people! *waves*


I'm reading My Favourite Poison by Anna Blundy - a rollicking crime/chick lit/dark comedy/spy story set in Egypt, featuring Faith Zanetti, a cynical English journalist who feels most at home in war zones and places where life is cheap and vodka is readily available. This is the fifth Faith novel, and they're all quite dark - suicides, wrongful imprisonment, the horrors of war, trafficking in children, mental illness, abandonment and grief - but have sufficient laugh lines scattered through the books to warrant being called 'rollicking' or 'darkly funny'. I've now bought four out of the five, having found the first (actually the fourth) in a dump-bin of discounted books, then the third, also on sale. apparently they don't sell well in Australia - we like wry or quirky humour, but maybe Blundy's plots are too grim and her jokes too Russian (see her novels for explanation if you are not familiar with the general tendency of Russian jokes to be really, really sad) for the average Australian reader. Blundy herself worked for many years as a journalist in Russia, the Middle East, Africa and America, and her father, also a journalist, was killed while working in El Salvador.


I've read all five (well, still reading the fifth) but have declined to buy the second because it's so unhappy; war orphans being sold into sex slavery is horrific, Faith's best friend committing suicide was devastating, but Faith herself having a nervous breakdown was just too much for me - maybe something to do with the first person narrative.

Anyways, I'd ordered My Favourite Poison and waited weeks for it, started it eagerly a couple of days ago, but was disgruntled because it just wasn't funny. Tonight, however, I'm chortling away at Faith's idea that she could disguise herself by wearing a red t-shirt instead of her usual white one (she's not entirely serious about that working).

So is the writing better at this point in the novel? I think it's pretty consistent, actually, and the reason I'm chuckling now is because I had a good talk this arvo with someone who asked me what I was so peeved about, and now that I've aired my grievances with sundry persons who have done Bad Things such as a) bill me more than they should have, b) be outrageously busy with other clients and not have time to fit me in for an appointment, and c) be cheerful when I'm feeling grumpy, I'm feeling quite relaxed and ready to enjoy Faith's travails.


Which confirms my theory (well, other people's too, but no way am I going to cite sources in this blog, unless I really feel like it, so for the purposes of this blog right now it's mine) that a novel is co-created by the reader, or at least, that an individual reader's experience is co-created by that reader - by the layers of cultural and literary knowledge they bring to it, their understanding of the genre, their understanding of individual words (or not), and, not least, their state of being and mood at the time.

books that shaped me

Some people object to lists, but I looove lists of good books (that's why I bought Nancy Pearl's "Book Lust"). And this "shopping list" post certainly fits the theme of my blog - my life as a reader/audience.

These books are all ones that I love, by authors & illustrators that I admire; some were also childhood favourites. I decided to do a list of 100, which meant having to exclude lots, so when a book is part of a series, I have usually put just the first book, or my favourite, to represent them all (in most cases I love the whole series).

Mostly I've listed books that were published at least five years ago (except for Let the Right One In, which I made an exception for cos it's a) brilliant and b) such a good example of cross-genre writing), to give enough time to judge how much the books have stayed with me.

I've also aimed to avoid having more than one book by the same author in the same category (although some authors are included in more than one genre), cos otherwise my children's books could've been all Joan Aiken, for example, and I wanted to include as many authors as possible.

They're grouped by genre/audience/format cos I wanted to have a representative range of the books that I love and that have contributed to my world view. I started reading crime, SF and general adult fiction when I was a kid, and still read kids' books now.


Young Adult:
1. My Heartbeat, Garret Freymann-Weyr
2. Saving Francesca, Melina Marchetta
3. Boy Meets Boy, David Levithan
4. Sky Legs, Irini Savvides
5. Tomorrow, When the War Began, John Marsden
6. The Sterkarm Handshake, Susan Price
7. Lockie Leonard, Human Torpedo, Tim Winton
8. Tex, S.E. Hinton
9. Pagan's Vows, Catherine Jinks
10. Finding Cassie Crazy, Jaclyn Moriarty

Crime/Mystery
11. Justice, Faye Kellerman
12. Shakespeare's Champion, Charlaine Harris
13. Cut to the Quick, Kate Ross
14. Seeing a Large Cat, Elizabeth Peters
15. The Embroidered Sunset, Joan Aiken
16. A Running Duck, Paula Gosling
17. The Franchise Affair, Josephine Tey
18. Peepshow, Leigh Redhead
19. Busman's Honeymoon, Dorothy L. Sayers
20. For the Defense, Kate Wilhelm

SF/Fantasy/Horror
21. Darwin's Radio, Greg Bear
22. The October Country, Ray Bradbury
23. Dhalgren, Samuel R. Delany, Jr
24. Welcome, Chaos, Kate Wilhelm
25. Insomnia, Stephen King
26. Hunting Party, Elizabeth Moon
27. Body of Glass, Marge Piercy
28. Beauty, Sheri S. Tepper
29. The Autumn Castle, Kim Wilkins
30. Always Coming Home, Ursula K. Le Guin

Picture books:
31. I Hate My Teddy Bear, David McKee
32. Eloise, Kay Thompson & Hilary Knight
33. Goodnight, Moon, Margaret Wise Brown & Clement Hurd
34. My Place, Nadia Wheatley & Donna Rawlins
35. Fungus the Bogeyman, Raymond Briggs
36. Where the Wild Things Are, Maurice Sendak
37. Just One Apple, Janosch
38. Tip-Tip, Marcelle Vérité
39. The Waterhole, Graeme Base
40. Grandpa, John Burningham

Children's:
41. The Load of Unicorn, Cynthia Harnett
42. Black Hearts in Battersea, Joan Aiken
43. The Horse & His Boy, C.S. Lewis
44. The Wind on the Moon, Eric Linklater
45. The Borrowers, Mary Norton
46. Handles, Jan Mark
47. The Ice is Coming, Patricia Wrightson
48. The Children of Green Knowe, Lucy M. Boston
49. White Boots, Noel Streatfield
50. The Phantom Tollbooth, Norman Juster

General fiction:
51. A Spot of Bother, Mark Haddon
52. 26a, Diana Evans
53. The Spell, Alan Hollinghurst
54. Not That Sort of Girl, Mary Wesley
55. Dirt Music, Tim Winton
56. The Infernal Optimist, Linda Jaivin
57. God on the Rocks, Jane Gardam
58. Three Dog Night, Peter Goldsworthy
59. I for Isobel, Amy Witting
60. The Bat Tattoo, Russell Hoban

Historical novels:
61. Gone to Soldiers, Marge Piercy
62. The Vizard Mask, Diana Norman
63. The Gentleman's Garden, Catherine Jinks
64. An Infamous Army, Georgette Heyer
65. Jane Fairfax, Joan Aiken
66. These Is My Words, Nancy Turner
67. Queen of the Lightning, Kathleen Herbert
68. Cold Mountain, Charles Frazier
69. Year of Wonders, Geraldine Brooks
70. Small Gains, K.M. Peyton

Graphic novels:
71. Sandman, Neil Gaiman & Kieth/Dringenberg/Klein, et al.
72. Y: Last Man, Brian K. Vaughn & Pia Guerra
73. Tales of the Slayers: Presumption, Jane Espenson & Russell/Kindzierski/Showman
74. The Adventuress, Audrey Niffenegger
75. Fun Home, Alison Bechdel
76. Persepolis 1 & 2, Marjane Satrapi
77. Blankets, Craig Thompson
78. 99 Ways to Tell a Story, Matt Madden
79. Black Orchid, Neil Gaiman & Dave McKean
80. Buddha, Osamu Tezuka

Classics (and ones that should be):
81. Persuasion, Jane Austen
82. Wuthering Heights, Emily Bronte
83. Jane Eyre, Charlotte Bronte
84. Vanity Fair, W.M. Thackeray
85. Frankenstein, Mary Shelley
86. Maurice, E.M. Forster
87. Mrs Dalloway, Virginia Woolf
88. Living Alone, Stella Benson
89. At the Back of the North Wind, George MacDonald
90. Sing For Your Supper, Pamela Frankau

Cross-genre & other favourites:
91. Drums of Autumn, Diana Gabaldon
92. Dead Until Dark, Charlaine Harris
93. Anansi Boys, Neil Gaiman
94. The Underdog, Markus Zusak
95. The Puppy Sister, S.E. Hinton
96. How I Live Now, Meg Rosoff
97. Sabriel, Garth Nix
98. Emma Tupper's Diary, Peter Dickinson
99. Cold Tom, Sally Price
100. Let the Right One In, John Ajvide Lindqvist

remember the days of the high school yard

If high school was the happiest time of my life, I'd be dead by now.
fortunately, it wasn't. in fact, the year I was at high school was among the unhappiest I've had.

I only had one year of high school, thank God. I left at the end of year 7 (shortly before turning 13), because I loathed the place, and mum thought both my education and my sanity would be better served by “home-schooling”.

I put “home schooling” in inverted commas because we mostly just made up a curriculum and then I’d get on with reading all the fiction, history, travel, pop science, etc, that I wanted to anyway. I also was a volunteer at a child care centre, a women’s refuge, and as a Lifeline telephone counsellor, was a student then a tutor at the local Youth Theatre, and sat in on college classes (the same college where my mum worked, and where I later did my first degree).

this post started life as a Facebook questionnaire Notes thingy, so it's in Q & A form, and includes questions I probably wouldn't have thought to ask myself, and Americanisms, which I'll leave as they are cos it'd be a bit rude to change them, given I'm not even crediting the original (unknown to me) writer of the quiz.

So a) there’s not much material from one year (although it seemed an eternity of pain at the time), and b) it’s a bit traumatic remembering all that shit. So I’ve included some stuff from after I left high school, but while I was still in my early-to-mid teens.

1. What stereotype would you characterize yourself in high school? (Nerd, Jock, Artsy, Stoner etc)
nerd, then artsy nerd.

2. Who was your fave teacher and why?
my maths teacher (can’t remember his name), cos I liked maths and he gave me extra work when I’d finished stuff early. At college, when I was 14 or so, one of the English lecturers with whom I did Women in Lit – heaps of fun!

3.What was your worst high school moment?
too many to choose:
being asked on my first day if I was a virgin (I should bloody well hope so! I was 11 going on 12);
being pushed down a flight of stairs;
being told by an English teacher (who I’d previously respected) that my response to a poem was ‘wrong’;
being asked by a guy (who I wasn’t interested in, but still) if I’d ‘go with’ him (i.e. be his gf), then before I answered, he and his mates all laughed and said ‘sucked in’.

4.What was your best high school moment?
- HS: getting home at the end of each day.
- Best college-during-my-early-teens moment: talking about the Romantic poets (Shelley, Byron, Clare, Keats), and about Virginia Woolf, in a class of people who were actually interested and had read them.

5. What music most reminds you of high school?
ABBA might, but fortunately I have much more positive associations with ABBA now. Mamma Mia, here I go again - lovely Meryl Streep, and dancing to Dancing Queen at Conflux 2 - we had a great DJ at the masquerade ball!

6. What class would you like to take again if you had the chance?
none! Never want to go to a high school again, unless –
if I was the teacher, and the kids actually wanted to be there, then English, history, civics, drama – anything where I could rabbit on a bit, get them to do fun and challenging stuff and hopefully inspire them.
I would like to do high-school level maths and science, cos I missed most of that, but not at an actual high-school.


7. Who did you hang out with most in high school?
my sister, except we weren’t s’posed to talk to each other because year 7s and year 10s were s’posed to be in different parts of the playground. Stupid bureaucracy.

8. What is something you miss the most about high school?
absolutely nothing. Say it again – school – what is it good for? Huh! Absolutely nothing.

9. What do you miss the least?
Being bullied, rushing from one horrible stupid class to another carrying tons of heavy books (we didn’t have lockers - are there lockers in Australian high schools now?).

10. Who did you date or have a crush on?
- no one at school. Immature dickheads, most of them.
- at college while in early teens – lots of people, probably the earliest was a comms student called Jen (I think) who was in They Shoot Horses Don’t They? (or maybe she did lighting – I forget the details, just that I thought she was so cool, and wished I had the courage to talk with her)

11. What is something really funny that happened?
more eye-rollingly stupid, but I got into an argument with my science teacher about the ethics of Australia mining uranium and selling it to other countries, e.g France, who then used it in nuclear weapons that they tested, above ground, in the Pacific. My science teacher said that if we didn’t sell it to the French, another country would. I said that by that reasoning, it would be okay for him to sell me heroin because if he didn’t someone else would. His only answer was ‘but you’re not a heroin addict’, then ‘get back to work on identifying the sedimentary, igneous, and metamorphic rocks’. Blah.

Lots of funny things happened at college-before-I-enrolled. Can I remember a good anecdote? Sorry, nothing specific.

12. Did you ever get in trouble in high school?
ha! I was so 'good', until the last month of the last term, when I was so fed up, and after mostly getting As I failed a test – shock! horror! My form teacher (the science teacher, poor fool) had a Serious Talk with me. I just glowered at him.

13. What were you really into back then?
writing angst-filled poems, reading and watching SF and detective fiction, playing in the garden with our cats.

14. Where did you hang out?
- during HS: during the school day, wherever I hoped no one would find me; in my bedroom (James Dean, Marilyn Monroe, Buster Keaton and Elvis posters on the wall) while at home.
- during college-in-early-teens: in the college Union eating hot chips, at Youth Theatre, in the community radio’s student broadcasting studio…

15. What was your proudest accomplishment?
- HS: surviving
- in-mid-teens: getting a job as drama tutor; training as a Lifeline counsellor

16. If you could go back and change something, what would it be?
it’d be great to go back and tell myself “it will get better”, and to not internalise all the shit that the bullies told me


17. Who influenced you most?
- at HS: the bullies, probably
- at c-in-mid-ts: women at the refuge – workers and residents; English lecturers at college (before I enrolled, and a History lecturer afterwards); drama tutors at youth theatre; other volunteers at Lifeline (most of whom were practising Christians, and I was then an atheist).

18. What were some of your fave TV shows from that era?
Blake’s 7, Starksy & Hutch, Dr Who (depending on which Doctor), Countdown, Welcome Back Kotter

19. Fave movies?
Star Wars, Ordinary People, CE3K (Close Encounters), Gallipoli, Scanners, Mad Max 2, Gregory’s Girl

20. Is there anything you would like to say that you never had the chance to say to someone?
- to all the bullies: I hope you’ve grown up to be decent people
- to the lecturers at college-in-my-mid-teens: thanks for restoring my faith in adults and in formal education
- to my mum: thank you!
- to my sister: we made it out alive!

travelling in Europe with my older sister when we were in our teens was way better education than being at high school.