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Spring growth in the bookpile
Moar booksss!
Finally finished Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell, just in time for various parcels to arrive...
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Media Mondays: too much book
So I've just started reading Susanna Clarke's Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell because I keep seeing gifs of the BBC miniseries across my tumblr dash, and while I'm not exactly spoiler-averse I do like to keep *some* surprises/want to read before watching ( Read more... ) -
The Reading Pile sprouts in autumn
SO. I finally moved into my new place a month ago, and have been unpacking and moving things around and generally settling in.
There are many small rituals that go into making a new space feel like home (first cup of coffee made, first meal cooked, first night's sleep in it, planting things), but now I've come to the best one: buying new books!
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Ave atque vale, Pterry
Ah hell, Terry Pratchett died. One of the wisest, wittiest, most clear-sighted writers I ever read.
AT LAST, SIR TERRY, WE MUST WALK TOGETHER.
- Terry Pratchett (@terryandrob) March 12, 2015
Terry took Death’s arm and followed him through the doors and on to the black desert under the endless night.
- Terry Pratchett (@terryandrob) March 12, 2015
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And another year comes around
I've just come in from the dark, where I've been drinking a piña colada and staring up at the stars in the remarkable peace of the countryside. For all that my astronomical knowledge is hazy (Southern Cross, Probably Venus, False Southern Cross, ...Other Southern Cross?, Other Other Southern Cross, No Wait The Real Southern Cross What The Hell Were ( Read more... ) -
Folklore Fridays: Ah yes, the vampire's old enemy: a stone
There's a zillion bits of weird folkore surrounding the creation and disposal of vampires (of which, yes, the sinister occurance of vampire watermelons are my favourite). But ask me for citations, and I draw a blank because "I read it several years ago across several sources including a 19th-century collection of vampire folklore, no I don't ( Read more... ) -
'Afterparty' in Volume 12.2 of The Review of Australian Fiction
The latest issue of the Review of Australian Fiction just went live with my short story 'Afterparty', a tale of resurrections, resolutions, parties, crushes, last dances, first kisses, ghosts, gods, magic and mayhem on that most spectacular of nights, New Year's Eve in Sydney. I'm thrilled to be sharing a table of contents with Clarion South buddy ( Read more... ) -
Whatever Wednesdays: Delia's gone, but I'm settling the score
Song of the day: The Body Electric, by Hurray for the Riff Raff. A bluesy-folk response to all those murder ballads where women are killed.
“I also feel like, first and foremost, I have this feminist lens that I see the world in. And I feel like folk music is so great because it’s a conversation throughout the generations. So I thought it was ( Read more... ) -
Whatever Wednesdays: om nom nom
Two things that have tided me over this week:
1/ A more-ish recipe for macaroni and cheese that uses an egg/cheddar/cottage cheese/sour cream mix instead of a bechamel sauce and is thus 500% times less bothersome to clean up. Good hot and cold and reheated. (The recipe as stated serves eight, which I... didn't notice until I ran out of dish to ( Read more... ) -
Folklore Fridays: it came to me in a dream
A tale from the Solomon Islands gives the origin of the Baegu language as this:
One night a woman, Fala, dreamed of a new language, and when she woke up she could not remember her old language. She could only speak in the language of her dream.
(Source: Solomon Island Folktales from Malaita, collected and translated by Kay Bauman)The story goes ( Read more... )
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