Category Archives: Everything

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David and Goliath

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BOOK OF SAMUEL 1 Holy Bible

Chapter 17 (Holy Bible, ISBN for example 9780060649234)

A few days after Scott started housesitting at a penthouse apartment on Exhibition Street, a mob of us went around to visit him. An ancient tomcat lived in the laundry room. I remember it as Old Pukey. According to Scott, if anything startled it, it could vomit, and anything might startle it.

Old Pukey’s fur had started to fall out in patches. When it tried to purr, it made this awful gulping noise that sounded like it trying to clear its throat and not quite managing it. Continue reading

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Becoming A Writer Reread #3

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becoming_a_writerBECOMING A WRITER

Dorothea Brande

This is the third instalment in my reread of Dorothea Brande’s remarkable 1934 book, Becoming a Writer. You can find part one here. In part one Dorothea Brande described the four key difficulties that prevent a person from writing. In the second chapter, she takes a closer look at what functional, professional writers are (generally speaking) like as a group. In part three, Dorothea takes a closer look at the advantages of splitting yourself into two people in your writing life. Continue reading

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A Darkly Restrained Elegance Of Storytelling

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the_hole_the_fox_did_makeTHE HOLE THE FOX DID MAKE

Emily Carroll

The Hole the fox did make is an elegant, beautiful and restrained ghostly tale presented as a drawn story. Saying too much will give away too much, and in any instance, Hole the fox did make is short enough that you can and should just go ahead and read it right away.

If you like that, the author, Emily Carroll has several other charming, scary, radiant stories at her site. The art style is strongly modern with what might almost be a pop art / literary vibe to it. In terms of art, I’m reminded of something partway between You’re All Just Jealous of my Jetpack and Hark, a Vagrant, but with a clear strong storyteller’s voice rather than one-off humorous jibes.

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Tour Scenic Cesta Punta

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werner_herzog_eats_his_shoeWERNER HERZOG EATS HIS SHOE 

Dir. Les Blank. Perf. Werner Herzog, Alice Waters, Tom Luddy, Michael Goodwin, Chris Strachwitz and Phil Harberts. Flower Films, 1980. Film.

After cooking and eating his shoe in Werner Herzog Eats His Shoe, Herzog explains that he ranks a lack of adequate images as one of the gravest threats to civilisation. He puts it on par with overpopulation and ecological devastation.

For the man who fixes his focus well into the future, it cuts to the marrow of his fear that human progress in his society may’ve ground to a standstill. Without adequate images to knit its dreams from, can his society dream dreams of significance? Or will it spend its time perfecting the Slurpee and finding Australia’s Next Top Model, as its citizens grow more and more isolated from each another? Continue reading

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The World Was Silent When We Died

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half_of_a_yellow_sunHALF OF A YELLOW SUN

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie Fourth Estate, 2006, ISBN: 9780007200283

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Half of a Yellow Sun was, from memory, a very fashionable book to have read some years ago.  It achieved great success worldwide, receiving the Orange Prize for Fiction in 2007 and many positive reviews.  Set before and during the Nigerian Civil War, the novel examines colonial and post-colonial Nigerian politics, white attitudes towards black Africa, international reactions to the Civil War, nationalism and varying forms of hypocrisy, amongst other themes.  Despite the sharpness of Adichie’s criticisms, though, the novel is easy to read and very accessible to those who, like me, have little background knowledge about Nigeria or the Igbo people. Continue reading

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A Strange Tale Indeed

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beautiful_darknessBEAUTIFUL DARKNESS

Fabien Vehlmann and Kerascoët      ISBN: 9781770461291

A cast of cute little characters show us the horrors of humanity via the childish conceits of pettiness, jealousy, greed and two-facedness. Sound familiar? If yes, you’ve obviously watched shows like The Apprentice or, y’know, just met… people. And all this is set throughout the turning of four seasons in a forest next to, around and on the corpse of a little girl. Continue reading

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Never A Dull Or Predictable Moment

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the_firebird_mysteryTHE FIREBIRD MYSTERY

Darrell Pitt ISBN: 9781922147752

I must first declare an interest. I too am a steampunk writer, living in Brunswick and also published by Text (we also have the same shirt size).

The Firebird Mystery is a fast paced romp through an alternative steampunk England, set between the wars – think The 39Steps with teenagers and robots. We met orphaned circus acrobat, Jack Mason, and try to keep up with him as he and his companions, Scarlet and Mr Doyle, pursue a dastardly criminal conspiracy through chapters of ever increasing stakes. I could almost hear the orchestra playing the ‘chase’ score from the Saturday morning adventure series as I read. Continue reading

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PAIRS

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PAIRSpairs

This shows the paths of some specks of colour as they emerge from several moving bodies. Each body belongs to one of four breeds: those that emit teal specks of colour, those that emit orange ones, those that emit white ones or those that emit violet ones. Each breed, in turn, belongs to one of two pairs. Each body accelerates with a constant magnitude of acceleration towards the closest body among those belonging to the other breed in the pair to which its own breed belongs.

Meanwhile, each body emits specks of the appropriate colour in the direction opposite to its acceleration. All the specks of colour move at the same speed and fade as they move. Continue reading

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Keep On Shulgin’

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myersbriggs

GIFTS DIFFERING: UNDERSTANDING PERSONALITY TYPE

Myers, Isabel Briggs & Myers, Peter B. (Davies-Black Publishing, 1980; ISBN 089106074X)

The clock showed three when the speeding person made his move. He’d stalked me since two, prowling around the edge of the conversation, waiting to detach me from the herd. The need to verbalise his jumbled thoughts to some listener beat like a fever behind his eyes.

I knew a carnivore when I saw one, but the room’s shadows made him almost invisible. I think the Goths who decorated the place must’ve concocted them on purpose. Draped in costume-shop gloom for the occasion, their apartment looked like a Tim Burton exhibit realised in eight dollars of black and purple crepe paper. When I looked away for a twinkling moment, he pounced out of the shadows. Continue reading

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WAR!: And Being Hungry In The Rain

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the_third_horsemanTHE THIRD HORSEMAN: CLIMATE CHANGE AND THE GREAT FAMINE OF THE 14th CENTURY

William Rosen ISBN: 0670025895

Before I begin, let’s get one thing straight. I love me a bit of Black Death. Plague? Bring it on*. I also love meteorology and all that Earth Science business. Needless to say, when the author of Justinian’s Flea comes up with another evocatively titled tome hinting at that crazy little climate anomaly a few decades prior to the Black Death, my heart does a little hop, skip and jump… then promptly falls into a vat of lukewarm melted chocolate. Continue reading

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Four

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FOURfour

This shows the trails of some specks of colour as they emanate from four moving masses. Each mass attracts one of the other masses and all the specks of colour that emanate from it with a force that diminishes with the square of the distance: the mass that emits specks of green attracts the specks of violet and the mass that emits them, which in turn attracts the specks of blue and the mass that emits them, which in turn attracts the specks of ochre and the mass that emits them, which in turn attracts the specks of green and the mass that emits them. Each speck of colour fades as it moves. Continue reading

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      THE DEAD LANDS Benjamin Percy Hachette Australia,  April 2015,  R.R.P. $29.99 It seemed fitting to be reading post-apocalyptic event fiction about a parched city as we move officially into an El Niño event. Thankfully we will have a couple of months of respite thanks to the Indian Ocean Dipole. Not … Continue reading