Tag Archives: non-fiction

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A Matter Of Style

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BETWEEN YOU AND ME: CONFESSIONS OF A COMMA QUEEN Book Cover BETWEEN YOU AND ME: CONFESSIONS OF A COMMA QUEEN
Mary Norris
Text Publishing
April 2015

Between you and me, Between You and Me* may well have made it into my top three favourite not dull books on Modern English grammar and punctuation. Now, I’m not saying the Commonwealth of Australia’s Style Manual is dull but it’s not exactly a rollercoaster made of glitter. Between You and Me is not a style manual but Mary Norris’s autobiographical account of life as a copy editor at The New Yorker. Though the reasons for loving it are numerous, it deserves accolades for making me aware of the existence of a pencil sharpener museum and that a pencil party is a thing that can happen.

Before reading this, Mary Norris’s first book, I had a vague notion that someone called the Comma Queen existed†. Of course, being so far removed from any stimulus that might encourage reading of The New Yorker, I have managed to remain unfamiliar with her work. Thus my only attraction to the book was its contents, which promised fabulous giblets of juicy punctuation fun. I have since discovered the Comma Queen has begun a wonderful video series, on The New Yorker’s website, which I will be following from now on. Continue reading

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Horror Movie, Right There on my TV

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THE NEWS:  A USER’S MANUAL

Alain de Botton (Pantheon, 2014) ISBN: 978-0307379122 The News

The News:  A User’s Manual is pop philosopher and celebrated egghead Alain de Botton’s latest contribution to dinner party conversation*.  It is a meditative, considered musing on why western societies in particular are so obsessed with “the news” and keeping up with it.  As a news junkie myself, passing through an airport bookshop, I was curious to see what de Botton might have concluded about it all.  I have not previously read any of his books, though I did once catch an episode of the documentary series The Architecture of Happiness, so that counts, right?

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Chased

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NEW CYCLIST HANDBOOKcyclist

Hewitt, Ben (editor; Rodale Books, November 2005, ISBN 9781594863004)

Winter found me cycling down a service road on the Princes Highway, in the calm of the middle of the night, when two men leapt out of their car and chased after me on foot.

“Oi!” yelled one, “Oi! Stop you bastard!” Continue reading

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As a Woman, My Country is the Whole World

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HALF THE SKY: TURNING OPPRESSION INTO OPPORTUNITY FOR WOMEN WORLDWIDE

Nicholas D. Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn (Vintage Books, 2009) ISBN: 978-307-38709-7 Half the sky

So a couple months ago, giddy with having my first full-time job, but already feeling intellectually understimulated from the lack of university work to avoid doing, I stumbled into that great bookshop on Bourke Street.  Near Parliament House with the very aesthetic black and white sign, and crammed full of various works in a style reminiscent of a secondhand bookshop, but where everything is quite new.  Difficult to navigate, but a joy to lose yourself in.  In my highly suggestible state, one of an armful of books I took home with me was Nicholas D. Kristoff and Sheryl WuDunn’s Half the Sky.  I hesitated over it for some time, worrying that the book might have a white saviour complex and would thus turn out to be a disappointment[*].  In the end, though, I decided it was easy to read and so if I hated it, it would at least be quickly dealt with.

Half the Sky is what will hopefully be a portrait of humanity at the beginning of the 21st century.  Of the world’s people, women are still overwhelmingly more likely to be under-educated, under- or completely unpaid for their work, and face discrimination on every front.  In many parts of the world, girls are less likely to be born in the first place[†], and from the moment of their birth are provided less nutrition and less healthcare than boys.

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My Kingdom For A Plumbing License

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ECONOMICS: THE USER’S GUIDE

Ha-Joon Chang (Bloomsbury, 2014) ISBN: 978-1620408124 Economics the users guide

Like many people, I have spent rather a while feeling incapable of arguing economics, because I believed economics was a complicated and maths-related science.  I had opinions, of course, on economic issues, but never realised they were economic.  And I knew that I disliked neoliberal politics — that I, rather, favoured the Keynesian approach, if not out-and-out democratic socialism.  But I didn’t feel I knew enough about the issues to discuss them in any meaningful way.  Thus, when I came across Ha-Joon Chang’s accessible, introductory reader on economics, I was very excited.  It should surprise no one that I am an unmitigated nerd.

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Concession card

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PUBLIC TRANSPORTpublictrans

White, Peter R. (Routledge, October 2008, ISBN 9780415445306)

When I started secondary school in the eighties Victorian schoolboys and schoolgirls could apply for a concession card that let them buy cheaper tickets on buses, trams and trains. To apply, you filled out a form with your details and glued a photograph of yourself over a rectangle they provided on the form. The railway clerk separated the section with your photograph along an official perforated line, stamped it, laminated it and gave it back to you as your concession card.

When I applied for mine, I glued the photograph on sideways (leaving a lot of space on either side of my head so it filled the rectangle). The railway clerk would have to decide if he faced a smart aleck schoolboy on a lark or an earnest imbecile who’d glued his picture on sideways through mental incapacity. Continue reading

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Utensils

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SECONDHAND SMOKE EXPOSURE AND CARDIOVASCULAR EFFECTSutensils

Committee on Secondhand Smoke Exposure and Acute Coronary Events (National Academies Press, February 2010, ISBN 9780309138390)

The backroom at La Casetta lived under a haze of smoke. No fan whipped it into turbulence. No window let it escape. Instead, from opening to closing, it hung in unmoving bands like the smog over a miniature city with skyscrapers of stacked pizza boxes. I liked to imagine Remo, the manager, nailing up the ‘no smoking’ sign while smoking a cigarette.

The drivers smoked on one side of the room while they waited for orders to come in. The receptionists smoked on the other next to the telephones. A long stretch without orders had caught me in the crossfire of their combined output. By the time the call came in, I’d wheezed through a nicotine cloud for twenty minutes. I didn’t know it then, but at that moment a receptionist listened to a tenacious customer explaining the importance of delivering disposable cutlery with his meal. Continue reading

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Human Element

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MANAGING THE HUMAN FACTOR IN INFORMATION SECURITYhumanelement

Lacey, David (Wiley, 2009, ISBN 9780470721995)

I buzz into the supermarket’s parking lot at six in the morning.

From there, I can already hear the klaxon. Inside the store, it sounds like a fire drill on the morning of a hangover. Continue reading

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Binary Star

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BINARY STARbinaryjpg

This shows the trails of some specks of color as they emerge from the members of a binary star. The stars attract the specks of color with forces that diminish with the square of the distance: the blue star attracts the specks of red and the red star attracts the specks of blue. No other forces act on the specks of color, but each fades as it moves.

binaryjpg

 

 

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Ice Currency

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COIN LAUNDRIES: ROAD TO FINANCIAL INDEPENDENCElaund

Higdon, Emerson G. (Mountain Pub, June 2001, ISBN 9780962317392)

No apartment building in suburbia qualifies as complete until it has its own laundry room. To pay for it, instead of tacking a few extra bucks on to everyone’s rent, we attach coin boxes to the washers and dryers and everyone keeps big jars of change. Each week when you attend to your laundry, rather than the pleasant sense of sharing a resource with your neighbours, you have the sense of an external “management” inconveniencing you for the sake of two dollars in dryer money.

A few years ago, a shrewd friend of mine started to strike back by manufacturing his own dryer change out of ice. He freezes disks of ice in his icebox using the plastic rings from the necks of soda bottles and then shaves them down to the right thickness. The coin slot never knows the difference. Continue reading

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Bus Shelters

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POLICING PUBLIC TRANSPORTATION: AN ENVIRONMENTAL AND PROCEDURAL EVALUATION OF BUS STOPSbus

Kooi, Brandon R.  (LFB Scholarly Publishing, 2007, series: “Criminal Justice: Recent Scholarship”, ISBN 9781593321468)

One day, some transport minister may decide to give up his car for a year so he can experience the reality of relying on public transport. Unless he and all his mistresses live on a train line, he will sit in a lot of bus stops. Some of these, like the ones in Clayton, will follow the old-fashioned, comfortable design of an ass-width plank with either a straight backrest or one arched to match the human spine. Some others, like the unenclosed seats in Mt. Waverley, leave out the backrest, which does no harm. But if the minister rides out to Oakleigh, his backside will discover special pain benches that replace the backrest with a thick horizontal pole at scapula height.

The benches themselves arch downwards to stop you from trying to perch at the front edge away from the pole. They measure twenty-eight centimetres deep, but the pole overhangs them by twelve centimetres. Continue reading

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