Just caught myself in the early throes of cleaning the boys’ room. This will not do. It’s obviously avoidance behaviour. Am staring at the latest review copy. The publicity hyperbole accompanying the paperback proclaims it “the perfect read for dog lovers and military enthusiasts alike“. Which is a pretty fucking long stride away from this […]
Blog
Little milestone
Thirty. Thousand. Words. And all’s well.
Old Filth, and all that.
This post is seven years too late. A perverse and quite irrational sense of anti-nepotism, for want of a better term, has prevented me from becoming acquainted with Jane Gardam‘s beautiful writing before this year. We are not related (sadly!); even if we were, since Gardam is Jane’s husband’s surname, I couldn’t even claim shared […]
Sunshine
Sincerely I promise this will not morph into a mummyblog. Eeek. But there’s a time to recognise unexpected gifts that my kids give me, and nod at the pile of things I am thankful for. Number one, or close to it, is the current moment. The Now. Man, I’ve practiced yoga since 1996, and didn’t […]
Gatsby
The official trailer has been released, and it has not damped my fears. I am afraid, more than slightly afraid. I do hope I am wrong. But, if Fitzgerald does suffer death by Baz, at least there remains a clear memory of when the Elevator Repair Service brought Gatz to Brisbane a few years ago, […]
Of middling greyness
The repellant thing about blogging, for me, tends to be an inherent reliance on the personal pronoun, and it’s this that keeps me from adding my boring written bits to the void. However, an article I’ve just read about certain ageist reactions to the grey-haired presenter of a TV show I’ve never seen spurs me […]
Three new reviews
After an absence whose days were full but not fertile, here are Kate Forsyth’s Bitter Greens, Playing House by Amy Choi, and the wonderful Adam Johnson’s The Orphan Master’s Son. Astute (one may say time-fortunate) readers may note the newish and natty little quote hanging around recently added reviews. This quaint folly is my editor’s […]
NEW!
On another note, two more reviews have been chucked on the pile: Mad Women and Spoiled.
Quandry
I’m all in a dither over this latest review. Already, it’s taken much longer to write than usual. It has been written, deleted, rewritten a few times. The book was poor. I disliked it on a number of levels: starting with the macro, I think the genre of “memoir” can do without half-life scratches from […]
Biting my tongue.
After an amazing read, thank you Mr Johnson, I am now reviewing something so banal that I have to put my work aside so that I do not write something cruel*. But I am so puzzled. I understand marketing (although at times I wish I didn’t). I understand the fact that I can not get […]