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cyphomandraI should find out if there's some way to cut space out of itunes files to edit all those massively long silent gaps preceding hidden tracks. Message brought to you by Placebo's Burger Queen, which in my version has about 12 minutes of silence, but I could also do with editing down Neko Case's Marais La Nuit, otherwise known as 30 minutes of cricket noises. Possibly I am missing the point of the artistic choices involved.
Kate Grenville, The secret river. Historical, based in part on her own ancestors; Will Thornhill grows up poor in 1800s London, manages to scrape together some sort of life on the waterways, but , due to the almost inevitable choices of criminal behaviour, loses it all and is deported to Australia. There, he works his way up (his wife has come with him, as a freewoman, and is technically in charge of him while he is a convict) and becomes obsessed with owning – and controlling – his own piece of land. A particular piece of land that is currently inhabited, from time to time, by Aborigines.
Very well written. The story line has a lot of inevitability to it that, by and large, works as a weight of destiny rather than familiar cliché, and the contact between two very different world views is delicately handled, from lighter glancing interactions to ones that alter the characters and through to the violent collision than ends it. I enjoyed reading it, although I haven’t felt a strong desire to own my own copy – not entirely sure why, although I think it’s partly that I feel it’s a book about observation rather than experience.
There’s a really interesting interview with the author here – the points I wanted to pull out are the source of the title, which sounds a bit Enid Blyton but is in fact apparently from the quote “There is a secret river of blood in Australian history”, which gives an entirely different picture, and also a useful discussion about appropriation (Grenville’s term) in explaining why although she establishes space for the existence of an Aboriginal viewpoint she never steps into their heads.
David Almond, The savage. Short, gorgeously illustrated (by Dave McKean) – a boy whose father has just died writes a story about a savage, who is living on the fringes of his own world. The narrator (Blue) is being bullied, and the savage responds to this. Great take on grief as unspoken externalised metaphor, and reminding me yet again that I really have to read more David Almond.
Naomi Wolf, Misconceptions. Wolf on pregnancy, birth and motherhood. More obviously limited to a very specific subgroup of women (race, class, country) than her earlier books, which is irritating if you don’t match these – the complete lack of acknowledgement of any other sorts of medical system was a bit irritating, because a lot of the polarisation in US pregnancy/birth issues results from the weird (disclaimer – cultural bias ☺) way they do things there, and so her habit of generalising from personal to broad works less well for me than it did, say, in The Beauty Myth. Also, she seems more than usually ignorant of everything to do with babies before having her own one.
There are bits I like in here – often the personal writing itself, if I see it as independent of the broader theorising, or if I add in mental disclaimers about how her experience does not necessarily reflect others. To take an example – Wolf talks about how her pregnancy challenged her pro-choice views, which is perfectly reasonable, but then assumes everyone will feel the same. I’m aware of more than one pro-life leaning person who’s become more pro-choice during/post-pregnancy, due to realisation of the commitment and potential problems involved, or there’s also the pro-life proponents for whom the whole process confirms their belief that they alone can make moral decisions. In some ways I would have preferred either a memoir or a polemic.
Merryn Williams, The chalet girls grow up. The Chalet School series is over 60 books long and has an increasing number of fill-ins/sequels being added to it by devoted fans, most of which are at best competent colouring-in jobs which never, ever exceed the author’s original restraints. This sequel tramples all over these boundaries, forcing the characters out from their cosy existence and into a rather harrowing version of real life – domestic violence, suicides, alcoholism, messy medical problems, affairs and sexual liberation. As such it went off like a particularly embarrassing firework within the Chalet fan community (of which I am not part) and has a lot of grumpy one-star reviews on Amazon. I do think this has problems with punctuation, and it does veer too far towards soap opera at times (the suicide scene never feels that well grounded), but the bluntly practical take on some of the characters (Jo and Mary-Lou, especially) and the sheer enthusiasm of it all makes it enjoyable. In an odd way it’s as if David Lodge’s “How far can you go” got mixed up with an original Chalet School draft.
Kate Grenville, The secret river. Historical, based in part on her own ancestors; Will Thornhill grows up poor in 1800s London, manages to scrape together some sort of life on the waterways, but , due to the almost inevitable choices of criminal behaviour, loses it all and is deported to Australia. There, he works his way up (his wife has come with him, as a freewoman, and is technically in charge of him while he is a convict) and becomes obsessed with owning – and controlling – his own piece of land. A particular piece of land that is currently inhabited, from time to time, by Aborigines.
Very well written. The story line has a lot of inevitability to it that, by and large, works as a weight of destiny rather than familiar cliché, and the contact between two very different world views is delicately handled, from lighter glancing interactions to ones that alter the characters and through to the violent collision than ends it. I enjoyed reading it, although I haven’t felt a strong desire to own my own copy – not entirely sure why, although I think it’s partly that I feel it’s a book about observation rather than experience.
There’s a really interesting interview with the author here – the points I wanted to pull out are the source of the title, which sounds a bit Enid Blyton but is in fact apparently from the quote “There is a secret river of blood in Australian history”, which gives an entirely different picture, and also a useful discussion about appropriation (Grenville’s term) in explaining why although she establishes space for the existence of an Aboriginal viewpoint she never steps into their heads.
David Almond, The savage. Short, gorgeously illustrated (by Dave McKean) – a boy whose father has just died writes a story about a savage, who is living on the fringes of his own world. The narrator (Blue) is being bullied, and the savage responds to this. Great take on grief as unspoken externalised metaphor, and reminding me yet again that I really have to read more David Almond.
Naomi Wolf, Misconceptions. Wolf on pregnancy, birth and motherhood. More obviously limited to a very specific subgroup of women (race, class, country) than her earlier books, which is irritating if you don’t match these – the complete lack of acknowledgement of any other sorts of medical system was a bit irritating, because a lot of the polarisation in US pregnancy/birth issues results from the weird (disclaimer – cultural bias ☺) way they do things there, and so her habit of generalising from personal to broad works less well for me than it did, say, in The Beauty Myth. Also, she seems more than usually ignorant of everything to do with babies before having her own one.
There are bits I like in here – often the personal writing itself, if I see it as independent of the broader theorising, or if I add in mental disclaimers about how her experience does not necessarily reflect others. To take an example – Wolf talks about how her pregnancy challenged her pro-choice views, which is perfectly reasonable, but then assumes everyone will feel the same. I’m aware of more than one pro-life leaning person who’s become more pro-choice during/post-pregnancy, due to realisation of the commitment and potential problems involved, or there’s also the pro-life proponents for whom the whole process confirms their belief that they alone can make moral decisions. In some ways I would have preferred either a memoir or a polemic.
Merryn Williams, The chalet girls grow up. The Chalet School series is over 60 books long and has an increasing number of fill-ins/sequels being added to it by devoted fans, most of which are at best competent colouring-in jobs which never, ever exceed the author’s original restraints. This sequel tramples all over these boundaries, forcing the characters out from their cosy existence and into a rather harrowing version of real life – domestic violence, suicides, alcoholism, messy medical problems, affairs and sexual liberation. As such it went off like a particularly embarrassing firework within the Chalet fan community (of which I am not part) and has a lot of grumpy one-star reviews on Amazon. I do think this has problems with punctuation, and it does veer too far towards soap opera at times (the suicide scene never feels that well grounded), but the bluntly practical take on some of the characters (Jo and Mary-Lou, especially) and the sheer enthusiasm of it all makes it enjoyable. In an odd way it’s as if David Lodge’s “How far can you go” got mixed up with an original Chalet School draft.
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no subject
Date: 2010-01-02 04:28 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-01-02 08:14 am (UTC)If you want to permanently remove dead air, though, Audacity is definitely the way to go.
no subject
Date: 2010-01-02 08:32 pm (UTC)