Archive for the 'Books n Stuff' Category

Sometimes I Just Wanna Tell You Stuff

Published on July 15, 2010 in Beloved, Books n Stuff, Pop Culture and Teaching. 10 Comments

It isn’t all literary sophistication around here you know. Well. Actually if you are a long-time reader/friend you probably definitely already know that, having been subjected to posts about pubic hair, haemorrhoids, and me dropping and dragging in Year 9 English classes.

That disclaimer out of the way, I just wanted to let you know how much I love Freaks and Geeks. How the doodlewhacker did I miss this show? I mean, I had heard about it vaguely around the traps and I knew that it was set in a school but that was it.

Love, love, love it. So poignant, funny, heart-breaking, cringe-inducing and lovely.

I am yet to procure the last 2 episodes but I will get my dirty hands on them, don’t you worry.

When I cornered Beloved into watching an episode or two he was all ‘Isn’t that chick from Juno?’ I thought that too, except that, was Ellen Page even born when it was made? Okay, so she probably was but she would have been, what? 5. Okay, I exaggerate. She was 12.

Watching this show I realised which role Linda Cardinelli was made for. If she wanted to be in films that have turned into the biggest pile of poo. Bella a la Twilight franchise. Tell me I am wrong. And yes, she is too old so that cannot be part of your argument. This is my fantasy re-casting, okay?

Have a nice day!

Roughage for the Dot Point Diarrhea

Published on May 31, 2010 in Beloved, Books n Stuff, Married Life and Pop Culture. 7 Comments

When I was younger, I had the idea that ‘electronic’ music wasn’t real. This was all pre NKOTB of course. I guess I felt that if the song couldn’t be played without the use of power then it wasn’t proper. Who knew I was some sort of weird sort of music hippie/elitist?
I watched West Side Story (Mariaaaaaaaaaaaa!) on the weekend at the insistence of my mum. It was really cool. I didn’t realise how many of the songs I knew, the costumes were gorgeous and the choreography timeless. Now, I haven’t read this anywhere but Michael Jackson was obviously influence heavily by this musical, right? I could see him all over it in terms of the dance style, the too-short pants, the silences with the clicking and weird calls (a la Smooth Criminal)…Ooh – found ‘proof’ – have a watch!
My new Mary Jane Doc Martens make me little pigeon toed because I walk differently in them to avoid them digging in to my ankles. Kinda scary how easily your whole gait can be put off by shoes that aren’t comfortable.
Right at this moment I am trying to make rice pudding in the slow cooker. I will let you know how that works out.
On Wednesday Beloved and I will be celebrating 11 years together.

Okay non-book lovers, don’t bother reading any further……..

I read Now by Morris Gleitzman and had a good bawl. (Now follows Once and Then – two books in which we meet Zelda and Felix who stick together through thick and thin in Nazi Germany.) In Now we meet Zelda, the namesake of her grandfather Felix’s childhood friend. In this story Zelda deals with absent parents, Felix’s painful memories and being bullied. Gleitzman uses images of the Victorian Bush fires that are evocative of the holocaust, in a touching and haunting manner. A lovely tribute to the story of Zelda and Felix as told in Once and Then. (Then contains one of my favourite lines in a book ever: ‘If he sees a Nazi he can just do a poo!’)
I am also on a bit of a Scott Westerfeld spree. I loved Peeps and I read So Yesterday recently. I like how he takes ‘radical’ ideas and pitches them at teenagers – it feels like he simultaneously trying to teach them and is also pulling the piss. I enjoyed how Pretties (second book in the Uglies trilogy) seems to be looking to the emo culture and how teens of today are so overstimulated and deadened that they need pain and pills to feel again.
Okay – one more book thing. I read Liar by Justine Labalestier too (She and Westerfeld are a couple I believe). Some people have said it was the best book they have ever read. I wanted to throw it across the room when I got to the ‘twist’. Up until that point I was absolutely hooked – the story was mysterious, engrossing, strange and sexy. Micah is a self-confessed liar with a family illness and attends a progressive New York school. It is there that she meets Zach, who takes an interest in the androgynous, weird Micah. When he is murdered Micah is shattered. When I got to the twist I was ‘you have GOT to be shitting me!’ Also, while I liked the unreliable narrator I am not keen on the ‘did I or didn’t I’ quadruple switch – it was then to me that Micah lost her power and credibilty……………5 minutes later. Now that I think about it – if I think of the twist as linked with the narrator it is maybe not so annoying. I mean, it might not be true, right?

O My Brothers

Published on April 28, 2010 in Books n Stuff and Pop Culture. 8 Comments

I read and watched A Clockwork Orange over the weekend. (The one before I read The Road – masochistic much?)

Just in case you don’t know they story – it is about a boy called Alex who, with his gang of friends, runs riot at night, full of drugs, raping women and beating innocent citizens up. When he is caught he is sent to prison. He behaves like a model prisoner and becomes a volunteer for an experiment in rehabilitation. Alex is cured of his violent tendencies but he is then unable to defend himself against his enemies. After a suicide attempt the procedure is reversed. Will Alex go back to his old ways? (I won’t spoil the end but the movie and book end differently.)

I incensed a few people on Facebook when I suggested the film could do with a re-imagining. I understand that it is a classic but what I am saying is, unfortunately, society has come to a place whereby the film portrayal is actually a little tame.

Is me saying this making me part of culture the that is desensitized to ‘ultra-violence’? I think that if my students (who are indeed too young) saw the film they would find it laughable and outdated. Another version would be more powerfully served by remaining more faithful to the book – especially having Alex at least LOOK like a 15 year old. That is what made the book so damn scary.

Controversial as my idea is – it is coming from a place, not meant to disparage Kubrick’s vision but to better show Burgess’.

Swim, Cocktail, Read then Repeat

Published on March 8, 2010 in Beloved, Books n Stuff, Lazy Bitch and Queen Me. 0 Comments

As we settled in for breakfast we were watched very carefully. He strutted up and down the balustrade, arms folded behind his back, head cocked as if to say ‘Come on then grunts, hand it over!’

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Today was one of those perfect days on holiday and funnily enough, not one you often get. We headed over to the adult pool, books in hand and plonked ourselves down at a table. We read a bit, swam a bit and had a cocktail or two (or as I renamed them, finding myself particularly amusing - ’wangtails’)

Later that day we sauntered back to the beach to take some photos of the camels and the beautiful Broome cloudscapes.

Now if you don’t know, Broome has a nudie beach. However it isn’t a good time of year for swimming because of the stingers. One intrepid nudist decided to give it a go. While his mates drank beer by the car. He was asking for it wasn’t he? Yup. They nicked off with his gear and jumped into the car. He spent a good 15 minutes, hands cupped over his tackle, chasing the tantalisingly stop/start car. Highly entertaining for all viewers.

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Another Day in Paradise

Published on March 7, 2010 in Beloved, Books n Stuff, Married Life and Queen Me. 4 Comments

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As the photo above shows, Beloved and I took the obligatory camel ride at sunset on Cable Beach. We are last in the line on ‘Murphy’.

Cycles

Published on February 22, 2010 in Beloved, Books n Stuff, Depression, Fur Baby, Married Life and Teaching. 10 Comments

Tired. So, so tired.

Just want to nap. Don’t want to go that place where I like my colleagues and love the kids but hate that 90% of the lil buggers couldn’t give a crap about learning anything.

I want to stay home with my puppy and have cups of tea and lemon curd on toast. I want a leisurely morning at the gym and an afternoon of fixing up my novel, with a nap thrown in for good measure. Then there would be a nice dinner with Beloved and in the cool of the evening we would take Theo for walkies where he would sniff and wee on everything and we would narrate his thoughts: ‘This is mine, and this is mine – ooh – and this too!’

Regardless, I will plod through the next five weeks, till 2 weeks of toast and naps and writing make me forget about the apathy of teenagers until we do it all again.

Is this really my 8th year of doing this?

Not A Review

Published on February 17, 2010 in Books n Stuff. 5 Comments

I binged this weekend. I know I shouldn’t have and it stopped me from doing things that I needed to do. But once I get sucked in I can’t let go.

With all the words smeared tellingly in my head, I admit that I read three books. I know I haven’t posted about anything I have read in a while but that is not to say I haven’t been reading. That would be like not breathing. I just thought I would give you lot a break. However the books I read have forced me to resurface. Not because I need to review them but because they have wrinkled my brow and inflamed my loins in consternation.

This weekend I read Hush Hush by Becca Fitzpatrick, Fallen by Lauren Kate (This week I also read Vulture’s Gate by Kirsty Murray. A great Aussie Sci-Fi/Fantasy/Dystopian novel, it doesn’t fall into the rant category I am about to inflict upon the other books…but I can’t guarantee this when the main characters come of age)

My rant comes from being a ‘bored’ and grumpy ol’ housewife (I know I am not really these things, but do play along). Look, I know there has to be a suspension of disbelief when you read a teen fantasy/romance novel. I get that. But I think it is harder to do this in books than films. Books to me are so much more intimate. They get into your head to create feelings and private pictures that films can’t. Therefore, when a writer creates an idea about love, romance, lust or whatever I think we are more vulnerable to it.

I fear that books such as the above are creating an unrealistic version of love for impressionable teens. I would understand if the books were aimed at lust starved old bats such as myself – it is all a bit escapist and sexy. But they aren’t. What are these girls learning from such stories? (Twilight don’t think you are getting away without a spanking either – bend over Meyer!)

Girls are learning that they can be sorta cute, sorta smart, have absent, crap or dead parents and then they are going to meet the most drop-dead gorgeous, mysterious and sexy guy who is going to treat them like dirt. Somewhere along the way there will be mountains of sexual tension, a ‘nice’ guy who gets left out in the cold and somehow this very average girl is literally the centre of the universe. And oh the lust! Perhaps it is jealousy but can we have a scene of Bella and Edward in however many hundreds of years it takes the horniness to fade please? It might go something like:

‘Can you stop fucking poking me in the back with that thing?’ seethed Bella

‘Aw come on honey’ wheedled Edward ‘It has been a while’ and in an eons old patented Edward move his hand clambered over Bella’s shoulder and grabbed a handful of boob.

‘Are you out of your ever-lovin’ mind? I go to work, take care of the house while you are out hunting all day and then you expect me to be in the mood?’

……anyway, where were we?

Meh. But why am I whinging about the lack of reality in a genre that is called ‘fantasy’? Idiot.

However I did read Vampire Academy by Richelle Mead as well, and I did enjoy it a bit more because the main character was strong, feisty, had a ’sexual’ self before setting her sights on the hot, unobtainable guy and while she was attending a vampire school – the bitchiness, machinations and rumours made it ‘realistic’.

It is my own fault really. If I spaced the girly books with other genres I probably wouldn’t get my knickers in such a bunch.

As you were. Rant over.

Beloved Wants a Post About his Awesomeness

Published on January 22, 2010 in Beloved, Books n Stuff, Married Life and Queen Me. 13 Comments

What is your life-long dream? Have you achieved it yet? What do you think you would do, once you had?

I had a life-long dream, to write a novel. I had an inkling, through school and university that I was an okay writer. I just believed I had a lack of imagination. Beloved introduced me to the fantasy genre about 9 years ago, thinking that it might help me. And it did. I started with The Belgariad series by David Eddings and continued with Ian Irvine’s The View from the Mirror series. I must say, I love Aussie sci-fi and fantasy – it is really refreshing.

For many years I harboured a yearning to write a novel. Without actually getting off my arse to do anything about it. I became a teacher, so that I would have all these holidays to write in. And I did start, in my first year, to write that novel. I got up to page 80.

If I had to say something about trying to write a novel is that it is simultaneously the easiest and hardest thing to do. When I actually got writing, it would write itself, as if the characters were already people living inside my head (schizophrenia anyone?) and sometimes it was the most daunting, mountain moving task ever.

By mid 2009 I had decided enough was enough. How much would it suck to have a dream and not achieve it? I would hate to die and not do the one thing I truly wanted to do. In the October school holidays I told myself I would write 10 pages everyday. While I didn’t exactly write that much, I still wrote. My next goal was to actually finish the novel by the end of the Summer holidays. Very rough first draft of course.

And as of Wednesday the 2oth of January, at approximately 5pm I did it. I am not sure if I can describe the feeling. It was pretty freaking amazing. As soon as I wrote those last words, I hit save and print…and I still haven’t even read the last 5 or so pages. I am a little bit scared to. I posted the news on facebook and then went a bought a bottle of Pol Roger Champagne and watched Aliens in the Attic (cute, funny, brainless) while waiting for Beloved to come home, so I wouldn’t have to drink alone. (I seriously considered not buying the champagne because of the health kick I am on and then I was like are you serious? I am sorry, how many first novels are you planning to finish?)

So – how do I feel? Excited, happy, scared, elated, relieved. I said my dream was to write a novel. I didn’t say it had to be a good one. But nonetheless I am going to edit the shit out of it, let a select few cast their discerning eye over it, and see where it takes me, even if it is the rejection pile. And then I will start my next.

The next day Beloved proclaimed he had a present for me. Now, I am all geared for deciding when I ‘deserve‘ presents, but it didn’t even cross my mind that this would be one occasion. This of course made Beloved even happier, because as I have mentioned before, he likes to do things without me ‘opening my whinge hole’. So sufficed to say I was delightedly gob-smacked when the little blue bag appeared and nestled within was a gorgeous platinum and diamond Fleur de Lis Key charm necklace. Spoilt bitch!

Awesome husband and achieving my dreams? Feel free to do a little hating.

Shut Up With the Books Lady!

Published on January 15, 2010 in Books n Stuff. 10 Comments

I know that by the lack of response I get you guys couldn’t give a crap when I bang on about books. No matter. But I just read a super awesome book and I want to tell you about it. The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins. It was engaging, fast-paced, action-packed, scintillating with a little bit of romance and nary a vampire in sight. Couldn’t put it down. It is a young adult novel (I read them for ‘research’ – and I am up to page 271 of my own book, yay!) but don’t let that stop you reading this gem. A brief rundown for you- it is the future, Katniss Everdeen lives in what used to be called America in District 12. Every year 2 teenagers from each district are picked to go into the Hunger Games – a mega huge reality TV spectacle in which the teens fight each-other to the death, while trying to survive in the wilderness of the arena. And that is all I am going to say. Read it. Awesome. Loved it.

Next blog? We are going to talk about haemorrhoids. Don’t say I didn’t warn you!

PS: How bout the new look hey? I am loving it!

The Sad Tale of the Brothers Grossbart

Published on January 1, 2010 in Books n Stuff. 0 Comments

I really don’t know what to think of this debut novel by Jesse Bullington. Reading it was definitely one of those times that my speed reading skills did not hold me in good stead but it wasn’t quite interesting enough for me to slow down for. Okay – I take that back the idea and characters were engaging but the story wasn’t necessarily.

A synopsis: The twin brothers Grossbarts are grave-robbers living in Europe in the 14th century. They are feral, filthy and take no responsibilityfor their actions, claiming that they are just good men ‘been done wrong’. They embark upon a journey to ‘Gyptland’ to seek their fortune and along the way meet with demons, witches and crazy ex-pirates.

What I liked: That in a way you actually come to like these vile main characters. It was clever how ideas of good and bad get switched around (The ‘revenge’ of the good farmer Heinrich) There were interesting conversations about religion, it was genuinely funny in parts and the brothers really loved each other.

What I didn’t like: Well, I nearly gave up after a few chapters. I just couldn’t be arsed reading about loathsome characters, explicit violence and a particularly nasty sex-scene. The plot seemed to meander and stall and then there was the end, all of a sudden.

Would I recommend it: I think some people, such as Josh, would find it interesting but it is hard to say if it was a good book, despite the supposedly rave reviews.