in which Justine Larbalestier and Scott Westerfeld hold a sock

Me: Let’s go to Toronto to hear some Authors!
Librarian Friends Ess and Dee: That’s awfully far, and we'll be up way past our usual bedtime.
Me: It is Justine Larbalestier and Scott Westerfeld.
Ess and Dee: Road trip!

In Toronto. We advance menacingly three-abreast on the Authors.

Me: *Hear myself say* I loved this awesome monkey knife fighting fairy mangosteen book you wrote. My favourite bit was the bobsled accident. It was tremendously funny and clever. I think you should also write one about the main characterʼs little sister. She was great.
Me: *apparently actually say* We brought you biscuits. They are the Australian Arnott’s biscuits I get from our local British/NZ/ Oz shop when I am homesick. However, it seems to me there are very few Australians/ Kiwis here because the Australian/ Kiwi stuff is all really old. I suspect these of being at the very least stale and possibly poisonous.
Justine Larbalestier: Um, thanks.
Dee: *gets out enormous pile of Scott Westerfeld’s books for him to sign. Cackles*. I’ve got forty three thousand books, and she brought biscuits. All we need is for Ess to ask you to pull her finger.
Ess: *faints with mortification at her two compatriots* I am a very shy person. Please don’t think I am anything like these two yahoos.
Scott Westerfeld: *sees that there are Advance Reading Copies in Dee’s enormous pile of books she has brought for him to sign* Hey, where did you get these?
We chorus: We’re librarians. We choose books for libraries. We bought your books for many libraries.
Justine Larbalestier and Scott Westerfeld: We generally like librarians.
Scott Westerfeld *to Ess, who also has ARCs*: Who should I sign these to (or 'to whom should I sign these'; I don’t want to put grammatically incorrect words in his mouth)?
Ess: *fainting in shyness* Ohhh…no…it’s ok – I am too shy to tell you my name. You could just sign them. No name.
Scott Westerfeld: *gives Ess the stink-eye* I strongly suspect you of going off to sell these on eBay.
Ess: *drops dead*

There was also a bit with a sock, which I won’t go into, because thanks to my camera battery going dead, there’s no evidence. But you can tell a lot about someone if they are willing to hold your sock-in-progress for a photo. It is an indication of their soundness, some would say, that they are willing to engage with you on a sock-holding level, especially if they already suspect you of going off to make gobs of cash from their signed ARCs.

A, Ess and Dee *being shepherded out by security*: Result. Now, when does Jaclyn Moriarty next come to Canada? I bet we can totally freak her the frack out.

nobody likes a tall poppy

According to a new initiative, Sydney’s no longer just the place to go for big to-dos such as the Olympics. The new events/tourism calendar will apparently tout the city as the place to be and to do things, absolutely all the time. Don’t miss a second. Get there. Be there. Stay there. It’s not just for one-offs, but for long-term, extended event-enjoyment. All Sydney, all the time.

In fact: "Sydney will own January," said the chairman of Events NSW.

Forgive me.

Sydney will own January?

Who is this guy??

Doesn't this sound like the sort of thing you hear from a huge League forward trying to monster the other side under? Is Adelaide going to have to request written permission from Sydney for January to exist there as well? Are Melbourne and Perth going to be kicking each other’s shins over who gets to own the dregs of October and March? Will Tasmania end up patching together the bits left over, so it at least gets to say it owns Augtember?

Perhaps Sydney has plans for long-range gains over the other months as well, at which point it will begin loaning them out to other cities on a time-share basis.

Sydney will own January. I ask you.

most dinosaur fun

I'm trawling through the new publishers' catalogues once more.

I don’t know about you, but when I read that a novel ‘plumbs the depths of human depravity’, it just makes me feel a bit like laying my head down on a cool surface and going ‘o, please, not again’.

Are people really approaching booksellers going “The one you recommended last week was pretty depraved, but have you got anything, you know, depraved-er? I just wish there was something out there that really plumbed the depths, you know?”

And at the other end of the spectrum, comes “The Most Dinosaur Fun…Ever!!”

There’s clearly a scale in effect here. How much dinosaur fun is the most dinosaur fun?

It's got to be quite a considerable amount of fun. But it’s a qualified ‘most’ – that is, it might be the most dinosaur fun, but what if amphibian fun, or invertebrate fun, is funner than dinosaur fun? Maybe, once you've experienced invertebrate fun, there's just no going back to dinosaur fun. By limiting yourself to dinosaur fun, you might be missing out.

meanwhile, south of the border

Dear Bigsister,

Your newly-acquired citizenship is brought to you by the letters U, S and A.

Congratulations.

Love, A.

xxx

Lake Ontario a teapot tonight!

Canada Votes.

I'll be over here, dumping my tea into the lake.

The rest of you, go do your thing. Those of us suffering taxation without representation are counting on you.

how are 'you'?

Yesterday, I was one of those lonely people. Now you’re lying next to me, making love to me.

Well, clearly you’re not. Not the last time I checked, anyway.

But: if you doubt what’s in my heart, you can break it open – but be careful when you do, ‘cause inside there’s a girl who looks like you. Or: You are my sweetest downfall. I loved you first. Or even: Today, I thought I saw you standing on the corner. I was just about to call your name.

My thoroughly scientific methodology of flipping through some records shows at least a 2/3 to 1/3 mix of ‘songs that are addressed to you’ compared with songs that aren’t. And this includes quite a lot of folk songs, which, given their generally higher content related to ploughing, highwaymen, and hats trimmed with green willow, you would expect to skew the results against the ‘you’ bracket considerably. (Incidentally, I feel bound to pass on to you that my research reveals all Hawksley Workman needs is you and the candles, which is nice; that Paul Kelly will be your lover now, a concept worth investigating at least; and that Hem know you’ll bury someone for them, which is nothing if not disturbing).

I digress.

Common in songwriting, and we all accept it.

So. Why not books? I’m counting on the fingers of, well, two fingers, how many books I can think of that do the same.

We could discount that subset of songs addressed to a named person, while still using ‘you’ to address them; I guess we quite easily buy into ‘overhearing’ someone addressing someone else as ‘you’ while not thinking it’s ‘us’. The ‘you’ who is Regina Spektor’s sweetest downfall is Samson. The ‘you’ to whom the Muttonbirds reckon they’re not lying is Ngaire; the ‘you’ they said they’d take dancing is Jackie; the ‘you’ with whom they used to be the best of friends is Esther. (Busy blokes).

So let's call books in which two characters write letters to each other the same sort of thing as songs-addressed-to-a-named-‘you’: again, we know the ‘you’ isn’t ‘us’. (This also means, thankfully, that we can discount Clarissa, the fifteen zillion pages of which I finally left behind at the last emigration, conceding that still being approximately one-ninth into it after almost eleven freaking years is an indication that there isn’t enough time in all the world to get through the whole thing).

If on a winter’s night a traveler is one book that really throws the kitchen sink at it, and it’s a whole kitchen sink of weird, actually telling you want you’re doing and narrating your movements to you, without your permission. The only other I can think of is After Summer (or After January, depending on your hemisphere), which has as I recall two passages addressed to ‘you’. And it’s sort of the same as a love song, the main character addressing another character in the story and trying to put into words why he liiiikes her. The first time it happens in the narrative I always find it jarring for about a sentence, and then just go along with it.

Could you read a book done that way, the whole way through, d’you reckon? A whole novel addressed by one character to another, using ‘you’? Or can all that sort of thing just come to nothing good in the end?

the joy of flatting

Moving back home today. Forced out while cheerful workmen knocked out the walls, bathroom and kitchen, put up new walls, and put back the same bathroom and kitchen. A week in a strange flat with lousy water pressure and a persistent smell of dead cat. In the time between leaving and coming back, the heating in my building has very much been switched on. Canadian landlords seem of the opinion that their apartments should be hotter than the surface of the sun to compensate for winter.

There is, in theory, a means of avoiding all these attendant weirdnesses of flatting your whole life. I understand some people go so far as to pick one country to live in, and stay in it. But, oh...

A: *casts sidelong glance at Australia*
Australia: *winks sexily*
A: *is undone*

So many countries, so little time.

hearing a story

Last night, listening to some music. Unremarkable, undistinguished, a mixture of songs and singers with which I am unfamiliar. They sounded a lot the same.

Then, out of nowhere, the line: I'm too old for the girl I love, but she doesn't know it yet.

Can't shift it out of my head, now.