not my best side

How desperate does someone have to be for sugar before she seriously considers – and by ‘seriously’ I mean ‘seriously enough to actually reach the point of standing in front of the open fridge door’ - the possibility of drinking from a bottle of maple syrup? Or if not drinking from it, at least pouring from it into a big spoon to take its sugary goodness like a dose of Panadol for a childhood earache?

This is not, as you may be charitably surmising, a rhetorical question.

parallel importing

This article, while possibly spending slightly more time on chooks and utes than is strictly proportional in the overall issue, sums up quite well what's going on in the Aussie book industry right now.

I don't do well at explaining this whole thing, which is one reason I haven’t touched it here, but the Guardian nutshells it neatly. The other reason I haven’t written about it is that every time I get into it I lose any articulate expression all that education carefully engendered in me, and start going “No. Just no. Because no. Because. No.”

So instead, you can find many thousands of spectacularly well-chosen words on this issue right here. Start with this (ignore what he says about booksellers. He doesn't mean all of us, and you can find submissions from indies too - for example, and some figures). See this. And then, this, especially because it addresses the allegation of protectionism. This, too, because it also addresses figures, or the lack of them. It’s livelihoods, and industryhoods, and culturehoods.

If nothing else, if you’ve read the US version of Don’t Call Me Ishmael you will know how maddening a North Americanisation of a novel can get. Reading it over here is bad enough. Reading this version in Australia would make me want to weep. And break something.

(This is a different-but-related thing, but I loathe that Americanisation suggests North Americans can’t access a novel unless it’s written for them, with cultural and linguistic references of anywhere else removed or changed. It’s insulting. Canadian friends, if I were you I would be spectacularly pissed off with the implication I couldn't interpret what a ute is from the fact that someone’s driving it. In DCMIshmael, the big debate was over ‘dag’. There isn’t really an equivalent over here. But I'm guessing you could probably have got it from the context.

Finally, and what I think is more worrying, is that a generation of American kids could grow up thinking the world is really like that – a) completely tailored to them and b) all the same. An American kid reading DCMIshmael would have to surmise that Australian high schools have a thriving American football culture. American kids aren’t stupid. But if they’re not given the chance to be informed, well, could you blame them if they were to grow up being bemused every time everyone isn't just like them?)

zombie ap-sock-alypse

This is how you read The Forest of Hands and Teeth when you also have a birthday sock knitting deadline. Because there is no option on not doing the socks, but there is also clearly no option to not read The Forest of Hands and Teeth. As your hands are occupied with sock, The Forest of Hands and Teeth has to be held open with elastic bands.

I do not like zombie movies. I wondered about a zombie book, to be truthful, but I heard it was awesome and must be read!! So I read it.

I had to go to bed one time in between starting this book and finishing it. Going to bed in the middle of this book is not recommended.

It is scarier than zombie movies, but in a much better way.

The characters’ world is post-zombie apocalypse, and people are hemmed in their village(s) by metal fences that keep them safe, but the zombies – (‘the Unconsecrated’) are always there. You can hear them all the time. You get used to seeing them ‘tearing [themselves] against the fences’. They can’t die; they just batter themselves into an ever-weaker state. They are the people you loved, the people you grew up with, and you want them near you even though you don’t, and you have to live knowing the only reason they want near you is hunger.

The change that precipitates the action is a breach of the fences, a village attacked; survivors head out onto unknown narrow enclosed paths through the Forest. The tension is heightened all the time, because the Unconsecrated are there against the fences as the survivors walk. Blunted, torn fingers tangle in hair if they stray too close (scratchy zombie Hands, survivable; bitey zombie Teeth, prognosis not so hot).

So unlike zombie movies when OMGsuddenlyzombiesarehappening!!! Howcanwestopthemandsavethewoooorld?? , you start out in a place where life just includes them and always has. Which is quite the paradigm shift. There are procedures in place for when a living person gets bitten and starts to Turn; Guardians and gates and ropes. The bitten have options, while they’re still with-it enough. People get used to it.

*MILD SPOILER*

I cannot stress enough that the zombies are always there. Did I say that? Always. There. When the survivors make it to a better-prepared village, with treetop refuges, it’s clear people are equipped to just live on while below, scores and scores of the Unconsecrated shamble and crave and moan without cease.

*END OF SPOILER*

To be a bit serious for a sec, most of us will never have to live in a world where any real level of danger becomes just part of our daily lives, and where we have to scoop bits of hope when there’s no evidence there’s any good reason for it. But plenty of people do, and that’s what’s terrifying about this book’s world – that every decision in life has to be crafted around that horrible relentless truth.

Also, rope bridges. I recommend working on them. Preferably before the zombies are actually breaking the doors down.

And also, look; the birthday socks match what Mary is wearing on the cover of this book! I made awesome zombie-fighting birthday socks!! So the birthday recipient will, if nothing else, be dressed for the zombie apocalypse.

Which may be all some of us can hope for.

dear singers 2

Singers, you misunderstand me, possibly on purpose and for comic effect.

When I say that when you adopt a mid-Atlantic accent to sing, it beats through my skull with the thunder of a thousand fire-hoofed stallions and makes me die inside each time I hear you, what I mean is you are perfectly welcome to sing with a mid-Atlantic accent if that’s where you come from. (Though if that’s actually where you come from, you most likely have fins and scales and your singing career is limited to being attached to a wood-effect backboard and animatronically booming Take me to the River to the delight of precisely no-one).

I am not against Floating Accent Syndrome of itself, because I suffer from it. Everyone who has lived for any length of time anywhere other than the place in which they were born should suffer from it. If you’ve lived in places other than where you were born, and don’t start to sound a bit Lucky Oceans, then you probably need to get out a bit more.

In short: If you sound like that, then sound like that. But if you don’t, don’t (cf. fire-hoofed stallions, dying inside, &c).

Love, Amberxx

unsuccessful tourism activities

I’ve been Seeing the Local Sights, because you do that when people From Away are visiting. You have to Show Them the Local Sights, and as there are many Local Sights I Haven’t Seen this was an Excellent Opportunity.

AMBER: Let’s go to the museum!
AMBER’S MUM: I am very on board with museums. I love museums. In fact, I require regular applications of local history to maintain good health. I am the Queen of Museums!!
AMBER: I know. I actually do totally know that. I used to live with you, remember?

AMBER’S MUM (confused): Is it me, or is this museum actually an art gallery with one very large piece of art in it?
AMBER: That's an excellent point. But it says here it is the one piece of art that sums up this whole artist’s life so far, including his battle with not one but two debilitating diseases.
AMBER’S MUM: I definitely got that from looking at it.

(not very much later)
AMBER’S MUM: On further reflection, this museum appears to be mostly a shop with an art gallery with one very large piece of art in it attached. But look! Here in the shop is a box of cards with paintings of the local area on them. These are painted by some Canadian artists From History.
AMBER’S MUM (to the museum shop lady): In this box of cards are historical paintings of the local area. Where can we see these paintings?
MUSEUM SHOP LADY: Well, we sometimes sell posters.
AMBER’S MUM: No, I mean, the actual paintings. Where can we see them?
MUSEUM SHOP LADY (laughing quietly to herself at the indescribable lunacy of the foreign loons before her): Oh, no! These artists are dead.
AMBER’S MUM (backing away slowly): Ah. Well, thanks for clearing that up. Ber-bye.

AMBER’S MUM: I think I’m ready to go home now.

very

How excited?

That would be very.

See ya there, kids!