I don't like them

No, I don’t like them at all.

I don’t like the colour and I don’t like the holes.

But they’re not for me, so it’s all right.

It’s fun sometimes to knit things you don’t like, because otherwise you’d never do anything different. The person these are for picked the yarn and will like the pattern. And this pattern was just the right amount of complicated – not boring, but not ripping it back and weeping every row

because of my inability to count to five repeatedly. It’s sort of pretty, in the sense that I wouldn’t want to wear it.

The black behind the holes, by the way, is not part of the sock; it’s just so you can see the hole pattern. It turns out, after spending November to February emphatically not kicking around New Zealand in Birkenstocks, my feet revert to the pallid blue-ish colour of, well, these socks, so you can’t tell what’s sock and what’s hole.

Ugly socks done with, can you have a look at this for me?:

Purple, meet orange.
Was this a huge mistake?


It’s going to be a bag. But is it the sort of bag I might have knocked around travelling with, say, ten years ago? Should I have grown out of purple and orange by now?

this book wot I loved

I read about Diamond Dove over at Matilda and wanted to read it from Middlemiss’s post of an interview with Adrian Hyland. And it wasn’t straightforward, because you cannot get Diamond Dove here. It turns out you will be able to get it, soon, but the English Branch had to come through for me on this one. And hooray that they did.

I was put off by the phrase “An Emily Tempest Mystery” on the cover, because 1) I’m not a big fan of The Mystery Genre when it’s purposely identified as a genre, and 2) I just hate that construct on a book cover. You might as well put “A Pigeonholeable Sort Of Mystery”. Y’know? Which it isn’t.

So. I’m not a marker-up of books. Yet here it sits, bristling with yellow stickynotes at the many bits I loved. Almost all of them turns of phrase and dialogue. Hyland rocks at dialogue. You’d want to talk to every single character in the book (or have them talk to you, endlessly. Even the bad guys. Especially the bad guys). Everyone’s a collection of images (miner dad Jack’s a rock-hard torso and piercing blue eyes), fleshed out in how he or she talks.

This is not a quiet novel; it’s big and messy and noisy and seedy. Everyone shouts; everything’s filthy and held together with number eight wire. It’s a great yarn, no doubt. A murder mystery with a good cast of suspects, tangled up in land rights and geology and dreaming and drinking and dangerous dogs.

But I was secondarily interested in the story (partly because I’m so incurious about whodunthings; like I said, not a Mystery fan). I’d have read a year-in-the-life of these people just to be around the characters in the places in which they find themselves.

Ok…not quite true. There’s a bit where it gets mired in relationshippiness and leaves alone the mystery, and although the narrator makes a point of telling us she got distracted, I found it…distracting. I was not so taken with the grown man in a red beanie (that is where the Canadian word for it, toque, should come in, because it sounds like at least a half-grown up item of clothing; o gods, could the beanie be the whole reason I was not on board with the sex in this book? I think it was).

But. That was truly the only point at which my wild enthusiasm for every single thing in this novel dipped even slightly.

I’m sad I won’t run into these characters again. (Apparently there’ll be three books in this series, but Hyland reckons he’s aiming Emily off to far-flung places for the next ones, or something.) I will miss them. I already do miss them, since I finished the book. You can’t go about being spoilery and ruining endings, but I was especially keen on minor heroism from an unexpected quarter at the end. I should like to see more from that quarter. And Emily’s dad had better be around again. When Motor Jack starts “marshalling his narrative forces” there are very few people I’d rather listen to.

today's post is brought to you by the word 'disposed' (and some prefixes)

I read a book. It was an advance copy from a publisher, and it didn’t look like my kinda book. But the pub said it wasn’t her kinda book either, but she read it and was delighted and laughed like a drain. And, you know, sometimes it’s good to read not your kinda books.

Tell you the truth, I didn’t find it the best I’ve ever read. But it wasn’t at all bad. The pub was right; I laughed. The protag is an old guy who is smart and funny, and I am totally pre-disposed to get behind smart, funny old guys. But. Oh, but.

The protag is always talking about how he has a full head of hair.

Wow. Did I ever not like that. First, as we all know, old boys should be bald. There are very few exceptions to this rule. If they are unlucky enough not to be bald, they can slink away until they are grown-up enough to become bald, or maybe even get out the razor. Full-head-of-hair-as-important-characteristic is not likeable. There I was, reading along, laughing, and suddenly, he'd make a point of the hair thing again, and I would feel all cross and ill-disposed. (Also, this is a protag we are supposed to like. He’s no anti-hero. The hair thing isn’t an authorial conceit to show the protag’s, well, conceit. We’re meant to approve of the hair).

Then I checked out the author bio. He has, says his blurb, a multi-million-dollar business. Like that. Multi-million dollar.

I liked the book less.

Lots of people have talked about separating author from work – can you like the book if you know the author is a raging homophobe, that kind of thing (I made a typo there initially, and wrote ‘homophone’. Man, how eye hate their two bee homophones. Ewe?) But those are often things you learn about authors by really looking, not things they put in their bio on the back cover. But here is an author a) whose protag goes on about what a tremendously fetching and important thing his hair is, and b) who wants it noted in his bio that he has a multi-million dollar business.

So, the truth. I would’ve liked this book better if its author had not been someone who wanted me to know about his multi-million dollar business. It’s not the fact of having the multi-millions, but the wanting it to be part of the selected information people know about you, that turns me off it.

And the other truth. I would have been better-disposed to like it if I knew it had been written by, say, Carl Nixon. Nick Earls. Tim Winton. And maybe that’s the thing of it. I don’t know if Carl Nixon and Nick Earls and Tim Winton have multi-million-dollar businesses. Why? Because they don’t go on about it in their bios.


I don’t mean I would have done an about-face on a book I wasn’t all that keen on if the author had been a granola-munching pinko whale-saving do-gooder in Birkenstocks. It still wouldn’t be my kinda book. I would emphatically not have suddenly seen the light and realized it was in fact the greatest novel ever written, and the hair thing would still have got right on my wick. It doesn’t even mean I automatically like anything and everything Carl Nixon or Nick Earls or Tim Winton comes out with.

But I am pre-disposed to like it - yes, mostly because a)I know I have liked their other novels, but also because b)I am not put off by what they want readers to know about them.

I feel smaller and more confused as I go along. Help me out. Has reading what the author wanted you to know about him/her ever put you off reading the book? Are you brave enough to admit when you don’t like your favourite author’s latest? And, most importantly, what is up with these men and their hair? It’s that important? Really?

lord of the dance

My mum and dad are out dancing at a ceilidh.

My dad heads off for drinks after twirling my mother through something relatively strenuous.

My dad says to a woman nearby, “I’m getting too old for this.”

The woman nearby says, “Oh, no. Look at that man over there dancing. And he’s seventy.”

My dad makes international phone calls to his daughters to tell them a complete stranger thinks he’s younger than seventy.

Yes, really.

We may never hear the end of this one.

not right

Golden Guitars, go stand in the corner and think about your behaviour. I frown upon you.

The shouldawon that didntwin (anything, unbelieeevably)? The hamster-cute very talented Peter Denahy, because aside from everything else, what encapsulates between guitar and piece-a-cake the eternal universal cycle like That Song? (oh, all right, yes, and banjo, but you might just have to get over it). If you haven’t heard it, quick, catch up with everyone else…

Sort of Dunno Nothin'

…because you were either that kid, or you dated that kid. My nephew will grow up to be that kid, and my mate’s daughters will grow up to date that kid… and the world turns.

(Incidentally, when will Peter Denahy start to age? Is he another one who’s got one of those hidden portraits knocking around?)

the lost verse

I heard an old, old song done to a very pretty tune on the radio this week. The pretty tune was a morris tune I can’t remember the name of, and the song was Sir Arthur – or Sir Arthur and Charming Molly (or even, “Mollee”, but I suspect if you’re going to go that far you might already have your fingers in your ear and your eyes closed, and don’t need anybody else’s input on the subject).

As is usually the case with pretty folk songs, you’re best not to listen to the words.

In short, Sir Arthur fancies poor-girl ‘charming Molly’ and offers her everything if she'll (heh, heh) love him. Molly says she'll never lie with a married man till his wife is dead, which if nothing else, is disarmingly honest.

Well, in some versions of the story, Sir Arthur waits seven years until his wife dies, and in other versions, he waits seven years till his wife ups and takes a lover, and then he's free to marry charming Molly, who becomes a lady. The moral: lucky poor girl gets what she wants – providing, that is, what she wants is to marry Sir Arthur, which to be honest isn’t all that clear – by standing firm, as outlined in the last verse:

Now charming Molly in her carriage doth ride,
With her hounds at her feet, and her lord by her side:
Now all ye fair maids take a warning by me,
And ne'er love a married man till his wife dee (or runs off with a lover, whichever)

This is all well and good, until you look at the verse tucked in the middle, just after Molly rejects Sir Arthur the first time:

'Oh, charming Molly, lend me then your penknife,
And I will go home, and I'll kill my own wife;
I'll kill my own wife, and my children all three,
If you will but love me, my charming Molly!'

YES. Now, credit where it’s due, he doesn’t kill his wife. He waits. Until she decides she’d rather go off with presumably just about anybody who isn’t plotting to kill her with a penknife.

What a catch.

Eternal worship to the ethnomusicologist who unearths the buried real final verse that nobody sings any more because the world of folk music is controlled by the bearded and the mad. I believe it has something to do with how, after the penknife comment, charming Molly gathers a bunch of her mates and warns them if they ever see that big freak Sir Arthur come within five mile of her again, they should run like dogs for the constable. I think she also tells the lass who milks the cows on Sir Arthur’s estate, in this same lost verse, that she should probably hie her up to the big house as soon as possible and warn the wife she’s married a dangerous lunatic, and she and the kids should get the frack out of there and go stay with her mum.

Alternatively, eternal worship to the songwriter who can come up with this infinitely better version.

the Hat redux

Janet has kindly set me straight on the multitude of reasons why my Harry Manx Hat version 1.0 isn’t working. I mean, she didn’t do it in a setting-me-straight way, because Janet is obviously quite nice. But her comment and website have helped me understand everything that's Wrong with my Hat.

The first and foremost reason is, I am not Janet. Dude, those are some extraordinary hats right there. The extraordinariness of those hats is something Peter Mansbridge should probably bring up on the National.

But they’re _woven_? You’re kidding me. I guess my nine-foot musician radius isn’t close enough to determine that pretty freaking vital fact.

One thing that became immediately apparent after my Hat was worn, oh, twice, was that it hasn’t got enough substance – it’s flopped and gone head-shaped. (I was at least right about the ‘tube with a round top’ thing though.) The flopping would happen with this quite loosely put-together knitted thing, over a more substantial woven thing. I was going for version 2.0 in some sort of much more tightly-knitted sock yarn, though now I may still have to rethink things. (local yarn shop sale tomorrow, as a matter of fact. Thank you, universe).

There appears now also to be the magic scratchiness element, that is to say, musician's preference for only scratchy wool. I tried really hard to avoid scratchy wool for the sake of the lovely and the bald. My Hat is 100% pure merino. (and it’s still itchy. I’ve looked for something softer but apparently they don’t make yarn out of pixie wings).

Now I hear scratchy wool is the Harry Manx thang. Shpff. Musos, eh?

While you wait for the exciting next chapter of the saga, go and check out Janet’s hats and straw bales and suchlike. They will delight you. They will do things for your soul. I suspect, in fact, they may be instrumental in the restructuring of modern Canada. These are some powerful hats.

booklust

So there’s been a lot of Work lately. In the bits where there wasn’t Work, there was Knitting, and getting Things knitted In Time for Things. It all conspired to create a certain leanness in the Reading area, such that one or two Advance Reading Copies may not, strictly speaking, be Advance any more. But Santa was generous to the lucky, lucky booky chick, and brought a definitive end to the drought. He started with this:







The Knife that Killed Me, Anthony McGowan

…and I grabbed it with wanton abandon and read it in an afternoon, so I could share it among my booky mates. I love how Santa in an international entity, because this can’t be got in North America, and yet! I still get to have a copy, and more importantly be the bringer of it to others.

The desperate edge taken off my appetite, I started on this:








Stargirl, Jerry Spinelli

Which, I realise, everyone whose job is YA books should’ve read actually years ago, and wish I had, but at least I got to it now.

But then, this – another one you can’t get here, or not in this format – took up a siren call from the bookshelf:







Diamond Dove, Adrian Hyland


(Be interesting to see what the North American ed. has done to this actually. Different cover, different title (Moonlight Downs). Anyone know what's been done to the words on the inside?)

Anyway I’ve slipped, and I started cheating on Spinelli with Hyland, who is quite magnetic, but you know what? I can totally juggle two, and neither needs to know about the other; it’s not fair to ask me to choose between them right now, because I kind of need them both for different reasons, and nobody’s getting hurt and I can handle it, so if you can’t be supportive and accept my choices then just get off my freaking back, okay?

But Hyland and Spinelli are paperbacks, and sometimes I need a sturdy hardcover that will lie flat on my knees while my hands are occupied knitting all the many new request items, and I promise you it was just once, and just casual, but I dipped into this:







The Knife of Never Letting Go, Patrick Ness



I’m pretty sure I’m still in control, so long as Ness remains with the knitting pile and Spinelli and Hyland stay on the bedside table and don’t see.

Trouble is, I know Santa also dropped in on New Zealand, and I have it on good authority that these good-looking Kiwi specimens will shortly be knocking on the door and asking me out for a flat white, nothing implied, no strings, just to acquaint ourselves:

New Zealand Book of the Beach 2 and Best New Zealand Fiction 5

…and I don’t think I can say no.

best lines

For so very different reasons.

From Neil Gaiman, in The Graveyard Book (which you can hear him read aloud in full online at www.mousecircus.com)

‘At the best of times his face was unreadable. Now his face was a book written in a language long forgotten, in an alphabet unimagined.’

And then from Radio 2’s Mike Harding, about everyone bemoaning how The Folk Scene got too Professional and It’s A Shame:

‘Yes, I know it was a lot better when we all sang in folk clubs for nothing and knitted our own concertinas from recycled policeman's bicycles…’

Best lines you’ve read/ heard lately?

discoveries

Things Aunty Amber discovered this holiday

She discovered what she is best at:
Pushing swings for the longest time
Playing footy in the street for the longest time
Towing a toboggan uphill the most times

She discovered what she is not best at:
Anything that looks like actual mothering

She discovered the socks she knitted for her wee nephew have magical properties. They enable him to win at basketball AND football AND running AND table tennis AND fighting dinosaurs AND EVEN Ludo. More magical socks have been requested.

Finally, she discovered a kids’ TV show called Word Girl. Word Girl is a superhero whose superpower is - are you ready? - a really extensive vocabulary. The bad guy in Word Girl, clearly conceived of in the time-honoured drugged-out tradition of most children’s tv, is a butcher who shoots weapons-grade meat products out of his hands. He also makes grammatical mistakes, which Word Girl is always on hand to correct. Aunty Amber is finding herself a superhero costume as we speak.

What did you folks discover at the turn of a new year?