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.

pain/paean

For I am Publishers Weekly, and lo, I am bored:

'...a pleasant, if shallow interlude'. '...too much of which isn't especially insightful or funny.' 'Clearly, subtlety is not the order of the day. Sadly, neither is quality storytelling.' 'The narrative is preachy and bland.'

How. Could. You. Stand. It??? How could you stand to write a book and worrit and hope and pray and fearfully open up the hallowed PW pages, or not open them but have someone else open them for you, only to find your blood, sweat and tears boiled down to being 'not enough to buoy a routine plot'?

Weird, reviews of stuff. Regular folks just don't have to deal with such things. Why, I almost never read of myself in the library journal, "her dialogue with publishers is predictable and weak,' or 'while her copy-editing is incisive, the actual figures are very routine, which detracts from the pace', or even, "her selection of YA books for our collection is interesting and creative, but she has failed again to avoid the heavy-handed Kiwi-isms that tend to lace her decisions.'

Creative people. How are you not always sobbing into your tea and bourbon? Because everyone is never going to like your book. I mean, PW does like some books, as well as being so fearfully bored with others. But does one reviewer's 'skilful, nuanced mosaic' cancel out another's 'disorganised plot and one-dimensional characters'?

O God. A 'routine plot'. The cold sweats and the vapours.

Dear new baby...

Dear New Baby Sarah Madeline,

Please find enclosed “Baby Jacket To Fit 0-3 Months”.

I dunno, little dude. It looks awfully wee to me. I mean, I know you’re pretty new and everything, and I understand that people your age are usually on the small side. But I’m not convinced. Now I’ve finished making it, it seems to me this would fit a relatively well-built guinea-pig.

In 15 years’ time, your mum will be sorting through a houseful of crap and she’ll come across all the tiny things you wore right now, and will marvel at how someone so little and perfect morphed into this thing that tramples her dreams and hates her and leaves hair straighteners about the house on a daily basis. I just want you to pass on a note to her, that when she pulls out this jacket, she can reassure herself that you actually probably never were small enough to fit into it.

Still and all. I haven’t had a lot to do with people like you, so maybe it’ll work out all right. I mean, I do know one incontrovertible fact – that whatever age you are when this thing fits you, it will only continue to fit you for approximately two weeks. You guys grow fast.

It’s a good thing, because another thing you need to know is that your mother is firmly against dressing you in any sort of pastel, baby-coloured garments. The trouble is, the kind of wool they make in those colours is specially made to be thrown in the washing machine on numerous baby-vomit occasions and survive. Once you move away from baby-related colours, the type of wool that will still kiss your baby-skin with the softness of a thousand fairywings is mostly also the type of wool that has to be handwashed.

I know! No parents of a weeks-old baby will have the time or presence of mind to do that, right?

So what I suggest is, wear this for the one week you’re still tiny enough to fit into it, puke on it, and then instruct your parents to throw it away immediately. It’s the best solution for all of us.

Welcome to the world, kiddo. We’re glad you could join us.

Love, A.

what is it then?

I wore my New Zealand Book Month shirt to work on Friday. Because even when you're not in New Zealand, well, it's still New Zealand Book Month, so you have to show willing, and display your logo with adopted-kiwi pride.

Here is every single conversation I had on Friday:

COLLEAGUE: *looks suspicious at the sort of allegiance I am electing to display in a work environment*

ME: It's not weed.

COLLEAGUE: What is it then?

ME: It's a book.

COLLEAGUE:...

ME: It's a book.

COLLEAGUE: Is it a book about weed?

ME: *facepalm*

balancing the hemispheres

Recent local tourism activities indicate the following proof:

Universal equilibrium. QED.