Strong Verbs Are Just Better

Currently Reading:
Fiction: Tony Birch, 'Common People' - a short story collection.
Technically also les Trois Mousquetaires, but I haven't touched it for a while.
Lit Mag: Meanjin Winter 2019. Only one issue behind, go me!
Poetry: Making very slow progress on Paradise Lost, via Anthony Oliviera's podcast.
Academic: Revisiting Troilus and Criseyde
Other non-fiction: Zip and zilch.

Recently Finished:

Gluten-Free Girl Every Day by Shauna James Ahern

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


I haven't actually cooked out of this yet, but I really enjoyed reading it, and it furnished my mum with a shepherd's/cottage pie recipe to solve a Great Dilemma.


Cardinal by Louise Milligan

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


This was incredibly compelling, and I devoured it in under 12 hours. The archival work is - as far as I can determine, because this is a journalistic work and not a historical one and thus lacks citations - very very good, and the prose compelling.

I do wonder about the ethics of publishing this (and the 7.30 Report segments from which it grew) *before* the charges been laid in the Cathedral or Swimmers trials. Before charges are laid there aren't non-discolure orders or non-publication orders, but... did the ABC and Milligan *not* think that media coverage like this would leave any trial open to claims of prejudice? All I can think is that neither Milligan nor her interviewees seriously expected Pell to ever set foot on Australian soil again.

I also wonder about MUP publishing it as popular non-fiction: how would it have stood up as an academic text, in history or in media studies? (Historians would want *a metric fuckton* of ethics approvals, I'm quite sure.)


Difficult Women by Roxane Gay

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


A really interesting, strong collection. Almost no one in these stories is *likeable*, but I didn't expect otherwise with a title like that. The narratives are, for the most part, in the vein of contemporary realist writing wherein mostly miserable people are doing their best with mostly miserable circumstances. Once or twice, the women make a break. Once or twice, there's even a halfway decent man standing with them.

Recurring themes include assault, mediocre sex, lust *despite* the mediocrity of the man involved, motherhood, mother-grief, everyday violence.


Assassin's Quest by Robin Hobb

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


The single focalising character structure of this series... really lets this book down. Hobb does her best to compensate, with Fitz's visions and his metaleptic slips as narrator, but it doesn't work super well. Especially given the actual events of the plot are really well and intricately woven together, that's a disappointment, as is the sharp short shrift of the ending.

Still. Worth it to see Fitz *finally* stop moping so much. And the Fool riding high. ILU, Fool.


The Poppy War by R.F. Kuang

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Well that... takes a sharp turn from 'plucky youngster strives to escape her assigned Lot In Life and undergoes Special Training' to 'highly realistic (except for the magic) retelling of the Sino-Japanese war, complete with the Nanking Massacre'.

It's GOOD, don't get me wrong, but it's A Lot!

I also... a pretty central part of this narrative involves a race of Mystical Fire Shamans who hail from what seems to be Fantasy Taiwan, and are darker-skinned and more quote-unquote "primitive" in their ways than the people of Fantasy China or Fantasy Japan (although they are brutally impressive warriors). The people of Fantasy China have many racist opinions about these Fantasy-Austronesians, whom they ruled over until Plot Happened. Kuang does a faaairly good job of lampshading the difference between 'opinions the characters have' and 'opinions that are reasonable to hold', and 'dehumanising anyone: it are not good' is obviously shaping up to be a big theme throughout the series. But I note that while I have read many positive appraisals of this as an Asian-inspired fantasy by an Asian-American author, if anyone has written about this book from the perspective of an Indigenous Taiwanese (or other Austronesian indigenous?) reader, I haven't found it. If anyone knows of such a thing, lemme know.


Also finished, to review later: AJ Demas, Sword Dance; The Lifted Brow 41; Robin Hobb, Ship of Magic; Thea Astley, It's Raining In Mango

Online Fiction

Jo Cumberland (Meanjin Winter 2019), Home. Just a really striking piece. (NB: touches on suicide.)


Up Next:

I have the sequel to 'The Poppy War', and I'm expecting 'The Mad Ship' to come in at the Mobile Library on Monday.

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Music Notes:

I have purchased Lil' Nas X EP. I suspect he will be a one-hit wonder, but it sure is a good song, that one hit.