You may have noticed that the blog has been a bit quiet in the last week or two. I apologise for this – with illness in the family, I’ve had other things on my mind.
Today I’ve felt up to being a real person. I’ve cooked tonnes of food (to curb the ridiculous-food-eating that happens when you’re snowed under), and exercised, and done dishes and washing, and now I’m tending to this poor, neglected blog.
This has made me think about the advice I’ve heard from multiple bloggers that I sometimes follow, but mainly don’t: build up a back-log of posts.
If you’re a baby blogger, this is possibly the best piece of advice you can get to help the longevity of your blog. The oft-repeated (probably true) piece of expertise says that blogs that are regularly updated are those that are the most successful. While I don’t think it’s as direly important since most people source content via some kind of RSS reader, I do think that there’s a bit of truth to it. I find that my content is better when I’m posting more often – it’s got something to do with being in the groove, or something. It’s nice to have your readers feeling like you’re a friend they check it with regularly. At least, that’s the feeling I get from being on the reading side of my own favourite blogs.
It’s times like these, when I’m feeling pretty generally overwhelmed by life, that I wish I’d consistently taken the advice about stockpiling posts. If I had, I’d have something to give you all, despite being away from the blog, or not able to think about writing.
I’m sure we all know about Amazon, and how far and wide its tentacles reach. As a bricks-and-mortar bookseller, places like Amazon are the bane of my existence, but also a kind of necessary evil. In Australia, you’re looking at paying about $35 AUD for a hardcover book, $26 AUD for a paperback. Larger format, glossy things like cookbooks are upwards of $50 AUD. I understand that this makes reading books that you own an activity for the moneyed-up. I’ve just looked up a deckle edge, new release hardcover book on Amazon: $14. While it makes my job harder, I think the problem really lies with the processes that set books in Australian stores at such high prices, not the fact that places like Amazon exist. If anything Amazon’s making owning books possible for students and part-time workers, rather than just those on high salaries.
The company that Amazon have “acquired”, GoodReads, is a website that allows readers to track their reading. Readers can enter data about books they’re reading (where they’re up to in their current book, their thoughts as they read, star-ratings when they finish) as well as taking note of books they’d like to read in future, and connecting with their friends. Readers can compare their favourite books with their friends’ favourite books. And the service that I worry might be affected the most by Amazon’s finger being in the pie – GoodReads offers recommendations based on your reading habits, and what you’ve rated highly in the past. When there’s no business being driven behind this feature, I love it. But when there is? I worry. I’m imagining a direct link to buying the book, which is great, but it also means we’d be linked straight up to Amazon, and most customers wouldn’t question this twice. Customers would just be funnelled straight from one service to another – and customers’ reading mode will be encouraged toward the Kindle. Not just eReading, but this particular brand of eReader.
And because of the nature of GoodReads, Amazon are getting their hands on a heap of information that readers are willingly loading onto the website.
I am just guessing here – only time will tell exactly what changes will come into play because of this merger.
The thing here isn’t that I have a problem with Amazon, but that we should all be a bit worried when business concerns come into the domain of services that aren’t trying to sell us anything. Or… weren’t.
Yesterday saw the announcement of the 2013 Miles Franklin longlist. The ten longlisted titles were slowly revealed for the first time via Twitter – each title tweeted by @_milesfranklin‘s account as a picture of the book’s cover. It was a bit delicious – the usual clicking of a link and quick look at a list was replaced by the same kind of nervous anticipation felt at an awards ceremony.
The first thing I noticed about the list was how many women there were on there. Of ten titles, eight are written by women. This, in the same year that the Australian Women’s Writing Challenge has been widely embraced, and in the lead-up to the inaugural Stella Prize announcement. Interestingly, two of the titles on the Stella shortlist are also on the Miles Franklin longlist (Carrie Tiffany’s Mateship with Birds and Michelle de Kretser’s Questions of Travel).
Miles Franklin was a lady, whose pen name looked a helluva lot like a man’s. I’d hazard a guess that this was a move to be taken seriously. Those were the times she lived in. We now have new women’s prizes, widespread movements championing women’s writing, and a longlist for a major literary award with a majority of women’s writing. These are the times we live in.
Congratulations to all the nominated writers, and good luck!
A side note: I have read one of the longlisted titles, Brian Castro’s Street to Street. My review can be read here.
This Teaser Tuesday is missing a cover, because I’m gobbling up a reading copy that isn’t due until June, and the cover doesn’t seem to exist out in the world yet. To make up for it, I’m going to share this extra tid-bit: Mel Campbell’s pintrest where she shares her research for the book. GETTING INSIDE THE CREATIVE PROCESS! How exciting.
Share with us two (2) “teaser” sentences from that page.
You also need to share the title of the book that you’re getting your “teaser” from … that way people can have some great book recommendations if they like the teaser you’ve given!
“Last year, I visited the Bendigo Art Gallery to see an exhibition of clothes that once belonged to Hollywood actress Grace Kelly, later Princess Grace of Monaco. When I compared the garments to the photos, films and newsreels depicting Grace wearing them, I couldn’t believe the relatively solid, healthy-looking person in the images could possibly have possessed the kind of dainty, birdlike body that would have fitted into these sleeves and waistlines.”
– from Out of Shape by Mel Campbell, due out June 2013.
Share with us two (2) “teaser” sentences from that page.
You also need to share the title of the book that you’re getting your “teaser” from … that way people can have some great book recommendations if they like the teaser you’ve given!
“Once we were on the road, I looked for minor detours to our destination, if possible, detours designed to prolong the trip by a minute – or maybe two, but no more lest she grow suspicious – and thereby extend my time with her. I drove with both hands clenching the wheel, and my eyes firmly on the road.”
From And The Mountains Echoed by Khaled Hosseini, p84.
“Oh, often I don’t finish the book! I just run out of time…”
I judge them. Harshly. How dare you? How dare you gather a group of people who are passionate about books, about reading, and not respect that sacred space by at least completing the book that’s up for discussion?
Last night I went to my first book club, and I was that girl. Having spent the previous night cleaning for a late-notice house inspection, I didn’t finish the book. I got very close, but 15 pages from the end still isn’t finished. I carried the guilt in under one arm, and the book under the other. I still contributed.
After reading like a writer for so long, this book club mode of reading strikes me as different. Not bad, but different. It’s luxurious. It relates to the content of the book on the same level that people in the world relate to other people in the world. We’re allowed to judge.
It’s been one of those months where the amount of books bought, borrowed and acquired have far outweighed the books I’ve finished reading. I’ve been plugging away at a great many collections and journals, reading a poem, essay or short story from each before I start my own work. This means I’ve read a lot, but I’ve only actually FINISHED reading two books this month. I’m going to blame this on the fact that it’s a short month. YES, those two (possibly three) days make a HUGE difference!
The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky pissed me off sufficiently to warrant a rant.
The other book I finished was a self-help book by Russ Harris (my self-help hero, because he writes stuff that works!), called ACT With Love, about applying Acceptance and Commitment Therapy to relationships.
I’m nearing the end of two books right now, so March promises more than 2 books read, for sure.
The State Library of Victoria’s white dome stretches half way to the stars. Blue spots from a projector hit the glass and move like slow ripples on a lake. Converging for a second in the middle, the dome becomes an eye, gazing down at the many people scattered throughout the room.
People perch on desks – something that I suspect would be tutt-tutted by any on-duty librarian, but right now it’s 4am, and there is a choir standing at one end of the room. Young voices crescendo and swell to fill the massive space.
All night I have seen faces in phones, or phones mediating experience; everyone is hyper-connected, and demands for something to be happening. This is the first year of Melbourne’s ‘White Night’ all-night cultural festival, and the city has opened itself up as a spectacle. While it’s been encouraging to see so many curious, well-mannered people out, it’s also a bit vulgar.
In the Wheeler Centre, tables run either side of the performance space, and writers sit at them to put pen to paper. People who know what’s happening come in and sit, or visit writing friends to buoy spirits with ice-cream or coffee. People who don’t know what’s happening are immediately obvious. They walk in and pause in the doorway. Then they walk slowly down the aisle between desks, the way people walk through a gallery half-engaged, looking for a piece that grabs their attention. When they find that piece (writer), they forget that the writer lives. They stand too close, or try to see what’s being written. They take a photo: the writer as curio.
Because of this, the Domed Reading Room is out of space and time – it kicks against what the rest of the Melbourne city night is doing. These desks where great works have been researched, written, and read, stand like the well-preserved relics of some great, ancient city. Balconies with not-to-be-touched books seem impossibly far away, four stories up and as stoic as the building itself.
Exaudi Youth Choir don’t sing songs tonight, they sing prayers of ambiance. They spread themselves around the room’s perimeter and offer up haunting angel voices mixed with animal sounds. Somehow, this arrangement, which seems to be a dreamy homage to Australian landscape and wildlife, only serves to make this building feel even older.
People’s faces are down still, but this time in thought. Some inspect the floral stamp in the desks’ leather. Others close their eyes for a quick nap. Everyone is joined for a moment by this event – a choir, in the Domed Reading Room, at 4am. I suspect this hasn’t happened before in history.
The night marches steadily on til dawn. As always, it slows between 5 and 6am. Finally we reach 7am. In the city there is no dew, but McDonalds wrappers seem to take its place this morning. Bins overflow, and the footpath is covered in cardboard and plastic.
The sun is a red ember, winking at me in the gaps between houses.
“I stayed up all night too,” it says. “Somewhere.”
This is a re-cap of my White Night, spent primarily at the Wheeler Centre as part of an event run by the Emerging Writers Festival.
Bivouacking at the Wheeler Centre – it feels like a school camp somehow. On the bus on the way in, I feel like a kid again. I carry a pillow and cupcakes, and a backpack full of laptop, pens and notebook. There’s a novel in there for the wee hours.
The night begins without any great fanfare. A small crowd gathers for Eric Yoshiyaki Dando’s performance at 8pm. Eric is a bit short, a bit hairy; he wears no shoes and rolled-up fisherman’s pants. He reads from his iPhone (“from the Sleepers’ app, which is very handy!”) about his time spent as a shopping centre Santa. I presume it is non-fiction, but on later reflection I will wonder. Either way, he’s utterly charming. The AUSLAN lady’s hands dance, and Eric makes her say “snail” again because he loves the sign for it.
After Eric’s performance people splinter. There’s an awful lot of talking. More than one person here seems to be participating in White Night in order to write about it – I’m not the only person whose impulse is to document. There are people with cameras, and a few people approach to ask what we’re working on, or why we’re here.
I leave for dinner. Sitting outside the State Library, I watch patterns drive themselves up the exterior walls. There are people with strollers. It’s as busy as New Years Eve, but people are happier and more friendly. This doesn’t last though – after dinner, at about 10.30, people seem a bit more volatile. There’s hostility in their demand for something to be happening always, everywhere. I walk more carefully back to the Wheeler Centre.
Photo credit: Reuben Acciano for the Emerging Writers Festival
The Wheeler Centre packs out for later performances at midnight and 1am. The midnight performance has everyone laughing, Laura Jean McKay and Lawrence Leung lunging about the stage, jazz hands flying around one another in a battle to decide who reads first. The pieces they perform are similarly impressive.
Performances from 3am onwards start to calm down. Luke Ayres Ryan does the 3am reading, which is of a story he wrote when he was 14. He antagonises his young self as he reads, incredulous that he ever thought that this writing was something to be proud of. I hope that he sees the value in his current writing, and wonder if we all have this mode when we read over ancient pieces. True, the piece he reads is as dismal as anything a 14 year-old would write, but still.
The audience at this reading is mainly those of us who have been writing all night. We lounge in bean bags, lulling, and we begin to feel a bit heavy-lidded. Second winds will come later. For now, sedate is the way to be. Chad Parkhill plays a ridiculous DJ set (“full of funky beats with a fat bass line”) to perk us all up, and it works in a way. We dance like fools for a little bit, before a friend arrives and a few of us head to the Domed Reading Room at the State Library.
This is the only thing that I really want to catch at White Night; the only thing that I absolutely need to see. The Domed Reading Room is expansive and overwhelming at the best of times, but in this ethereal space where the city hums and everybody is dreaming, it’s almost too much. The Exaudi Youth choir send their voices up to the ceiling, where projected lights move like ripples in a slow stream. It feels like sleep. Every person is surrounded by calm. People scatter, sitting on desks and chairs. Many heads take the opportunity for a quick nap.
Returning to the Wheeler Centre feels strange, stepping back into the real world. People come and go, and while people still write, the hours between 5 and 7 feel more like a drop-in centre where people stick their heads in out of curiosity.
The tram ride home hits me in the face, and I struggle not to close my eyes as we trundle up a now-quiet, very rubbishy Collins Street.
The night was certainly white; brilliant with creative light and a generous crowd hungry for culture. Every piece of the city opened up and poured out all the secrets that are so often hidden.
Sam van Zweden 