Breathing Just a Little

I've recently returned from a 5-day work and fun trip interstate, during which I read one book start to finish (the short story collection) and finished off the novel I had been ambling slowly through. Very different books! My thoughts are below. (My next reading mission is to circle back to the Booker shortlist and clean up the four books on it that I haven't yet read, so that will probably be the next book post). I love short story collections, and I do tend to favour single-author collections as I think it gives you more of an opportunity to read yourself into the author's oeuvre, but this book was a real departure for me in terms of genre. I am not usually a horror reader, although I do read SFF horror crossovers from time to time; reading urban horror fiction is not my usual jam. That said, I really enjoyed this collection, and read it very quickly. As with all short story volumes, there were stand-outs and weaker stories, but overall, the tonal effect was consistent (...

I thought I'd have a bit of a stab at a found poem sestina, which is a device I have used before. I create the first stanza from a line from one of today's news articles (I try to look across a variety of outlets), then build the poem from that base. The sestina is a weird form, anchored by the final words of each line of the opening stanza. The pattern is: 1. ABCDEF 2. FAEBDC 3. CFDABE 4. ECBFAD 5. DEACFB 6. BDFECA 7. (envoi) ECA or ACE In this pattern, A is the final word of line 1, B is the final word of line 2, and so on. Source articles: 1. Quote from President Trump in The Guardian live feed 2. Artificial intelligence to dominate Australia's future economy, but who will reap the benefits? by David Taylor (ABC Australia News) 3. Brett Sutton quoted in "'We never want to do that again': Brett Sutton on the lessons that must be learned from the pandemic by Neil Mitchell, Nine News 4. France transfixed by murder trial without a body by Hugh Schofield, BBC New...

This is an outstanding reflection on the complex and often surprising things that happen when humans completely destroy a landscape and then abandon it, for reasons as diverse as "used up all the resources", "irradiated it ooops", "poisoned it ooops again", "political structures collapsed so we didn't need it anymore", "economic forces shifted away", and "failed to account for natural disasters in a compellingly obtuse human way". Flyn, herself a resident of a remote Scottish area, takes us on a journey through places as diverse as the blaes (huge spoil tips) of West Lothian, the "Green Line" DMZ in Cyprus, the vast abandoned collective farms of the former Soviet Union, and of course the Chernobyl exclusion zone (what book about humans brutalising the environment would be complete with it?) We visit the Place a Gaz in France (which is polluted by war detritus heavy metals), the contaminated mouth of the Passaic R...

This will be my last longlist post - I'm bailing out at 8, with 2 partially read (Endling and Flashlight) and 3 fully unread, being The Rest of Our Lives, Flesh, and The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny (the last of which won't even be out until after the shortlist drop). Overall, I haven't been super delighted by this longlist, which is why I have decided to punt at 8. When the shortlist is announced, I'll circle back to pick up any that make the cut which I haven't read  (I'm certainly expecting that the Desai book, which comes out two days after the shortlist drop, will make an appearance, given the usual quality of her work). Of the 8 books I've read, if I personally was compiling the shortlist, the two definites would be Seascraper and  Love Forms. I'd also add The Land in Winter and Audition as strong possibles if the balance of the list doesn't cut the mustard. That's me, but I suspect the judges could also go for The South and / or One Boat,...

It is strange, the day when you wake up in a pool of sunlight, your limbs loose in their post-dreaming lethargy and you realise that you can release the pain at last; that you can reach out your hand to the one who hurt you and say, we can go on, and I no longer hold that deep black well inside me dark and sad and full of knives. Perhaps, after all, forgiveness is more like love than it is like forgetting. It comes up softly and after many long nights cradling hurt places tenderly spinning gold from bitter straw. Perhaps it is the lovegift that you give your poor, sad, wounded past self to say: I see that pain, and I let it go and I do not hold the darkness anymore and I can hold out my hand again in kindness even to the one who hurt me and I can cherish the new flowers that grow on the grave of the person I was, before: the new life that comes from old things dying the things I learned from those hard dark watches the things the moon taught me, when it was just her and me sailing the ...

I am doing Steptember this year, the fundraiser organised by the Cerebral Palsy Alliance, which targets 10,000 steps a day for the month. While, in ordinary circumstances, there are a couple days a week I hit 10,000 steps anyway, I never usually get it daily, so this does require a bit more intentionality from me (no bad thing, physically or mentally). Each day so far, I have walked somewhere different. My walks have been: - Day 1: Creek path near my house (with dog) - Day 2: Cherry Lake, Altona - Day 3: River walk, Werribee (with friend) - Day 4: Wetland path near my house (with dog) - Day 5: Melbourne City walking  - Day 6: Berry's Beach, Phillip Island (with husband) - Day 7: Conservation Hill , Phillip Island (with husband) - Day 8: Churchill Island Circuit, Phillip Island (with husband - Day 9: My own backyard! I thought it might be nice to do a photo record of my walks, so here is days 1-9 - just one image from each walk. Day 1: The creek near my house Day 2: Cherry Lake...