Currently Wednesday: 8 January 2020

[calissa]

Currently Reading

My book club predominantly reads SFF, but occasionally ventures into other territory. To kick off 2020, we thought we'd tackle Growing Up Aboriginal in Australia edited by Dr Anita Heiss. It's a collection of short non-fiction essays from a wide variety of Aboriginal perspectives. I've found it very educational so far. One thing I found curious was that the essays were arranged in alphabetical order by the author's surname, rather than arranging the stories so as to provide contrast and variety. Perhaps a difference between fiction and non-fiction anthologies? I haven't read enough of the latter to know. Or perhaps the editor was looking for a less judgemental approach.

Speaking of judgemental, I'm attempting to read Writing and Enjoying Haiku: A Hands-On Guide by Jane Reichhold for something like the third or fourth time. While it has been informative, the author certainly has some Opinions and I feel like there's some subtle racism at work. However, the book has introduced me to the ideas of kigo and saijiki, which I find resonate with me. Japanese haiku traditionally contain kigo, a word that indicates the season. Saijiki are dictionaries of kigo. I have found myself contemplating pulling together my own saijiki.

On audio, I'm currently a short way into Archivist Wasp by Nicole Kornher-Stace, a dystopian YA sci-fi. It's a lot darker than I was anticipating and have kind of been avoiding it. After all, living in apocalypse seems like enough right now.


Currently Watching

Sahaquiel and I are close to wrapping up the second season of Upstart Crow, a sitcom about William Shakespeare. It has been fun to play spot the reference and Sahaquiel relishes the pantomime-villain feel of the antagonist.

Comments

[sweet_sparrow]

Archivist Wasp is so good, but yeah. It's pretty bleak, especially at first. I hope you'll enjoy it as you continue, though. It's such a powerful story about friendship. The rest sounds pretty interesting too.

[calissa]

Your comment reassures me, so I think I'll stick with it and see how it goes.

[sweet_sparrow]

<3 Hopefully well. It's very different from a lot of what's out there, which is partially the science fantasy setting and largely the grumpy, snarky friendship that stays a friendship. I find that, for me at least, if you connect to the humour in it, it's a lot of fun once the action starts to pick up and the worldbuilding starts to come together.

But to be honest, it's my kind of weird fantasy, so I admit to bias.