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Culture consumed, and whatnot
I'm one of the lucky ones in lockdown, in that -- after a false start where I could only reread Blyton and Sayers* for a few weeks -- stress hasn't eaten my ability to read. Or anything else. And work has been quiet -- it always is, mid-year -- so I've had a lot of time!
Australian history
Tiberius with a Telephone and The Trials of Portnoy by Patrick Mullins. Being a biography of William McMahon, one of Australia's most mediocre prime ministers -- and believe me, there's competition for the title -- and an overview of literary censorship in Australia and the legal battles over Portnoy's Complaint which saw the Australian government belatedly concede that adults are entitled to read offensive literature.
The second book is much faster, shorter and more entertaining, but I did enjoy reading the first, if only because it gave me fresh reasons to dislike Menzies.
Australian contemporary YA and middle grade
I had to sign up to a new library ebook service to access the Mullins books, and it turned out to have an extensive collection of Australian YA. So I read:
This Is How We Change The Ending by Vikki Wakefield
The Bogan Mondrian by Steven Herrick
Sick Bay by Nova Weetman
I grouped these three together because they all depict state school kids (a regrettable rarity in Australian fiction for young readers, even though the majority of kids and teens attend state schools), and all feature food insecurity and parents who are -- through grief and mental illness in two-thirds of cases -- unable to care for their kids.
Friends, I have Issues. Not with any of these books in particular -- Sick Bay was outstanding, and Wakefield has been writing about working class kids on the margins for her whole career -- but the pattern begins to stand out. And, like, trends come and go! A few years ago, it seemed like every second YA novel was about a poor kid getting a scholarship to a posh school! But I'm mildly troubled that we've gone from having almost no depictions of state school students, to so many depictions of desperate poverty.
(Ironically, that sort of WAS my experience in my early teen years, but I was acutely aware that I was in the minority.)
Australian novels by Black authors
When the Ground is Hard by Malla Nunn is an historical YA novel set at a boarding school for mixed race children in Swaziland in the early '60s. Nunn trusts the reader enough to let her heroine be absolutely unlikeable for a big chunk of the book: she's snobbish, racist and completely lost when a wealthier girl pushes her out of her friendship group -- and her dorm -- and she has to room with the darker-skinned daughter of a single mother.
Nunn incorporates the traditional tropes of the boarding school story -- schoolgirl heroism, a mystery to solve -- but melds them with harsh reality: violence, death, the well-intentioned white missionaries who don't understand the nuances of the culture around them. I inhaled this in an evening, even though I was tired, because I just couldn't stop.
(Nunn -- I don't know if she would identify as African-Australian, but she was born in South Africa and now lives in Australia -- also has a series about a Black police officer in Apartheid-era South Africa, which I'm curious to read -- but it's only available in omnibus ebook form, and I'd rather just get the first book to start with and see how I go from there.)
Ghost Bird by Lisa Fuller is historical YA fantasy, with elements drawn from traditional Wuilli Wuilli beliefs. (Fuller is a Wuilli Wuilli woman, and consulted with the Elders in writing her novel. It's set in a small Queensland town in the 1990s, where the heat is endless and the heroine's tearaway twin sister has gone missing. Run off, people say, but the heroine is dreaming of her -- and something is trying to get into their house.
Particularly notable about Ghost Bird is how strong the Queensland voice is. I kept pausing to reread bits of narrative or dialogue, because it was like listening to the people I knew growing up, and I have NEVER encountered that in fiction before.
And then I read...
Too Much Lip by Melissa Lucashenko. A completely different type of book -- an adult crime novel set in New South Wales. Again, the narrative voice felt like home, and not just because the heroine has spent a lot of time in the southern suburbs of Brisbane. Kerry is in town to visit her dying grandfather; she rides up on a stolen Harley Davidson, with an ex-girlfriend in prison and a backpack containing $30,000. She doesn't plan to stay, but. Well. Family.
Sequels
The Empire of Gold by S. A. Chakraborty (#3 in the Daevabad trilogy) and Jade War by Fonda Lee (#2 in The Green Bone Saga) are linked in my head for two reasons: I picked both series up because I was in the mood for some adult fantasy in non-European settings, and although I enjoy both a lot, and have very strong opinions about shipping in the Daevabad trilogy, I also found them both incredibly poorly written, and in similar ways: too much contemporary, American-sounding dialogue in settings that don't support it.
And, in the case of the Green Bone Saga, the world building is ... detailed, yet messy, in that this is analogous to a post-WW2 era, with a war very similar to Korea or Vietnam brewing, but there is also colour television and video. It doesn't QUITE hang together, but I love the political world building so it's not a dealbreaker.
OzYA SF
First I read the Lifelike trilogy by Jay Kristoff, which -- despite the author being Australian, and also a nice bloke with whom I have the privilege of hanging out sometimes -- manages to be one of those YA dystopias where America is a complete disaster and ... well, for all we know, the rest of the world is doing just fine.
Which isn't to say I didn't thoroughly enjoy it! It was exactly the chaotic mash-up of Mad Max and X-Men I was in the mood for, and also covered similar thematic ground to Star Trek: Picard and did it better.
Then I read The Erasure Initative by Lili Wilkinson, in which a young woman wakes up on a self-driving bus with no memory of who she is or how she got there. I think this is what they call "high concept", and I'm gonna describe it as "The Good Place meets Speed but with an overtly queer heroine". I'm usually pretty good at spotting twists, but this surprised me throughout, and when I reached the end, I had to go back to look at all the clues again.
After all that...
I sort of had a YA hangover. I needed something completely different from anything else I've read lately.
So I picked up A Suitable Boy by Vikram Seth. It's one of the longest novels in the English language, and I've always been a bit intimidated by its size, and by the fact that I don't know much at all about India. But finally I said, "Well, if you can read all of A Song of Ice and Fire, you can read this, ya racist." Then I wondered if this sort of internal dialogue really achieved anything. Then I started reading A Suitable Boy (thank God for ebooks, my arthritic hands are NOT up to giant paperbacks these days), and a week and a half later I'm at 65% and thoroughly engrossed.
For the record, if anyone else is intimidated, despite the enormous cast, it's extremely easy to follow. Although I still don't know much at all about India and really need to fix that. Like, it's embarrassing, my own stepmother is Indian!
* One day I shall combine them, but in the meantime, I commend for your attention the Wells and Wong mysteries by Robin Stevens.
Das Boot (the TV series)
I've never seen the famous movie, but the TV adaptation/sequel is on SBS On Demand, the streaming channel attached to our public "ethnic" broadcaster, and we figured, why not?
And it's really good! But also super dooper bleak, as befits a French-German depiction of the Second World War. (Season 2 ends with literally half the cast either dead, dying or on their way to a concentration camp. OTOH, some of the submarine bros manage to defect to the US, and I kind of want season 3 to be about nothing but their adventures in the land of the free -- which is depicted here as well-intentioned by hampered by its own venality.)
A few months ago, we watched Dark, the German Netflix series about, ummmmmm, time travel, how time travel >>> therapy, and the futility of teenage optimism. One of the actors in that appears in Das Boot, and then he also turned up in Hanna, the 2011 film. Which...
A tale of two Hannas
I missed the 2011 film when it came out -- I think I had vague plans to see it, but somehow never got around to it. And I don't know exactly why we decided we should watch the TV adaptation, save that it's on Prime, and ads for season were running on SBS On Demand, so we figured why not.
Anyway, we watched season one of Hanna, then the movie, then season 2. And it was really interesting to contrast the two versions of the same story! Both are good, but their priorities are different -- the film is a fairytale, with surreal set pieces and a villain -- played by Cate Blanchett -- who is part of a heightened reality, with recurring motifs of evil stepmothers and wolves. (There are multiple scenes where Blanchett brushes her teeth and spits bloody saliva into the sink.)
The TV series covers the same storyline, but more grounded in reality, and with bigger worldbuilding. The villain is no longer an evil stepmother, and by season 2, she's not even a villain. (Oh, a redemption arc for a woman who is approaching middle age? SOLD.)
I prefer Saoirse Ronan's performance as Hanna in the film, and the queerness of her relationship with regular girl Sophie (the TV series is a master class in queerbaiting and I'm mad about it), but the TV series has a bigger and more diverse, less cartoonish supporting cast.
Season 2 is where the series comes into its own, with a boarding school full of genetically manipulated teenage girl assassins. Honestly, the CIA Red Room plot ALONE is enough to keep me engaged, even though then they had to go out? And assassinate people???? PROBLEMATIC.
One thing I particularly enjoy: this is a British series, so it doesn't hesitate to go, "Oh yeah, the CIA are the bad guys."
Fargo
Another movie followed by TV adaptation combo! I've been meaning to watch the movie since, oh, 1996, and finally got around to it the other week. And I liked it a lot! So now we're watching the TV series, which I'm also enjoying even though I'm into season 2 and kiiiiiiinda wondering if maybe the writers have some sort of problem with women. Or, more specifically, with women who aren't in some way linked with law enforcement, and who don't have any particular power in their own right?
I don't know, it's not as if they treat powerless men with any more respect. And I'm only halfway through the second season. I might be being a bit oversensitive?
The Old Guard
In which a gang of immortal warriors are targeted by Big Pharma. Shenanigans ensue.
I watched this because it suddenly took over my Tumblr dash, but was a bit underwhelmed. Like, the characters were good but the worldbuilding didn't quite hold up for me, and I found the directing really bland. (Also, while I had osmosed from the fandom that there was Charlize Theron, her girlfriend Paige Tico and an interracial gay couple, I had no idea the co-protagonist was an African American woman. Just saying.)
Anyway, it was fine, but forgettable, and we have yet another Greek superheroine who isn't played by a Greek woman because ... I don't know why, but it's not a good look. I read the first issue of the comic to try and figure out the appeal, and liked that even less, so this is one for the blocklist.
The Umbrella Academy (season 2)
Apparently there are people who do not love each and every single one of the Hargreeves children. I don't get it, myself, but okay.
Anyway, this was a good time with some fun new characters and also, possibly, a plot. In conclusion, VANYA HARGREEVES HAS NEVER DONE ANYTHING WRONG, EVER, IN HER ENTIRE LIFE.
Star Trek: Lower Decks
I'm not a big animated comedy fan, so I went into this figuring it would be fine, but not for me.
I WAS WRONG, I love it a lot. Mostly because of Beckett Mariner, who is a really fascinating and fun character, and also a character who could only work in the heightened reality of animated comedy. I believe there may also be some other characters in the show; I'm not sure.
Australian history
Tiberius with a Telephone and The Trials of Portnoy by Patrick Mullins. Being a biography of William McMahon, one of Australia's most mediocre prime ministers -- and believe me, there's competition for the title -- and an overview of literary censorship in Australia and the legal battles over Portnoy's Complaint which saw the Australian government belatedly concede that adults are entitled to read offensive literature.
The second book is much faster, shorter and more entertaining, but I did enjoy reading the first, if only because it gave me fresh reasons to dislike Menzies.
Australian contemporary YA and middle grade
I had to sign up to a new library ebook service to access the Mullins books, and it turned out to have an extensive collection of Australian YA. So I read:
This Is How We Change The Ending by Vikki Wakefield
The Bogan Mondrian by Steven Herrick
Sick Bay by Nova Weetman
I grouped these three together because they all depict state school kids (a regrettable rarity in Australian fiction for young readers, even though the majority of kids and teens attend state schools), and all feature food insecurity and parents who are -- through grief and mental illness in two-thirds of cases -- unable to care for their kids.
Friends, I have Issues. Not with any of these books in particular -- Sick Bay was outstanding, and Wakefield has been writing about working class kids on the margins for her whole career -- but the pattern begins to stand out. And, like, trends come and go! A few years ago, it seemed like every second YA novel was about a poor kid getting a scholarship to a posh school! But I'm mildly troubled that we've gone from having almost no depictions of state school students, to so many depictions of desperate poverty.
(Ironically, that sort of WAS my experience in my early teen years, but I was acutely aware that I was in the minority.)
Australian novels by Black authors
When the Ground is Hard by Malla Nunn is an historical YA novel set at a boarding school for mixed race children in Swaziland in the early '60s. Nunn trusts the reader enough to let her heroine be absolutely unlikeable for a big chunk of the book: she's snobbish, racist and completely lost when a wealthier girl pushes her out of her friendship group -- and her dorm -- and she has to room with the darker-skinned daughter of a single mother.
Nunn incorporates the traditional tropes of the boarding school story -- schoolgirl heroism, a mystery to solve -- but melds them with harsh reality: violence, death, the well-intentioned white missionaries who don't understand the nuances of the culture around them. I inhaled this in an evening, even though I was tired, because I just couldn't stop.
(Nunn -- I don't know if she would identify as African-Australian, but she was born in South Africa and now lives in Australia -- also has a series about a Black police officer in Apartheid-era South Africa, which I'm curious to read -- but it's only available in omnibus ebook form, and I'd rather just get the first book to start with and see how I go from there.)
Ghost Bird by Lisa Fuller is historical YA fantasy, with elements drawn from traditional Wuilli Wuilli beliefs. (Fuller is a Wuilli Wuilli woman, and consulted with the Elders in writing her novel. It's set in a small Queensland town in the 1990s, where the heat is endless and the heroine's tearaway twin sister has gone missing. Run off, people say, but the heroine is dreaming of her -- and something is trying to get into their house.
Particularly notable about Ghost Bird is how strong the Queensland voice is. I kept pausing to reread bits of narrative or dialogue, because it was like listening to the people I knew growing up, and I have NEVER encountered that in fiction before.
And then I read...
Too Much Lip by Melissa Lucashenko. A completely different type of book -- an adult crime novel set in New South Wales. Again, the narrative voice felt like home, and not just because the heroine has spent a lot of time in the southern suburbs of Brisbane. Kerry is in town to visit her dying grandfather; she rides up on a stolen Harley Davidson, with an ex-girlfriend in prison and a backpack containing $30,000. She doesn't plan to stay, but. Well. Family.
Sequels
The Empire of Gold by S. A. Chakraborty (#3 in the Daevabad trilogy) and Jade War by Fonda Lee (#2 in The Green Bone Saga) are linked in my head for two reasons: I picked both series up because I was in the mood for some adult fantasy in non-European settings, and although I enjoy both a lot, and have very strong opinions about shipping in the Daevabad trilogy, I also found them both incredibly poorly written, and in similar ways: too much contemporary, American-sounding dialogue in settings that don't support it.
And, in the case of the Green Bone Saga, the world building is ... detailed, yet messy, in that this is analogous to a post-WW2 era, with a war very similar to Korea or Vietnam brewing, but there is also colour television and video. It doesn't QUITE hang together, but I love the political world building so it's not a dealbreaker.
OzYA SF
First I read the Lifelike trilogy by Jay Kristoff, which -- despite the author being Australian, and also a nice bloke with whom I have the privilege of hanging out sometimes -- manages to be one of those YA dystopias where America is a complete disaster and ... well, for all we know, the rest of the world is doing just fine.
Which isn't to say I didn't thoroughly enjoy it! It was exactly the chaotic mash-up of Mad Max and X-Men I was in the mood for, and also covered similar thematic ground to Star Trek: Picard and did it better.
Then I read The Erasure Initative by Lili Wilkinson, in which a young woman wakes up on a self-driving bus with no memory of who she is or how she got there. I think this is what they call "high concept", and I'm gonna describe it as "The Good Place meets Speed but with an overtly queer heroine". I'm usually pretty good at spotting twists, but this surprised me throughout, and when I reached the end, I had to go back to look at all the clues again.
After all that...
I sort of had a YA hangover. I needed something completely different from anything else I've read lately.
So I picked up A Suitable Boy by Vikram Seth. It's one of the longest novels in the English language, and I've always been a bit intimidated by its size, and by the fact that I don't know much at all about India. But finally I said, "Well, if you can read all of A Song of Ice and Fire, you can read this, ya racist." Then I wondered if this sort of internal dialogue really achieved anything. Then I started reading A Suitable Boy (thank God for ebooks, my arthritic hands are NOT up to giant paperbacks these days), and a week and a half later I'm at 65% and thoroughly engrossed.
For the record, if anyone else is intimidated, despite the enormous cast, it's extremely easy to follow. Although I still don't know much at all about India and really need to fix that. Like, it's embarrassing, my own stepmother is Indian!
* One day I shall combine them, but in the meantime, I commend for your attention the Wells and Wong mysteries by Robin Stevens.
Das Boot (the TV series)
I've never seen the famous movie, but the TV adaptation/sequel is on SBS On Demand, the streaming channel attached to our public "ethnic" broadcaster, and we figured, why not?
And it's really good! But also super dooper bleak, as befits a French-German depiction of the Second World War. (Season 2 ends with literally half the cast either dead, dying or on their way to a concentration camp. OTOH, some of the submarine bros manage to defect to the US, and I kind of want season 3 to be about nothing but their adventures in the land of the free -- which is depicted here as well-intentioned by hampered by its own venality.)
A few months ago, we watched Dark, the German Netflix series about, ummmmmm, time travel, how time travel >>> therapy, and the futility of teenage optimism. One of the actors in that appears in Das Boot, and then he also turned up in Hanna, the 2011 film. Which...
A tale of two Hannas
I missed the 2011 film when it came out -- I think I had vague plans to see it, but somehow never got around to it. And I don't know exactly why we decided we should watch the TV adaptation, save that it's on Prime, and ads for season were running on SBS On Demand, so we figured why not.
Anyway, we watched season one of Hanna, then the movie, then season 2. And it was really interesting to contrast the two versions of the same story! Both are good, but their priorities are different -- the film is a fairytale, with surreal set pieces and a villain -- played by Cate Blanchett -- who is part of a heightened reality, with recurring motifs of evil stepmothers and wolves. (There are multiple scenes where Blanchett brushes her teeth and spits bloody saliva into the sink.)
The TV series covers the same storyline, but more grounded in reality, and with bigger worldbuilding. The villain is no longer an evil stepmother, and by season 2, she's not even a villain. (Oh, a redemption arc for a woman who is approaching middle age? SOLD.)
I prefer Saoirse Ronan's performance as Hanna in the film, and the queerness of her relationship with regular girl Sophie (the TV series is a master class in queerbaiting and I'm mad about it), but the TV series has a bigger and more diverse, less cartoonish supporting cast.
Season 2 is where the series comes into its own, with a boarding school full of genetically manipulated teenage girl assassins. Honestly, the CIA Red Room plot ALONE is enough to keep me engaged, even though then they had to go out? And assassinate people???? PROBLEMATIC.
One thing I particularly enjoy: this is a British series, so it doesn't hesitate to go, "Oh yeah, the CIA are the bad guys."
Fargo
Another movie followed by TV adaptation combo! I've been meaning to watch the movie since, oh, 1996, and finally got around to it the other week. And I liked it a lot! So now we're watching the TV series, which I'm also enjoying even though I'm into season 2 and kiiiiiiinda wondering if maybe the writers have some sort of problem with women. Or, more specifically, with women who aren't in some way linked with law enforcement, and who don't have any particular power in their own right?
I don't know, it's not as if they treat powerless men with any more respect. And I'm only halfway through the second season. I might be being a bit oversensitive?
The Old Guard
In which a gang of immortal warriors are targeted by Big Pharma. Shenanigans ensue.
I watched this because it suddenly took over my Tumblr dash, but was a bit underwhelmed. Like, the characters were good but the worldbuilding didn't quite hold up for me, and I found the directing really bland. (Also, while I had osmosed from the fandom that there was Charlize Theron, her girlfriend Paige Tico and an interracial gay couple, I had no idea the co-protagonist was an African American woman. Just saying.)
Anyway, it was fine, but forgettable, and we have yet another Greek superheroine who isn't played by a Greek woman because ... I don't know why, but it's not a good look. I read the first issue of the comic to try and figure out the appeal, and liked that even less, so this is one for the blocklist.
The Umbrella Academy (season 2)
Apparently there are people who do not love each and every single one of the Hargreeves children. I don't get it, myself, but okay.
Anyway, this was a good time with some fun new characters and also, possibly, a plot. In conclusion, VANYA HARGREEVES HAS NEVER DONE ANYTHING WRONG, EVER, IN HER ENTIRE LIFE.
Star Trek: Lower Decks
I'm not a big animated comedy fan, so I went into this figuring it would be fine, but not for me.
I WAS WRONG, I love it a lot. Mostly because of Beckett Mariner, who is a really fascinating and fun character, and also a character who could only work in the heightened reality of animated comedy. I believe there may also be some other characters in the show; I'm not sure.
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The Lisa Fuller book sounds very interesting. I just read Kathleen Jennings' novella Flyaway, which is also set in Queensland, and liked it very much.
I also found The Old Guard underwhelming but enjoyable for its running time. I did appreciate that the action scenes were comprehensible and there was no gratutious sexualization of anybody. Though the Scythians aren't Greek! They were from central Eurasia, they're just primarily known through Greek (and to a lesser extent Roman and Persian) texts.
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Yes! I think I picked them both up because I kept seeing in the same rec posts!
And see, I thought it was absolutely the '60s and '70s, but the technology really throws me off. And there's no REASON why videotapes and colour TV couldn't have been on the market earlier, but I feel like that changes the way people consume media, and so much of the second book explores how the Green Bone gangster films impact the way they're perceived in real life.
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My husband is LOVING Lower Decks so far. I'm so far behind on anything Star Trek it's not even funny. one of my 2020 binge goals is to get on track.
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My husband is LOVING Lower Decks so far. I'm so far behind on anything Star Trek it's not even funny. one of my 2020 binge goals is to get on track.
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I hear from spouse that Mariner's voice actor is both a comedian and they're letting her ad-lib/add stuff. (Which, honestly, if you're going to hire a comedian, I can't think why you wouldn't let them at least try script-modifying ideas, y'know?)
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I find it quite interesting in motion, like, the way the outlines shift with shadows is cool? And it suits the storytelling, which I guess is maybe more important than my own aesthetic preferences.
(Maybe)
AND she'll be hosting the official Trek podcast!
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I kept wondering what would happen if one of the characters got beheaded. Does the head grow back? Do the head and the body remain separate and alive (which, if so, nightmare fuel)? Or would that kill them? I have yet to get any answers on this.