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Reading & watching- Belvoir: Blue (Thomas Weatherall 2023) 29 January 2023Image from Belvoir website'Getting older is inevitable, but growing up takes courage.' The advertising tagline for this play isn't exactly aimed at Belvoir's usual audience, many of whom know that getting older does take quite a bit of courage.However, the play itself, a one-hander featuring the writer, and brilliantly directed by Deborah […]
- The Whale (Darren Aronovsky 2023) 28 January 2023It would be too harsh to call this suicide porn, but quite a lot is made of the spectacle of someone with extreme congested heart disease wolfing down greasy foods., It's very much a well-made play transposed to the screen, and the contrivance of it is annoyingly evident. If my companion had said she wanted to leave after half an hour I would have join […]
- Haunted by the Past (Ruby Langford Ginibi 1999) 27 January 2023I've been reading about First Nations people a bit much recently. It's time to read a book by a First Nations woman
- Tár (Todd Field 2022) 27 January 2023A brilliant performance by Kate Blanchett. I think the fuss about it is part of the all too usual pre-Oscars nastiness.
- Fear Agent Final edition volume 2 (Rick Remender and others 2018) 26 January 2023The second half of my annual comics gift.
- Belvoir: Blue (Thomas Weatherall 2023) 29 January 2023
Search Results for: fortuitous
Another fortuitous incident
From page 257 of Amy Wilentz’s book on Haiti, The Rainy Season (about which I’ll write more very soon): When Duvalier fell, movements like Chavannes’, which had maintained a fairly low profile under Duvalier, burst out into the open and … Continue reading
No, really, what does fortuitous mean?
Mungo MacCallum has coined more than his share of memorable phrases. He quotes poetry and can work up an excellent bush ballad. His prose is generally witty and lucid. He’s not an academic, he’s a writer. In the current Quarterly … Continue reading
What does fortuitous mean?
Me and the dictionaries I have to hand all agree on the answer to that question, though the Macquarie Dictionary, Third Edition, does take a moment to editorialise. Having defined the word as an adjective meaning ‘happening or produced by … Continue reading
Summer reads 7: Gabriel Zaid’s So Many Books
Gabriel Zaid, So Many Books, translated by Natasha Wimmer (Sort Of Books, 2004) I took a number of physically small books away on our summer break, and have blogged about them as ‘Summer reads’. I was only dimly aware that … Continue reading
Posted in Books, Page 7x/47/7
Tagged essays, Gabriel Zaid, Natasha Wimmer, translation
Édouard Louis, Who Killed My Father
Édouard Louis, Who Killed My Father (2018, translated from French by Lorin Stein, New Directions 2019) It was purely fortuitous that I read this book immediately after Susan Hill’s Black Sheep, but they make a beautiful pair. Arthur, one of … Continue reading
Tagged Édouard Louis, Lorin Stein, non-fiction, translation
Steven Pinker’s Sense of Style
Steven Pinker, The Sense of Style (Allen Lane 2014) I love a good argument about punctuation, spelling, syntax or the meaning of words. Does MS Word really allow minuscule to be spelled with two Is? How about the person who wrote to the paper … Continue reading
Revisionism?
Along with about 30 other people, the Art Student and I heard Paul Ham talk at Gleebooks last night. It was one of the smallest Gleebooks turn-outs I’ve seen, and it’s hard not to think the subject may have had … Continue reading
LoSoRhyMo #8: Place names
I’ve recently discovered Luke Pearson’s @Aboriginal oz blog, which I recommend for smart, measured writing about hard subjects. I stumbled across (not upon) it when doing some research on Massacre Island (also known as Murdering Island) near Narrandera. In a … Continue reading
Shambhala Chinese Poetry
J P Seaton (editor, & translator of most poems), The Shambhala Anthology of Chinese Poetry (Shambhala 2006) This was a present for my 60th birthday. I was delighted to receive it but obviously, given that I’m now 63, I was … Continue reading
Waleed Aly on conservatism
Waleed Aly, What’s Right: The future of conservatism in Australia (Quarterly Essay 37) In the 1950s my parents subscribed to The Saturday Evening Post. I habitually started reading it from the back, because there were no cartoons in the front … Continue reading
Me fail? I fly! 