Fern at Otway Fly

On Flickr, I'm still stuck in February...

Photos from the Twelve Apostles and other spots along the Great Ocean Road (so worth the drive if you ever have a chance!) are up on Flickr. So I still have maybe three more sets of February photos! And then March and April. Aaaaaaaaaaa!

Yesterday I spent the day winning $5 at two-up (a gambling coin toss game favoured by ANZAC forces in WWII and illegal on every day of the year except ANZAC Day, 25 April), eating delicious pie, and going to a crazy women in uniform party. Nine out of ten Alyssas consider it to have been a successful birthday, and we don't know what that last one is on about!

Sydney Library Redemption

Sydney City Library has redeemed itself in my eyes, even if I did have to pay a membership fee. They have copies of Audrey Niffenegger's visual novels, Three Incestuous Sisters and The Adventuress. Today I came upon them and immediately read both of them twice.

"Clothilde knows that the cause of headaches is birds using pieces of her hair to build their nests. Therefore, she saves all her hair in jars hidden in her closet. Despite this, she continues to suffer." - Audrey Niffenegger, Three Incestuous Sisters

They are whimsical picture books for adults. The art is brilliantly quirky, the text is so sparse there are lots of gaps for the images/imaginations to fill in. I can't wait for her second novel! (Her first, The Time Traveller's Wife, is one of my all-time favourites.)

There was live jazz floating down from the swanky cafe on the top floor of the library, so I hung out in the lobby to also read Brokeback Mountain by Annie Proulx, just out of curiosity really--it's only about 50 pages long. But I loved it. The characters' voices are just right there. I should see the movie.

I had gone to the library looking for books on my Project Filling in the Gaps list; I came away with one from the list and seven others.

A Fortuitous Encounter

I am a sucker for both windmills (they're pretty, and also green power! yay!) and sunsets, so in February on the Adelaide-Melbourne road trip, I was tickled pink (actually more of an orange, as you can see...) to run into BOTH AT ONCE!

HEAPS AND HEAPS more photos of similar on my Flickr page. And they aren't even half of the ones I took. It was sheer bliss!

Project Filling in the Gaps: World Literature

Lo! Behold! It's a very long list! There are 100 books on it! I hereby declare my intention to read them all!

A few weeks ago, the fantabulous Moonrat of Editorial Ass (and also Andromeda Romano-Lax, whose novel The Spanish Bow I kinda want to read!) began an awesome trend involving making lists of 100 books that one hasn't read, and reading them all over the next 5(ish) years in order to fill the gaps in one's reading background. In other words, in order to approach one tiny baby step closer to acheiving divine Coleridge-ness, I'm pretty sure he once said he'd read everything ever. (And he was Coleridge, so who's going to argue.)

Which I think is a pretty keen idea! Except that I'm only one year out of the (great, excellent, wonderful, never to be criticised) English Honours program that forced me to take classes in things like 17th Century novels and Elizabethan plays (even if I did wiggle out of the Victorian requirement). While I'm still way behind the pack (especially all of those other English majors, I think most of them have lapped me a couple of times...) in the race to have read Everything that is English Canon... I don't really want to catch up! I had a nice big dose in university not-long-at-all ago. Also, I recently made a goal to read more books by people of colour, and one of my esteemed mother's remarks about it was to ask whether I was going to read such books in translation? And the answer was no, I was talking about books written in English, in North America and Britain where most of the books I read tend to have been written. And this is still the case. But it did make me think about how little world literature I have read. So when Project Fill In the Gaps waltzed along, I thought my world literature gaps could use some filling. My personal twist is Project Fill-in-the-Gaps: World Literature Edition!

The only problem is I don't really know much about world literature.

So this list has been compiled somewhat haphazardly by large geographical area, using things like Wikipedia articles and online reading lists, as well as some items from my usual to-read list. In some cases I've taken into account local book awards, and in some cases I've just picked books because the summary on Amazon made me want to read them. I've unwisely tackled canon, contemporary literary fiction, and genre fiction all at the same time. I've also included a few literary theory must-haves that uni made me curious to read, and some feminist and anti-racist theory, because my reading in that area is... argh, I haven't read anything! The "Last 10" are the extras, in cases where I found too many awesome things to fit into my neat little regional sets of 10. My list is pretty arbitrary, and I know there are big big gaps. It's just a start, really! Because once I knock this one back, if it goes well, in five years a savvier me will make another list, and the cycle will begin again. But if you are reading this and you spot something big I've missed, I'd be ever-so-grateful if you would take a moment to point out any glaring flaws, as I'm open to amendment!

I'm giving myself 25 books of leeway, because I know I've probably put some things on this list I won't actually be able to find.

Africa
1. Chinua Achebe - Things Fall Apart (Nigeria)
2. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie - Half of a Yellow Sun (Nigeria)
3. Yvonne Vera - Butterfly Burning (Zimbabwe)
4. Margaret Ogola - The River and the Source (Kenya)
5. Sarah Ladipo Manyika - In Dependence (Nigeria)
6. Bessie Head - When Rain Clouds Gather (Botswana)
7. Ben Okri - The Famished Road (Nigeria)
8. J. M. Coetzee - Disgrace (South Africa)
9. M. G. Vassanji - The Book of Secrets (Kenya)
10. Zakes Mda - Ways of Dying (South Africa)

East Asia
11. Hwang Sok-Yong - The Guest (Korea)
12. Murasaki Shikibu - The Tale of Genji (Japan)
13. Murakami Haruki - Hard Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World (Japan)
14. Yoshimoto Banana - Kitchen (Japan)
15. Louis Cha – The Deer and the Cauldron (China)
16. Eileen Chang – Love in a Fallen City (China)
17. Luo Guanzhong - Romance of the Three Kingdoms (China)
18. Qiu Xiaolong - Death of a Red Heroine (China)
19. Jose Rizal - Touch Me Not (Philippines)
20. Wilfrido D. Nolledo - But for the Lovers (Philippines)

South Asia
21. Kiran Desai - The Inheritance of Loss (India)
22. Arvind Adiga - The White Tiger (India)
23. Amitav Ghosh – The Calcutta Chromosome (India)
24. Anuja Chauhan – The Zoya Factor (India)
25. Arundhati Roy - The God of Small Things (India)
26. Mohsin Hamid – Moth Smoke (Pakistan)
27. Altaf Fatima - The One Who Did Not Ask (Pakistan)
28. Jean Arasanayagam - All is Burning (Sri Lanka)
29. Carl Muller - The Jam Fruit Tree (Sri Lanka)
30. Rajiva Wijesinha - Acts of Faith (Sri Lanka)
Kunzang Choden - The Circle of Karma

Middle East
31. Salim Matar - The Woman of the Flask (Iraq)
32. Orhan Pamuk – My Name is Red (Turkey)
33. Alaa Al Aswany - The Yacoubian Building (Egypt)
34. Bahaa Taher - Love in Exile (Egypt)
35. Emile Habiby - The Secret Life of Saeed: The Pessoptimist (Palestine)
36. Hanan al-Shaykh - Women of Sand and Myrrh (Lebanon)
37. Meir Shalev - The Blue Mountain (Israel)
38. Iraj Pezeshkzad - My Uncle Napoleon (Iran)
39. Simin Daneshvar - Savushun (Iran)
40. Hoda Barakat - The Stone of Laughter (Lebanon)

Europe
41. Vladimir Nabokov - Lolita (Russia)
42. Milan Kundera - The Unbearable Lightness of Being (Czechoslovakia)
43. Carlos Ruiz Zafón - The Angel's Game (Spain)
44. James Joyce - Ulysses (Ireland)
45. Miguel de Cervantes - Don Quixote (Spain)
46. Jeanette Winterson - Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit (Britain)
47. Charlotte Bronte - Jane Eyre (Britain)
48. Marcel Proust - In Search of Lost Time (France)
49. Julia Kristeva - The Old Man and the Wolves (France)
50. Umberto Eco - The Name of the Rose (Italy)

Oceania
51. Kate Grenville - The Secret River (Australia)
52. Mudrooroo - Wild Cat Falling (Australia)
53. Thomas Keneally - Schindler's List (Australia)
54. Pramoedya Ananta Toer - This Earth of Mankind (Indonesia)
55. Elizabeth Knox - The Vintner's Luck (New Zealand)

Carribean
56. V S Naipul – A House for Mr Biswas (Trinidad and Tobago)
57. Wide Sargasso Sea - Jean Rhys (Dominica)
58. Shani Mootoo - Cereus Blooms at Night (Trinidad)
59. Geoffrey Philp - Benjamin, My Son (Jamaica)
60. Marcia Douglas - Madam Fate (Jamaica)

North America
61. David Foster Wallace - Infine Jest (USA)
62. Leonard Cohen - Beautiful Losers (Canada)
63. Jhumpa Lahiri - Unaccustomed Earth (USA)
64. Shyam Selvadurai - Funny Boy (Canada)
65. Maya Angelou – I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (USA)
66. Toni Morrison - The Bluest Eye (USA)
67. Alice Walker - The Colour Purple (USA)
68. Harper Lee - To Kill a Mockingbird (USA)
69. William Faulkner - The Sound and the Fury (USA)
70. Eden Robinson - Blood Sports (Canada)

South America
71. Gabriel Garcia Marquez - One Hundred Years of Solitude (Colombia)
72. Laura Esquivel - Like Water for Chocolate (Mexico)
73. Isabel Allende - House of Spirits (Chile)
74. Paul Coelho - The Alchemist (Brazil)
75. Luisa Valenzuela - He Who Searches (Argentina)
76. Carlos Fuentes - Terra Nostra (Mexico)
77. Jorge Luis Borges - Collected Stories (Argentina)
78. Roberto Bolaño - 2666 (Chile)
79. Reinaldo Arenas - The Palace of the White Skunks (Cuba)
80. Juan José Saer - The Event (Argentina)

Literary, Feminist, and Antiracist Theory
81. bell hooks - Feminist Theory: From Margin to Centre
82. Simone DeBeauvoir - The Second Sex
83. Luce Irigaray – This Sex Which Is Not One
84. Helene Cixous – The Laugh of the Medusa
85. Homi Bhabha – The Location of Culture
86. Michel Foucault – History of Sexulity
87. Sherene Razack - Looking White People in the Eye
88. Dr. Beverly Daniel Tatum - Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria?
89. Anne Bishop – Becoming an Ally: Breaking the Cycle of Oppression
90. Paul Kivel - Uprooting Racism: How White People Can Work for Racial Justice

The Last Ten Books on the List
91. Hsien-Yung Pai - Wandering in the Garden, Waking from a Dream: Tales of Taipei Characters (Taipei)
92. Ye Zhaoyan - Nanjing 1937: A Love Story (China)
93. Salman Rushdie - Midnight's Children (Britain)
94. Michael Winter - This All Happened (Canada)
95. Nalo Hopkinson - Brown Girl in the Ring (Canada)
96. Hiromi Goto - Chorus of Mushrooms (Canada)
97. Octavia E. Butler - Fledgling (USA)
98. Romesh Gunesekera - Reef (Sri Lanka)
99. ed. Makeda Silvera - Piece of My Heart: A Lesbian of Colour Anthology
100. Thomas Bernhard - The Loser (Germany)

Bolded are the books that have been read! Hurrah!

Deja Vu on 12th April

Today reminded me of two days in Japan--the first and last days of my visit to Kyoto in September, on my way out of the country.

On the first day, I travelled an hour by train to Osaka in order to pick up some lost property. The previous day I had left a plastic bag containing my favourite black shawl and some Sakamoto Ryouma socks on the JR bus from Kochi. I had called JR up and managed to explain what I was looking for and where I had left it; they instructed me to visit the office at Osaka station the following day. When I arrived, however, my bag wasn't there; it had accidentally gone to Okayama. Thinking back now, perhaps the lost property staff were just curious to meet this shawl-and-historical-figure-sock-losing foreigner? In any case, I spent the morning going to Osaka, walking around the station for a while, and then going back to Kyoto, and that's why today reminds me of it. I left my hostel at 10AM checkout, dropped my backpack off in a storage locker at a downtown train station, and then, realizing that I had left my (new, pink!) umbrella in the hostel, went back to get it. Rather shorter than Kyoto to Osaka, and more successful, too.

On the last day in Kyoto, in spite of heavy rain I decided to go to a forested area in the north of the city. I arrived there, lightly damp, and got my feet totally soaked walking only a little ways into the forest. I glimpsed the big red tori gate of the temple in the forest, my actual goal. But the muddiness of the ground between me and the gate, and the fact that it was still raining and I wouldn't be able to take my camera out at all, lead me to give up at this point and take the next bus back to my hostel. I wanted to get to Tokyo by evening, and I didn't have much energy or enough time to do anything really good--and besides, it was raining--so I ended up heading straight to the shinkansen. It was a bit like that today. Because of my 6pm flight back to Sydney (which I will be boarding in not too long) I couldn't really do anything much, and a serious case of New Shoes Syndrome discouraged me from climing up to the Mount Coot-Tha lookout, so I spent the mid-day floating around the city on ferries and reading in parks, and then caught an earlier-than-necessary train to the airport.

I always feel bad when I waste time like this while travelling, but I guess it can't be helped.

Scientific Findings on 11th April 2009

1. Toasters are forbidden in the bathrooms and showers of the hostel where I am staying.

2. Carrying a DSLR-looking camera gains you unexpected artist cred with art gallery docents.

3. The "For Kids" summary cards for art at the Queensland Gallery of Modern Art are, except for the slightly patronising tone, better (more concisely, with less pointless grandiloquence) written and more insightful than the notes for adults.

Edited to add this critical update:

4. Passionfruit is delicious.

Accomplishments on 10th April 2009

My current location is Brisbane, on a random Easter weekend journey that wasn't planned at all. And if I had stopped to think, I mightn't have gone touristing on public holidays when all of the attractions would be closed! So far the Travel Success Rate of this trip is probably about 75%.

But I'm still feeling pretty accomplished, because today I:

1. Won a staring contest with an emu.
2. Confiscated a brown paper bag from a too-hungry kangaroo.
3. Got lost on the bus in Brisbane for like the 60th time in the last two days.

I went to Lone Pine Koala Reserve. The highlights were the free-roaming kangaroo enclosure in which I also roamed free, and the flying raptor display. Note koalas absent from highlights. Those dudes just sit in trees and eat. Laaaaame.

Adopted Joey

I met the woman whose hands you see here at the Sunday market in downtown Adelaide. She has adopted this orphaned joey, and will raise it and keep it on her country property for the rest of its life. She said it won't be possible to rehabilitate the joey when it grows older, because it has learned not to be afraid of humans. A friend of hers has adopted five kangaroos this way, and continues to care for them now that they are grown. When female kangaroos are hit by cars and die, joeys often survive in the pouch. If they aren't cared for by people, they too will undoubtedly not survive.

The joey was very soft.

Sunset at Glenelg, Adelaide

Taken February 13th.

Reading and Race

Earlier this year I stumbled, via the Feminist Science Fiction blog, upon a massive debate about race in fantasy and speculative fiction. I hadn't really thought about representation in SF before, so that was a good kick in the pants... but more importantly, I hadn't thought about the way much fantasy is based around something like medeival English culture. Keyword English. Those taverns, the travellers on horses, the lords and ladies and kings and queens and so on. It was this particular blog entry by deepad on livejournal, which really interested me. (Please do read it, but I have to ask you not to comment on it if you do disagree... the author has had more than enough negative comments to deal with already.)

Being, as I am, a white person of the Celt-blend variety, I never really realized that it's a privilege to look at fantasy novels and see settings that I can relate to as being similar to where my ancestors, if you were to look far enough back, came from. So I took a look at the links radiating from that entry and read bits of the discussion that it was part of, and particlarly I ended up looking at this LJ community, which challenges members to read 50 books by people of colour, and some other book challenges, and through other avenues around the same time I found Carleen Brice's blog, White Readers Meet Black Authors. The same topic came up on Editorial Ass, a blog I follow.

So all of this talk about reading challenges and introductions and affirmative action in reading choices made me wonder... How many books by people of colour did I read last year? The answer is eight. Eight out of sixty is pretty bad. I don't want to aim at a number of books, but I've decided to limit books by white writers to half of my reading this year. So if I read sixty books again this year, thirty of them will have been by people of colour.

Here's my list so far. I'm only at 4 out of 13, even though I've been thinking about it as I make my book choices. But I have 9 more months to make it up! If you're a reader, I encourage you to have a look at what you're reading. Unfortunately, if you stroll into a bookstore or a library, there will be more books by white writers than writers of colour, and that leaves us with this lame unbalanced fictional worldview. I've already really enjoyed some books I might otherwise not have read because of my goal this year. And I'm barely started.

But, without further ado, my reading from January-March 2009!

George R. R. Martin - A Storm of Swords (audiobook)
Michael Crichton - Prey
Geraldine Brooks - People of the Book
Jodi Picoult - The Pact
Amy Bloom - Away
George R. R. Martin - A Feast for Crows (audiobook)
Daniel Mason - The Piano Tuner
Larissa Behrendt - Home
Gabriel Garcia Marquez - Love in the Time of Cholera
Kim Edwards - The Memory Keeper's Daughter
Iain M. Banks - Consider Phlebas
April Sinclair - I Left My Back Door Open
Helen Neff - Accident of Birth