Justine Larbalestier

reading, writing, eating, drinking, sport

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Dope, proofs, hoops, words

Today is going to be insanely off-the-charts busy so instead of the long and thoughtful post on the meaning of the “sublime” that I’ve been working on I’ll

  • recommend Sara Gran‘s Dope what I recently read and loved. Imagine a noir 1950s novel if it was written much more spare, set in New York, and narrated by an ex-(teetering on the edge of non-exness) junkie prostitute who now makes a living boosting jewellery. Not going to tell you another thing about it. Just that it’s short, there’s not a word out of place, and it made me cry. (Mind you Qantas ads make me cry.) Read it immediately!

    Any of you read any read-immediately books you’d like to recommend? Dope was recommended by Marrije. Thank you!

  • and exhalt in the page proofs of Magic’s Child what arrived. It looks like a real book! All typeset and stuff! So purty! So far the proofer has spotted a minor plot oopsie (someone not having something and then somehow out of nowhere having it) and reminded me once again that I’m the world’s worst punctuater. All she does is shift my commas around and remove and add semi-colons. Bless her! And sigh on my inability to ever understand the simple comma.

  • boast of my squeaky wheelness. I wrote to one of my favourite blogs, women’s hoops—twas a mournful letter whingeing that they hadn’t blogged the Aussies winning the World Championships and here’s how they responded. Bless ‘em!

  • The ABC has this fabulous wordmap project where they’re trying to map the regionalisms of Australian English. It doesn’t take a second to add regionalism of your own. My problem is I’m not at all sure where I picked up the words I used. I had no idea “grouse” was more of a Victorian word. I’ve never lived in Victoria. Only New South Wales, the ACT and Northern Territory. I reckon tellie, books, and radio must muddy the waters of pinning down regionalisms more than somewhat.

And now I roll up sleeves and get to work.

Posted by Justine at 9:21, 29 September 2006 under Basketball, Bloggery, Magic or Madness trilogy, Praising, Reading, Sport, Whingeing, Words & Language | 4 Comments »

Comments

  1. little willow Says:

    Ghosts of Albion: Witchery is out now! It is written by Christopher Golden and Amber Benson and set in Victorian England, with magic and ghosts and beasties and things that go bump in the night as well as hilarious sidekicks and famous poets. Of course, I recommend seeing and reading all of the GoA projects and books in order, which means starting at the very beginning and watching the first presentation online.

    http://www.bbc.co.uk/cult/ghosts/legacy/

    :)

    September 29th, 2006 at 10:24 AM

  2. veejane Says:

    > I had no idea “grouse” was more of a Victorian word.

    Speaking of word-variations, I spent a long moment wondering, “What does an historical period ghave to do with regionalisms?” Yes, hello, ignorant American.

    “Grouse” as in the bird, or “grouse” as in the verb meaning complain? (I use both, but don’t have much to contribute to an Asutralian dialect map. There have been some wonderful US dialect maps, from which it can be determined that it’s a miracle Americans can understand one another.)

    [Blog overlord grumpily points out: this question has already been asked and answered.]

    September 29th, 2006 at 9:59 AM

  3. veejane Says:

    I have been *firmly* *lessoned* in my reading skills and return, penitent, with weblinks for the enjoyment and edification of our host:

    Harvard dialect maps (North America)

    Really long Wikipedia article about British vs. American dialect, including cool stuff like morphology (with separate link to Australian dialect)

    Photographs of grouse

    September 29th, 2006 at 11:32 AM

  4. oyceter Says:

    Page proofs! The joy!

    Also, completely off topic, I read Mely’s account of your dinner with her and Rachel and am immensely jealous, particularly of your ability to eat all things that look like braaaaaiiiinnnns.

    Mmmmm, braaaaaiiiiiinnnnns.

    October 4th, 2006 at 5:21 PM

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