More on Shaun Tan

I'm still loving Shaun Tan's Tales From Outer Suburbia.


One of the stories in the collection, 'Eric' is available for viewing here. It's not the same experience as seeing it on the page, though. I post it in the hope that you, too, will go on to experience the wonder of the hard copy!


An interview of Shaun Tan, a great introduction to this excellent artist, can be found here.


I have heard Tan give a lecture before, and loved hearing his insights on the creative process and the nature of fiction. "All fiction is false," he reminds us, "what makes it convincing is that it runs alongside the truth."

Your innner polar bear

"I am your inner polar bear. Find me before it's too late."


So begins a powerful and thought-provoking story by Jeanette Winterson on the subject of the consequences of climate change.


It is definitely worth reading. You can find it here.

Banned books week

Banned books week is in full swing in the States, and this poem by Ellen Hopkins has been adopted as its manifesto.

It's powerful stuff.

"Ideas are incombustible."

Snow White

This gorgeous image is by Laura Barrett. It can be found with the Grimms' version of the Snow White fairytale here.

A book of villainous tales

I am very much enjoying reading Troll's Eye View, a collection of fairy tales retold from the "villain's" perspective. My favourite story so far is ' The Boy Who Cried Wolf ' by Holly Black, because it's dark and so much fun to read. If I had kids, this is the kind of book I'd read to them.

Salon.com's ever-insightful Laura Miller did a write-up of the book here.

An interesting point highlighted by many of the stories in this book is that classic villains don't often get up to much evil-doing. Perhaps they're just misunderstood?

The saga continues...

Publicity for the screen release of New Mooon is increasing, and the meta-life of Twilight is turning into as much of a saga as the actual story.

This weekend's The Australian featured a story which discusses what Twilight does to the vampire genre: "This is vampire lite. It dilutes and sanitises the vampire genre," says publisher Alison Urquhart. Journalist Emma Tom agrees, calling Twilight "the greatest vampire killer of them all."

I find it ironic that while Twilight fans are busy praising the chaste series for its depiction of a teen relationship in which sex is not essential, and while vampire lovers are criticising it for its misrepresentation of vampires, scores of readers are rushing into bookstores crying, "Give me more vampire books!"

Thus, within the space of a year the vampire genre has gone from catering to a niche market to providing for the 'mainstream', and Twilight readers have moved on to the 'real' blood-lusting, sex-driven vampire novels, anyway.

The medium and the message

I've said it before, and I'll say it again.

There is something about the tactile qualities of paper and ink and glue that can never be replaced by their electronic counterparts.

As a reader, I like to feel the weight and texture of books in my hands. I also tend to remember how to find bits and pieces of text by where they were positioned: about a third of the thickness in, on the left hand page near the top of the second paragraph.

As a compulsive writer, I use a word processor for larger projects (after all, it makes editing a dream) but I also have an array of notebooks and scraps of paper on which I jot down lines of inspiration and frustration as they come to mind. I have never really kept a diary (and oh! how it makes me feel like a failed writer!) but if you could bring together all the scraps of paper, the margins and the forgotten notebook pages on which I've scrawled thoughts as they came, you would have a diary of sorts. When I have new ideas for a narrative, I tend to write these by hand initially, then go on to word process. Typing these things out would never do.

Typing poetry would never do, either. Poetry, by nature, needs space to breathe. The mind has no time to breathe when word processing. Besides, once I'm finished, I like to see what the shapes of my letters tell me about my own frame of mind.

Sadly, I hear handwriting is on the decline. I can't help feeling that a certain type of insipiration is declining with it.

Umberto Eco discusses the problem here.

Easy Read = Trashy Novel ?

The brilliant Lev Grossman (author of The Magicians, a gritty fantasy novel I devoured in 24 hours a few weeks ago) on why good novels can be easy to read: "A good story is a dirty secret that we all share."

Read his article here.

What people like to read

To what extent is "literary merit" mutually exclusive with being a good read?

Says Nick Hornby of literary awards: "the books that have actually come to mean something to the culture have all been ignored, so what you are saying to people is the books you like are no good. It is not true and it is not right."

You can see the full interview in The Australian, here.

Nick Hornby's About A Boy is one of my all-time favourite books. If you've seen the film, don't presume you know what the book's about!

Meanwhile, another story in The Australian discusses popular misconceptions about the romance genre, and why women like to read it.

Even so, I read the first few pages of Candace Bushnell's One Fifth Avenue the other day and found myself completely disgusted with the poor grammar and overt plot devices.

The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

T. S. Eliot's ' The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock' has been my favourite poem since I first read it in 2003. This image is currently on my desktop, and it reminds me every day to eat my peaches.

Tales From Outer Suburbia

I have finally got round to buying Shaun Tan's Tales From Outer Suburbia, and it is a gorgeous book! As always, Shaun Tan's artwork is incredible! The book is a collection of short stories, all written and illustrated by Tan.

I have been a fan of Tan for some years. His illustrations make brilliant use of fantastical elements, showing the strangeness and absurdity of objects and places that we have come to think of as ordinary. In this book, Tan proves that he's a great writer too.

My favourite story so far is 'Distant Rain', which begins: "Have you ever wondered what happens to all the poems people write? The poems they never let anyone else read?"

The e-book debate

It's not quite recent, but here's a rather insightful article I found about the e-book debate. It considers all sides, which is good journalism.