Aimee Said's Blog, page 11
March 7, 2011
Happy International Women's Day
Today is the 100th anniversary of International Women's Day. Even though I really, really hate the fact that IWD only exists because women and men are still so far from being equal, it's a great day to celebrate our achievements and strengthen our resolve to achieve equality for women all over the world.
In honour of IWD, here are a few women I really admire.*
Meg Rosoff - not only do I love her books, but her blog posts make me laff and laff. She also reminds me that everyone gets writer's block; that there are advantages to not being published when you're very young; and not to take myself too seriously.
Pip Lincolne - you may know Pip from the Meet Me At Mike's blog and/or books. She's someone who's worked hard to make a living doing what she loves and now she's receiving the karmic payback she deserves. Not only is Pip a supertalented crafter, she's also very generous, kind and an all-round ace chick.
Maggie Beer - I love watching Maggie on TV - she's so warm and lovely, you just know she'd be fun to hang out with, and her passion for fresh local produce is addictive.
Aside from being great at what they do, what these women have in common is that they've found success by following their passion. I aspire to be more like all of them.
I'll leave the final thought for the day to Dusty...
* This list is by no means exhaustive, obv., otherwise it would go on for the interwebs equivalent of milesandmiles.
In honour of IWD, here are a few women I really admire.*
Meg Rosoff - not only do I love her books, but her blog posts make me laff and laff. She also reminds me that everyone gets writer's block; that there are advantages to not being published when you're very young; and not to take myself too seriously.
Pip Lincolne - you may know Pip from the Meet Me At Mike's blog and/or books. She's someone who's worked hard to make a living doing what she loves and now she's receiving the karmic payback she deserves. Not only is Pip a supertalented crafter, she's also very generous, kind and an all-round ace chick.
Maggie Beer - I love watching Maggie on TV - she's so warm and lovely, you just know she'd be fun to hang out with, and her passion for fresh local produce is addictive.
Aside from being great at what they do, what these women have in common is that they've found success by following their passion. I aspire to be more like all of them.
I'll leave the final thought for the day to Dusty...
* This list is by no means exhaustive, obv., otherwise it would go on for the interwebs equivalent of milesandmiles.
March 6, 2011
Star picks
Blog posts starred in my google reader this week...
I want a writing hut. I really do.I will be playing Forever Young Adult's Anne of Green Gables drinking game as soon as I can round up a few bosom friends and a bottle of Aunt Marilla's cordial.YA Highway dissected the YA Mafiahysteria conspiracy theory rumour and Justine Larbelestier came out of her RSI-imposed blogging exile to call on authors to embrace bad reviews.*Emma Barrie's confessions of things she never told her parents made me chuckle...and feel guilty (but we all know we lied for our parents' own good).Fiona at Words and Flavours posted about first times - the ones we remember and the ones we don't.Cory Doctorow's article in The Guardian about information overload made me feel better about occasionally hitting the 'mark all as read' button.And I remembered how much I love this
* In fact, according to the Stanford Daily, bad reviews may increase sales.
I want a writing hut. I really do.I will be playing Forever Young Adult's Anne of Green Gables drinking game as soon as I can round up a few bosom friends and a bottle of Aunt Marilla's cordial.YA Highway dissected the YA Mafia
* In fact, according to the Stanford Daily, bad reviews may increase sales.
February 27, 2011
Star picks
Among the gems that Google Reader delivered me last week were:
Karen Tayleur's post on Maslow's Theory and bookstores (which, given my last post, certainly holds true for me, too)according to Forever Young Adult, my signature cocktail is something called a La Cola Nostra. If I ever find out what 'pimento dram' is, I might try it.*I personally hate Cadbury Creme Eggs (and the advertising campaign with them offing themselves in gleefully violent ways disturbs me), but if you're going to eat the evil little buggers you may as well make them youself.Molly O'Neill's post, and the video that inspired it, made me cry a little. In a good way, mostly.
** Or I might not...there's something about the name that's putting me off - I think it reminds me a little too much of 'colonoscopy'.
Karen Tayleur's post on Maslow's Theory and bookstores (which, given my last post, certainly holds true for me, too)according to Forever Young Adult, my signature cocktail is something called a La Cola Nostra. If I ever find out what 'pimento dram' is, I might try it.*I personally hate Cadbury Creme Eggs (and the advertising campaign with them offing themselves in gleefully violent ways disturbs me), but if you're going to eat the evil little buggers you may as well make them youself.Molly O'Neill's post, and the video that inspired it, made me cry a little. In a good way, mostly.
** Or I might not...there's something about the name that's putting me off - I think it reminds me a little too much of 'colonoscopy'.
February 26, 2011
Excuses to buy books
Borders going into adminstration reminded me that it's been a while since I visited my favourite local independent bookstore. I would be too, too sad if The Sun Bookshop or (worser) The Younger Sun closed, so I figured I'd better do my bit and support them with my business.*
Luckily I went in with a strict shopping list, because it took all my self control not to come out with a trolley-load of books.
I got this
because EVERYONE in the blogosphere has raved about how great it is.
And this
because both Kate and Steph gave it excellent reviews.
Now I just have to decide which to read first...
* If all this sounds like I'm trying to justify buying books, you're right - I've curbed my book buying this year because I'm trying to save my pay to take a couple of months off the Day Job and get stuck into my next book.
Luckily I went in with a strict shopping list, because it took all my self control not to come out with a trolley-load of books.
I got this
because EVERYONE in the blogosphere has raved about how great it is.
And this
because both Kate and Steph gave it excellent reviews.
Now I just have to decide which to read first...
* If all this sounds like I'm trying to justify buying books, you're right - I've curbed my book buying this year because I'm trying to save my pay to take a couple of months off the Day Job and get stuck into my next book.
February 20, 2011
My name is Aimee and I am a blog addict*
Where other people's online crack is Twitter or Facebook, my own weakness is blogs and Google Reader is my dealer. Every day it delivers around 125 new posts on everything from who wore what to the BAFTAS to highlights from the Nancy Drew Cookbook, and of course lots of bookish and writerly news.
And it's ace, but it's quite hard to keep up with and I inevitably start reading a long and involved post and then the phone rings or the cat wants feeding or (heaven forbid) I have to do some real work and I star it to come back to and rarely do.
Today I accidentally hit the 'recently starred link' on my GReader homepage and was presented with a slew of articles that I'd either meant to get back to, or email to a friend justforlaffs, or refer to again in the future, and - lo and behold- they were really interesting! But I'd never gotten back to them because I have the memory of a forgetful gnat. So, from today, on Mondays I'm going to spend some time with my star picks and - ever the oversharer - I thought you might find something interesting in them too.
My star picks for the week of 14 February:
How glasses ruined my life by Kate Constable asks the timeless question: '...did my glasses make me into a nerd, or was the nerdiness always there, just waiting for the specs to bring it into flower?' I'm not quite sure what the fact that I was thrilled the day I got my first pair of (Tootsie-style) specs at 14 says about me...Meg Rosoff's Battle hymn of the lemur mother cracked me upas did Rumours I've heard about Anna Wintour (The Hairpin)My Girl Friday covered some of my favourite flicks in her round-up of John Hughes movies (sigh, part of me still wishes I was Molly Ringwald).* Not a bloggING addict, as the scarcity of recent posts will attest.
And it's ace, but it's quite hard to keep up with and I inevitably start reading a long and involved post and then the phone rings or the cat wants feeding or (heaven forbid) I have to do some real work and I star it to come back to and rarely do.
Today I accidentally hit the 'recently starred link' on my GReader homepage and was presented with a slew of articles that I'd either meant to get back to, or email to a friend justforlaffs, or refer to again in the future, and - lo and behold- they were really interesting! But I'd never gotten back to them because I have the memory of a forgetful gnat. So, from today, on Mondays I'm going to spend some time with my star picks and - ever the oversharer - I thought you might find something interesting in them too.
My star picks for the week of 14 February:
How glasses ruined my life by Kate Constable asks the timeless question: '...did my glasses make me into a nerd, or was the nerdiness always there, just waiting for the specs to bring it into flower?' I'm not quite sure what the fact that I was thrilled the day I got my first pair of (Tootsie-style) specs at 14 says about me...Meg Rosoff's Battle hymn of the lemur mother cracked me upas did Rumours I've heard about Anna Wintour (The Hairpin)My Girl Friday covered some of my favourite flicks in her round-up of John Hughes movies (sigh, part of me still wishes I was Molly Ringwald).* Not a bloggING addict, as the scarcity of recent posts will attest.
February 13, 2011
Unfunny Valentines
I have bad memories of Valentine's Days of my youth, to put it mildly. For my first few years of high school, VDay was spent gazingly longingy at the half-dead roses paraded from class to class by girls who not only had boyfriends but had boyfriends who they met at the station before school. And it didn't matter that I thought VDay was a load of bollocks or that their boyfriends were idiots, they had Someone.
On Valentine's Day in Year 10, I finally had Someone. At least at the beginning of the day. We'd only been going out for a few weeks (and he'd been at a school camp for a week of that, so really we barely knew each other at all), and I wasn't in love with him and I didn't think we were going to spend the rest of our lives together. But I did think on that I might get a half-dead rose to call my own, or at least a flowery card with a poem in it*.
Instead I got dumped. Over the phone.** And while I was trying not to cry like a hysterical Girl, he quoted a song that he thought summed up our relationship and why it had to end.
Adolescent Heartbreaker: You know 'This one goes out to the one I love' by REM?
Aimee: Yeah
AH: You know when he sings, 'This one goes out to the one I love/This one goes out to the one I've left behind/A simple prop to occupy my time'?
Aimee: Yeah.
AH: I guess you were my simple prop.
Aimee: But it's Valentine's Day.
AH: Yeah. Sorry about that.
The moral of this story? Don't go out with plonkers who quote Michael Stipe.
* He did have form for writing angsty poems about love, so this wasn't as unrealistic as it may sound.
** This was back in the dark ages before you could dump someone via text message or IM or by changing your relationship status on Facebook back to 'single' - all avenues that I'm sure this boy would have taken if the technology had been invented back then.
On Valentine's Day in Year 10, I finally had Someone. At least at the beginning of the day. We'd only been going out for a few weeks (and he'd been at a school camp for a week of that, so really we barely knew each other at all), and I wasn't in love with him and I didn't think we were going to spend the rest of our lives together. But I did think on that I might get a half-dead rose to call my own, or at least a flowery card with a poem in it*.
Instead I got dumped. Over the phone.** And while I was trying not to cry like a hysterical Girl, he quoted a song that he thought summed up our relationship and why it had to end.
Adolescent Heartbreaker: You know 'This one goes out to the one I love' by REM?
Aimee: Yeah
AH: You know when he sings, 'This one goes out to the one I love/This one goes out to the one I've left behind/A simple prop to occupy my time'?
Aimee: Yeah.
AH: I guess you were my simple prop.
Aimee: But it's Valentine's Day.
AH: Yeah. Sorry about that.
The moral of this story? Don't go out with plonkers who quote Michael Stipe.
* He did have form for writing angsty poems about love, so this wasn't as unrealistic as it may sound.
** This was back in the dark ages before you could dump someone via text message or IM or by changing your relationship status on Facebook back to 'single' - all avenues that I'm sure this boy would have taken if the technology had been invented back then.
February 6, 2011
Many hoppy returns
Image from Disapproving Rabbits. I believe this fellow is called Toby...The Year of the Rabbit has just begun! Apparently this is a year of the metal hare...I'm not sure what that means, but it doesn't sound as cuddly as I like my bunnies to be.
To celebrate the year of the rabbit you could:
make dumplings (not out of bunnies, obv.)knit a bunnyread your Chinese zodiac fortune for the year* make yourself some bunny slippers.* Hopefully it's more optimistic than mine which says that Mr Fantapants (a fellow Ox) and I can look forward to hard work, little reward and not much fun. It also warns "you may prone to insomnia or accidental mass annihilation". Sounds like it could be a tiring, dangerous year Chez Fantapants!
January 28, 2011
Sports I could get into: Puppy Bowl
Don't worry, Puppy Bowl isn't anything to do with bowling puppies. From what Wikipedia tells me, it's shown in the States on the Animal Planet network, on the afternoon of the Super Bowl football game.
Basically, they put a lot of puppies (each representing the animal shelter they come from) on a model football field and let them run around together. Excellent! If I was a gambler, I'd back Max - I reckon those aerodynamic ears must give him some kind of advantage...
And this guy officially has the best job in the world.*
* After working in the sloth orphanage. And teaching baby otters to swim.
Basically, they put a lot of puppies (each representing the animal shelter they come from) on a model football field and let them run around together. Excellent! If I was a gambler, I'd back Max - I reckon those aerodynamic ears must give him some kind of advantage...
And this guy officially has the best job in the world.*
* After working in the sloth orphanage. And teaching baby otters to swim.
January 18, 2011
Authors for Queensland online auction
Want to do more to help those affected by Queensland's floods and get something for yourself at the same time? Then take a gander at the Authors for Queensland auction. The auction has been organised by authors Kate Gordon, Katrina Germein, Fleur McDonald and Emily Gale, largely thanks to the Power of Twitter.*
As well as signed copies of loads of great books, there are some very special items up for grabs, including:
manuscript assessments/reports by some top authors, including Penni Russon, Jackie French and Maggie Aldersonmentorships and consultationsand some very special treats and experiences.Bidding is open until Monday 24 January.
And if something crafty is more your style (or also your style), Toni Coward is keeping a master list of flood-benefit auctions on her blog, make it perfect.
* Which makes me think yet again that I really must overcome my Twitter aversion, because I really would have liked to contribute to the auction but only found out about it after contributions closed :(
As well as signed copies of loads of great books, there are some very special items up for grabs, including:
manuscript assessments/reports by some top authors, including Penni Russon, Jackie French and Maggie Aldersonmentorships and consultationsand some very special treats and experiences.Bidding is open until Monday 24 January.
And if something crafty is more your style (or also your style), Toni Coward is keeping a master list of flood-benefit auctions on her blog, make it perfect.
* Which makes me think yet again that I really must overcome my Twitter aversion, because I really would have liked to contribute to the auction but only found out about it after contributions closed :(
January 13, 2011
Online vs. instore book buying - discussion on Literary Life
Megan at Literary Life has been running a week-long discussion on online vs. instore book buying. While we all love to buy books at the lowest price possible,* there's more to buying from cheaper overseas bookselling sites than just the fact that your hard-earned isn't going into the pockets of Australian retailers.
Yesterday's discussion was from the point of view of authors, and I was most chuffed to have my thoughts on the matter included.
* because the cheaper the book the more of them we can afford to buy, obv.
Yesterday's discussion was from the point of view of authors, and I was most chuffed to have my thoughts on the matter included.
* because the cheaper the book the more of them we can afford to buy, obv.
