Gillian Polack's Blog, page 275

gillpolack @ 2011-01-17T12:28:00

This is a quick heads-up for those who wanted to find the rest of my donation-in-kind to the Queensland flood relief. If you don't need a copy of Baggage (because you already have one) and if you really, don't want to consult the historian side of me, it's worth checking out the hundreds of other possibilities. Such an array of books and services!

Mine are here:

http://authorsforqueensland.wordpress.com/2011/01/16/a-copy-of-the-anthology-baggage-gillian-polack/ (One of my personal copies, currently in hiding under my bed. Signed if you want it signed.)

http://authorsforqueensland.wordpress.com/2011/01/16/consultation-with-a-medievalist-dr-gillian-polack/ (They've used the Women's History Month bio, so it's about a decade old. I really like the photo though. It was taken at the Women's History Month launch in 2002, I think. The bio is hilarious - those 'over twenty short pieces' now amount to well over 300 short pieces - excluding this blog - and there are 2 novels and 2 anthologies and, looking at it, not even Wikipedia is up to date, nor, for that matter is my own webpage - I ought to do something about that - but I can't, I've got those 4 articles to finish today. Anyhow, if I know you - from this blog, from Facebook, from real life - and you win the bid, I'll add a bit of extra time to the consultation, simply because of your amazing innate good taste.).

The main site is here:

http://authorsforqueensland.wordpress.com/

Bid early and often!!

gillpolack @ 2011-01-16T22:58:00

For about three hours this afternoon I did amazing amounts of work. If I could do just one more hour of amazing work, I would be able to say "hah!" at the hot weather. Three more hours would be even better, because I'm halfway through four different things and it would be rather nice to finish them off. Alas, however, the heat has finished me off.

I plan to do my one more hour, at least. I plan to deceive my body into thinking that it's cool by sipping slowly on iced strawberry liqueur and doing that hour of work the whole while. At the end of this, I shall at least have done my daily minimum (achievement!) and I shall be so tipsy that I'll have a very good chance of getting some sleep (double achievement!).

My yesterday's achievement was getting the complete Conflux cookbook off to the editor on time.

I'm pretty sure I didn't achieve anything at all the day before yesterday.

Friends have started coming home from their summer break. Their first question is "What did you do on your holiday?" At this stage, I am accepting suggestions for answers to this question because "I finished a very draft chapter of my dissertation, some novel, a bunch of research, a whole cookbook, some articles, some book reviews, and I filled in innumerable forms" is apparently not acceptable. Neither, apparently, is "I didn't know I was on holiday."

I don't find it depressing that I don't take holiday in summer. I just find it difficult when everyone around me assumes that I do, even when I never have. I have a superhero dual existence (and also, I watched Smallville tonight). I shall assume a secret identity and wear a cape next year when I work through summer and see if that helps my friends get their head around my December and January.

I would take holiday if I saw a point in it. Being on holiday and alone at home, though, is a mug's game. I've had a thoroughly enjoyable summer and done much useful stuff will will stand me in good stead throughout the year. And I have my leave waiting for me to take when there are things I want to do and people I want to be with.

I just need an acceptable way of answering that question.

gillpolack @ 2011-01-16T14:48:00

You might want to check out Horrorscope. I said I needed to understand a wider range of books at a deeper level - this is one of the ways I'm going about it.

Special guest post

I just emailed Mary Victoria (who has her author copies of the new book!) and told her that her being a guest on her own blog would be just plain silly so she should visit mine (soon). It then struck me (after I had sent the email) that it would be fun to be a guest on my own blog. I shall interview myself, I think. Right now.

 

  Hi, Gillian, welcome to your own blog. I have some tricky questions for you.

 I am an expert at leaping to the side when tricky questions are hurled at me, so fire away.

 

  First of all, what is the most interesting thing you found in your computer drawer today?

Not the Windows Service Pack. That was what I was looking for. No, I actually found a $20 gift voucher for chocolate. I shall spend it all on dark chocolate enrobing Buderim ginger.

 

  Besides eating Buderim ginger, are you doing anything to support flood victims?

 Don't look at me so accusingly. I am! Or I think I am. Or I may be if anyone's interested. I've offered a copy of Baggage and an hour's consultation about things Medieval for one auction and naming rights for a character in a novel in another. Everything else I donate is between me and my bank account.

 

  Do you actually know anyone in Queensland ?

Honestly! What a question! I know my brothers and my nieces and nephews (once of whom is giving me a great-niece in a mere two months) and a bunch of writers and artists and members of the National Council of Jewish Women. Friends and family, in other words. Lots of them. The friends may look the other way, whistling, but the family has no choice but to accept my existence. And so far they're all alive and kicking. Especially the kicking.

  

What are you writing right now?

Right now, this blogpost. Also the Conflux cookbook. Also my time travel novel (with added Templar). Also a dissertation. Also applications for travel grants. Also book reviews and essays. I tried doing them all at once the day before yesterday and needed up watching anime. From now on it's strictly no more than two things at a time. Two things plus coffee. And choc-coated ginger. I can multiskill as far as choc-coated ginger.

 

You turn fifty this year, are your friends tired of you reminding them?

 I do and they are and I am entirely enjoying ageing ungracefully. Also, I want presents. Lots of presents. And the darkest and richest chocolate cake. And…excuse me while I admire my gift card and dream about chocolate ginger for a bit. I've been on diet for too long and the yearning for dark chocolate is overwhelming.

 

  On the subject of overwhelming, I have an overwhelming desire for you to talk about your current novel and to ask you some questions about Life Through Cellophane.

 My mind has been overtaken by dark chocolate. You will just have to wait until I am recovered or until someone else asks.

Aliette de Bodard - Harbinger of the Storm

I promised you a review of Aliette de Bodard's new book but summer has infected the grey matter and I have to offer you is torpor. It says something about the book that it didn't remain as my handbag book for very long, despite it being summer and me having lots of big deadlines this week and there being not much energy left in me.

I met Aliette de Bodard's first book when my life went pearshaped, this time last year. I'd forgotten that until I re-read what I had to say about it. I liked it, but I didn't love it. It was more than competently written. It was simply not my cup of tea. The world it was set in was fascinating, however, and definitely one I wanted to watch.

De Bodard's new book, Harbinger of the Storm, is more to my taste. Her characterisation has improved (though still not as deep as I like) and her world just as fascinating. What makes this book so much more fun is that the palpable fear starts early on and that it's not based on splashing blood or nightmares. It's based on one character knowing just how thin the ice is upon which all the others are skating and yet not being able to stop more and more of them pouring onto the frozen lake to show off their ice dancing skills. That was a bad metaphor. There is no ice in this novel. It's all Aztecs.

The focus was still on the mystery rather than the fantasy, but this time I was prepared for it and I enjoyed it.

De Bodard is dangerously addictive. She still writes books about men, but the position of women (and the potential for their lives) is clearer in this novel. Also that de Bodard is doing what she said she was (in her comment on my previous review) - she is very sympathetic to women in fiction, and yet is writing about a culture that is aggressively male - she understands the conflict and handles it better in this novel. What I said in my answer to her comment* still holds, too "If you're being true to the base culture and there is no equality in it, then writing a man's book is a good approach, because it leaves the female reader a place to read from without being diminished."

I would very much like to see de Bodard's work in a different culture because I want to see how she handles women n a framework where women have more options and where one doesn't have to break out of the social norms to create a strong female character, but I also want to read more of her Aztec books.

The reason I want to read more of them is pretty important. De Bodard is developing a very nice way of describing peoples' interface with their religious life. She uses actual belief as a basis for the fantasy elements. This is wonderful. It assumes that the stuff that entails deep belief is real. From this assumption flows the understanding that, if it's real, then religious ritual may be all that saves mankind. And this is the heart of the novel. What we do, matters. In that way, it's not just a mystery, it's about Mystery.** Where the numinous touches our world and what happens when it roams uncontrolled.



* am I always this recursive? I blame the cookbook, which was all about me finding out what I did and what the people I worked with did

** Sorry, Medievalism outs itself. The Mystery Plays are important to me and tend to creep into my mind when someone raises the relationship between religion and ordinary life.***

*** Not that the Mystery Plays have anything to do with my own religious belief. I am modern and Jewish, not Medieval and Christian.****

****This last footnote is purely to plague yasminke .

gillpolack @ 2011-01-14T13:41:00

Dear Paper

You really didn't have to spread yourself over so much floor. I was only trying to pick you up so that I could finish today's editing. I was not trying to insult or injure you.

I have determined a suitable punishment to such an over-reaction. When I have entered all my changes, I shall not put you in my back-up cabinet (where all good papers go to rest, in case the computer wipes itself without warning). Instead I shall rip you into note-sized shreds and use you to scribble on.

If you had behaved yourself, you could have had a dignified demise.

Gillian

PS to everyone - I shall do a proper post later today. I have a book to talk about! Aliette de Bodard's latest.

PPS I keep wanting to write a post about the blood libel. Someone tried to accuse me of it once, you see. By 'tried' I mean that it was in class and I was teaching food history. Power is everything. That class got a complete run-down on kashruth, on the effect of the fate of the Temple on sacrifices in Judaism and on Jewish food history, on anti-Semitism in England from the eleventh century, on the use of food habits by the Inquisition to identify relapsed Jews for the purposes of burning, and on how I've always wondered if people who purvey such stories are secretly harbouring a wish to do these things themselves. The person who accused me of ingesting babies' blood (she thought it was a regular ingredient in matzah) really didn't know what hit her. One of the other students thought my disquisition was fascinating, but pointed out that reading the ingredients on a matzah pack would have done the trick. That second student has become a friend.

PPPS Somehow, this post got garbled. Hopefully it is now fixed.

gillpolack @ 2011-01-12T14:59:00

I promised some folks I would remind them about workshops early enough so that they could book. If you were thinking of doing a workshop or a short course and say "Nah, I'll do it another time" please rethink. Some of the courses are going to be replaced with different ones (this is their last time round) for one thing. For another, the more students I have, the more income I earn and the less I worry about the Europe trip. Mostly, though, the cycle for these subjects is nearing an end and I may not be teaching them again for a long while. This happened a few years ago with Arthurian courses and now it's happening with food history and (to a lesser extent) with family history and memoirs.

Manipulating readers' minds (12 February). When I was editing Masques and Baggage, I explained to writers how punctuation and paragraphing were about manipulation. Three of the writers challenged me to teach a workshop for locals who had missed out on my apparently rivetting explanations. The ACT Writers' Centre thought the challenge was interesting, and has taken it up.
This workshop is very hands-on. Writers send me samples ahead of time and we look quite specifically at what they can do and how they can go about it and the effects different uses have on readers. No readers will be harmed during the preparation for this workshop.

Writing your family's history starts on 17 February. It explores family stories and how to tell them. We also deal with research techniques and finding more information about families and their background. Most times I've taught it, the class has opted for extra work on writing skills.

Medievalishness!!. Lots of fabulous historical background for novelists and people who love the Middle Ages and RPGers and other geeks. Twenty odd years of research have to find an out in my teaching somewhere and, alas for Canberra, this is the place. I have bad jokes and a board game and tons of new things to talk about. Last time I taught this, the class insisted they learn how to curse someone. The time before, they wanted cool tales of heroes and monsters.

The food history course starts on 5 May. It will largely be tailored to student interests (in other words, if the class wants to learn about Ancient Roman food, I will teach it and if they're interested in the culinary arts of cooking during the Blitz then we'll examine mock apricot tarts closely - if what they really want are trade routes, then I *love* teaching trade routes), but will include a healthy dose of Medieval food and a recipe or two from Jane Austen's family.

gillpolack @ 2011-01-11T13:24:00

So far everyone I know (including my brothers) are clear of the floodwaters (well, mostly - 6 inches of water in the yard doesn't count). Please, please stay that way!!

gillpolack @ 2011-01-10T15:28:00

I've been wondering all weekend why I've been oversensitive and fragile. I'm coming into anniversary period. It's easy to forget that the anniversary of a parent's death is difficult, but when that's the same period as my own interesting events of last summer and when I'm still not through medical tests, suddenly fragility makes sense.

In a perfect world, people would balance the negative comments with nice things and life would throw me breaks as well as hard balls. This is not a perfect world.

It is, however, a world where time passes. I'll be over this by February. Next year will be easier. Then the year after will be easier still.

I have several friends who also have a bit of bleak memory around this time of year. I'm thinking of you.

gillpolack @ 2011-01-09T20:11:00

I just realised it's a leap year this year. In April the leap month will have happened and my mental calendars will be back in alignment. Yay!!!