Gillian Polack's Blog, page 307

gillpolack @ 2010-06-29T11:32:00

I was looking at wordlists for tomorrow's class (our theme of the day will be "Expand your modern vocabulary using old words.") and I finally realised that the reason so many Yiddish words and phrases are a comfortable fit in English is because many of them're cognate*. Not all of them, but enough for comfort's sake. And this is why the Yiddish in the book I hated the other day (which I didn't tell you about - I read a book a day or thereabouts, you don't need to know that this one entirely...

gillpolack @ 2010-06-28T13:01:00

Wednesday's normally my day for achieving great evil, but I might have to apologise to my students and be nice for a change. For one thing, it's the last week they have me for more than 5 weeks in a term. For another thing, I have achieved great evil already today. My new article at Bibliobuffet includes serious consideration of anime, Arthuriana and LM Alcott. This is where anime watchers who have read Eight Cousins will emerge to argue with me and where everyone shakes their head in won...

gillpolack @ 2010-06-27T16:41:00

I'm reading "The Weathermonger" for work. One of the most marvellous things about doing a doctorate is the essential reading. Last time I got to read all kinds of glamorous Medieval texts and for a few months I even got to sit in ancient libraries and read them direct from the manuscript. There is nothing like reading an illuminated late fourteenth century manuscript under a painted roof, with daffodils and snow and the glowing stone of Oxford outside the window. (Of course I sat at that ...

Aussie spec fic writers

Amanda Greenslade, of the Specusphere is putting together as complete as possible a list of Australian speculative fiction writers. If you or anyone you know or know of is missing or any of their details are incorrect, now's a very good time to email her and let her know, because she's adding details at a rate of knots.

While on the subject of lists, Tehani Wessley has put together a list of stuff that's eligible for this year's Ditmar's. She asks that you email her if there's something miss...

gillpolack @ 2010-06-25T22:32:00

Natasha has gone back to her normal life and I'm returning to mine. She was wonderful to work with: she's bright and she worked hard. I gave her a range of tasks, from the exciting (the author interviews, and we wrote a book review together) to the mind-numbingly boring. And she never complained!

Now that she's finished, I keep thinking about other things she could do that would be learning experiences for her and useful for me. Some of the planning-for-novel we had discussed doing never e...

Interview - Kim Falconer

Hi,

My name is Natasha Pearson and I'm Gillian Polack's work experience student this week. We thought it would be a good idea if I interviewed one of my favourite authors Kim Falconer. Kim Falconer's books have every element a fantasy/sci-fi reader could possible want in them. Her series 'The Quantum Enchantment' combines adventure, romance and fantasy with futuristic and historical settings and includes time travel and beast-speaking. It has just the right mix of sword fighting, magic and...

gillpolack @ 2010-06-23T15:50:00

I'm having a quiet few minutes catching up on myself. I've had one minor health issue this week, and everything else has been about work.

My bibliographies are proceeding apace and my poor long-suffering work experience student was given a 26 page list of books, instructions on how to use the ANU LIibrary catalogue and left to find things. That was this morning, while I was teaching. It worked out well for her on the 'how do you get work done when you're home alone' front, too. It worked wel...

gillpolack @ 2010-06-21T12:48:00

I've another calendar program that has slightly diferent information to the others and means I now (when I put everything together) will have a functional calendar for the year I was after. For anyone who wants a Medieval calendar but doesn't care about phases of the moon or about sunset times, you can find it here.

As I was just explaining to my work experience student, I rather suspect I went to university with the calendar's creator. That was more than twenty years ago, so I may be wron...

gillpolack @ 2010-06-19T15:29:00

Another reason I like writing for Bibliobuffet. Today's "Behind the Words" column talks about why it's important to look for books that don't get the big attention.

This is something I care a fair amount about. That's why it's one of the subjects that keeps appearing on my blog.

It's easy to work out that the Hugo or Aurealis finalists are worth reading. It's easy to find out about books that get wide publicity in major newspapers and on major review sites. Then we can read them. Or not rea...

gillpolack @ 2010-06-19T00:47:00

Today and possibly tomorrow and maybe even Sunday is all about bibliographies. This will be derailed (and back to research proposal) if life demands. I need to sort out what's around and start working out what I need of what's around and how I'll access it.

I've been champing at the bit to get started on this for a while. My initial checks were all very well, but they didn't help me with my thinking past a certain point. And this is where I admit that looking at lists of books and scannin...