Gillian Polack's Blog, page 332

gillpolack @ 2009-12-15T16:33:00

I don't mean to write posts every other minute, but a link to the December Australian Spec Fic Blog Carnival hit my inbox and I thought you might like to see it.

gillpolack @ 2009-12-15T15:54:00

Canberra people: is anyone free on Saturday night? There's a double Flynn feature at the NFSA and I dearly want to go and would rather not go alone. It's Lilacs in the Spring and Montana and starts at 7 pm. Tickets are $10 full price. We can have tea and coffee at my place afterwards, if you want.

We might need to phone ahead or book ahead - I'd need to check up on that. It's an old fashioned cinema, with red plush seats and wooden floor for the centre aisle, so we'd being seeing the m...

Jewish Christmas Pudding

My late grandmother's recipe, in her own words. By request. Let your eyes glaze and glide gently over this entry if you've seen the recipe before or if it offends your sensitivities.

Christmas Pudding (Medium Rich)

1 lb suet
¾ lb fine breadcrumbs
¾ lb brown sugar
¼ lb flour
1 lb sultanas
1 lb currants
¼ lb mixed peel
½ teaspoon mixed spice
a good pinch salt
1 lemon
4 eggs
½ pt beer or milk
½ gill brandy

Prepare all the ingredients. Sieve flour & mix with crumbs & finely chopped suet. Add fruit & choppe...

gillpolack @ 2009-12-15T11:08:00

I just received a Google Alert for one of my books. Why is everything slightly hilarious in Latin?

ETA: It's today. Everything's just a bit amusing. For instance, there is a discussion on the PurpleZone (HarperVoyager fan area) on the best way of cooking vampire.

gillpolack @ 2009-12-14T23:17:00

I promised recipes soon. In the interim, enjoy a letter about plum pudding and the sorrowful lot of an author in 1822. I hereby volunteer myself to write as many essays as it will take to earn myself plum pudding, also. Or I could just accept I've eaten too much already with Chanukah and not make one at all, which is probably more sensible.

While I ponder this, I shall nibble on a chocolate coin. I shouldn't have any, as they were all won by various people on Saturday, but various people...

gillpolack @ 2009-12-14T11:24:00

I have three reviews to write this week, maybe four, and then I shall have run out, entirely. >lj user="girliejones"> worried about the length of Brandon Sanderson's next volume to Jordan's Wheel of Time, but it just arrived in the mail and it doesn't look bad, and I've decided I can finish it along with my belated scholarly reviews, before the end of Chanukah. This is a quiet week and perfect for such endeavours. If I run out of review before Saturday, then I'll do the oustanding Angry Ro...

Lavie Tidhar - The Bookman

The latest book I've read from Angry Robot's review scheme is Lavie Tidhar's The Bookman. Since Tidhar's name keeps cropping up in my vicinity, I was very curious to check out his writing. My verdict? It's a lot of fun, not so much because it's a humorous book, but because it's full of literary games.

Ignore the English past as it happened. Like Dan Abnett's Triumff, this is an alternate London where the timelines we know are warped and strange and corrupted. People who lived centuries ...

gillpolack @ 2009-12-13T21:15:00

I wasn't expecting Chanukah presents, so it's taken til now for the lovely things I've been given to make themselves known. My friends obviously know me, for I have a bottle of Moet, some rather good coffee beans, a 2010 diary (in Hebrew), lemons, loquats, lots of chocolate, some practical goodies and a very pretty blank book. That's not everything. When I tidied up last night, I put some things in safe places, so I am due pleasant discoveries as the rest appears.

My leftovers include nearl...

gillpolack @ 2009-12-13T13:04:00

I had a lovely time yesterday. I was tired beyond imagining, but the only time it showed was when I tried reading aloud and the words kept coming out funny.

I don't have to cook till Tuesday night, and I think I shall have a quiet day. Tomorrow I have messages to run (the ones I couldn't do on Friday beacuse the intense exhaustion started then), but till tomorrow I can take things a little more slowly than usual.

Please don't expect anything intelligent from me for a few days!

The story of Chanukah

I asked if anyone wanted it and lo, someone made the mistake of replying. I added some new jokes. They're very bad, these new jokes, but they make up for so many people having seen this before:

Once upon a time there was war in the Middle East. This is a rare and unusual occurrence. As a result of that rare and unusual occurrence, Israel (or Judea, or whatever that stretch of territory was called around 165 BCE) was overrun by rather pagan invaders. This led to some interesting history bei...