Saturday, June 27, 2015

Flight Behaviour by Barbara Kingsolver (and a re-scoring of Gone Girl)



I finished reading Flight Behaviour by Barbara Kingsolver last night. I’m in two minds about Barbara Kingsolver’s books (I’ve read The Poisonwood Bible and now this one); on the one hand, her writing is often beautiful, sometimes perfect. In Flight Behaviour, I loved her depictions of marriage and motherhood (the children in this book reminded me so much of Moses and Hazel). Two tastes:

But being a stay-at-home mom was the loneliest kind of lonely, in which she was always and never by herself. Days and days, hours and hours within them, and days within weeks, at the end of which she might not ever have gotten completely dressed or read any word longer than Chex, any word not ending in –os, or formed a sentence or brushed her teeth or left a single footprint outside the house. Just motherhood, with its routine costs of providing a largesse that outstripped her physical dimensions. She’d seen ewes in the pasture whose sixty-pound twins would run underneath together and bunt the udders to release the milk with sharp upward thrusts, jolting the mother’s hindquarters off the ground. That was the picture, overdrawn. A gut-twisting life of love, consecrated by the roof and walls that contained her and the air she was given to breathe. (page 59-60) 

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 “I knocked,” Hester declared. “Where were you?”

“Just cleaning, moving some stuff around on the back porch,” Dellarobia lied. She took a quick inventory of the things Hester would hold against her this morning: breakfast dishes in the sink, Cordie in just a diaper and shirt. She’d tried to get her dressed, but the child had pelted her all morning with a hail of no; she felt like a woman stoned for the sin of motherhood. (page 127)

I love Kingsolvers writing. I love the stories she tells.

But. (The other hand.) In both The Poisonwood Bible and Flight Behaviour I found myself thinking, “I’m being taught a lesson here!” and not in a reflective, “I’m similar to this character, and her relationships are shining fresh light on me and relationships in my life” way, but in a purposeful way that felt far too obvious and therefore patronising. The word I used to describe what I didn’t like about The Poisonwood Bible was ‘didactic’; I was disappointed to have to revive the description for this book, too. In Flight Behaviour, the lesson’s on climate change, which is a worthy topic to lecture people about, I have no problem with that; perhaps it’s the unsubtlety of the lecture that bothers me most (teach me sneakily! I don’t want to notice that I’m being taught something!). 

Despite feeling annoyed by the teachiness of parts, I really liked this book and have now spent quite some time googling and being amazed by images of the phenomenon it speaks about (no spoilers!). The writing scores 4.5 out of 5, and then I’ll take 2 points off for obviousness and score it 2.5 out of 5. But then I’ll add an extra point because I did actually enjoy it and I want you to read it, too, so that’d be 3.5 out of 5. Maybe just 3… Let’s just say 7 out of 10.

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In Flight Behaviour, the main character’s name is Dellarobia, which I think is beautiful, though it’s a mouthful. At the beginning of the book I was pronouncing it “della–row–bia” (as in row, row, row your boat), but a few chapters in someone says it slowly and it’s clear the name’s actually pronounced “della-robbia”, which I don’t like nearly as much. So throughout the remainder of the book I argued with myself, with one part of my brain wanting to stick with my preferred pronunciation, and the other part thinking, “You have to say it right! It’s obviously not pronounced that way, so let it go! If you pronounce it incorrectly while speaking about the book, you’ll sound like an idiot!” It was distracting. (This is my issue, not Kingsolvers. No points were removed for Dellarobia.)

Speaking of scoring books, I’ve been thinking more about Gone Girl since my last post, and I’ve decided I liked it more than I thought I did when I first finished it. It was very clever, and the ending was the right one, even though it left me wishing for more retribution, but I think that was kinda the point. So I’ll bump that one up to 4.25 out of 5/8.5 out of 10.

Sunday, June 21, 2015

Stats and books


Me, after submitting my final assignment

I survived Statistics! Hurrah! I wouldn’t say I liked it, but I didn’t hate it as much as I expected to (being a pessimist is pretty cool like that). The final week of the subject was a hard slog, but that was mostly because I’d borrowed two books from the library in preparation for my break, and then I naughtily started reading one (“I’ll just take a peek at the first few pages, so I can then look forward to getting into the rest of the book next week!” – it seemed like such a solid plan). It just so happened that the book I’d chosen to dabble in was a crazily-addictive page-turner (Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn), so the following day when Alan told me he wanted to have a nap while Hazel was sleeping, I let him know that, being the selfless and loving wife I am, I would sacrifice my study time that afternoon so that he could snooze for as long as he needed to (the desk is now in our bedroom). “You could move your laptop to the lounge room?” he suggested, but I shooshed him and sent him off to bed, then I grabbed my novel, made myself comfy on the couch, and read like mad for the next two hours, and then that night I continued to read instead of studying, and then when Hazel went to bed the next day I finished it off. Delayed gratifi-what now? GIVE ME THE MARSHMALLOWS.


Anyway, I enjoyed the reading again so very much that I then started on my second book (The Spare Room by Helen Garner), and it was so short and such a pleasure to read that I finished that one a couple of days later. So then I had to go onto the library site and choose another couple of books to read during my break, and then I had to try to shake my head back into study mode in order to finish my assignment. (It’s now in, and I’m blogging because I have no book to read.)


I liked Gone Girl, although I didn’t quite understand why Nick did the things he did, which left me feeling a little unsatisfied (I’m trying to be vague enough to give nothing away, and specific enough to actually be saying something; apologies if I’ve failed at either). I’d give it 3.5 out of 5 chewed fingernails. 

As for The Spare Room, I really enjoyed it. 4.5 out of 5… teatowels(...?). I want to wax lyrical about Helen Garner’s writing, but I haven’t written for so long I’m in no shape for either waxing or lyricising. Garner is brilliant (as I’ve said before). I’ll leave it at that.

Saturday, June 6, 2015

Vivid 2015 and other photos



I went to Vivid again! I rebelliously decided to take my camera (despite having recently reread my Vivid post from last year), and have since decided that approximately 93% of Vivid’s funness is made up of photo-taking for me. I’d rather take photos of someone pressing a button to make a light work than to be the one pressing the button to make the light work. 
This year we started at Milson’s Point and then walked across the bridge to get to The Rocks and Circular Quay. I loved the extra lights around, especially in The Rocks; they made up for the fact that the Opera House designs moved far too quickly and did a poor job of outlining the sails (fortunately I have approximately  78 bazillion photos of Opera-House-during-Vivid photos from last year to look at instead). 
5% more of the funness is noticing and appreciating light everywhere…


And the remaining 2% is made up of fits of giggles with your mum and sister after an embarrassing incident involving a narrow train aisle, two people with backpacks, and a stubborn pair of hips.

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Speaking of photos, I spent most of a recent family reunion (-type thing, on Alan’s side) hiding behind my camera’s viewfinder. Mo’s not a fan of having his photo taken (this is not entirely true: Mo’s a fan of having his photo taken pulling various faces while dancing around. I should have said either “Mo’s not a fan of having his photo taken while looking normal and standing still” or “I’m not a fan of taking photos of Moses pulling faces and dancing around”) and Hazel moves too quickly, so I was determined to make the most of the additional subjects. I ended up with hundreds of shots to delete upon our return home, and a handful that I quite liked. These are two of my favourites (you’ll see more in the birthday posts in a couple of months’ time):


I’ve been playing around with photo editing using Pixlr. I have no idea what constitutes “good” editing as opposed to “embarrassingly bad,” and I’m therefore worried about putting up my results here in case they fall at the latter end of the spectrum. Does it all come down to subjectivity? Is one of these photos below better than the other? Are neither any good? I don’t know. I want to know.
I'll add Learn how to edit photosto my bucket list.

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P.S. Two weeks until my class is over and Ill have time to blog again! Hurrah!