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wrul (they, iel, etc)

wrul@book.snailhuddle.org

Joined 2 months, 4 weeks ago

Nairm & Birrarungga, Kulin biik
https://snailhuddle.org/~wrul/
Reading mainly in Englishes and Frenches.

Most of this account is designated “followers‐only”, for the cosiness.

  • If you’d like a better sense of subjects and style before deciding whether to dip in, consider a bounce around the informal lit‐talk of BREYDON’s been reading. As well as there, book‐readin of the (long) 2022 appears on my pre‐huddle profile, @wrul@bookwyrm.social.
  • If I’ve posted something that you would like to boost, reference elsewhere, or otherwise link to, just let me know, and I can set it to public for you.

My user avatar is a rainbow lorikeet feeding on orange gum blossoms — photographed above a suburban nature strip, on Boon Wurrung Country.

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wrul (they, iel, etc)'s books

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Content warning coupla major plot points depicted in the 2008 parts of Greenwood; reference to suicidality, macho-ablism

Females (Paperback, en-Latn-US language, 2019, Verso) 4 stars

funny, vague, clever

4 stars

That was all I'd jotted down as a review of this, last year: "funny, vague, clever".

Vague? I meant it, strangely, as a compliment. The declarations are bold. From the first page, Andrea Long Chu arrays her arguments on a sweeping, jokey surge: "Everyone is female [...] There are no good female poets, simply because there are no good poets."

For a short book, Females is dense with points. Much is blunted in the rush. Beats are firmly met (or, if hard to pinpoint, are kept to), yet transition is a constant; text supple within constraints, and still its reach broad or deep or precipitously high, in the manner of a (complex) wave. It can't sustain itself at the extremes (and doesn't try to, hovers without overstaying, inertia impelling), but supports itself up there, however insubstantially.

Greenwood (Paperback, en-Latn-CA language, 2020, Scribe) 5 stars

2038. On a remote island off the Pacific coast of British Columbia stands the Greenwood …

a little bit monumental?

5 stars

A noticeable boundary arose, a couple of months ago, in the items delivered to me by the home library service. Sharp as between the rings of a trunk. Somebody new had started selecting loans for me.

Since that moment, Greenwood was the one I looked forward to most. Like many of its bagmates, I hadn’t heard of it, or its author, but the blurb held startling promise. I cored a few sentences from its heart, at random. Yes. They were striking. I would save this one, savour it.

Aside from the back third or so lacking the structural fullness of most of the novel — a slow and then hastening collapse which the format, together with the thematic content, primes the reader to anticipate, anyway — Greenwood did not disappoint in the least. Though not without occasional irritant (the typical occasion being an (at first glance?) unconvincing blow to …

Everything Feels Like the End of the World (Paperback, en-Latn-AU language, 2022, Allen & Unwin) 1 star

Everything Feels Like the End of the World is a collection of short speculative fiction …

well‐boring, yet not penetrating

1 star

The conceit of this being a collection of short stories may have served the writer well in maintaining funding, an audience, and industry connection throughout its composition, but fails the book as an artwork. Its abundance of redundant chapters would betray careless curation, an unwarranted, greedy completionism, were these genuine standalones, containers each of a story. Their emptiness, as even those chapters exceeding a couple of paragraphs remain bare vignette; the dogged homogeneity of concept; the consistent chronology along which they are all chained, the flicker of more‐than‐the‐sum‐of‐its‐parts integration; though, belong to a novel. Or an attempt at a novel.

The speculative urbanism approaches a cool. Some thought, maybe even research, has gone into redesigning an ever more inundated Birrarungga, to fashioning successive layers, up, down, and out, of future Old Melbournes and proposing emergent cultures around these. The evolution of increasingly coastal towns to the east is infinitely …

Clan (Hardcover, en-Latn-AU language, 2013, Allen & Unwin) 3 stars

Clan explores the world of Bangarra Dance Theatre and the extraordinary Aboriginal and Torres Strait …

mere flex

3 stars

[12 Jan 2023]

Dancers communicate so profoundly with the mere flex of a foot or hand, a shift of focus, the roll of a head, the transfer of weight within their body.

⸻ Stephen Page, opening page

Yet considering all that is going on in the images which fill almost the entire book, Barrett’s photography (as paired with Page’s art direction?) tends to be rather lifeless. Murky, flat, depleted of momentum, almost clinical, for all the heavy‐ink, gloss and phenomenal energies gone in.

I couldn’t help but contrast the pronounced underwhelm at a first glance through 21st century, prestige project Clan with my memory of alternately squint‐goggling at a juddery, blurred few‐second clip of anthropologist–choreographer Pearl Primus’ 1950 solo dance Spirituals, rolled and buoyed and awash with awe, utterly.

Like [Isadora] Duncan, [Primus] danced with — not against — gravity, but in her case the gesture tied …

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Gaucher.ère contrarié.e (Paperback, fr-Latn-CA language, Éditions L'Interlignex) No rating

Les trajectoires paradoxales des treize personnages s'entrelacent comme les fils d'une tapisserie humaine bigarrée, toutes …

Je peux me cacher derrière les langues « étrangères ». Mais toutes les langues sont des langues étrangères au Canada, n'est-ce pas ? Sauf le cri, l'inuktitut, l'ojibwé, anishnabe, haida gwai, mic mac, cri des plaines, dakota, blackfoot, montagnais, dene, atikamek, bella coola, oneida, tlicho, le mitchif… Il faudrait que je demande à mon sensei.

Gaucher.ère contrarié.e by 

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Gaucher.ère contrarié.e (Paperback, fr-Latn-CA language, Éditions L'Interlignex) No rating

Les trajectoires paradoxales des treize personnages s'entrelacent comme les fils d'une tapisserie humaine bigarrée, toutes …

Je ne savais pas que le français est toujours une langue exotique, au Canada anglais. Si on parle français, les gens sont impressionnés. Et ils croient qu’on a appris la langue en France. Ah, oui. Le vin français, l'accent français, la bouffe française, «ils sont tellement cultivés», les Français. Si eux, ces gens, parlent français, c'est parce qu'ils ont voyagé en France, bien entendu. J’existe dans un désert linguistique, en 2014 il n’existe plus de librairie francophone à Toronto. Toronto est-elle une ville désignée bilingue ? Alors, ça va ? Le statu quo ? Je peux acheter les livres en français en ligne, sans parler à un vendeur. C'est génial, parce que je n'aime pas le monde. Ou je voyage à Ottawa, ou dans une grande ville québécoise pour feuilleter, toucher les livres directement. Un objet tangible ne vaut rien ces jours-ci. Les gens aiment leurs livres numériques. Et c'est peut-être mieux. Personne n'a touché la version électronique, alors, il n'y a pas de germes.

Gaucher.ère contrarié.e by 

wants to read 地球星人 by Sayaka Murata

地球星人 (Paperback, ja-Jpan-JP language, 2021, Shinchōsha) 4 stars

恋愛や生殖を強制する世間になじめず、ネットで見つけた夫と性行為なしの婚姻生活を送る34歳の奈月。夫とともに田舎の親戚の家を訪れた彼女は、いとこの由宇に再会する。小学生の頃、自らを魔法少女と宇宙人だと信じていた二人は秘密の恋人同士だった。だが大人になった由宇は「地球星人」の常識に洗脳されかけていて…。芥川賞受賞作『コンビニ人間』を超える驚愕をもたらす衝撃的傑作。

Truly the longest of shots, as I don’t know that one’s been produced, but would anyone happen to have a spoken edition of this I could borrow?

(It’s Earthlings in the original Japanese).

L'homme qui voulait être heureux (Paperback, fr-Latn language, 2010, Pocket) 2 stars

les trous partout gâchent tout

2 stars

Content warning la dévaluation des vies racisées, l’écrasement des piétons

toki pona is a minimalist language that focuses on the good things in life.

It …

ona li suwi lili taso toki insa li pana e wawa jaki

1 star

sona toki pi jan wan lon lipu toki lili. ona li pana e ken kama sona lili kepeken ala mani. teno pini la mi alasa e ni. taso mi kama wile sama e sona pi jan mute e sona musi.

lipu mute ni li jo e moli mute tan jan. ni li ike tawa mi tan ni: teno pini la jan li toki lon nasi ni: toki pona li sewi e pilin pona.

sitelen li len e lipu. sitelen len li suwi. mi wile mute kama sona e sitelen toki e tawa toki.

mi kin wile lukin e anpa pi supa toki. tan nimi ali li seme? jan li pali e sona sin pi toki pona kepeken open lawa seme?

Despite the publication itself being quite sweet, the expressions inside exude off‐putting vibes.

One person’s idea of the language has gone into a free educational pamphlet, which is what I’d …

Fever of Animals (Paperback, en-Latn-AU language, 2015, Scribe Publications) 2 stars

For nearly five years I have wanted to write something about the surrealist painter Emil …

Elwood ennui

2 stars

[18 January 2023, Boonwurrung Country]

These remarks seem more review, I suppose, than close reading. So have a rating: straddling the slog of a one and the old two for well, I would not publish it, myself, in this state.

Allinson studs his book, very sparely, with breathtaking twists of phrase. The surrounding text is meticulously crafted also, and, I found (especially in the cases of the absolutely agonisingly autobiographically pitched Parts One and Three), disengaging.

It’s a multilayered grief text, but heavily filtered through themes of middleclass masculinity. Cultural cringe, even. The narrator is occasionally transposed to some other voice (slightly older Miles! slightly younger Miles! art critic Miles! potted historian Miles! translated scrap of this or that secondary source in the sole possession of Miles! gonzo journo Miles! Miles as Miles imagines his girlfriend would word him... travelogue Miles: miles of Miles...), without straying towards much of a …

Care of Australian Wildlife (Paperback, en-Latn-AU language, 2010, New Holland) 5 stars

Care of Australian Wildlife is the definitive guide for all Australians wishing to protect and …

decisive in a crisis, important in the ordinary

5 stars

Exemplary, clear and thorough guidance on first aid, rehabilitation, and resolving awkward encounters, along with well-rounded advice on planning garden spaces, managing habitat, and incorporating furnishings (such as nest boxes, birdbaths and possum thoroughfares) to support wildlife.