2010 books

46) Marianne de Pierres, Glitter Rose, 2010
I picked this up in Sydney's Galaxy Bookshop and spent a very relaxed 50th birthday reading it. There are four linked short stories about a small, imaginary Australian island which has been colonised by strange spores from the ocean deeps, organisms that can bathe the beach in a pink light, create giant sandcastles that are impervious to water and subtly alter the bodies and minds of the infected island residents. There's a small ensemble cast of characters (reminding me often of The Last Tobacco Shop in the World) in which a new arrival to the island is constantly out of her depth and learning the hard way, plus there are deaths and strange goings on of a mystical and earthy nature. De Pierres was clearly inspired by J.G. Ballard's Vermillion Sands and these tales share a Ballardian atmosphere of languorous decay; undoubtedly the best story is 'Mama Ailon', a deftly composed tale about a strangely cathartic birth which brings the stories to a kind of conclusion – in her notes De Pierres says this story cycle is probably complete, but no – she absolutely must write more of these, and I must read more from her.

no subject

Very Happy Birthdays to dougs and humanoid27.

Life imitates SF

A Malaysian astrophysicist is appointed Earth contact for aliens by the UN.

Fossil Poetry

A look at the etymology of the phrase 'Let the cat out of the bag'.

Does your language shape how you think?

Apparently, reading Arabic is hard on the brain.

Gene Weingarten in the Washington Post: Goodbye, cruel words: English. It's dead to me.

Douglas Coupland's neologisms: A Dictionary of the Near Future.

2010 books

47) Graham Greene, A Sense of Reality, 1963
This slim volume of four short stories predates the twenty-five year period in which Greene kept a comprehensive dream diary, although dreams are clearly one of this collection's thematic strands. His noted realism takes a back seat in favour of a more imaginative approach to his writing although to me it doesn't actually feel like something he was particularly comfortable with or even adept at: I puzzle at the glowing cover quotes and wonder if they were actually describing the same book I was reading. The most imaginative story, 'A Discovery in the Woods', a post-nuclear war piece, feels uncomfortably stilted throughout yet the idea is a decent enough one (it was also reprinted in the pages of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction in 1967 and later anthologised in a science fictional context three times); I didn't much care for the rather forced nature of the dream-inspired 'Under the Garden' and 'A Dream of a Strange Land', but the most successful story, 'A Visit to Morin', is a much more familiar kind of Greene, a sharp tale dealing with Catholicism and the loss of religious belief – now that's a story I will remember.