Comments Are Down
Hey kids. Comments are disabled until I wrap my head around the current comment spam issue I’m having. Could be a while; I’m a touch busy at the moment.
Reading Breakdown for 2014
So apparently my only blog post for all of 2014 was a breakdown of my reading statistics for 2013 and a plan for how I was going to improve those statistics (specifically in terms of gender) for 2014. I had planned to write a few reviews—and those reviews will still be written and posted—but when you work between 70 and 90 hours a week thousands of kilometres from home, things like that fall by the wayside. I did, however, actually follow through with the changes to my reading program. Specifically, I tried to reach gender parity in my reading for 2014 after realizing that I wasn’t as close as I thought I was when I looked at what I’d read in 2013. I thought I was pretty close to 50/50 men/women, but it turns out I was more like 63/37, and my numbers on writers of colour were even worse.… Continue Reading
2013 Reading Summary and the Plan for 2014
I don’t generally keep track of my reading on any sort of statistical level. I read what I read for reasons that are as much about the mood I’m in when it comes time to start a new book as anything else (probably more than any other reason, to be honest). This means that my reading choices over the course of a year tend to be not particularly considered. But this year everything I read got logged into Goodreads, and for the first time in a while I wasn’t actually paid to read anything, so I thought I’d take a look at what I read in the absence of any direction (beyond a handful of books that were for my steampunk book club). Here’s the breakdown: I read 65 books in 2013; 39 of them were written or edited* by men, 24 were written or edited by women, and 2… Continue Reading
I Write Terrible Poems
Don’t you just hate really earnest poetry? I don’t mean the seriousness and melodrama of the Victorians, or the obliqueness of the Modernists, or even the loony bullshit of sound poets (well, okay, maybe I mean the loony bullshit of sound poets): I’m talking about the work of late-comers, the kind of folks whose work doesn’t show any sense of self-awareness, of irony, of humour, or wit. I hate that kind of poetry. So of course when I sit down to write a poem, that’s pretty much all that comes out. Even worse: most of the time my poetry winds up being about women I’ve loved, or almost loved, or who loved me, or might have loved me, whether I want it to be or not. I make a conscious choice to write about, say, a tree, and by the end I’m writing about how ACYL broke my heart. Some… Continue Reading
A Bit of News
It’s been a long time since I’ve updated. Some things have happened that have kept this blog a low priority: I did some freelance work, switched jobs a couple of times, and have gone through some personal issues. I’ve taken on a new job in northern Saskatchewan, where I will potentially be without regular Internet access three weeks out of every month, for non-business related things, anyway. The job is set to last about two years, so vestige.org will be quiet for most of that time. I’m going to try and update once a month or so, mostly with quick personal notes or nature photos and stuff (there will be lots of nature to photograph), just to let everyone know I’m alive and still reading, but the silence that has become usual around these parts is probably going to continue. The job is a good opportunity, for a whole bunch… Continue Reading
Friday Reads: Blueprints of the Afterlife, by Ryan Boudinot
“Friday Reads,” if you’re not familiar with the phrase, is a phenomenon on Twitter where folks use the #FridayReads hashtag to talk about, and usually recommend, the books they happen to be reading (you know, on Friday). It doesn’t sound like much, but it’s kind of fun and cute and whatever, the way Twitter hashtags are. I’m making this one a blog post because I found myself, only 136 pages into this book, wanting to post a really long string of tweets about it. You know how every Philip K. Dick book blows your mind? If you watch some of the filmed version of his work, like Minority Report or that trippy rotoscoped take on A Scanner Darkly you would be forgiven for imagining Dick’s work as pulpy and unrefined, accompanied by the slightly paranoid low-rent philosophy that comes with its own sour-smelling cloud of smoke and a really bad… Continue Reading
Godblog, by Laurie Channer
Godblog wasn’t a bad book, but there were some structural problems that kept it from being a really good one. Most of the first hundred pages could have been cut without damaging the plot, and it would have given the book a tighter, more focused feel. It would have also eliminated a number of tertiary characters who did almost nothing but take up space, and may have allowed some of the bigger supporting characters to fade into the background just the tiniest bit and actually be supporting characters, rather than constantly jockeying for the lead role. The jumping back and forth in the narrative, while not frequent, heightened the suspense in one sense, but killed it for any number of smaller, but more interesting, mysteries, and as the timelines began to converge and characters were discovering startling truths, Channer seemed to forget more than once that she had given a… Continue Reading
The Complete Lockpick Pornography, by Joey Comeau
So here’s the deal: The Complete Lockpick Pornography is actually two short novels, Lockpick Pornography and We All Got It Coming, which has been described as its “thematic sequel.” I picked it up at Indie Lit Night at the Starlight Lounge this past Tuesday, where Joey gave a hilarious reading, and we had a great chat. (We hate all the same people, and all the same sports-related cultural touchstones!) There are some great, whaddayacall, blurbs on the back of the book that cover a lot of what I’d like to say, but I’ll see what I can do to add to them. The unnamed narrator of Lockpick is a pretty intense guy. Like all of us, he’s got expectations about the world, about what he thinks it is and what it should be, but none of them match up to what it really is, in ways that are both good… Continue Reading
Community Without Dan Harmon
As a fan of Community, it’s been a week of ups and downs. First there were rumours of cancelation, trotted out like the reliable workhorses they proved to be when the show was put on mid-season hiatus. And then we got the reprieve; thirteen more episodes, but getting moved to Fridays starting in June of all months. Whatever, we could live with it. But now this: Dan Harmon is no longer going to be Community‘s showrunner. I never even bothered to learn his actual title. It’s probably Executive Producer; it usually is with these things. The announcement says he will be staying on as a Consulting Producer, which appears to be network code for being paid to stay home and keep his mouth shut. Given how integral Harmon is to Community—even people who acknowledge that he’s a poor manager or otherwise have conflicts with him call him the “soul” of… Continue Reading
Biographemes and A.S. Byatt’s The Biographer’s Tale
This paper was researched and written over the course of almost a year, starting in May 2002 and ending in April 2003, under the direction of the amazing Dr. Sarah Tolmie, at the University of Waterloo. Many things have changed since then, and I would not come to all the same conclusions today. In particular, my understanding of feminism, and Byatt’s relationship to it, have both improved dramatically since writing this paper. I leave it as it stands, however, a) so as to not do disservice to who I was when I wrote it, and b) because rewriting it would be a crapload of work that I have no interest in doing. Section 1.0: Introduction In this essay I will explore the role of biographemes in A.S. Byatt’s novel The Biographer’s Tale. The novel is narrated by a frustrated graduate student, named Phineas G. Nanson, who gives up the study… Continue Reading