“What’s the good of Mercator’s North Poles and Equators,
Tropics, Zones, and Meridian Lines?”
So the Bellman would cry: and the crew would reply
“They are merely conventional signs!

When Lewis Carroll wrote this (in The Hunting of the Snark) he was making a sarcastic comment about C19th colonialism (really). But 'merely conventional signs' has ( Read more... )

Guys, I need some help. I'm writing about how web pages and books are structured differently. It's really easy to give examples for non-fiction (I'm probably going to talk about feminism 101 and TV tropes) but I'm really struggling to think of examples for fiction, especially narrative fiction, because all of the best examples I can think of are, ( Read more... )

Here are some links that have been keeping me going lately.

1. This one I may actually have linked to before, because I find myself returning to it regularly. Orson Scott Card, meet Alan Turing. This is a post at Feminist SF about Alan Turing, the British mathmatician who worked on cryptanalysis during the second world war (and was awarded the ( Read more... )

1. I've just hit 51 new books read this year (re-reads were not counted, but included a re-read of the Tiggie Tompson series, several of the YW books, and Monstrous Regiment, by Terry PRatchett.) I'd like to thank Octavia Butler (three books), the Mitford sisters (four books between them, and another one in progress), and particularly Lois McMaster ( Read more... )

kia ora everyone! there has been a little bit of radio silence from me for awhile and there probably will be fore another while, because first uni buried me in work, then work buried me in work, and somewhere in there my laptop died. (I am hopeful that it's just the power cord - the adaptor, I think - and that's all I'll need to replace. I am ( Read more... )

Karen Healey's brand new shiny novel Guardian of the Dead is the 29th book that I have read this year, and the first I have felt compelled to post about. This may be because I read a very early draft of this novel and because I think
( Read more... )

I moved into a new flat and
( Read more... )

I have a stack of books... I'd like to say they're on the bedside table but actually, they're on the floor/in my bag/on top of my bookcase, variously. However, the problem is the same, I just finished Northanger Abbey (LOVED it! And it was New Book #12 so I also feel virtuous) and now I need to decide what I'm going to read next. Help me?

View ( Read more... )

OK now. Of all the characters in fiction everywhere, Hermione Granger is the least likely in practically the entire WORLD to change her name upon marriage. She is career-motivated, widely-read, self-sufficient, politically aware and ACTIVE, and for fuck's sake, if that wasn't enough, she's marrying someone with FIVE LIVING MALE SIBLINGS ( Read more... )

1. Kia ora Tui

I am delighted to let you know you have been accepted for the Diploma in Publishing (Applied) in Wellington. Your formal acceptance letter and enrolment pack with further information will be sent next week. [etc etc etc]

I guess I'm going to publishing school which is really awesome because they typically take only half of their ( Read more... )