(no subject)

I have a little bit of insomnia. I blame my body. I was just about asleep when it started to think it ought to misbehave. Also, my bathroom is making strange noises. All by themselves, these things are happening. No encouragement from me. I can calm the physical stuff down with medications and wet leggings, but there's nothing I can do about the bathroom. I've tried.

Given I can't do anything useful for myself, I've decided to be useful to everyone else. Since no-one asked me any questions this time round, I won't have an open question post for a fair while. Just so that you know what you missed, here are some of the questions you might have asked:

1. What are the chief seasonings used in expensive English food in the fourteenth century?

2. How many lines in an average Medieval French epic legend? (and, as a subsidiary question, why epic legends - why not something neater and less dangerous, like lais? and why haven't Mythbusters tested some of the more interesting technical elements in the chansons de geste, like brains coming out of ears and armies flying thorugh the air?)

3. What do you store in your hat box?

4. Why do you have a disarticulated skull? (and, as a subsidiary question, why is it called Perceval?)

5. What exactly is wrong with your bathroom?

6. Why have you still got a headache, 8 days later?

7. Just how many siblings do you have? (and, as a subsidiary question, is it really possibly to be 2/3 an orphan?)

8. Can I come round on Boxing Day and eat bhel puri and watch Bollywood movies with you?

9. What history projects are you blithely ignoring right now?

10. When is your nephew getting married?

11. What size clothes do you wear?

12. Did you really study preclassical antiquity, Roman history, Renaissance history and the eighteenth century as an undergraduate? How did that turn you into a Medievalist?

13. Why are you so full of questions? (and, as a subsidiary question, why are so few of them ones I would have asked you if I had remembered?)

14. What rooms in your flat don't have books?

15. Do people really lose themselves in your library? Can I use it as a shortcut to the TARDIS or to L-space?

16. Why do you have a bag full of coffee shells? (and, as a subsidiary question, do you really need that many varieties of tea?)

17. Are you going to do a summary post for 2009?

18. Are you going to inflict more of your life history on us? (and,as a subsidiary question, does it really annoy jasonfischer?)

19. Of all the things to cause chain reactions in your body, why bushfire smoke? (why not something more tangible, like cane toads?)

20. Why is there no snow where you are? (this one for the super-ultra-intelligent)

(no subject)

Everywhere I look - from Goodreads to LJ - people are discussing women in novels. Mostly they think there aren't many really good female characters or there's only one strong woman and she's defined by context more that self, or that the Bechdel test would fail miserably in spec fic and that female characters only talk about relationships.

One thing I've noticed in these discussions is that the same writers are often given as examples of one thing or another. If you use a limited pool for sampling, then you're going to get daft results.

My daft results are going to be different from everyone else's daft results, because I'm going to use a different limited pool for sampling. My limited pool is going to be Australian and it's going to be recent and I'm going to include strong women singular and plural in good books (those books and stories have to be well and truly worth reading!). Romance books have been left out only because I don't know the genre, not because they don't meet my requirements - in fact, if you want good books with good strong women etc, chicklit and romance novels are a very good places to start.

This is one of those instant lists - they're writers I'm thinking of at this moment. There are lots more out there! (The only reason I'm not in that list myself is because I really can't evaluate how good a read I am, so if you want to take the list and expand it, please make a decision about Illumiunations and Life Through Cellophane - don't just neglect me, leave me out by conscious choice).

Maxine McArthur - especially Time Future
Kim Wilkins - quite a bit of her work
Kaaron Warren - I didn't say that the women had to be nice
Marianne de Pierres - Parish Plessis as not-strong? I laugh at you. In fact, her women generally rock.
Sonya Hartnett
Lucy Sussex - My Lady Tongue stands out, but it's hardly the only good thing she's written
Kate Forsyth
Felicity Pulman
Keri Arthur
Sophie Masson
Dave Luckett - his most recent book in particular
Pamela Freeman
Glenda Larke
Garth Nix - the Sabriel series
Kim Westwood
Tansy Rayner Roberts - has a strong female leading the Mocklore adventures. I haven't had a chance to read her new work, though.
Deborah Kalin

I'm sorry to all the writers I missed - it wasn't intentional. Not all the works by all the authors fit, but I've read at least one book or story that does, from each of these. Also, I only gave myself five minutes to compose the list, since I'm doing this while I'm doing other things (multitasking! I can multitask! not, alas, very well, however, which is why there are writers missing - please feel free to add names in the comments - just don't add yourself, for the same reason I didn't add me).

It would be nice if the books we always list magically transformed and had great female characters, preferably in multiples. Since they're not going to, why can't we read those that do and encourage publishers (by buying and reading books - what an odd thought) to take on more of them?

I'd love to see lists that are more inclusive, especially ones that include writers from elsewhere than Australia. I'd also like to add to the one I have (since it's incomplete) and then analyse it. I haven't got time for that today, alas, but can I suggest very strongly that we stop using the same list of authors, time after time, to prove a point? All it does is prove we have a list of authors we use to prove points. It doesn't actually make any solid case for or against women in fiction.

(no subject)

Kaaron Warren interviews a bunch of us about baggage. Yaritji's answers in particular make me think.

So many writers say "Any idea or story is fair game for fiction." The same writers are dead-keen on not being plagiarised. But what happens when fair game in one culture is plagiarism in another? Most people say "That's something to do with strange and distant different cultures." Except it isn't. Read the interview on the World SF News blog.

(no subject)

A very good family friend died last week. Half of one of my favourite couples for talking books, in fact. They knew enormous amounts about books and could always be relied on for sound recommendations. The three of us could turn any dinner conversation to literature, without any effort whatsoever.

His wife received a sympathy phonecall today.

"I'm sorry you lost your husband," the caller said, her voice very gentle.

"I didn't lose my husband," Y said, indignantly. "I know exactly where I buried him!"