Probably a bit early to be commenting, but this isn't really a review. I'm up to page 130. It's the last book of the Older Readers section for me - I've read the rest. I don't think it's exactly contemporary fiction, as nobody in the novel so much as mentions the Internet and the heroine, Jack, doesn't have a phone, apart from the one in the home she shares with her sister Trudy, and that one is disconnected for non-payment of the bill, so she has to go to the phone booth to try calling her boyfriend Luke(well, I say boyfriend, but they're not actually dating - all they do is meet weekly to have sex; she says she loves him, he doesn't return her feelings). Having a mobile would allow her to make contact without having to go through his family. In one scene the phone rings out - no message bank. In another, she mentions her video recorder. So, is it set in the 1980s? The 1990s? Certainly not in the here and now.

Jack seems to have a bit of obsessive compulsive disorder, taking the form of  counting the diamond-patterned tiles in the shop where she works.  She also keeps moving her bed around in her room, for no special reason, and setting up a display of toilet rolls at work, angrily shifting them back when they have been moved by the other shop worker. Definitely some OCD there!

The small town where she lives is dying, getting smaller and smaller, and has the appropriate name of  Mobius - you know, like the strip that has only one side. It also has a forest where people go to commit suicide. Very odd place!

I expect I'll finish it on time for Book Week, though, to be honest, I don't know what the students will think of it. It's a strange book...

I finished this yesterday and bought a copy for the library.

Oh, my, this is a deadly serious book, not the slightly humorous, or at least whimsical one I had expected from the blurb. It is about depression. The hero, Declan O'Malley, throws himself under a train in a fit of depression after his girlfriend is sent to live with her aunt in Hong Kong by her abusive mother and doesn't send a text to confirm she has arrived okay. It turns out that her mother had confiscated her phone before she left.

But Declan's depression isn't just about that, it's about something truly horrible that happened when he was six. This is hinted at several times in the course of the book, before you finally learn just what it was his great-aunt Mary did to him when he was a child.

After a gruesome and detailed description of his being dismantled by the train, he speaks to the reader from "non-space", where he gets to see what would have happened if he had hesitated before jumping. It isn't all positive but it's a lot better than being killed and thinking of what it has done to his family, his girl and even the train driver. This takes up most of the novel - and, interestingly, goes over nine years; the Declan of the later part of the novel is well into his twenties.

I found it very readable and you might have noticed I finished it quickly. It might work for some of our students who feel like reading a deadly serious book, but today I only had three Year 7 girls, a Year 9 and a Year 10 with me at book club. And there were only two borrowings from the shortlisted books - The Flywheel and Soon.

I've started reading Inbetween Days by Vikki Wakefield and when that's done I will have read all the Older Readers books. I think, of those I've read so far, I'd give the award to Cloudwish.

And speaking of books that turn out to be deadly serious, I've just begun reading Lili Wilkinson's newest novel, The Boundless Sublime, and I don't think this is going to be the usual romantic comedy which my students enjoy so much. It starts with a thoroughly depressed mother and daughter sitting in the living room watching TV and doing very little else after a family tragedy. Oh, dear. I'm sure it will be a great book, but, I must admit, I like those romantic comedies as much as the kids do, and this is beginning to remind me of the time Paul Jennings, so beloved by so many children for his hilarious stories, decided to write a serious YA novel. It was good, don't get me wrong - in fact, very good! It just didn't feel like Paul Jennings. If it's still in print I'll be very surprised. 

It may be that the author  needed to get this book out of her system. 

Or it may be that funny books just don't win the Children's Book Council Awards. Some of them make  it to the shortlist, but I can't recall one ever winning. Paul Jennings and Andy Griffiths are hugely popular with their readers, but not with awards judges. They just aren't literary enough. Ah, well. 

Anyone else out there reading the list? What do you think?

Inbetween Days is by Vikki Wakefield. I've met Vikki. She was part of a group of writers who once visited my school when the State Library couldn't get enough bookings to run one of their Teen Booktalkers sessions and rang me to ask if I wanted to have them come to my school. It seemed a shame to waste the already-organised session. 

She spoke to the kids about her new novel - her first - and showed them some of the art she had done while writing it. It was a very good talk and the kids were borrowing that book for weeks afterwards.

Now she's on her third and I've just started reading it. I haven't read enough yet to know if I'll like it; I never did get past the first couple of chapters of her second novel, maybe I'd better try again. Sometimes - as I said in another post - there are books it takes ages to get into and then suddenly you finish them in an evening. 

I do like the way she has described a hot summer evening in a way that I recognise. And unlike another award-winning author I won't name here, she hasn't resorted to purple prose. 

I decided to try one more time, after having reserved the book at my local library. This time it worked. What do you think, readers? An electronic glitch? Too many people downloading The Cursed Child at once?

Maybe I'm too cynical. Then again, if I was, I wouldn't have tried again.

But I've just finished the first part, up to Intermission. I'd love to see how they got all the effects on stage, but a review in the Age says they did. Will the play ever be performed here? Well, it took The Mousetrap a long, long time to get out of London. I wasn't born when it started. I might have to be taken to the theatre in a wheelchair if this play takes as long!

So for now, the script only.

Back to my read!

Okay, I didn't pre-order. I don't do that. Not for an ebook. Even when I was buying the print books I'd turn up on the day at Dymock's and there would be copies available.

But these days I buy mostly ebooks. You can simply log into your  account and buy. It downloads for you. You have a new book to enjoy! Why would you need to pre-order? It's electronic, right? They don't need to reprint, send them to the warehouses, send them to the shops.

And now, about an hour after this book became available to buy in ebook, I received the message,"This item is no longer availabłe."

Maybe it's my baby boomer ignorance of the technology others my age invented. How on earth can you run out of e-copies?

Or maybe I'm just a cynical person who thinks that this is a marketing thing. Allow so many downloads, then withdraw it. Keep them hungry. Then put it back, perhaps for a higher price. That'll learn 'em for not pre-ordering!

I'd very much like to read this book. I loved all the novels and I've heard good things about the play. I have the highest respect for the author, who deserves her high income.

But at this stage I may just add my name to the reserve queue at the local library and wait for my turn. Even if it takes months. I used to do that for new Terry Pratchett books - borrow, read, then buy in paperback. If it's good enough for Terry Pratchett, it's good enough for Ms Rowling.

Wel, I've completed my read of this particular CBCA shortlist book.

Is it good? Yes. And even if it doesn't win this award, it has already won some others, including one for spec fic. I finished the last chapters quickly, which says something about the readability of the story, and the heroine was good, as was her foster sister and a boy she was friendly with(no romance) but ...

There were some questions left unanswered at the end. I can't go into detail here without spoilers. I described the story outline in my last post on this. It's a dystopia set in a small village where everyone has been trapped for several generations after a rockfall(known as The Rockfall) got them stuck in a valley surrounded by mountains. It has become the ritual to send very slim young girls from seven years upwards to mine mica in the narrow natural passages -men aren't allowed into the mountain or allowed to scoop anything out, because the only survivors of the disaster last time, just after the Rockfall, were women - seven of them, so there is a team of seven girls who are trained to go in and get the mica needed badly for heat and light -only seven at a time, because that's the ritual. And no scooping out anything but what the mountain will allow because that's what caused the Rockfall. I totally understand the point the author is making here.

As I said in my last post, there's no comment on how small the gene pool is in a place where there's only one village - no point in naming it when there aren't any others - although there is a bit on the careful harvests and how happy everyone is when they manage to catch a bird the villagers can share.

But I think the ending let it down. Not so much the discovery of the other people on the other side and that there might be a way to reach them - that's more or less indicated in the scenes from the POV  of a girl called Lia, so not a spoiler. Again, I can't tell you, because spoiler. But I was left saying, "Hang on, there's been this flashback going on through the book and it never quite told us what happened to two of the characters and suddenly we find out what happened to one of them, but not how." 

To be honest, of the four Older Readers books I've read so far, I like two equally best, The Flywheel and Cloudwish. Possibly Cloudwish a bit ahead... Freedom Ride was good for the history it brought to life, though there were some familiar tropes in it I've seen before. This novel is, so far, the one I like the least. And I'm a lover of speculative fiction. 

 Sorry! 

I've just started my new Western Chances applications for two young women in our Year 10 class. They are being nominated for leadership skills. I think I may have posted about Western Chances before, but not recently.

Western Chances is a scholarship aimed at students in the western suburbs of Melbourne, where a lot of kids have very little money and not much chance of going to university, apart from the TAFE colleges and small local universities. TAFE is fine, but what if you want to do medicine or engineering? At one of the bigger universities? In theory, everyone can go if they're willing to repay some of the debt once they get a job that will have enough income to do so. In practice, there are a lot of expenses you might not have expected, and even if you have a job at McDonald's to help with your share house, it may not be enough... And some have up-front fees; I remember a student of ours who got into nursing, but ended up taking a year off to work up the up-front fees.

And then there's the time before you go to university. This wonderful scholarship was set up some years ago by Terry Bracks, wife of a former Victorian Premier. (That's a state Governor for my US readers). It's not a government thing or it would have been long gone. It relies on donations to pay the staff and help get scholarships out to students who are very good at something but who just can't afford the costs of even a state education. I made a donation this year and last, taken from my inheritance of a few thousand dollars from my late friend jan howard finder(lower-case intended), who passed away a couple of years ago. Businesses do their bit and the staff, who are amazing people, get all sorts of goodies for their Western Chances scholars, as well as the money. I get phone calls from them offering a place in an engineering camp or a free camp of some other kind, and when one of my students said she was interested in events management, the lady I deal with said she knew an events manager who could help to mentor the young lady.

But here's the thing: kids change their minds. These two went for counselling from their teachers and were advised on the subjects best for them. And the girl who had planned on events management changed her mind and decided on teaching. Specifically Foods teaching. For that, she plans on doing a VET subject, Hospitality. Which will cost her $400. And probably a textbook.

And General Maths - $88 for the textbook and $200 for a special calculator.

And Business Management - if she does that as a VET subject, it will cost $200. The VCE version(I hope that's what she's planning) will cost less, but there's certainly a textbook involved.

And Health and Human Development(I'm not sure of how much the textbook for that will cost, but it's bound to be $70-80).

And Psychology? $108 for the text and workbook.

In some cases, second-hand books are possible, but not always. Psychology's textbook has changed, so this year books had to be bought new. Even if they can get them second-hand this year, there's still the workbook, which has to be bought new because you write in them.

How on earth do most kids manage? Not all the kids at my school are from poor families, but that doesn't mean they can afford all the textbooks, not to mention calculators (a good reason not to do maths! And now the Federal government is talking about making maths compulsory all the way through).

And kids who are doing the expensive practical subjects(VET) are quite often kids from poorer families.

The other girl is not as complicated as this one, but she too has some expensive subject choices. Maths alone will cost her $288 and she may need tutoring. I said I'd see if I can get her some money for tutoring - there's an inexpensive tutoring service in the area, but it would still be around $200 altogether for 20 sessions. I'm hoping that there will be free reconditioned laptop computers available this year - there wen't last year, which is why the boys I nominated were given the money and told to arrange their own. It worked out, but they had to agree to make that their scholarship gift for the year. It was too dear for anything else. They already have their special calculators, thank heaven!

I may have to say, "If we can't get a reconditioned computer, you'll have to make a choice."

I know that textbook authors do a lot of work and have to be up-to-date, but really, do textbooks have to be quite that expensive?

Ah, well, I think the young ladies might have to settle for help towards their needs; I just don't think I can get them money for the lot. It will depend on how many applications WC gets this year - and it is very popular.

This is one of those things I do when I'm not being a library and English teacher or writing books or short stories. The kids deserve a hand up! And a few hundred a year can make a huge difference.

I'm off work today after a sleepless night; if you work in an office you can sit at your desk and try to focus, but not when you have kids to teach. It's not a job you can get away with being tired. The kids know when you're faking it.

So, off to rest a bit.

Well, I had to go at some stage, didn't I? I have loved Star Trek since discovering it in my teens. The original cast are either old or have passed away. So it has been wonderful seeing the new young cast who have grown into their roles over the last three movies.

I'm around 70 pages in since last night. This one has already won some awards, including the Aurealis, and been shortlisted in another. It's a dystopian novel in which a small village is located in a valley formed after a rockslide long ago. It's run by the Mothers and girls are valued more than boys because they can be sent, if good enough, into the mountain to harvest mica, which, in this world, is useful for heat and light. They need an alternative to wood fires because in the winter the snow comes right up to the top of the houses and smoke can't escape theough the chimneys, though they do have escape pipes.

And today I read the lot, finishing a few minutes ago. It's one of those "just one more chapter" books. It was a Saturday and the book was on the CBCA shortlist, so... 

It has a lot of charm and humour. It reminds me, oddly, of one of Will Kostakis's novels, without the Greek family or the gay boy. This one is about being a gay girl and trying to run the family restaurant to give her Dad a chance to have a break and an overseas holiday after years of no holidays and a wife who left him for another man and moved from Sydney to Melbourne. But Del(short for Delilah)has troubles when the manager is deported over visa issues and she can't find another one.

 Like the vengeful barista she had to sack when he was lazy and stole money. Like the franchise cafe competing with hers. And then there's her friend Charlie who has moved in to hide from the police after he punched out the father of a young woman he had a crush on. And the beautiful flamenco dancer Rosa whom she watches performing at the tapas bar across the road every night from her window. And the bullying at school for being gay and having had a romance with a girl who is now denying it and telling everyone who will listen that Del had the wrong idea about her. 

Somehow, despite all the disasters, and a case of insta-love, the book is funny, the voice delightful. 

I'll be interested to see how the book will go over with our students. They don't seem to mind the gay boy books - Will Kostakis and David Levithan's books go over quite well in our library, though usually after a teacher recommendation. One of our boys is currently reading and enjoying The Sidekicks, but then, he's a Kostakis fan in general. It was so nice to be able to introduce them last year at Reading Matters when Will came over to say hi. 

I'm sure there are some girls out there not admitting to their sexuality, but I don't know. Even if they aren't around at my school, there's plenty for everyone. 

Interestingly, if Cloudwish was a love letter to Melbourne, this novel is a tribute to Sydney. I've been in Glebe, where it's set, in the YHA, probably the hostel mentioned in it. It's a fairly posh suburb near the sea. I haven't been to the library which the characters campaign to save, but you can check it out in Google Images. It has tourists wanting a bus to Bondi beach, Rose Bay, where two of my nieces live, Central Station and Redfern. You don't have to live there to be able to picture it. 

This novel won the Ampersand Prize given annually by Hardie Grant Egmont for a debut novel.

I now have most - not all - of the Older and Younger Readers books for this year in my library and I've decided to make my way through them and comment as I go.

I've already read and commented on Soon by Morris Gleitzman and Cloudwish by Fiona Wood.

I'm nearly finished reading Sue Lawson's piece of historical fiction set in a small NSW town in 1965, Freedom Ride. It is, of course, about the Australian Freedom Ride led by Charles Perkins, who makes a brief appearance in the novel.

The hero is a white boy, Robbie, who lives with his father and his grandmother. He is not very happy in this life, which includes a school bully, an unpleasant grandmother and a father who goes to the RSL every Friday night and has some secrets her has never shared with Robbie.

And, of course, there's the small-town racism and ignorance and a local policeman who isn't interested in looking after the rights of the local indigenous people, even when one is killed, let alone when they're bashed up.

When Barry Gregory, a young man who has been in London, returns to his hometown to help his mother run the caravan park, things improve for Robbie, who takes a job with him and learns about the outside world and the fact that racism isn't nearly as bad in London as in his town.

I'm enjoying the 1960s references, including to OZ Magazine, which Barry reads.

It does take most of the book to actually get around to the Freedom Riders arriving in Walgaree, Robbie's home, though they're mentioned earlier - and abused by Robbie's father and grandmother.

Anyway, it will be interesting to see what else is available on this year's shortlist. There are some good books so far.

Anyone else reading them?

I've had all the Janna books in my library for some time, including the last two, which the author had to self publish after her original publisher dropped them. But I've never got around to reading them before; I bought them for some of the students, who had requested them.

However, having a browse through the crime section on iBooks, I found to my delight that they are now available in ebook, published again by Momentum, the digital imprint of Pan Macmillan, which also does print on demand. The covers are new too. And it was only $4.99 and not too large a download, so I bought the first of the series, Blood Oath. I think I'll be reading the rest now.

In case you're not familiar with the series, it's a series of YA historical mysteries set during the time of  Stephen and Matilda's fight over the English throne. The heroine is a young woman who is a herbalist trained by her mother. I haven't yet read far enough for the mystery bit to start, but I'm feeling comfortable in this world, which was so well described in the Brother Cadfael novels.

Actually, the author says in her note that she was inspired by the Brother Cadfael mysteries to make her heroine a herbalist, though her sympathies lie on the side of Matilda, while the characters in the Ellis Peters books prefer Stephen.

Well, must get back to it - Chapter 5 beckons!

So, here are a few(not ten, sorry!) universes which had food and eating scenes that I enjoyed. 

A Song Of Ice And Fire, aka Game Of Thrones. 

I've written about this before, including a review of the cookbook, A Feast Of Ice And Fire, written by some fans who did a lot of research, a lot more cooking and finally produced the book, presenting the author with goodies mentioned in his novels. And there are plenty! People in this series eat. And eat. Most of the foods - not all - are mediaeval. Some murders and mass murders happen at feasts - though I guess if you're going to kill all your enemies, it makes sense to do it when they're all in one place, and it has certainly happened in history.

Another universe in which people eat and eat. I sometimes wonder why Hogwarts students don't come home bigger than Dudley Dursley. Even when they're not having a feast - and they do have one to celebrate the beginning and end of term and another one on Halloween(also on Christmas Day, but there are only a few kids left at school for that) - there is a large choice of foods for breakfast and dinner, including dessert. There are the Honeydukes sweets(including chocolate for overcoming the shock of Dementors) and such wizardly treats as cauldron cakes and butterbeer. We're never told what either of those are, but that hasn't stopped fans from trying to make both. What is a cauldron cake? Is it shaped like a cauldron or baked in a cauldron? Is it even sweet?

 And butterbeer. We know it's low-alcohol(unless you're a House Elf, in which case it's quite possible to get drunk on it). We know it's delicious and warming. That's about it. But there are masses of recipes out there. One, as I recall, includes butterscotch schnapps! Never had that, but I bet it's rather more alcoholic than butterbeer! The only butterbeer recipe I might consider trying is from the web site Food Through The Pages, which is written by one of the abovementioned Ice And Fire fans. Research by her produced a 16th century recipe for something called Buttered Beer. Sounds good to me.

The Hobbit by J.R.R Tolkien begins with the chapter "An Unexpected Party", establishing the Hobbits as a race who like their food - not to mention the Dwarves, who pretty much empty out Bilbo Baggins's walk-in pantry over afternoon tea. Of course, there are thirteen of them, plus Gandalf the wizard. A late friend of mine once sent me a carefully typed-out article called "The Pleasures Of The Hobbit Table", which I scanned in order not to lose it. All the food described is very English in style. And Tolkien's English food isn't the stodgy stuff most of us imagine when we hear "English food." Simple, yes, but not stodgy.  It has been said that simple food is the hardest to get right, because you can't hide it behind sauces and spices. 

In The Lord Of The Rings we have the opening chapter, "A Long-Expected Party" in which Bilbo and Frodo celebrate their joint birthday and Bilbo nicks off to live at Rivendell. There is a detailed description of what everyone gets to eat at this party.  Later in the book, Sam Gamgee offers to make fish and chips for Gollum, who just can't get his head around the idea of spoiling lovely fresh, tender meat by cooking it.

And the Elves! They can throw together a feast in no time. And I did love that scene in the Hobbit movie in which one of the Dwarves looks up from his vegetarian meal of mostly lettuce and asks plaintively if he could maybe have some fish and chips. It wasn't in the novel, but it does confirm my view that the High Elves, anyway, tend to be living in New Age artist colonies. 

 But the most important Elvish foods are lembas bread and miruvor, a drink that will warm and comfort you when you need it most. Lembas is supposed to be a travel bread that lasts and lasts. What it really is, is the blessed wafer you have in church, while miruvor is the wine. Tolkien was a devout Catholic. See my earlier post about March 25th. 

Terry Pratchett's POV characters are mostly English-type people, who like bacon and eggs for breakfast, the greasier the better. Sam Vimes, the world-weary police chief, can't handle eating anything that doesn't make his arteries clang. As far as he's concerned, Burnt Crunchy Bits are an essential food group. His wife, Lady Sybil, feels she ought to be cooking for him, but as she isn't very good at it, she delights him with greasy, burnt food, just the way he likes it. Sam's idea of a BLT sandwich is plenty of B and skip the L and T altogether. 

There are the dwarfs, who bake bread that is so tough you can use it as a weapon - and they do. There's an entire museum of Dwarf Bread, including guerrilla crumpets. The Low King is crowned on the Scone of Stone. You certainly can't eat dwarf bread. So it's good to take on a journey because it lasts and lasts -  you'll eat anything rather than the bread.The joke is clearly meant to be about the journey breads mentioned in Tolkien's fiction, in which the Dwarves have a long lasting journey bread called cram. Pratchett's dwarfs love to eat rats, whether rat on a stick or in a pizza(quatri rodenti pizza is ordered in the novel Soul Music). 

There are Klatchian takeaways where you can buy curry, though the English characters think curry is yellow and contains swedes and sultanas. 

Anyway, people eat a lot in the Discworld novels! 

Kerry Greenwood writes crime fiction. And her characters eat. And eat. Partly, I think, it's because the author is herself a good cook who enjoys food. 

Phryne Fisher, her Jazz Era detective, is a small slim woman with Dutch Doll hair. She should be the size of a barn the way she eats. Phryne is wealthy and can afford to go out to dinner - and shout her dinner companions. Which she does. And we're treated to detailed descriptions of those meals. I suspected one was pollo e funghi pasta and tried it out and very nice it was. Kerry told me it was based on a pollo e funghi she'd had in Florence. 

But she has a wonderful cook, Mrs Butler, whose buffet meals are also described in great detail, from the soup to the dessert and savouries, followed by cocktails. And her adopted daughter, Ruth, wants to be a cook and in Dead Man's Chest she has the chance to cook for the family while they're on holiday at Queenscliff, because the staff of the house they're borrowing have vanished.

Corinna Chapman is a baker and she is a large lady. She takes great pleasure both in cooking and in eating out with her boyfriend Daniel. Restaurant meals are described and Corinna and Daniel usually end them with delicious gelato for dessert. Her apprentice Jason is a master of the muffin, including an amazing chocolate muffin for which the author provides a recipe at the end of the book. And I use her recipe for French Onion soup, very nice and easy to make and perfect for a winter night. 

I think Corinna is meant to be Kerry. She is built the same way and has the same love of food and cooking.

There are plenty more, of course, such as Enid Blyton. I've always wished I could try the honey biscuits described in the Faraway Tree books - and there are fans out there who have made up their own recipes for these. Characters in Enid Blyton books eat a lot. Don't forget the midnight feasts!

But I'll leave it here and invite your own thoughts on fiction and food. Any suggestions?

After my last post, I found in iBooks a Best Of Henry Kuttner, one of those books from SF Gateway, which has been republishing classic SF in ebook format.

It had some very familiar stories I last read many years ago. "Mimsy Were The Borogroves" was the first in the book. I think somewhere I have a vinyl recording of William Shatner reading that, but I'll need one of those special turntables to record it on to USB stick, then burn it to CD. It's the famous story about two children playing with toys sent from the far distant future by a man trying to build a time machine. They're his son's old toys and he just wants to use them to try out his prototype but he gives up when three tests don't bring the machine back. One of the three is picked up by a little girl in 19th century England, who has an "Uncle Charles" - hence the first verse of "Jabberwocky", which is a code ... I think he may have written that with his wife, C.L Moore, who was best known for her horror and fantasy fiction.

There's also "Nothing But Gingerbread Left", which I'm looking forward to rereading. You know how you sometimes can't get a song or tune out of your head? Well, some folk in the U.S. use that in the war against the Nazis. Delightful!

And, best of all, not one, but two Hogben stories! I didn't think you could get those in ebook(though there was that one short story I mentioned in my last post). One of the stories, "Cold War", I've read, but am happy to read again. The other, "Exit The Professor", I haven't.

I know there was a book called The Hogben Chronicles, published a few years ago by crowdfunding, but I think it was a limited edition and it was only in print. There were, at the time, copyright issues that didn't allow for ebooks.

But hopefully, sooner or later, things do change for most books. Ray Bradbury wouldn't allow his books in ebook for years, but now they're available. Harper Lee took a long time about it, but finally agreed to let her classic novel be ebooked.

You just have to be patient and keep looking.

Back to my new book!

Some time ago, I discovered that there are some classic SF stories on Project Gutenberg. I'm not just talking about Verne and Wells, but about some of the big name writers of the twentieth century's Golden Age of SF. I found, to my delight, works by Fritz Leiber, Poul Anderson, H.Beam Piper and Harry Harrison that have gone out of copyright. They all disappeared from my iPad when the first one was broken, but I retrieved the Fritz Leiber stories and tonight I have gone back to see what else is available.

Most of them are short stories or novellas that first appeared in magazines, usually in the 1930s - and sometimes the magazine covers are there to enjoy, though I don't mind if they're not.

So, what did I pick up this evening? I found some of the works of Fredric Brown ("Happy Ending", "Two-Timer")Murray Leinster(Med Ship Man") and Henry Kuttner. One of them, "The Ego Machine", by Henry Kuttner, I had actually read, but it had dropped off the iPad. There's even a short story by Gordon R Dickson, "No Shield From The Dead."

You can get plenty of classic stories, mind you, in iBooks, and very cheaply, in the various SF Megapacks. I do have some of those, but I'm being careful with the downloads. There's only so much space on my iPad and I can keep more control with the Gutenberg downloads which are often just individual short stories.

I do want to get hold of some of the Hogben stories of Kuttner, but there's only one on iBooks - ten pages long - and I think I've read it. The Hogben stories are about a long lived hillbilly family originally from Atlantis. They're very funny, but you can't get them in ebook. The one time I found one listed in the ToC of an anthology I bought it only to find that there was some sort of a copyright issue and they had instead published a story by someone else - a story I had in another anthology!

Another short story I can't find is Murray Leinster's "First Contact." It's hugely famous, but nobody seems to be anthologising it in ebook, despite several volumes of Leinster stories available in iBooks.

So, it goes both ways: you can sometimes find stories free on Gutenberg that you wouldn't have thought were out of copyright and there are stories you'd be happy to buy that have copyright issues that prevent them coming out in ebook!

Ah, well, there's plenty to read while I wait! 

I grabbed this one off my shelves whole looking for another Pratchett book to reread. I know of a lady on Livejournal who is rereading it all in publication order, but me, I read whatever I'm in the mood for. And whichever book I pick up, I soon settle into my reread, comfortable in this universe as putting on an old pair of slippers...

In Theophilus Grey And The Demon Thief, we met twelve year old Theophilus, mostly known as Philo, who was a link boy, a job that involved carrying a torch and escorting clients late at night through the mostly unlit London streets to wherever they wanted to go. Because of this, he and his team knew their part of London like the backs of their hands - and were likely to pick up information that could be sold by their master Garnet Hooke to the magistrates, especially one Henry Fielding, whom older readers probably know best as the author of Tom Jones and Joseph Andrews. Philo was trying to find out why a bunch of criminals were being found unconscious without a mark on them.

Today is my niece Amelia's fifteenth birthday. I've bought her a gift voucher for JB HiFi, where she can buy DVDs, music and gadgets. While I was there yesterday, I bought three DVDs for the price of two - Season 4 of Game Of Thrones, Season 1 of The Simpsons and Season 1 of Poldark - not the original, a remake, with the delicious Aidan Turner in the title role. Remember him? That's right, he was Kili, Thorin Oakenshield's nephew who - only in the film, NOT the book! - had a romance with an elf maiden.

Anyway, I posted about July 4 a couple of years ago, I'm Amelia's honour, so here's the link for you and please, do read it! Did you know the date has connections with Alice In Wonderland, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Neil Simon and the Crab Nebula? How? Check it out!

And happy birthday, my dearest Amelia! 

 I'm enjoying the reread so far. I'd forgotten a lot of it. This Gilgamesh starts to think of death, and how he definitely doesn't want it, when he is only six and attends his father's funeral.

 It's certainly based on the royal burial excavated by Leonard Wooolley, in which he had the theory that all those people who went with the king were there voluntarily. If you believed without question that the afterlife for most people was darkness and dust and you had the chance to go to heaven and party with the gods instead, in exchange for taking poison and lying down with the king in his grave, you might just do it, yes? Woolley gave some reasons for his theory; the layout was too neat, nobody seemed to have struggled and one handmaiden had her silver headdress in her pocket instead of on her head; maybe, he suggests, she was a bit late getting dressed for the funeral and forgot to put it on? It's a fascinating read, by the way, a book called Ur Of The Chaldees, which Penguin published many years ago; I was given it along with a number of other classics by a teacher who was clearing his shelves and knew I loved history. I used the book in my research for my book Time Travellers: Adventures In Archaeology(my one and only bestseller - still in print in the U.S., still bringing me royalties after 14 years).

At this point in my reading, Gilgamesh is not much past twelve and already a huge young man and sexually experienced. He discovered girls early and when his uncle takes him to the temple of Inanna to have his supposed first experience with a sacred prostitute, he has to pretend to be a virgin. 

I'm looking forward to rereading the rest. I always enjoy a book which has taken a myth or legend and shown me how it could work as history. 

Received in my email yesterday the following request from a lady doing her Masters thesis on diversity in speculative fiction. This is a subject that is being much discussed recently and it will be interesting to see what results she comes up with in her thesis. I'm going to do it.

Sorry, Australian and British fans only this time.

Take it away, Rachel Aitken!

Calling all science fiction and fantasy literature fans! I'm Rachel, and I'm a student from Scotland studying the MSc Publishing at Edinburgh Napier University. I'm currently conducting research for my dissertation, which aims to critically analyse racial and gender diversity within sci fi and fantasy fiction, specifically in the UK and Australia. I'm looking for participants to complete the following survey, where you will be asked about yourself, your opinions on diversity in the genre, with some case study questions regarding book cover decisions as well. The survey itself shouldn't take longer than 20 minutes, and I will be extremely grateful if you could complete it! It's for British and Australian participants only, as I am investigating differences in the genre between these two countries. The deadline for answers is July 17th. You can contact myself, if you have any questions, on Twitter (@rh_aitken) and you can access the survey here. Thank you again! 

I am going to write another one, anyway, and maybe this time there will even be a comment or two? 

Having dropped off the ASIM team for personal reasons, I've decided to continue with the slush reading, for which you don't need to be a member, but they paused for some months in reading submissions. Now it's back to business and over the last four weeks I have read twenty stories and passed on one to the next round. And I'm not sure that I should have passed that one on. The fact that I can't remember what it was about should tell you something about it. 

You see, I'm being more picky these days. Or maybe I've just been sent worse stories. The guy doing slush these days, with the retirement of Lucy Z, assures me I'm doing the right thing. Another friend still on the committee tells me they're being more picky too - perhaps too picky if, as she thought, a story now has to get a score of 3 to get into the slushpool - I told her that I couldn't remember ever seeing a story get a score better than 4! Three readers all giving it the top score of 1 is highly unlikely. I rarely gave even a wonderful story better than 2. It had to be something I thought would be an award-winner to get a 1 from me. 

 I do wish we had more people subscribing than submitting, instead of the other way around. That way, the magazine would be selling better and people would have a better idea of what's publishable and what isn't. Even if they just buy one ebook as a sample! 

But no. I sometimes suspect that many American stories we receive, from that country of many SF publications, are trying us because they were rejected - rightly! -  by all of the magazines back home. They get rejected here too. It would be nice to think they take the hint and retire those stories and try writing something else. 

 This isn't always the case. We've published early stories by the likes of Jim Hines 

and Ann Leckie and others who went on to win Hugos and Nebulas. Early fiction, mind you. Once they can get paid lots more back home, they sell there - and I don't blame them for that. But still - good writers do send us stuff that might possibly have been published in their own country. And our local international bestseller, Sean Williams, sent us a very short story set in his Twinmaker universe and was happy to do so. He mentioned it somewhere on line. And I published some wonderful stories by U.S. submitters in ASIM 60. They just aren't established writers; perhaps they will do well in future. I hope so.

Again, I'm reading in hopes of feeling the way I did when I opened, say, "The Wine Endures" by Anthony Panegyres(I published that in ASIM 50)or "What The Carp Saw(And Could Not Tell While Alive)" by Christine Lukas(I published that in ASIM 56, along with a terrific story by Lyn Battersby which I chose because we needed an extra story)or that beautiful story "Return Of The Queen" by an author whose name I've forgotten, as it was so long ago and he has never made any further sales, alas!

I keep hoping! 

So, just a little advice for future submitters whose stories may end up in my inbox, if you want to get to Round 2.

1. Get your grammar right. It's not the editor's job to fix it for you, unless you're paying someone to do it, and sending a story that is full of grammatical errors, as opposed to the odd typo, just shows the lack of professionalism of the author. 

2. If sending from outside Australia, don't make local jokes and references and assume readers overseas will understand them. If I don't know what they are, I'll reject the story out of hand. 

3. Kill your darlings. If a story is long, every bit of it needs to move the story on. If it doesn't, get rid of it.  I should add that when I have been sent several stories to read, guess which one has to wait longest to hear from me? Right! The longest one. It's a practical way for me to get through all of them as quickly as possible. And you know what? I have rarely read a story nine or ten thousand words long that didn't need a lot of pruning. While ASIM will occasionally take a longer story, it has to be brilliant. There is a limit to the wordage for each issue and if you're a subscriber who hated the longest story, you'd feel cheated, right? 

4. Don't submit a story that is number 6 in a so-far unpublished series which makes reference to things that happened in previous stories. And absolutely don't offer the whole series! Each issue is edited by a different person who can't be expected to commit a section of their issue to the latest episode of your magnum opus. Put the damned things together and try selling them as a novel somewhere. Don't try selling them to a magazine unless it does series and says so on its web site. If it turns up in my inbox, I am likely to reject it. If it's good, perhaps I'll reject it regretfully - but if it can't stand alone, I'll reject it. 

5. Ask someone to look at your story before submitting it anywhere and see if it makes sense. I've read a lot of stories in the last few weeks which made no sense to me. I said so, and why, in my comments.

6. Finally, check your market, even if it means shelling out a bit of money to read a magazine. If you sell, you can claim these things on tax. If not, at least you'll have had an enjoyable read or decided that this magazine is not for you. 

Well, now, off to read this week's slush - four short pieces, one long one. Fingers crossed I will be weeping at the beauty of at least one of them! 

Annie and Jamie are both abused children. Annie has been taken from one dreadful foster home to another as long as she can remember, while Jamie is living with his horrible father and grandmother. They're basically what in the US is known as "white trash" and, incidentally, are trolls, as he discovers for certain when his grandmother comes after him with a knife and fork. Annie's latest foster home is in a trailer with - well, more white trash, of the human variety. While they aren't planning to eat her, they do lock her out in the snowy back yard with their wolf-dogs, ordering her to teach them tricks before they will let her back in, as they watch TV all day.

When Annie is rescued from trolls by a dwarf girl in a magic snowmobile,  she learns that she has powerful abilities that might help her to save the magical town of Aurora. Jamie is rescued at the same time. He's not, as far as he knows, magical, and he might turn into a troll some time after his thirteenth birthday, a worry that hovers over him the whole novel.

 The novel, incidentally ends on a cliffhanger, which  should mean a sequel. No guarantee - if a sequel was committed to, there would be a blurb for it at the end. Even the author's web site doesn't mention when a sequel to this one is likely, though it does call it the first in a series, so be warned!

Carrie Jones is better known as a YA novelist; I read one of her novels, After Obsession, years ago, and remember liking it, but not what it was about. We do have some of her other books in my library. This middle-grade novel was her first, which I'm assuming was left in the bottom drawer till now.

It is entertaining and has the odd in-joke, such as calling a teenage elf boy Bloom(as in Orlando?). The humour is over-the-top, as are most of the characters. I thought it interesting that trolls can live in the regular human world without anyone noticing, because they can do a Hulk and change into green monsters when they feel like it. The elf boy can go to school and play baseball in the small town of Mount Desert, where the town librarian is also a magical being, who lives on both sides of the border, with a Brounie wife in Aurora and a house in town. There's no Hogwarts or H.I.V.E for the kids to attend. I quite like that.

However... here are some things that didn't quite work for me.

Aurora is in danger from a sort of dark lord who has been exiled, but now his minions are getting through the barrier because the protective garden gnome has been stolen. Yes, the magical refuge of the witches, Brounies, dwarfs, etc. is protected by a garden gnome! We're never told why, either. Did Miss Cornelia, owner of Aquarius House, perhaps enchant it to protect her people? Is it more than it seems? We don't know.

But I think I do know who stole it.

The odd thing is that it takes most of the novel and an encounter with an evil blood-sucking book before Jamie suddenly connects the stolen garden gnome with one his grandmother brought back from a troll hunting-party.

I was hoping to find out why so many of Annie's former foster homes burned down, but we're not told - if it was to do with her powers, we never find out. We do know that when she draws a rabbit it comes to life, which got her into trouble in various former homes, but that's all.

Characters who are knocked unconscious snore. In other words, if you faint or are knocked out, you go to sleep? And, in some cases, have to be woken up?  Unlikely, I'm afraid.

Still, I think there's enough action, adventure and humour to keep children from about nine to twelve reading and enjoying. It has an endearing silliness about it that makes it worth reading, despite the oddities.