Yes, I was at Worldcon 2010. Yes, I was superninja on a panel with China Miéville. In my capacity as a postgraduate academic and reader/fan, of course. Precious few people recognise or acknowledge me as a writer, yet*. Anyway, it was a pretty strange place to be in, but I was okay about the points I made. No, I did not faint in fright when China Miéville shook my hand. Yes, I did manage to wash my hand later that night. No, I did not giggle like a moron!

I also presented an academic paper, and attended back to back panels with my beautiful cloth-bound journal adorned with Japanese cherry blossoms and a geisha girl bookmark. I scribbled tons and tons of notes annotated with my own comments and (sometimes) snarky analysis/thoughts/criticisms. I also collected phat lewt. Now, not everything here is from Worldcon, and some of these things I didn’t have to pay for. Especially the used books from the Melbourne Science Fiction Club which they were giving away for free. I did make donations, though. The pocket watch on a chain I got from Carrington’s over on Swanston Street, a place I’d visited before on a prior visit to Melbourne. I also got a gorgeous pashmina there, but the pashminas, along with the chocolates are not in this pic. As for the Worldcon 2010 name-badge, I’m going to miss having it around my neck. For five days, it felt like a magic talisman, protecting me from the Evils of the world, because I was in a place where all SF/F geeks congregated, and it was good.

*In case this sounds like I’m whinging, I’m not. It makes me appreciate even more the people who know who I am and those who have faith in me. You guys rock and I <3 you all. Also, I am determined enough that hopefully, this status quo will not remain for long.

I’ve been so busy with stuff related to the conference and panel I’m going to be on that I completely forgot I had a stack of lovely books on folklore and fairytales from the uni library. I decided to photograph a couple for your visual delectation.

And here’s the stack of books that I’ve been poring over as I try to write the Conference Paper From Hell. I love the topic I chose, but my line of argument is frustrating me because I can’t find the right words to frame my thoughts. Tearing my hair out here!

While I pack my bags for the conference, I think about the care I take with assembling the clothes I wear and why fashion is important to me. It’s a point that was driven home today by this beautiful post by definatalie about how big/fat women are marginalised by more than one means, and one of them is fashion. I think most of us who have spent most of our lives overweight know how difficult it is to be taken seriously, and why fashion/appearances, to a certain extent, mean a lot to us. The way you carry yourself can either add to or mitigate the degree of marginalising your experience. I still remember the turning point in my life when I realised I could wear normal clothes like jeans, be halfway “hip” and how empowering it was for me. It’s not just about looks, it’s about how it makes you feel inside to take control of your own destiny and interactions. These things become necessary in a world where, lamentably, these little visual triggers add up to society’s mental “imaging” of who you are as a person. Strangers assume it’s okay to give you unsolicited advice about everything from your eating habits to how you dress, people assume you’re lazy and slothful, or just mentally retarded. I’ve found evidence of this behavior even amongst the supposedly highly educated, and I think it’s a societal anathema. More so than us well-meaning, well-rounded individuals who struggle to balance diets with busy schedules and our body chemistry that often fights against our efforts.

I don’t post about clothes and fashion on this blog, mostly because I’ve grown comfortable not talking about the personal aspect of my being here. It’s more of a privacy thing, but I really admire people like definatalie who are part of the fatshionista movement, because they are bringing positive thoughts and empowerment for women who may come in bigger shapes and sizes but are still beautiful. Some days, we all have to be reminded we’re beautiful.

Public Service Signal Boost

In other, book-related news, Norilana Books is celebrating its 4th Anniversary. An independent publisher, Norilana Books has an impressive list of books in its catalogue, inclusive of the Clockwork Phoenix series of anthologies (and if you haven’t read them, you should! The stories are quite awesome!), Vera Nazarian’s own lyrical fiction, Eugie Foster’s Returning My Sister’s Face, which I’ve reviewed over at m/c reviews as one of the best books to come out of 2009, as well as Marion Zimmer Bradley’s Sword and Sorceress anthologies. The state of the economy has made times hard for the press, so if you have money to spare and have a liking for any of the books, do buy a book or two, for yourself or as a gift. I’ve got, in my personal library, five books from the press (bought during the course of two years) and I’m happy with all of them. They’re beautifully designed and bound, the typeface is kind to the eyes, and the stories are lovely.

I thought some of you might enjoy pictorial proof of the books that have been engrossing and inspiring me, both as a writer and a postgraduate academic, over the past couple of weeks. They’re all from the university library, hence the bar codes. I’ll be an academic for life if only for this. Access to books and databases. I think it’s a major job perk.

The books you see are (in no particular order):

The Einstein Intersection - Samuel R. Delany
The Jewel-Hinged Jaw: Notes on the Language of Science Fiction – Samuel R. Delany
Silent Interviews: On Language, Race, Sex, Science Fiction and Some Comics – Samuel R. Delany
A Sense of Wonder: Samuel R. Delany, Race, Identity and Difference - Jeffrey Allen Tucker
The Language of The Night – Ursula K Le Guin
Dancing at the Edge of The World: Thoughts on Words, Women Places – Ursula K Le Guin
The Left Hand of Darkness – Ursula K Le Guin

Ursula K Le Guin has been my hero since I was a lonely fifteen year old spending her afternoons at either the school library or the public library in a sleepy rural town in Malaysia, looking for whatever science fiction and fantasy book she could find to read because she didn’t have enough money to buy as many books as she ploughed through, per week. That’s how I discovered the Earthsea books, and was haunted by Ged and his shadow. I’m actually impressed at the selection of classics that were in that tiny library in Sungai Petani! Discovered many lifelong loves there.

Later, during my twentysomething years, I remember taking a book of Le Guin’s poems from a shelf in a bookstore to read while I waited for a friend. It was far too expensive for me to buy, but in that hour I read her poems and felt like every line was an arrow straight into me, reminding me of certain truths that still existed while my soul slept. It’s surprising to me that despite all this, I haven’t read enough of her books, apart from her Earthsea books, some of her poems and critical writings, and the Orsinian Tales, of course. But then again, it’s made me so very glad to rediscover them over the past couple of weeks. Couldn’t have come at a better time, really. Perhaps this is why we leave off reading that special book, or wearing that special dress or going to that special, secret place we’ve always wanted to visit. Perhaps something in us knows, or feels that there will be a time when we will need it more than this. And some day, that time comes, and you’re glad you waited.

You would think I had better things to do instead of calculating my reading average for the past seven years, and you would be right. I’ve been dividing my weekend up between reading texts for a conference paper and a panel I will be presenting at, drafting an academic paper, drafting a short story, as well as catching up on some reading for pleasure. The books that have given me the most pleasure this week have been Ursula K Le Guin’s The Lathe of Heaven as well as her Left Hand of Darkness. I’ve also enjoyed reading a collection of her critical writing, The Language of the Night along with some essays and interviews by Samuel R. Delany, and Helen Merrick’s The Secret Feminist Cabal: A Cultural History of Science Fiction Feminisms.

All in all, I am satisfied with my reading for the year, but it also left me curious about my reading patterns for the last decade or so. It feels as if I read slower now, but that is also due to the realities of being both a postgraduate scholar as well as an academic. Ironically enough, my years of teaching literature at a non-governmental organisation’s private college had me reading voraciously. It is ironic because I was teaching 15-17 hours a week, doing some admin stuff as well as running an editorial board for the college, but somehow, I still managed to find time to lose myself in texts. I would suppose it was because we had these hours between classes to fill, it was a shared office space and none of us were given individual computers. It was also partially because I tend not to have a very active social life. Which leads me to believe that my shocking low of only 33 books read for pleasure last year was due to the amount of time spent on a certain social networking apparatus that I’ve since jettisoned. Granted, there are things I often leave off the list. I did a hefty bit of critical reading last year, and the same applies to this year. Those books, articles, reviews etc will never go on these lists because there are far too many of them. Occasionally I will list primary sources or secondary sources that I actually enjoyed for its own sake, but otherwise, I’d feel it was cheating.

Anyway, I decided to use ordered lists for all the reading lists I have on this site. I actually have been keeping these lists since 2000, but since The Book Alcove was coded by hand and long-since jettisoned, those earlier lists have since disappeared into the ether. What I have here are my reading figures from 2003-2009, and just for added fun, I even calculated the mean.

1. 2003 – 46 books
2. 2004 – 42 books
3. 2005 – 68 books
4. 2006 – 45 books
5. 2007 – 58 books
6. 2008 – 78 books
7. 2009 – 33 books

Mean – 52.85 books per year

I don’t know about you, but I find this depressing. For someone passionate about books and whose path in life is all about books, that’s a depressing amount of reading. I’d love to make it to 100 books some year, but I know it won’t be this year. Fortunately, my reading figure for this year won’t be as grim as 2009, since I’ve already reached 40 books! I’m hoping to at least reach my average by the end of this year. Somehow, I think I can do it. I find hours spent just reading quietly to be very healing for me, and I aim to do more of this.

I feel a bit dodgy for posting this, since I didn’t exactly make the puff pastry from scratch. It was an impromptu thing. I had to leave the house to get my blood pressure meds, onions and some fruits. At the grocery store I had a sudden urge to get puff pastry sheets. Then I came home, and in a crazy fit, started drafting out a short story set in the golden age of the Yrole Triptych that’s been sitting in my brain since last June. Well, okay, originally the story itself was set in Lumen Procellae, but I decided to set it in the world of The Yrole Triptych instead. The result is this: making the sort of Spiced Meat Rolls I imagined the people of my protagonist’s village would eat. The filling is minced meat, mashed potatoes, minted peas. I cooked it with caramelized onions, ginger-garlic paste, garam masala powder, some paprika, some fresh coriander, curry leaves, spices (cloves, black mustard seeds, fenugreek, cinnamon flakes, cardamom, jeera), a tablespoon of Malaysian curry powder and a tiny bit of lemon juice, just enough for flavour, not sourness.

Anyhow, I probably shouldn’t be drafting short stories when I’ve got academic deadlines, but reading about writing and scifi/fantasy literary criticism in general just makes me want to write instead of just writing about others. I’ll get back to the grindstone after this post-prandial drowsiness wears off.

I don’t know which worries me more, that I’ve been spending each weekend in a frenzy of cooking and baking, or that I’m dorky enough to cook stuff from my stories.