Category: Books

Finding Books

personby Gillian Polack
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Part One

One of the less-talked about side effects of the current wave of antisemitism is that we simply don’t hear about Jewish writers. Some of us (Jewish writers) write for the wider world, some specifically for Jewish communities. The vast majority of us are less visible. I was chatting with other Jewish writers a few weeks ago, and I discovered that this was worse in Australia than in the US, but that there’s no place not infected by the hate.

What readers read is our choice. Finding out about books we’d like to read is far more difficult than it used to be. If a reader has a favourite author who happens to be Jewish, they might not have access to anything new by them because the book publicity trail ignores much of the new work by Jewish writers. At the other end of the spectrum, if a reader doesn’t want to read any book by Jews, they can simply not buy the books or not borrow them from the library. Losing public awareness of Jewish writing doesn’t change the situation for those who will never read a Jewish writer: it changes it for those who want to and have no idea what books to ask for.

What I shall do here is, on the Mondays when I have a group of writers who share being Jewish and who want to be introduced… I shall introduce them. It’s that simple.

I’ve gradually, over the years, found other ways of sharing news about writers, to make up for those essays I used to write, that looked at so many books that I’d read. I miss the parcels of books in the mail, and excitedly reading a dozen of them and finding three that would work together nicely.

My new way of finding books for other people (when I can’t obtain them all myself or read them all) is to ask writers, “Who would you like to be in a group with?” When I get answers to this question, I’ll write more posts like this. They won’t always be about Jewish writers, because there are other groups that are also less seen than they should be. That’s the thing about antisemitism (as most of Australia saw on Sunday, even if they had no idea what they were seeing): it spreads into distrust and silencing of other minority groups. It’s as if people discover permission to lose chunks of culture and the people who create that culture. I can’t tell you about the books or who their audience is unless they’re in the world of science fiction, fantasy or historical fiction, or unless they write history at my end of the history trail. I used to be able to! One of the side-effects of being unwell (and plodding towards blindness) is that I no longer read three books a day. I miss having read all the books and being able to say “Oh! I read that! I can talk about it!” This is not a review series, then, but a simple set of reports.

Call this a series on how writers see themselves and which books they see sitting nicely alongside theirs on the shelf.

If you know of writers who are missing from bookshelves and from essays and from talks, encourage them to contact me and to share with me some details of their work and that of several other writers. And now on to our first group of writers!

Part Two

Debbi Weinberg Lakritz writes children’s books. The US has its own labels, and there they’re called picture books. If there’s a pile of books and a child instantly sits down with it and will not budged until all pages have been turned, then her books may be in that pile. The writes she suggests belong with hers on that pile (shelves don’t work nearly as well as glorious stacks of books when we’re talking about picture books) are Liza Wiemer, Ann Koffsky and Erica Lyons.

When I was a child there was just one picture book for Jewish children in our home library and none at all in our local library. We read it and read it and read it. One of my sisters learned how to use the stepstool before it was actually safe, because this book talked to us in a way that other books didn’t. The book disappeared fifty years ago and I only half remember its title. It was published in the 1940s or 1950s, and was a beige hardback. I look back at my Melbourne childhood and wonder at it and am totally pleased that these days there are choices for picture books that talk to Jewish children.

If any of you explore those books, let me know about them? I would love to know how children read and enjoy books that reflect their own background. I was not one of those children and nor were any Jewish Australian children in the 1960s.

Tomorrow night I attend the launch of a book that discusses what it’s like to be a Jewish Australian right now. I shall raise a glass there to these four authors, and to every other writer who helps give children a sense that they belong in this world. Debbi explained her group of writers to me and told me how warm and supportive the Jewish kidlit world is. This is another excuse to support kidlit. We need that kind and generous world to expand, so very much.

Escaping

personby Gillian Polack
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Is it already Monday?

I am going to write a series on Jewish writers.

Why?

I’m so glad you asked!

I spend a lot of time each week fighting hate. Some people don’t hate so much as think my whole life should be spent fighting the cause their heart is with, which is, in Australia right now, fighting everything about Israel, including its existence.

I am not Israeli (I fight the bad things it does and cheer on the good, just as I do with any other country), however most Australian Jews are dealing with unprecedented levels of antisemitism. This should leave me free of the need to articulate shibboleths, since I’m already one of the bad people in their eyes, right? Entirely wrong. Just over the weekend, these folks have been saying (if they’re nice) “You’re looking at this all wrong. I’ll explain to you how you should think.” If they’re not so nice I learn many things about myself I did not know.

Mostly the bad language and accusations fall into two categories: what I like to think of as new DoubleSpeak, or accusations. I asked someone if I could use their words here to illustrate the DoubleSpeak, as I wanted an example of the particular language they used – it was gloriously fake – and they disappeared from the discussion entirely. The insults can be mild, but they’re usually more dramatic. I’m learning how to handle them better. When someone calls me a child-killer I generally tell them to let the police know and to hand over all the evidence, for instance.

I’m trying to work out what kind of mind hates in this way. This is a marvellous opportunity to find out, because there’s so much hate directed at most Jews. In Australia, we’ve even got ‘good Jews’ and ‘bad Jews.’ I’ve seen people labelled this way three times in the last two days. Last week there were even more labels, because of a literary festival that went terribly awry.

I don’t know about you, but I need a break from this shambolic mess. This is why I’ll introduce books for the next few weeks.

Several groups of Jewish writers gave me details of their books to share (and I’m watching out for more!). The sadness is that I can’t read them until I’m caught up with all my backlog. I’ve been unwell again so the backlog is severe. My normal “Let me read everything first so that I can introduce it properly” will not work. If I’ve read and enjoyed something, I’ll let you know, I promise. Otherwise I’ll tell you what I can.

I’ll share books right up until Jewish New Year. If you want more books after that, I’ll happily continue. I might not be the only person who needs books to distract them from the rather scary everyday.

Principles and Retail

personby Nancy Jane Moore
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The other day on social media, I saw an article in SF Gate about a San Francisco bookstore that decided it would no longer sell Harry Potter books. The store, Booksmith, told the reporter they didn’t want to contribute in any way to J.K. Rowling’s new foundation that provides funding for those fighting inclusion of trans people in single sex spaces.

Since I saw the story first on on social media, there were, of course, comments, one of which said it was “sad” that bookstores were “banning” books.

That’s ridiculous, of course. A bookstore is not obligated to stock any book it doesn’t want to, particularly since no bookstore – except maybe Amazon – can stock everything.  All booksellers curate what they sell. That’s not banning.

Now generally most bookstores try to stock books that they think will sell well that are in keeping with the kind of store they want to be. A science fiction bookstore won’t bother with nonfiction bestsellers, but might well offer obscure editions by a revered author.

And many indie bookstores won’t sell small press books because the publishers can’t offer the return deals that big publishers give them. Both indie bookstores and small presses have tight budgets.

But bookstores, perhaps more than most businesses, reflect the taste of the people who own and run them, so it’s no surprise to me that a given store might decide not to stock books by an author they despise.

What makes it a story is that they said exactly why they’re doing it, instead of just not having the books in stock.

This reminded me of an old friend of mine, known all over the state of Texas as Tiger, though his given name was David, who for a couple of years in the late 1960s owned and ran a record store in College Station, Texas. Continue reading “Principles and Retail”…

Book Review: Beware the Real Neverland!

personby Deborah J. Ross
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The Adventures of Mary Darling, by Pat Murphy (Tachyon)

Peter Pan: We’ve all read the book, seen the play, or watched the animated film, so we know the drill: In Victorian London, three children are swept away to Neverland by PeterPanSpiritOfYouth, where they have many adventures battling pirates led by the dastardly Captain Hook. They leave behind a frantic, ineffectual mother, a bombastic, equally ineffective father, and a drooling dog nanny. Author Pat Murphy asks, Is that really what happened? What if Mary Darling had once been spirited away to be a “Mother” to the Lost Boys, despite her insistence that she is not a Mother? What if she understands all too well the deception and peril of the place and its capricious leader?

In Murphy’s retelling, after emerging from the first horrific shock of finding her children missing, with only one place they could have gone, Mary Darling determines to rescue them herself. Under the innocuous facade of a Victorian wife lies a powerful woman who has fought her way free of Neverland with considerable piratical skills. Of course, she encounters opposition, first in her husband, George, who is loving but befuddled by her “independent ways.” A more significant barrier comes from her uncle, Doctor John Watson, who enlists his friend, Sherlock Holmes, in determining what ails her. Holmes decides that Mary is the prime suspect in the disappearance of her children.

As Mary embarks on her quest to rescue her children before they either starve to death in Neverland or fall prey to Pan’s careless disregard for human life, her past reveals itself in layers. In past and present, we meet old friends and allies, people whose lives have been forever altered by their contact with Neverland. We also discover the reality behind J. M. Barrie’s imperialistic misrepresentation of indigenous peoples, the role and power of women, and the importance of memory.

The Adventures of Mary Darling is a brilliant re-imagining of a familiar tale, laying bare its folly and portraying the ingenuity, skill, and heroism of Mary and a host of other characters, invented and glossed-over. My favorite was James, a sweet gay boy, one of a series of Pan’s “Toodles,” and who later as Captain Hook proves to be one of Mary’s staunchest and most able supporters. It should come as neither surprise nor spoiler that Mr. Holmes never appreciates his loss in insisting that logic is the only reality.

Highly recommended.

 

Creating Habits

personby Nancy Jane Moore
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I’m fascinated to discover how many of the books I’ve chosen for my morning reading practice have turned out to be about time. I started with Carlo Rovelli’s The Order of Time, just finished Oliver Burkeman’s Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals, and have just started Jenny Odell’s Saving Time: Discovering a Live Beyond the Clock.

None of these books is about how to be more productive, which is good because my morning reading is not remotely about efficiency and productivity. It is, even though I’m reading words and writing down some of the ones that strike me as important, a kind of meditative practice.

It started out as a practical thing. I like to do some movement when I first get up – some physical therapy exercises that keep my body moving right along with my Tai Chi form – but I also want to keep an eye on my blood pressure. It’s best to check blood pressure when you’re relaxed, so I started reading for about 15 minutes before I dug out my cuff.

Reading quickly became important in its own right, and over the six months I’ve been doing this, I’ve figured out how to get the most out of it.

First of all, the ideal books are ones best read for a few minutes at a time. Rovelli’s on time was an excellent starting place, since it addressed time as approached by physicists with a philosophical bent and required me to think rather deeply about it when I read.

Books of essays are also good – I read Rebecca Solnit’s latest collection No Straight Road Takes You There before I started on Burkeman. Basically, any book in which reading a few pages gives you something to think about works.

And interestingly, most of the books I’ve ended up really appreciating in this practice are ones I’ve had for some time, but hadn’t read much of, because in truth they are books best read in small doses. If you keep reading to finish the book – as I am prone to do with novels or with nonfiction that’s more reportorial – you miss a lot of the point.

While I’ve been a serious reader all my life – I not only cannot remember not knowing how to read, I do not have any idea how I learned to read except that I already knew how when I started school – I’ve never read this way before.

I might have read school assignments a bit at a time and even taken some notes, but that was for a completely different purpose. In general, I’ve always been the person who buried her nose in a book and kept it there until the end or until interrupted. And I hated being interrupted.

I still read that way, but not first thing in the morning.

And among the things I have learned – especially as I read about time – is that doing this particular bit of reading every day is an incredibly important way to spend my time. Continue reading “Creating Habits”…

If there were but words enough and time… or maybe a photograph

personby Gillian Polack
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This is a short note to let you know that, when you read this, I will have emerged from my second science fiction convention in a fortnight. I will have seen some of my favourite people and will be too tired to write anything.

I wanted to apologise for no blog post. Instead of that, let me give you a picture. A picture, after all, is worth a thousand words. Actually, it’s worth more than 1000 words. I used this picture (and the memory of getting through that flood) in a story I set in Belanglo Forest. I stayed in the log cabin (and have a picture of the log cabin if you want to see it) and drank at the pub and, very fortunately, didn’t see any dead bodies. If you’re curious about the story (which probably classifies as sarcastic horror), you can find more about it here: This Fresh Hell – Australasian Horror Writers Association

Picture of a minivan splashing through a drowned road in a pine forest in New South Wales
1980s, Belanglo, at the time of the backpack murders

Not Gods

personby Nancy Jane Moore
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“We are as gods and might as well get used to it,” Stewart Brand said back in 1968. I remember reading that in the Whole Earth Catalog back in the day.

The concept appealed to me, as did the catalog and its successor, the Coevolution Quarterly. I recall thumbing through the issues, finding gems of ideas amidst a lot of odd ones. In those pre-Internet times, it was a way – along with alternative comics, music, and the underground press, not to mention the Civil Rights and antiwar movements and second-wave feminism – to find something new to chew on.

We were definitely looking for something new to chew on.

I don’t remember exactly what I thought when I first saw those words, but l suspect that part of what I thought was that they were an admonition to human beings who were starting to unlock knowledge beyond that needed for basic survival. I heard “Be careful. We’ve got more power than we understand.”

After all, I grew up in the shadow of the Bomb. We were playing with things that could blow up the whole world, and far too many of the men – and it was mostly men – in positions of power were not the sort of person who was good at taking care or planning for the long term.

But these days as I look at some of what Brand has to say, I’m not sure at all that I was correct about what he meant. I’m starting to wonder if he was thinking more along the lines of the broligarchs who are out to spread humanity throughout the universe and even think they’re going to live forever.

After reading Adam Becker’s More Everything Forever, I think those people believe they are gods, or that they’re becoming gods. Continue reading “Not Gods”…

Dissertating

personby Gillian Polack
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I’ve finished a complete draft (a clean one) of my dissertation. Around 75,000 words, so about the size of a standard non-fiction study. While there are more processes to get through to reach that draft: annual reports, forms to fill, supervisors to meet and talk to, the actual work involved is the same as for most scholarly work if you already know enough about the subject. This is why the US has additional processes to check that the student has that knowledge. Australia doesn’t have Major Field exams and has limited coursework. It took me about five weeks all up to finish my coursework, in fact. We have to understand ethics for research, and how to work safely, and any languages for the research, and how to actually do the research, and the norms for the field we’re working in, and so forth and so on and… lots of small things, but, in my case, the only big one was learning about literary studies. I’d already done a lot of research in other disciplines and I already read all the languages, so my coursework was basically a matter of going through online modules and demonstrating I had the knowledge.

One entirely odd facet of doing three PhDs is the language side of things. For my first PhD I needed to read nine languages well. I couldn’t read all of those languages well enough (especially Latin, which I could not read at all) so I took a year off in the middle and did a Masters in Canada. That coursework taught me why the US and Canadian PhDs, with the hefty coursework load, are so very handy. It also taught me that my undergraduate degree was very rigorous, which is why I had most of what I needed before I began. I added Latin and palaeography to my skills in Canada and they are very useful!

For my second PhD I only needed five languages, and they were all ones I already knew. I’ve talked to so many fiction writers about this, and most of them did not need any languages except English. “How did you deal with archives and primary sources?” I asked. Some of them don’t. Others pay to have critical works translated or work with translations. Our minds were entirely boggled by each others’ approaches.

This led me to a new understanding. PhD theses (including exegeses attached to Creative Arts PhDs, which is what my second was) are each unique. Underlying skills are similar: research for original work (which is exceedingly different to the type of research I do to write a short story or a novel without a scholarly bent), the capacity to write, the capacity to edit, and an extreme level of patience with the processes of study and publishing.

I said that I’ve finished the thing, but I still have much administratrivia to do, and the copy edit to go through. My thesis will be submitted on 15 May, and it will be months before I know the result.

The need for patience is very familiar to me from my novels. Someones I wait months after the final edits are done for a novel to be published and sometimes years. COVID and the current economic crises have both elongated my wait times (and me being Jewish doesn’t help with some parts of the industry and makes no difference at all to others): I have two novels queued and do not know when they will emerge. My first PhD was beset by quite different crises, but with the same result. The examination took three years, which pretty much cost me my career, back then.

This (almost finished) PhD is different in one big way. The discipline I’m working in is the first I am not entirely comfortable with. I am far more an historian than a literary scholar. Working in Literary Studies has given me a solid appreciation of the work of literary experts. History is not easier, but it suits the way my mind works. I like assembling data and making beautiful patterns from it and explaining it to the world. Now that I understand that not all research does this and that it’s a good thing that there are different approaches (truly, I understand story far, far better now that I can see it from more than one discipline – it’s going to affect both my writing and my teaching, in good ways) my current work of non-fiction is suddenly a lot easier. I don’t have to read every bit of research written in the last 250 years in eleven languages to explain what needs to be explained. It still helps I have the languages, to be honest, but it also helps that I now look for who I’m talking to early on and that I pay far more attention to audience than I used to.

What does this add up to? First, even though I think of it as a dissertation, my PhD is a book. Now that I’m almost done with it, I can finish the book I began during my PhD intermission last year (that trip to Germany was for a purpose).

Two books in a year? Not quite. My earlier work is coming back to haunt me and I may have a third book, which is short essays and thus only needs editing. If this happens (and right now it looks likely) it’s a different type of book again, with quite different research. Short essays don’t need the deep and long research. They take somewhere between an hour (if I already know the subject and have the book I’m writing about in front of me) to about three days. The book adds up, over time, to about 8 months’ work, not three to four years.

Why do I calculate these things? I’m ill (and finally being a bit more open about it) and can’t do all the things I used to do. And yet I’m writing more than I ever have. Short stories (when someone asks) and novels and non-fiction. All these doctorates have helped me understand how much work I need to put in for my various types of writing.

Way back when I was a professional reviewer (a long, long time ago) one of the biggest issues I found with many works, was that balance between the right amount of research, taking the right direction for the research, and keeping in mind that the reader will have the book in front of them. All books need to be readable for their audiences. Those writers who hit this successfully every single time (and you can see some of these simply by looking at the work of other Treehouse writers – I share the Treehouse with amazing writers) can be trusted by their audience. You can pick up a book by them and know it will do what it is supposed to do and that you will be entertained, and often be made to think, and be delighted.

My writing is too diverse for this. For example, I’m untrustworthy for entertainment because my first PhD was so very not entertaining. It wasn’t supposed to be. In fact, I was in huge trouble for the first two years because, as my main supervisor said, “The reader is not supposed to want to turn the page.” This is why most theses are unpublishable as they are and why I didn’t even seek to get that first one published: I had to drain all the joy out to get it through examination.

I’ve learned a great deal over the years, and I managed to be properly scholarly without as much desiccation in the new thesis. It still can’t be published without significant changes. A dissertation is quite different to a book for the wider public because its audience is entirely different.

I still don’t believe anyone needs three PhDs, even if I end up with three myself… but I am in love with the amount of learning along the way. Knowing the difference between writing for academics, for teachers, for the general public and for myself: not a bad outcome. Knowing when to stop researching and why to stop researching for about ten different types of books: what every writer needs.

Let me finish the last unfinished thought and then I’ll get back to work. What is that thought? I used nine languages for the first PhD, didn’t I? It was a Medieval History book, and I read over 139 primary sources (Old French epic legends, Middle English Arthuriana, Latin chronicles and the like), and I had to have both the medieval language and the modern language and… it was so much fun. For years I was the world expert in Old French insults: I still teach how to use them effectively in fighting scenes.

Remember it was five languages for the second PhD, which was a time travel novel and a dissertation? I should have learned an extra language, but I discovered that Old Occitan was easy to read when one knows Latin and various dialects of Old French. I have the manual for it. I read through it once and realised that was enough to read most texts in Old Occitan. A friend once called this “the Medievalist advantage.” I try to say everything in the paragraph pompously because, honestly it sounds pompous.

The only languages I needed for the current PhD were English and French and maybe a little Spanish. That’s all. I learned the disciple, not extra languages.

There have to be PhDs where one only needs one language, but I’ve not undertaken any. Why? There’s a reason for the languages. They open up concepts and give exciting new insights. There is very little research that’s not better with knowledge of more languages. Think about it. Isn’t my life better because I can be rude to idiots in Old French?

Real Problems and the Stupid Coup

personby Nancy Jane Moore
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I finished reading Ed Yong’s An Immense World this week. It is a brilliant explanation of the myriad of senses of the animals on this planet. He has talked to so many great scientists doing deep work, and made what they’re doing clear to the rest of us.

But it left me with — once again — the understanding that we have real problems to address on this planet and instead we’re forced to deal with what Rebecca Solnit has taken to calling the “Stupid Coup,” a name that becomes more apt with each day.

In the last pages of the book, Yong talks about the problems posed by light pollution — which affects the senses of many insects, birds, and bats, not to mention human beings. But he also mentions such things as ships crossing the ocean affecting whales, the damage to the Great Coral Reef, and how such things create a cascade of damage.

About ten years ago, my partner and I backpacked in the Ventana Wilderness, in the northern part of the Los Padres National Forest here in California. I tell many stories about that trip — how we waded the Carmel River 25 times (not an exaggeration), how bad the trail was in spots — but one of the real glories of it was that, with the exception of a airplane or two overhead, we didn’t hear any human noises for three days except the ones we made.

And we could see the stars (through the trees and clouds, at least) because we were surrounded by enough mountains and trees to block light from the nearby cities. One of those nights — the one where we collapsed into our sleeping bags, completely exhausted — we heard frogs and crickets for hours. Nothing else.

Do you know how rare that is?

I doubt that humans, who have only been living in this overlit and noisy state for about a hundred years – somewhat longer for noise – have adapted, even though we know what’s going on. You can be damn sure that the other creatures on the planet have not.

Fortunately, a whole lot of scientists have ideas on what to do about that for the benefit of both people and all the other creatures.

Unfortunately, what they recommend will not even get discussed these days because of the Stupid Coup. People who aren’t willing to consider the effects of air pollution on human beings (“drill, baby, drill”) are certainly not going to worry about light pollution reducing the insect population. Continue reading “Real Problems and the Stupid Coup”…

For the Good of the Realm in Outcasts StoryBundle

personby Nancy Jane Moore
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Covers of all the books in the Outcasts Storybundle.

My novel For the Good of the Realm is part of the Outcasts StoryBundle, curated by Danielle Ackley-McPhail.

As the description on the StoryBundle link says, “Outsiders. Rebels. Free-Thinkers. Who doesn’t love an underdog?” In all these books an outsider plays a key role even though they’re likely not appreciated.

As with all storybundles, you can get the whole package of ebooks for $20 or pay more if you’re so inclined.

Read more about the bundle on the eSpec Books blog.