Have I got links for you!

I wrote a Longvision chapter commentary post. It's about Romanitas chapter 2, 'Green Thames'.

In response to a variety of things, I wrote an impassioned defence of J. K. Rowling and Roald Dahl. Against what charges was I defending them? The charge of encouraging children to challenge authority. Oddly enough, on the same day, Neil Gaiman linked to a New York Times article about absent and bumbling parents in children's literature, which is sort of what I was discussing.

Scalzi, as usual, has some good stuff on his blog, including this (conservative US senator Tom Coburn tells conservatives to get their news and current affairs from a wider range of sources than Faux News, which is stating the bleeding obvious, but welcome nonetheless), and his thoughts on this year's Hugo nominees. Abigail Nussbaum's opinions on the matter, are, as usual, worthwhile.

Here's a GREAT post by Justine Larbalestier about teenagers and reading, which I urge you all to read. She makes the sensible point that a lot of the panicking seems to be that teenagers aren't reading the right kind of books, that is, not novels. But, as she notes, teenagers are reading, so stop panicking. She's also got an interesting post about how most US readers seem to be interpreting Karen Healey's book Guardian of the Dead as being set in Australia, when it is, in fact, set in New Zealand - and very clearly stated to be set there.

This Boing Boing post about a ramen connoisseur is pretty cool. So is this article in The Independent about John Oliver, a British comedian who's been a very successful addition to The Daily Show line up.

Despite my strong resistance to becoming British, it seems to have rubbed off somewhat. In case you didn't realise, the general election's been called for 6th May. While I can't vote in it, I've found myself getting caught up in it, and read the election coverage in three papers from cover to cover today. I actually quite enjoy elections. The US one in 2008 I spent watching with three American housemates, celebrating ecstatically as the night wore on. For my last Australian one, I was working for a newspaper, and there's something very special about being in the media during an election year. There's a sense of knowing camaraderie that you don't find elsewhere, with everyone dropping everything to stand transfixed in front of the office televisions whenever an important speech comes on and so on.

As a foreigner, the British election won't have a huge impact on my life (unless the government decides to kick out all foreign students or limit our ability to work or something), but as a passionate participant in several other elections (and a person from a country where voting is compulsory), I urge all my British friends to register to vote, if they haven't already, and to vote.

(Amusingly, when I was in Southport with my cousins, I learnt that British elections are always on Thursdays. Australian ones are always on Saturdays, so as to allow everyone to vote. My cousin remarked that the British ones were held on weekdays to keep people from voting. However, every election I've ever voted in has required me to duck out of work in the cake shop because, as a student, I had been working part-time on Saturdays...)

The other example of rubbed-off Britishness is a bit sillier. I was reading a book published in the US, and found myself flinching every time the author used the word 'pants' to mean 'trousers'. Somehow, although this is a perfectly acceptable Australian usage, the British meaning of 'pants' seems to have lodged in my brain. It's only 'pants'. I still happily say 'chips' to mean both 'crisps' and 'hot chips', 'swimmers' for 'swimming costume' and so on. But 'pants' for 'trousers' looks wrong.

One final piece of ephemera before I leave you to cook dinner. While running today, I had the best seamless transition from one song to another:

'I'm totally addicted to -' 'Bass in the place, London!'

It kind of made my day. Which is kind of pathetic.

Have I got links for you!

I wrote a Longvision chapter commentary post. It's about Romanitas chapter 2, 'Green Thames'.

In response to a variety of things, I wrote an impassioned defence of J. K. Rowling and Roald Dahl. Against what charges was I defending them? The charge of encouraging children to challenge authority. Oddly enough, on the same day, Neil Gaiman linked to a New York Times article about absent and bumbling parents in children's literature, which is sort of what I was discussing.

Scalzi, as usual, has some good stuff on his blog, including this (conservative US senator Tom Coburn tells conservatives to get their news and current affairs from a wider range of sources than Faux News, which is stating the bleeding obvious, but welcome nonetheless), and his thoughts on this year's Hugo nominees. Abigail Nussbaum's opinions on the matter, are, as usual, worthwhile.

Here's a GREAT post by Justine Larbalestier about teenagers and reading, which I urge you all to read. She makes the sensible point that a lot of the panicking seems to be that teenagers aren't reading the right kind of books, that is, not novels. But, as she notes, teenagers are reading, so stop panicking. She's also got an interesting post about how most US readers seem to be interpreting Karen Healey's book Guardian of the Dead as being set in Australia, when it is, in fact, set in New Zealand - and very clearly stated to be set there.

This Boing Boing post about a ramen connoisseur is pretty cool. So is this article in The Independent about John Oliver, a British comedian who's been a very successful addition to The Daily Show line up.

Despite my strong resistance to becoming British, it seems to have rubbed off somewhat. In case you didn't realise, the general election's been called for 6th May. While I can't vote in it, I've found myself getting caught up in it, and read the election coverage in three papers from cover to cover today. I actually quite enjoy elections. The US one in 2008 I spent watching with three American housemates, celebrating ecstatically as the night wore on. For my last Australian one, I was working for a newspaper, and there's something very special about being in the media during an election year. There's a sense of knowing camaraderie that you don't find elsewhere, with everyone dropping everything to stand transfixed in front of the office televisions whenever an important speech comes on and so on.

As a foreigner, the British election won't have a huge impact on my life (unless the government decides to kick out all foreign students or limit our ability to work or something), but as a passionate participant in several other elections (and a person from a country where voting is compulsory), I urge all my British friends to register to vote, if they haven't already, and to vote.

(Amusingly, when I was in Southport with my cousins, I learnt that British elections are always on Thursdays. Australian ones are always on Saturdays, so as to allow everyone to vote. My cousin remarked that the British ones were held on weekdays to keep people from voting. However, every election I've ever voted in has required me to duck out of work in the cake shop because, as a student, I had been working part-time on Saturdays...)

The other example of rubbed-off Britishness is a bit sillier. I was reading a book published in the US, and found myself flinching every time the author used the word 'pants' to mean 'trousers'. Somehow, although this is a perfectly acceptable Australian usage, the British meaning of 'pants' seems to have lodged in my brain. It's only 'pants'. I still happily say 'chips' to mean both 'crisps' and 'hot chips', 'swimmers' for 'swimming costume' and so on. But 'pants' for 'trousers' looks wrong.

One final piece of ephemera before I leave you to cook dinner. While running today, I had the best seamless transition from one song to another:

'I'm totally addicted to -' 'Bass in the place, London!'

It kind of made my day. Which is kind of pathetic.