Introduction post

[dolorosa_12]

My name is Ronni. I'm an Australian woman, in my forties, and live in the UK.

Elsewhere online, you can find me at:

Wordpress: dolorosa12 (long-form reviews)
Archive of Our Own: Dolorosa (fic)
Instagram: ronnidolorosa (photos of nature, food, drink, books, people)
Goodreads: Dolorosa (book logging, mainly for my own records)

Please feel free to add me on any of these platforms. If I don't recognise your name (i.e. if it doesn't match your Dreamwidth name), I will not add you back unless you let me know who you are.

Friending policy

Feel free to subscribe and add as you like. I generally won't add people back unless they introduce themselves (or unless we met in a friending meme or similar), so please do feel free to say hello, either in the comments of this post, or elsewhere.

Transformative works policy

I give blanket permission for anyone to remix, translate, or create fanworks inspired by any of my fic, as long as my fic is acknowledged and linked to. There's no need to ask me for permission, although it would be great to have a link to anything you create.

Linking policy

Almost all of my posts are public, and please feel free to link these public posts (with attribution) on your own journal or Dreamwidth comms.



I'm an Australian immigrant to the UK. I immigrated in 2008 to do an MPhil, and then PhD, in medieval Irish literature, at the University of Cambridge. While I realised that academia definitely wasn't for me, I fell in love with the place, and basically never left. After a series of part-time entry-level jobs in libraries during my PhD, I moved into a career in academic librarianship. I work in one of the faculty libraries at the University of Cambridge. My job mostly involves teaching classes on research/academic skills to university students, researchers, and healthcare professionals. I really love teaching, and have found librarianship to be a profession which perfectly suits my interests, skills, and temperament.

I'm married to Matthias, a German immigrant to the UK. He's been in Cambridge since undergrad, and we met when we were postgraduate students in the same department. Like me, he left medievalist academia after finishing his PhD for librarianship, and he works in another Cambridge faculty library. Between the two of us, we have five passports (for four different countries).

I came to fandom comparably late — I've been online since 2007. My first foray into online fandom was two forums for two different books series: Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy, and Isobelle Carmody's Obernewtyn series. Although most of us have since drifted away from those two forums, and barely talk about the fandoms that brought us together, the friends I met through those two forums ('sraffies' and 'Obernetters' respectively) are still some of my closest, and the sense of community I found in those two platforms remains the (high) standard by which I judge all fannish communities.

After drifting through Livejournal and Tumblr, I found my ideal fannish home on Dreamwidth, and it's remained very much my online home base ever since. Most of my fandoms are small (think Yuletide-eligible) book fandoms, and it's very rare that I meet other people who share my fannish interests. For this reason, I've found it more helpful to connect with people who share common outlooks and ways of engaging with fandom, rather than common fandoms. I'm in fandom for conversation and community, with a preference for slower-moving, long-form blogging, rather than the rapid-fire, real-time reactions that you get on more fast-moving platforms. I like commenting, and receiving and responding to comments on my own posts. I've found over the years that I tend to connect better with people whose Dreamwidth journals are a good mix of real-life reflections, reviews/meta/fannish discussion, and links to interesting things, rather than people who are all fandom all the time, or people whose journals are solely links to their fic.

Once I'm fannish about something, those feelings tend never to go away, so my list of fandoms is ever expanding. This is a non-exhaustive list:

Pagan Chronicles series — Catherine Jinks

Romanitas trilogy — Sophia McDougall

Galax Arena, and the Space Demons trilogy — Gillian Rubinstein

The novels of Victor Kelleher

The Bone Season series — Samantha Shannon

His Dark Materials trilogy and the Sally Lockhart mysteries — Philip Pullman

The Benjamin January mysteries — Barbara Hambly

Spinning Silver — Naomi Novik

Winternight trilogy — Katherine Arden

Six of Crows duology — Leigh Bardugo

Dominion of the Fallen trilogy (and novellas) — Aliette de Bodard

The Lions of Al-Rassan — Guy Gavriel Kay

Juniper and Wise Child — Monica Furlong

The Demon's Lexicon trilogy — Sarah Rees Brennan

A Memory Called Empire — Arkady Martine

Terra Ignota series — Ada Palmer

Roma Sub Rosa series — Steven Saylor

Crossroads and Court of Fives trilogies — Kate Elliott

The Silence of the Girls — Pat Barker

The characters of Briseis and Chryseis in the Iliad (and various adaptations/retellings — barring The Song of Achilles, which I really dislike)

I'm also kind of broadly fannish/always happy to talk about folktales, fairytales and mythology, medieval Irish literature, Cirque du Soleil, and the eclectic variety of music I enjoy. I watch a lot of TV, but for the most part I don't tend to get involved in TV fandoms: my fannish feelings are pretty much exclusively absorbed by books.

My journal tends to be a mixture of book, TV and film reviews, slice-of-(my) life (I like cooking, gardening, swimming, wandering around in the fens, yoga, and travelling), links to interesting things (both fannish and non-fannish), and the occasional politics post (mainly British or Australian politics). I do my best to encourage comments and discussion, and am always happy to get comments on older posts.

Comments

[lowhours]

hello! We bumped into each other talking about children's books, and I've subscribed to you/granted access, feel free to undo(?) that if you aren't comfortable with it!

I very recently reread taronga by victor kelleher, and have had no motivation to talk about it publicly because WHO ON EARTH HAS ALSO READ IT BESIDES HATERS ON GOODREADS? well, possibly you! I enjoy scifi/fantasy generally but am very on/off with my fiction reading and blogging, so hopefully being subscribed to some good influences on that front will help me, lol.

[dolorosa_12]

I'm definitely keen to subscribe/grant access back, and have just done so — I'm always delighted to meet people who've read the same Australian children's and YA literature that I grew up with and continue to adore. It always makes me really sad to see negative reviews for Kelleher on Goodreads, as I assume most come from people who were made to read his books for school and didn't click with them. (I seem to be the odd one out in that a) I was introduced to Kelleher's books through school, but fell instantly in love with them and b) I actually ended up loving every single book/play/collection of poetry/film we were assigned to read/watch for English classes in school.)

I haven't reread Taronga in years, although your comment has prompted me to track down a secondhand copy at some point and see if it still stands up. I have reread his Parkland/Earthsong/Fire Dancer trilogy in the past two years, and that definitely still stands up in terms of quality — it's devastatingly good. In other words, I would definitely be keen to read your thoughts on Taronga!

[lowhours]

yay! I apologise that my reading habits are super haphazard, but I don't mind if you unsubscribe at any time etc! and I agree, it's really fun to have the same niche things in the background, because then it's EXTRA fun to think about how that shapes later reading preferences. I don't think we were assigned Taronga, but I definitely read it in primary school (... i did have a convo recently with a friend questioning the range of disturbing/strange novels that were just floating around a primary school library!?), and I remember being SO uncomfortable and unsettled by it - and being really enthralled by that reading experience. When I think about my fondness for oblique, uncomfortable and ominous narratives now, I wonder if that book imprinted on something important, lol.

I haven't actually read anything else by him, but I was so surprised by how well it stood up (especially on a basic fine-grained prose level - this tends to be a thing i find frustrating when revisiting YAlit) that now I'm considering looking at his other work. The falling in love with assigned readings is very relatable though LMAO i feel like a survey of most dw users would return a similar result :D.

RE: the book itself, I wanted to re-read mostly for the animal telepathy and the animosity between the main character and the tiger, which WAS just as intense and weird as I remember it being, but what I really took away this time was How Does This Book Fit Into Discourses of Colonialism And Orientalism.... I'm also partway through Said's Orientalism, so I'm sure that's why it's at the forefront of my mind, but finding out that Kelleher also grew up in Africa really compounds the feeling that he was grappling with some significant questions re: what it means to Relate to Otherness on stolen land. I don't know how deliberate that was or how successfully it works but it's pretty wild to think that a) he wrote it in the 80s and b) i read it as a little kid and just got to absorb all of that complexity. MUCH TO CONSIDER.

[dolorosa_12]

1980s and 1990s Australian children's/YA literature was really, really disturbing — a lot of it was dystopian or post-apocalyptic, grappling with a theme that runs through a lot of Australian media by non-Indigenous creators: an unease in the land, and a sense that the hostility of the land is punishing people for the monstrous wrong of colonisation. Kelleher's books certainly tap into this, but you find it in children's literature by Jackie French, Isobelle Carmody, Gillian Rubinstein, and more.

My Year 6 teacher in primary school was the first person to introduce me to Kelleher's writing — he read books aloud to us in class, chapter by chapter over the course of a term, and the first book he read was The Red King by Kelleher. This is a secondary-world epic fantasy novel, but it's got a lot going on below the surface, and goes into darker places than you'd expect. I loved this book, and read pretty much every other Kelleher book in our classroom, and in my school and local library. In high school English class we studied Taronga one year, and Kelleher's adult postapocalyptic novel The Beast of Heaven another year. The latter, along with Kelleher's YA novel Del-Del, remain two of the most disturbing things I've ever read.

especially on a basic fine-grained prose level - this tends to be a thing i find frustrating when revisiting YAlit

He's a really good prose stylist, although to be honest I feel this is true for a lot of 1980s and 1990s Australian YA compared to the stuff published today. I don't think the writers were necessarily better, but the publishing industry was much more robust — Australia's children's lit industry in those days was absolutely booming, independent of publishing in the US or UK, and most moderately successful authors were able to earn a comfortable living from their writing alone, without needing to have day jobs, or do their own marketing work (which most current authors have to do themselves), and there was more money to pay for more competent editing etc. (I worked for ten years as a reviewer — mainly of YA literature — for an Australian newspaper, so I watched all this collapse and fall apart in slow motion, in real time.)

Kelleher also grew up in Africa really compounds the feeling that he was grappling with some significant questions re: what it means to Relate to Otherness on stolen land. I don't know how deliberate that was

Oh, it was totally deliberate, and it comes through a lot in his other writing, as per my first paragraph. Taronga is one of the few books of his that I haven't reread in at least fifteen years, so I can't say how successful he is, but his fiction almost universally explores issues of colonialism, and who has the right to land, and to claim the label of humanity. And he really doesn't pull his punches.

[lowhours]

This is such interesting and useful information! especially your reflections on the publishing industry, i find any behind-the-curtain systems analysis so fascinating - i love to know reasons! causes! the chains of events, and material influences! While it's very gratifying to hear confirmation of my hunches regarding the previous rigour of the australian ya lit scene, it's sad to know that it's faded (and that you had to watch it happen......).

Sorry to have just like, blurted Kelleher's biographic info back at you, but thank you for getting what I meant, and for tying it into other aus authors - i hadn't made the connections, and I'm interested to revisit their work with this lens. And I look forward to reading more of his work that you've mentioned, since you've said this is something he continues to concentrate on :))