words and images
Language shapes our thought. Examined carefully, it reveals our attitudes. For both reasons, looking at the language around the arrival of Europeans in Australia is worthwhile.
These are notes for a dictionary, a collection of words and concepts arranged somewhat logically. English is a rich and flexible language. Where we have multiple choices for an idea, as we usually do, each of them has a slightly different meaning and cluster of connotations. Teasing them all out is slow, patient work.
Breath, the new science of a lost art
James Nestor, Penguin 2020.
Nestor, a science writer, explains in the introduction to Breath that he was alerted to the possibilities of breath-based health therapies (conventional and not) when his doctor sent him to a yoga breathing class to fix up his own chronic poor health. It worked, and sent him on an intermittent quest (he wrote another book along the way) to learn more.
Zen and the Art of Saving the Planet
Thich Nhat Hanh
Rider, 2021 plumvillage.org/books
Zen and the Art of Saving the Planet is a very worthwhile book with a couple of odd aspects.
The general reader is likely to read it exactly as it is presented, as a book by Thich Nhat Hanh (“Thay” to his many followers) with commentaries from one of his senior students. As such, it is wise, gentle and encouraging, like everything else of his that I know.
Black Swan – a Koorie Woman’s Life
Eileen Harrison and Carolyn Landon
Allen & Unwin, 2011
All reviews say more about the reviewer than they pretend to, but this one is far more personal and autobiographical than most.
Black Swan came to me as a review copy when it was first released, but the newspaper I freelanced for wasn’t interested so I set it aside for myself. It has been on my shelf ever since. In the aftermath of thinking again about Singing the Coast, its time has finally come: its parallels and contrasts with that book and with my own life made it particularly relevant to me this year.
Eileen Harrison was born into a large, close-knit family on the Aboriginal Mission at Lake Tyers on the Gippsland Lakes. She grew up there, attending the mission school while I was attending the state school in Leongatha, 250 km away. I went on to secondary school; she was not allowed to. Rather, she and her family were uprooted by a new government policy and sent to the Western District, far from extended family.
This is a collection of mini-reviews of science fiction and fantasy books which I liked enough to recommend but haven’t reviewed at length (often because I couldn’t find time).
The collection began as a string of comments to an identically-titled post on Green Path, one which drifted away from its environmental theme and into general SF. It is structured like a blog, with the most recent additions at the top; dates given are the dates reviews were added.
• Anthropocene Rag • Zen Cho • Every Version of You • The Scar • Babel • The Year of the Jackpot • Children of Memory • Futuristic Violence and Fancy Suits • Reconstruction • The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida • The Anomaly • Flyaway • From Here On, Monsters
Alex Irvine’s Anthropocene Rag (2020) is a roadtrip, somewhat in the manner of Spinrad’s People’s Police, through territory explored by Cory Doctorow, William Gibson and Greg Egan among others.
Consciousness is emerging in an artificial intelligence which has so much nano-tech at its disposal that it can casually make anything it likes. But it doesn’t understand itself or its own motivations. What could possibly go wrong?
(31.12.24)
Zen Cho was born and raised in Malaysia and now lives in England. Her first fiction appeared in 2015 and she has been collecting awards ever since, so she is definitely a writer to watch. Here are two of her recent books.