JAAM 29 / Book Groups / RWC2011 / Odd Names

JAAM time

My copy of JAAM 29, edited by Anne Kennedy, arrived today. It features my short story 'The Bartender's Glass.' It's the detective story I mention sometimes when I talk about the stories I liked but couldn't find a way to include in A Man Melting as they didn't 'play nice' with the other stories...

Anyway, JAAM 29 looks like it has some great stuff inside and I look forward to reading it properly over the next week.

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Attention book groups

You can now read online the Book Group Compass piece on A Man Melting that featured in the Winter 2011 issue of Booknotes.

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New item for to-do list inspired by a tweet on Sunday: write the great rugby league novel before Pip Adam does.

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You learn something every day

The Niagara Falls did not look like this when I visited in 2009. In fact, it looked like the banner at the top of this page (it’s a photo of the horseshoe falls, taken near the gift shop on the Canadian side).

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Sport, take II

I went to the Argentina vs Georgia Rugby World Cup 2011 game in Palmerston North on Sunday. My one and only RWC game I’ll go to. (Mostly went up to Palmy to visit whanau and check out the Argentinean asado, but the barbeque wasn’t ready when we had to leave the square).

Great atmosphere in FMG stadium and the Square beforehand.

The Square being invaded by Pumas supporters.

The Argentinean supporters got quiet in the first half when their team kept knocking on and missing their penalty kicks (Georgia led 7-5 at half time), but Los Pumas picked it up in the second. Phew!

Lots of handling errors, lots of scrums, lots of hands on hips.

I haven't been to a rugby game for a while,
but the amount of non-players on the field was ridiculous.

But in the end, a good time was had by all.

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From the archives

I was looking through my emails from a few years ago and found this…

Top 10 CDs I borrowed from Brisbane City Library in 2005

1. Sleater-Kinney 'One-Beat'
2. Bob Dylan 'Highway 61 Revisited'
3. Iggy and the Stooges 'Raw Power'
4. Rolling Stones 'Let it Bleed'
5. Television 'Marquee Moon'
6. Elliott Smith 'XO'
7. The Fall '50,000 Fall Fans Can't be Wrong' (2CD best of)
8.  Love (best of)
9. Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers (best of)
10. Elvis Costello (and the Attractions) 'Best of'

Clearly my musical education was a work in progress in 2005.

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New-old review?

There might have been a review of A Man Melting in the Taranaki Daily News on November 8, 2010. Yep, that’s almost a year ago, but I just got a Google alert about it now. Sadly, the site it links to doesn’t work. Did anyone read this review when it came out? Do I need to go for a road trip to the New Plymouth library, or is there some other way to get a hold of a copy?

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What the Dickens? II

ODD NAMES. 

The names conjured up by Dickens are more than matched from the subscription list of a certain New York newspaper : — Maria Pickles, William F. Peterfish, John J. Cowhog, Laura Loofborrow, Maggie Mussmaker, J. Tyranny, Minnie Bighost, Fannie Vinegar, Susie Souse, Nora B. Freelove, Mattie B. Toogood, Mollie M. Whiteneck, Phenia Sufficool, Effie Blunk, Cora Coon, Viola Eyestone, Raytie Shivers, Pearl Shad, Frankie Somple, John George Dingledog, O. D. Pancake,Dick Turnipseed, and Cynthia Neiderfrankensteinhauser.

Article from Evening Post, 6 November 1886, via Papers Past.