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wrul (pre‐2023)

wrul@bookwyrm.social

Joined 3 years, 9 months ago

2023 Update: Although I may still finish up quoting and reviewing a few books through this account if they are already partly documented here, new book‐readin–posting is now going on through wrul@book.snailhuddle.org. See you there! 😊

they (en), yel (fr), etc. Nairm & Birrarung-ga, Kulin biik gopher://breydon.id.au | gemini://breydon.id.au | https://breydon.id.au/reading

Testing out a stenography system by remarking on the odd good sit-down. Sometimes nicking vocab from non-ficcy bits.

Let me know if we know each other from elsewhere, and please feel free to say hi (or not) either way!

My user avatar is a rainbow lorikeet feeding on orange gum blossoms.

Ratings, roughly: “Half” stars (to approximate zero) seemed almost pure harm and were poorly written. 1s were slogs and wastes. 2s I would have refused publication pending thorough rounds of redrafts, reframing, and/or reresearch. 3s read neither fantastically nor awfully, or they did both just enough that it cancelled out — unless they delighted but I barely began, so couldn’t reliably say. 4s held something, substantial, of distinct interest or especial enjoyment, which might richly reward a deliberate revisiting. 5s may not ring perfect to me, but I would gift or receive with unhesitating gladness.

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wrul (pre‐2023)'s books

Currently Reading (View all 7)

Ilyas Nagdee, Azfar Shafi: Race to the Bottom (Paperback, 2022, Pluto Press)
Pear Nuallak: Pearls from Their Mouth (Paperback, 2022, Hajar Press)
Barbara J. Fields, Karen E. Fields: Racecraft (2022, Verso Books)

Read (View all 58)

Kerri ni Dochartaigh: Thin Places (2022, Canongate Books)
Tim Flannery: The Climate Cure (Paperback, 2020, Text Publishing)
Chelsea Watego: Another Day in the Colony (Paperback, 2021, University of Queensland Press)

Set Aside (View all 16)

Peter Sutton, Keryn Walshe: Farmers or Hunter-gatherers? (Paperback, 2021, Melbourne University Press)
Museum Victoria: Melbourne's Wildlife (Paperback, en-Latn-AU language, 2006, Museum Victoria and CSIRO Publishing)
bell hooks: All About Love (2018)

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quoted Love Marriage by Monica Ali

Monica Ali: Love Marriage (Paperback, 2022, Little, Brown Book Group Limited)

Content warning body-image, shaming

quoted Second-Hand Time by Svetlana Aleksievich

Svetlana Aleksievich: Second-Hand Time (Paperback, 2016, Text Publishing Company)

I want to know about […] the myriad sundry details of a vanished way of life. It’s the only way to chase the catastrophe into the contours of the ordinary and try to tell a story. Make some small discovery. It never ceases to amaze me how interesting everyday life really is.

— Second-Hand Time by  (Page 7)

in ‘Remarks from an Accomplice’

quoted Native Plants of Melbourne and Adjoining Areas by David Jones

David Jones, Barbara Jones: Native Plants of Melbourne and Adjoining Areas (Paperback, 1999, Bloomings Books)

As Melbourne’s urban sprawl continues so the pressure on the remaining patches of bushland increases …

The lip is delicately hinged and trembles in the slightest breeze.

— Native Plants of Melbourne and Adjoining Areas by , (Page 119)

A warm round of applause, please, for Genoplesium morrisii!

Aside: the photo on facing page 118 of G. despectans, with ruddy purple flowers genuflecting from their blue-green spike against a hazy mauve and blue background, is an eye-catcher. And it’s nice to be stuck.

quoted Native Plants of Melbourne and Adjoining Areas by David Jones

David Jones, Barbara Jones: Native Plants of Melbourne and Adjoining Areas (Paperback, 1999, Bloomings Books)

As Melbourne’s urban sprawl continues so the pressure on the remaining patches of bushland increases …

Leafless terrestrial orchid with a thick subterranean rhizome […]

[…]

Cultivation Impossible to grow.

— Native Plants of Melbourne and Adjoining Areas by , (Page 117)

This is pallid brown Gastrodia sesamoides, flowering around bushfire season in the hills and eastern suburbs, smelling of spice, from up to half a metre above the ground!

quoted Native Plants of Melbourne and Adjoining Areas by David Jones

David Jones, Barbara Jones: Native Plants of Melbourne and Adjoining Areas (Paperback, 1999, Bloomings Books)

As Melbourne’s urban sprawl continues so the pressure on the remaining patches of bushland increases …

quoted Native Plants of Melbourne and Adjoining Areas by David Jones

David Jones, Barbara Jones: Native Plants of Melbourne and Adjoining Areas (Paperback, 1999, Bloomings Books)

As Melbourne’s urban sprawl continues so the pressure on the remaining patches of bushland increases …

quoted Native Plants of Melbourne and Adjoining Areas by David Jones

David Jones, Barbara Jones: Native Plants of Melbourne and Adjoining Areas (Paperback, 1999, Bloomings Books)

As Melbourne’s urban sprawl continues so the pressure on the remaining patches of bushland increases …

[Chiloglottis reflexa flowers] are pollinated by male thynnine wasps which attempt to mate with the lip.

— Native Plants of Melbourne and Adjoining Areas by , (Page 63)

I would like to know who thynnine wasps are, please.

[Chiloglottis valida] is pollinated in a similar way to C. reflexa, but by a different species of wasp. ⸻ pg. 64

By the by.

quoted Native Plants of Melbourne and Adjoining Areas by David Jones

David Jones, Barbara Jones: Native Plants of Melbourne and Adjoining Areas (Paperback, 1999, Bloomings Books)

As Melbourne’s urban sprawl continues so the pressure on the remaining patches of bushland increases …

A fast-growing species which was apparently widely distributed on the goldfields by Chinese diggers.

— Native Plants of Melbourne and Adjoining Areas by , (Page 60)

Cassinia arcuata, everyone!

The flowerheads, in “long, drooping clusters of shiny brown” look at least as intensely familiar as the association of a curry scent with a similar binomial, but Bun’s plant was much denser than the Jones photo depicts.

However, it was very frequently-pruned, and I have a sense of growth reaching upwards in something like the manner of a trimmed magnolia branch. More research needed, then.

quoted All Boys Aren't Blue by George M. Johnson

George M. Johnson: All Boys Aren't Blue (AudiobookFormat, 2021, Penguin Random House Children's UK)

This powerful YA memoir-manifesto follows journalist and LGBTQ+ activist George M. Johnson as they explore …

Although I couldn’t wait to escape New Jersey, her album gave me the opportunity to escape in my mind. I would sit in my car by myself and blast her. Every song spoke to me. Her femininity was everything that I was feeling inside of me. She was just so sassy, and sexy, and powerful. I wanted to be her. Well, not really be her, but I would daydream about her. I wanted to be me, in Virginia, and dancing to her. I wanted to be me dancing to her.

— All Boys Aren't Blue by 

Track 17 ‘Chapter 13: Setting myself free, or setting myself up’, 07:04–07:34

On listening to Beyoncé’s first solo album while yearning to be gay away at college.

quoted All Mixed Up by Jason Om

Jason Om: All Mixed Up (AudiobookFormat, 2022, ABC Audio)

Candid and heartfelt, All Mixed Up is a compelling true story about trauma, identity and …

All around us, the suburbs spoke with a constant [fizzes tongue against top teeth] of electricity and the distant [exhales forcefully yet evenly through open mouth] of traffic.

— All Mixed Up by 

Track 2 ‘Chapter One’, 12:37–12:45

On growing up in Oakleigh in the 1980s. Both quotations of suburbia produced at (perfectly just uncomfortable) length.