Jack/Knife

I'm really loving this collection by San Francisco outfit, Jack/Knife. The styling reminds me of modern westerns, ranch lifestyle and down south America. It's pretty great. Plus it rocks one of my favourite colour pallettes - blacks, browns, whites and blues, combining them pretty damn perfectly. It's super great. Check out Jack/Knife's full collection over on their website.

Sunday Short: Beginners by Raymond Carver

Terri said the man she lived with before she lived with Herb loved her so much he tried to kill her. Herb laughed after she said this. He made a face. Terri looked at him. Then she said, “He beat me up one night, the last night we lived together. He dragged me around the living room by my ankles, all the while saying, ‘I love you, don’t you see? I love you, you bitch.’ He went on dragging me around the living room, my head knocking on things.” She looked around the table at us and then looked at her hands on her glass. “What do you do with love like that?” she said. She was a bone-thin woman with a pretty face, dark eyes, and brown hair that hung down her back. She liked necklaces made of turquoise, and long pendant earrings. She was fifteen years younger than Herb, had suffered periods of anorexia, and during the late sixties, before she’d gone to nursing school, had been a dropout, a “street person,” as she put it. Herb sometimes called her, affectionately, his hippie.

Raymond Carver is generally touted as one of the masters of short fiction and I unfortunately haven't had a chance to read all that much of his work, even though I know he's influenced a ton of my writing friends. Beginners is a good short though, solid and somehow both incredibly intimate and horribly detached, and it works remarkably well at fleshing out characters who are the same. 

You can read 'Beginners' over on The New Yorker website.

A Book a Week: 'The House of the Spirits' by Isabel Allende (15/52)

The death of the beautiful, green-haired Rosa sets life off for her sister Clara and their suitor, Esteban Truebo. Clara, a clairvoyant, lives a loveless marriage with Esteban, having three children who she has unique and compelling relationships with, and who, throughout the novel, we witness the political upheaval of Chile.

Oh man, this book hits all my buttons. Magical realism! Inter-generational family saga! Loveless relationships paralleled by insanely romantic, doomed ones! Minor characters who recur in unexpected places! It helps that Allende's prose is almost as magical as the content of this novel, being deeply moving and poignantly layered. The exploration of the characters is always pitch perfect, and even when characters are doing downright dastardly things, you understand them, if not empathise with them. All in all, it's a pretty perfect novel.

5 out of 5 three-legged tables.

Friday Finds

I've been listening to so much of The Four Tops recently, it feels a little ridiculous. They're such a great jam though, particularly this song.

- This interactive Game of Thrones map is giving me life right now.

- Amy Berg's documentary on Hollywood sex abuse is insanely topical given the allegations against Bryan Singer. Also looks generally like a must-watch.

- This artist's means of combating gross dudes on Tinder is pretty awesome.

- As are these photos of 1940s circus girls!

Family Affairs SS 2014

Family Affairs is another one of those designers that I'm forever a bit in love with. Mother and daughter team, Nina and Kaya Egli, are lean and mean, crafting clothes that are deceptively simple, chic and vibrant all at once. I'm particularly loving the styling of this collection and the movement of it. It's nice to see clothes being, y'know, worn, instead of the clothes wearing the girl, and that's a real testimony to the charming model and photographer too! Plus I would wear the red dress above basically to everything ever.

You can check out the full collection over at the Family Affairs website here.

  

Three Pubs

In relatively insane, Sophie-is-a-professional-writer news, I've had two short stories and a memoir published already this year, and another story shortlisted for the Rachel Funari Prize for Fiction. It's a pretty great feeling, and the pieces are all stories that I feel pretty darn happy about. Huzzah for progress!

You can purchase Voiceworks here, Regime here, and the Sleepers Almanac here.

Sunday Short: 'The Type' by Sarah Kay

You are a woman. Skin and bones. Veins and nerves. Hair and sweat.
You are not made of metaphors. Not apologies. Not excuses.

 I go on and off poetry, but this one's been doing the rounds for a while and it really is pretty wonderful. It captures compelling narrative about womanhood and feminism and body without ever seeming contrived and cliche. It's a pretty great piece of writing.

You can read 'The Type' by Sarah Kay over at The Huffington Post.

Friday Finds

I've had this song stuck in my head basically all week, so here! Have a listen! May it be stuck in your head too.

- This interview with Kelly Sue DeConnick is basically spot on, both for writing comic books and any sort of creative practice.

- Anthony Mackie's comments on a Wonder Woman movie are pretty perfect too.

- The trailer for David Fincher's Gone Girl! Ahh!

- This trailer for Obvious Child is equally great! I love Jenny Slate, so it's awesome to see her in a starring role.

- These vintage bookstore photos are pretty great too.

That's about it from me today! I hope you're all having a great Good Friday and, if you celebrate it, a happy Easter too.

Lauren Moffatt Fall 2014

If I was a rich woman, my wardrobe would be made up of Lauren Moffatt. I've loved her stuff for so long now that when she releases new collections, I tend to load up her website and just sigh wisfully into it. (I mean, I would cut off an arm if I could get my hands on this dress from her spring collection). Her new fall one is actually a little less whimsical than normal, showing a real maturity in her as a designer. The silhouettes swing from loose and forgiving, to well-tailored and cinch waisted. I kind of love it a whole lot. You can view her full collection over on her website.

 

 

Sunday Short: Wolf like Me by Antonia Hayes

My inevitable downfall was the sun, the trigger of an intense flare of illness. My friend Bella and I had gone on a holiday to the beach, where we sat on the hot sand all day and read Doris Lessing, and lay out on cheap inflatable lilos tied to a buoy, floating under the Mediterranean sun. We jumped off rugged clay cliffs into the sea, sipped on pineapple-flavoured cocktails, laughed and danced to Europop. After a week our skin was dusky and our hair fell in saltwater waves. But I came home with a fever, my limbs aching, and covered in a violet shock of bruises. One leg was indigo and covered in welts. In the days following the holiday, my body was so heavy that I couldn’t get out of bed for almost a week, and so sore that, incapable of standing up, I vomited in my sheets and lay in a pool of my own sick for several hours until I could move.

There seems to be a surge of writing about illness lately, and it's been interesting to both be privy to it and to write about it myself. 'Wolf like Me' by Antonia Hayes is definitely one of the better pieces I've read, tracing her diagnosis of Lupus in beautifully poetic prose,while writing about something which is, well, not exactly beautiful. She captures the ugliness of illness, the insecurity of something incurable, and the anxiety that accompanies knowing something's wrong without knowing exactly what that is. It's a pretty great piece of writing.  

You can read 'Wolf like Me' over on the Meanjin website.

A Book a Week: 'Catch-22' by Joseph Heller (14/52)

Yossarian is a man on the edge. Or so he'd have you think. Set during the tail end of World War II, Catch-22 trails the lives of an Air Force squadron posted on Pianosa, and fully details the anger, dehumanisation and insanity of war with a satire bite.

Joseph Heller really is a master of satire. This book is equal parts emphatic, hilarious, tragic and rage inducing, both for content and style. I totally get why people love it, hold it up in esteem, but I found it a very frustrating read - repetitive and too long, and some of the best lines of dialogue I've ever read weighed down by heavy exposition. So I guess my feelings are mixed at best. I kind of wanted to get them on paper before I talk about it in my bookclub tonight, because I know for a fact that the two people coming despise the sucker and, while I didn't, I can really see why they did. It's a little too self-aware, a little too long (or a lot too long), and tends to talk around things instead of about them. I liked Yossarian though, and Nately and even Minderbinder and Doc Daneeka, enjoyed my time with them, even if I frequently found myself frustrated by them. Then again, that's mostly the point of Catch-22, exploring the futility, the anguish, the frustration and, well, the catch of it.

3 out of 5 false ailments.

Friday Finds

- Hear Sylvia Plath read her poem The Birthday Present.

- The new Jurassic Park adds more ladies! And awesome ladies too!

- These ritual photos of make-up routines are pretty lovely and fascinating too.

- These 22 photos of foxes are even lovelier.

- And to take you out for the weekend, have 26 majestic dogs.

A Book a Week: 'V for Vendetta' by Alan Moore (13/52)

In a dystopian United Kingdom, much of the world has been destroyed, politically, culturally and morally. A fascist party called Norsefire has exterminated its opponents in concentration camps and now rules the country as a police state. V stands firmly in opposition. An anarchist revolutionary dressed in a Guy Fawkes mask, he begins an violent, intricate campaign to murder his former captives, take down the government and change the new social norm. At his side is his new protege, Evey Hammond, who resists at first, but is quickly swept up in V's mission.

So, hm. I wonder if I'm the wrong sort of reader for this story, a part of the wrong generation maybe lacking the zeal and anger that Moore so thoroughly imbues into this story. It's not that I didn't enjoy it! I did! I found it compelling and interesting and containing some pretty solid writing and great, shadowy art; however, it also reads as a bit camp, a bit too elaborate and a bit too theatrical. I also had a bit of trouble discerning between the wide range of white, dark haired male supporting characters, who all seemed to act and speak the same way. Often, when one was killed off, I had difficulties knowing who, exactly, it was.

V was also not entirely what I expected. I saw the movie years ago, and don't remember him as being quite as ruthless as he is in the graphic novel. He's biting, nasty and totally cutthroat (sometimes literally) in getting his way. The effect is actually a good one, making him less likable and infinitely more so all at once. Bleeding hearts club, this is not, and it's nice to have a hero so unambiguously bad for a change.

Speaking of hearts though, Evey's the big, beating one of this story. Her journey from a nervous, sweet-natured girl unwittingly in a bad situation to a smart, ruthless woman orchestrating bad situations was by far the most compelling storyline in V for Vendetta, even if some of the symbolism used to get there felt a little heavy handed at times (getting rid of the children's toys, the letter, the mask).

It's a good read, but not one that resonated with me as much as I know it has with other readers.

3.5 out of 5 Scarlet Carsons.

Eat Me! Bread and Butter

  
How cute is this?! Totally mod and odd all at once, the Eat Me! Bread and Butter look is a gorgeous collection for a warmer winter, something that totally speaks to me as, y'know, Brisbane doesn't get all that cold, even with winter stretching its legs in July. Anyway, love this. 

You can have a better look at Eat Me! Bread and Butter over on Miss Moss' blog.

 

  

 

  

Sunday Short: The Insiders by Nicholas Brooks

One day, after he’d been doing it for a few years, he borrowed a friend’s camera and asked if I’d come down and take photos. Because I had nothing better to do, and because I secretly admired the way he made everything look so easy, I agreed. I followed him to the break wall at the mouth of the river and, after a quick lesson on how to use the camera, I stood on the rocks and did my best to snap pictures of him as he moved across the waves. Most of the photos I took turned out blurry and poorly framed, as we found out later when we went through them in his bedroom, but there was one that was clear and bright and sharp.

The Flashers series is one that keeps delivering, and The Insiders is a pretty great addition to it. Short, sharp, and remarkably painful, it's a snapshot of two brothers before and after a shattering accident. Nicholas Brooks tight prose lends a simple weight to the situation and, even before the incident, you know this isn't going to be something that ends well.

You can read 'The Insiders' over on the Seizure website. 

Friday Finds

- These aerial shots of Botswana are stunning.These are too.

- These 50 costume tests from famous films are awesome too.

- Upcoming genre movies that aren't sequels, remakes or reboots. Adding a lot of these to my to-watch list right now!

- The Mondo Captain America: The Winter Soldier posters are pretty cool! (Total aside, but I got to see a preview screening of this on Monday night, and it was really, really great. Like. Everyone should see it immediately, great).

- What's your Victorian pen name? I'm Simon Oliver!

- And to take you out for the weekend, a supercut of Selina Kyle awkwardly meeting normal people in Veep.

A Book a Week: 'The Outsiders' by S.E. Hinton (12/52)

Ponyboy Curtis is the baby of an Oklahoma greaser gang. Rough boys with rougher pasts, the greasers are the scourge of the city, at war with the richer Socs. Ponyboy quickly finds himself in over his head when his friend, Johnny, murders one of the Socs and the boys end up on the run, jeopardising not only their relationships and families, but maybe even their lives.

I got pretty swept up in this. S.E. Hinton has an excellent sense of compelling prose, especially given she was so young when she wrote this! The relationships are realistic and charming, and Ponyboy is a well drawn character who you empathise with almost from the get-go. He's a sweet, lost boy in a city full of them, and that comes across so beautifully in the tease out of this. That said, some of the plot points hit me out of left field and seemed, well, unrealistic, and I'm not sure yet if it's because I'm unfamiliar with the era or if they really did just come out of nowhere (burning down school, I'm looking at you).

That said, I thoroughly enjoyed the novel, and it makes me really interested to read her later work to see how she progressed as an author.

3.5 out of 5 beat up copies of Gone with the Wind.

Bridge & Burn FW 2014

I've never been much of a camper, being way too inclined towards cleanliness and warm water than that sort of thing usually allows. This collection by Bridge & Burn though almost has me changing my mind. With its sweet silhouettes and cozy coats, it's a pretty awesome range of clothing that makes me want to leave the city and head out into the wild. You can view (and buy) the collection over on their website.