Sunday Short: 'All Along the Wall' by Emily Carroll

Emily Carroll is straight up unfair. She creates these amazing, snippets of horror, these tantalising stories with a wealth of history somehow conveyed in just a few panels. All Along the Wall is no exception to this. It's taut, shiver-inducing and, as always, beautifully illustrated.

You can read All Along the Wall here.

Friday Finds

- I really adored The Secret of Kells so am pretty ecstatic to see the second film from the creative team, Song of the Sea.

- This trailer for The Little Prince is wonderfully delightful. 

- You Won't Find It On a Map - 11 fictional places that have appeared in multiple works.

- And on that note, what would our cities look like if women built them?

- 33 times Mindy Kaling was the queen of 2014.

- This Batman wedding is all kinds of amazing.

- As is using Jane Austen quotes to reply to Tinder gents.

'The Girl With All the Gifts' by M. R. Carey (46/52)

Melanie gets wheeled to class every day, chained to a chair. They have new teachers, but Miss Justineau's her favourite. Miss Justineau treats them like people. Brings them things from the outside world. Melanie and Miss Justineau don't know that their world is about to implode.

This book ticked a lot of my boxes - zombies! Female relationships! Uprisings! So it's disappointing that I didn't engage with it more. It's not that it's poorly written - it's very well written. With firm characterisations, some lovely imagery and a brisk pace to it. It's just that it also fell into so many tropes. The good teacher. The golden girl. The brutish military man with a heart of gold. The heartless scientist. There was the occasional twist on these tropes - and on the zombie genre - but none of it felt life altering or like something I hadn't read before. It was a good read, just not a great one.

3 out of 5 feral zombie children.

'Dark Places' by Gillian Flynn (45/52)

Libby Day was seven years old when  her brother murdered her mother and sisters. Now, years later, she finds herself broke, the only foreseeable income in reopening her own case with the backing of a murder club, convinced of her brother's innocence.

I really enjoyed Gone Girl which I read earlier this year, and a few of my friends told me shortly after that it was great, but didn't hold a candle to Dark Places. It's taken me a while to get to this, but I found it a month ago in a second hand book store, and while I think the opening scene was amazing, it took me a while to engage with the narrative. Libby's a lowly thing at the start, distasteful, and her voice, fully realised, has a hell of a bite.

But I fell in love with her in the end. A desperate, scrambling thing, a scavenger at the edges of life - a role so typically reserved for male protagonists. Libby was unappealing until she wasn't, until you were so on board with her, on this twisted journey into the past and the future. It amounts into this tense, wrought story with a deeper emotional impact than a lot of books I've read recently.

4.5 out of 5 secret notes.

Sunday Short: 'The Code of Miss Porter’s' by Evgenia Peretz

From its very start, in 1843, Miss Porter’s has been committed not just to the old-fashioned values of charm, grace, and loyalty but to another, unspoken value as well: the ability to tough it out. Deeply ingrained in the school’s DNA, it makes the school a kind of upper-class, social Outward Bound. Throughout its history, Miss Porter’s has tested girls’ personal fortitude in a variety of ways: through academic rigor, strict rules, and rituals designed to produce anxiety and intimidate. Whatever their problems, Miss Porter’s girls were expected to buck up, not to go crying home to Daddy. Think Jackie—charming, poised, cultured, and able to smile through her husband’s many infidelities. Much has changed. Farmington—anyone over 50 who went there calls it Farmington; today’s girls say simply “Porter’s”—has gone from a sheltered, almost entirely Wasp institution to one that’s impressively diverse. But this connection to its past, this remarkable stoicism, is what makes Miss Porter’s Miss Porter’s in the eyes of students and alumnae, and they wear it as a badge of honor.

I only watched Mad Men recently, and finally got to the point where Sally gets shipped off to Miss Porter's. It took me back to this terrific article I read about the school over on Vanity Fair. It's a terrific article, one which explores the history of Miss Porter's School and American WASP culture.

You can read 'The Code of Miss Porter's' over on the Vanity Fair website here.

Ace & Jig FW 2014

Ace & Jig, I hardly know ye, but man do you make some cute clothes. Rich and mismatched prints are kind of my jam at the moment, so to see a collection put together so well makes me all sorts of happy. It's all pretty delightful.

You can view the full collection over at the Ace & Jig website.

   

  

   

  

Sunday Short: 'Damage' by Jennifer Mills

I adapt to his enthusiasm. I adapt to his advice to take up agriculture. I adapt to the way my mother comes in at night to say goodbye, her grey-blue travelling scarf scratchy against my cheek when she leans down to kiss me, and I adapt to the envelope of cash I find on my bedside table the following morning. I adapt to the fact that she doesn’t write, and I adapt to my father’s strange happiness. Winter tomatoes sprawl across the yard. Life goes on, and so does the hole.

Jennifer Mills is one of my favourite current Australian short fiction writers. Reading her work always feels strangely like a treat and this new piece, 'Damage' published over on Meanjin is no exception. Beautifully wrought, it uses a dramatic incident of a fire and sinkholes to reflect very intimate details of the lives of a small family. It's really, really lovely.

You can read 'Damage' over on the Meanjin website.

Friday Finds

- I was very saddened last week to hear of the death of PD James, and Buzzfeed has a lovely tribute compiling some of her quotes over on their site. 

- Five black science fiction authors you should know. Lots to add to the reading list!

- A Bend It Like Beckham musical is coming!

- These Harry Potter redesigns are gorgeous.

- Ernest Hemingway in 15 seconds.

- Jurassic World trailer! New Agent Carter trailer!! Star Wars VII trailer!!!!

- More Lego science ladies!!

- 100 years of hair and makeup.

- And to take you out for the weekend, baby orphaned bats.

'Yes Please' by Amy Poehler (44/52)

Writer, actress and comedian, Amy Poehler recounts her life so far in a series of essays, memoirs, random bits of advice and photographs.

Oh, man, I love Amy Poehler. I've never been a serious watcher of Saturday Night Live where she first came to the general public's attention, but she was pretty much an instant fave when fourteen year old Sophie saw her in Mean Girls way back in '04. It's been ten years since then, and she's skyrocketed fame-wise since then. And for good reason. She's warm, funny, takes no shit, and insanely smart. All of those traits are on show in this oddball collection which is, man, just a lot of fun.

Her advice is never pretentious, and her stories come organically, and without too much attention to typical structure which makes it more of a conversation with Poehler than a straight memoir. It may or may not have made me buy the audio book. (It definitely did)

4 out of 5 improv groups.

Orla Kiely FW 2014

I feel like I'm always blogging about Orla Kiely's stuff, but it is seriously SO CUTE. There's barely an outfit here I wouldn't wear, and I love the way they straddle that line between domestic fifties and sixties mod. It's like all the seasons of Mad Men (which spans late fifties through mid seventies) rolled into one line of looks. Magic.

You can the full collection on their website.