Book neglect
I must confess; my consumption of the written word has taken a steady nose-dive of late. I have piles of books at home judging me silently for leaving them unread and unmolested. ‘I’m oh so interesting’ they imply in their stationary state. ‘Just look at my pretty cover!’ (If they could move they’d ruffle their pages like a bird impressing a suitor.) There’s a particularly enticing book on Riot Grrrl culture that’s imprinted itself against my brain, cover all pink and black and ROCK. But too much comedy and too much theatre leave little time for reading. With the winter months almost here I believe there’ll be much more lounging around.
Graffiti art in South Melbourne
Recently the Readings website profiled the book Pride and Prejudice and Zombies on their front page (we have a screen capture attached to the office notice board – it was attached by me). Jane Austen with zombies and ninjas makes so much sense now that I’ve seen it done. The author even supplies helpful discussion notes for the classroom. High school English would have been much livelier if Pride and Prejudice was a story of polite society romantic politics versus a gruesome bloodbath of the dead. A friend has lent me her copy. I hold it triumphantly above my head; YES,THIS WILL BE THE BOOK TO READ!
One final note to end this terribly geeky entry – along the way back to the office after my errand run this week I found a message of warning tattooed to a wall in South Melbourne. My computer almost completely controls me already so remember – ‘Fight For Robot Rights Before They Do.’
Louise
Festival Administrator
Posted on 24 May 2009, in MWF staff musings and tagged geek, Jane Austen, Melbourne Writers Festival, MWF, Readings, riot grrrl, robots, street art, zombies. Bookmark the permalink. 10 Comments.
Melbourne Writers Festival blog 
I sympathise. My “to read” pile sort of looms and totters rather than flutter prettily.
Or I could end up like those people in The Birds. My books may flutter prettily now, but when they decide they’ve had enough I’ll have no escape.
Just picturing books perched along power lines and fences in the dusk. Waiting.
http://www.facebook.com/home.php?ref=logo#/photo.php?pid=1776263&id=62013203991&ref=mf
This is the link to a very cool picture of the Avid Reader Jane Austen Vs Zombies window that has scared small children all over West End. The literary world is indeed Zombie crazy.
Zombies are EVERYWHERE. I started to read The Forest of Hands and Teeth a few weeks ago and, by 3am, had to hide it under a pile of other books to stop being spooked.
On a positive note though, I was delighted to see a zombie Dorothy (ala Wizard of Oz) at the recent Melbourne Zombie Shuffle. She wore ruby shoes and was withdrawing cash from an ATM.
But were they ruby red with blood? Blood doesn’t sparkle as well as you might hope.
Emilly: no, they weren’t bloody red shoes. They twinkled. Of course they may have been stained as well. It would have blended well.
I’ve just come across this quote from James Baker:
The US may be repeating Japan’s mistake by viewing our current banking crisis as one of liquidity and not solvency. Most proposals advanced thus far assume that, once confidence in financial markets is restored, banks will recover. But if their assumption is wrong, we risk perpetuating US zombie banks and suffering a lost American decade.
On the film discussion radio show I host every Saturday, we did a listener poll on people’s favourite undead beastie – vampires or zombies. Vampires were overwhelmingly the winner based on the fact that most people thought they dressed better and did cooler things. I, on the other hand, argued that as an audience member you had more chance of enjoying a zombie film than a vampire film. Bad vampire films are just bad. Bad zombie films are still good.
Speaking of Jane Austen, have you heard about Pride and Predator?
I’ve heard of Pride and Predator! But only because I was sitting next to you when you told me.