An uncertain day yesterday. Marianne had to play trumpet with her band at local Australia Day citizenship ceremonies. Such things are sufficiently dull that even she didn’t want us to go.  That said, a small part of me wonders when and if she’ll opt for citizenship herself.  She’s been here ten years nearly (this May, I think), and it’s been on her mind. Speaking of ten years, we had a lovely time for our anniversary. Thanks to my brother, we spent a very pleasant evening in a king suite at the local Hilton where he works. Arrived in the afternoon after some shopping, then some time together, dinner down at the Hyatt restaurant, back to the hotel for a quiet night, then up for breakfast, then home. Lovely, and a nice way for Marianne and I to reconnect with one another a little. The last few years have been so hectic and stressful that we’ve kind of lost touch with one another a bit, so these moments are very precious.
I ended up taking the girls to the beach in the morning. Trigg was fun. Got there about 9.30am, spent some time in the water then building sandcastles. The girls intermittently loved it, were bored, loved it, were taken aback at the surf, were bored, loved it, and so on. A quiet afternoon at home, then over to Stephen’s to watch the Australia Day fireworks, which was nice.
I heard this morning about the Newbery/Printz results, which are amazing. Yay Neil! Yay Margo!  I also had some news about some stressful stuff. Not resolved yet, but hopefully soon. I also finished reading my first book of 2009 today, Malcolm Gladwell’s Blink.  A fascinating book that left me wondering why no-one seems able to write as well or as interestingly about science fiction.
A fascinating book that left me wondering why no-one seems able to write as well or as interestingly about science fiction.
Is there an implied “for a mass audience” there (because that’s the audience Gladwell is writing for), or is this a general statement about the breadth of the writing about science fiction that we have available to us at the moment?
That’s probably a fair assumption. One thing that may be unfair about the statement is that Gladwell is a very, very good writer of nonfiction. We simply haven’t had that many very, very good writers of nonfiction address the subject of science fiction (especially outside of criticism and review, though I’d hold my observation is reasonably valid there too).
In that general-interest case, yes, I would also like to see that book very much. I think Michael Chabon might be able to write it; I think Francis Spufford almost certainly could.