Professional Envy and Another New Release Roundup

The giveaway is a copy of 'Half Truth' by Nadia Mahjouri

Dear Readers,

Thank you so much for the well-wishes and general vibes of positivity and resilience last week. The silver lining of the academia horror stories was the overwhelming solidarity.

This week I have some very exciting Bibliocarta news…

We are thrilled to present our first ever Sydney event: A Sweet Moroccan Night in Sydney. This is a collaboration with new Moroccan restaurant Cafe Tanja and debut Moroccan-Australian author Nadia Mahjouri.

Join us on Monday 24 March at 6pm at Cafe Tanja in Surry Hills for bottomless atay (mint tea) and three of Cafe Tanja’s desserts: date cake, msemen (flaky, buttery North African pastry) and their famous Arab Blondie.

From 6.30pm Nadia Mahjouri and I will be in-conversation about her debut novel, Half Truth. ‘A daughter searches for her father; a mother for her son. From isolated Tasmania to vibrant Morocco, two women seek the truth about what happened to the same man.’ Nadia will take audience questions, and copies of Half Truth will be available for sale and signing on the night.

The ticket is priced a little higher than you might be used to because Cafe Tanja is opening and cooking especially for us, which means staffing and childcare costs need to be covered. And there are only 20 seats available, so it’s guaranteed to be delightfully intimate. This event isn’t a money-maker for me or the company. It is, I hope, the beginning of the bigger Bibliocarta plan: broadening our literary horizons together and creating the same excellent kind nerd community at home as well as abroad.

In related news, I’m thrilled to report that the Bibliocarta online library is finally searchable by destination! You have no idea how much I’ve been waiting for this final tech update. I was holding off, but now it’s done, in the coming weeks I’ll be ramping up sharing your submissions there and posting lots of people’s great recommendations on the Bibliocarta Instagram page.

Best wishes and happy reading,

Bri

Spoiler Alert

The next Spoiler Alert livestream is going to happen next week on Wednesday night! There is much to discuss: they’ve announced they’re posthumously publishing Didion’s secret diaries, and I’ve got opinions about these Australian publishing mergers. We’re doing Birnam Wood by Eleanor Catton and Didion & Babitz by Lili Anolik.

Got a thought about any of the above? Send me a voice memo here—either naming yourself or anonymous—so I can play it when we’re live and we can all respond and discuss. You can watch previous Spoiler Alerts here.

Good News

1. If you read Eggshell Skull (I haven’t in 7 years lol) you might remember that scene in Bundaberg where I cried at all the little turtles hatching and scrambling over the sand to get to the ocean. Their survival odds were grim. Well, as the ABC report, more than 500 endangered loggerhead turtles have nested at Mon Repos beach this season, which the rangers are saying is the largest number since the 1970s. Environmental news hits so much harder when you’ve actually seen and felt a place, doesn’t it? I often think about the tension between tourism and environmentalism, but I keep coming back to this: people who have witnessed the magnificence of nature are so much more invested in its protection. ‘Among the star performers was a turtle that was first tagged in 1980 and has undertaken 13 seasons of breeding.’ Go turtle mama, go!

2. In Australia, the National Student Ombudsman is now taking complaints. Why is this important? Because until now there was no real recourse for survivors whose matters were minimised or inappropriately handled by their universities. The ombudsman can compel universities to give them information but they don’t act without the complainant’s consent. It’s a trauma-informed accountability mechanism. I want to take a moment here and shout from the rooftops: the tireless advocacy from the team at End Rape On Campus Australia got this done. The women I met in my advocacy days are absolute gladiators. I get goosebumps thinking of their grit and determination. Real heroes.

3. Sam Kerr has been found Not Guilty of ‘racially aggravated harassment’ and I’m with Geoffrey Robertson on this: it never should have even gone to trial. ‘Prosecutors initially thought that this [‘stupid and white’] insult had caused no “alarm or distress” and refused to take the case to trial. But one officer, 11 months later, made a statement that he had been.’ I mean, what? That one dude decided to dig his heels in, and a multi-layered institutional snowball began? The cops calling her ‘missy moo’ made me shudder with recognition. Where the fuck did ‘missy moo’ come from and why is it so singularly patronising? They didn’t believe she’d tried to call the police from the cab. Why did several teams of public servants let this go to trial? So stupid. Such a distraction.

Bad News

1. Netanyahu is warning Hamas that ‘intense fighting’ will resume if the scheduled release of hostages doesn’t happen this week. Hamas said they were pausing the releases because Israel was slowing or compromising humanitarian aid deliveries. The truce is supposed to be renegotiated in March, and there are serious concerns it won’t hold that long. Meanwhile, as the New York Times report here, ‘Trump has said the United States will rebuild Gaza into the “Riviera of the Middle East,” and on Monday he threatened to withdraw financial support for Egypt and Jordan unless they take in all the Palestinians who would be displaced by that effort.’ Trump’s election is kerosene on this fire. Just when Palestinians were starting to be able to return home, the president is speaking—in his deranged real estate terms—about forcing them elsewhere.

2. Feeling emboldened by the flatcap bullshit that passes for politics in America now, Pauline Hanson is on a new rant-fuelled treadmill, wanting a parliamentary inquiry into medical treatments for transgender children. The Sydney Morning Herald report that 18 coalition senators—including frontbenchers Bridget McKenzie, Michaelia Cash, and Jacinta Nampijinpa Price, and MPs Alex Antic and Matt Canavan—supported her. Kudos to the three Coalition senators—Andrew Bragg, Maria Kovacic, and Richard Colbeck—who voted with the Greens and Labor to defeat the motion. The weirdest part? A review of medical treatment for transgender children is already under way in Australia with bipartisan support.

3. This bad news is specific to my neighbourhood of Kings Cross. The beloved David Polson AM has died. We knew each other from the dog park, where Judit and his dog Rosie would play. In his Sydney Morning Herald Obituary they write that he ‘was one of only 28 left of the first 400 men diagnosed with HIV/AIDS in Australia in 1984’, that he ‘underwent more than 28 drug trials’ to lead the way in research that ultimately benefitted thousands of others, and that he was the founding chair of the phenomenal public space, Qtopia: a place for memory, celebration, and education. There is much to read about David’s courage and valour, but I would like to add something small that won’t appear in any formal obituary. David would throw out the most side-splittingly witty ripper calls. An absolute master orator and scathing observationalist who never punched down. I admire him so much.

Good Reviews: New Release Roundup!

Back in October everyone loved the new release roundup I did, so I thought it was time for another. Here are recent releases from a range of genres that I’m excited to take a look at.

1. Gutsy Girls: Love, Poetry and Sisterhood by Josie McSkimming is a work of literary life writing by Dorothy Porter’s sister about their brilliant family. ‘Josie fell into evangelical Christianity and psychotherapy while Dot found “the Arts” and sex.’ It was written with ‘unprecedented access to Porter’s personal diaries and letters’, so might make an interesting follow-up to our conversation about Didion & Babitz.

2. The Quickening: Antarctica, Motherhood, and Cultivating Hope in a Warming World by Elizabeth Rush is one of those books so very overlapping in subject matter with my own that I’m almost afraid to read it. Fortunately her interests are explored here in non-fiction. I had to special order my copy as it’s only just now out in Australia.

3. The Woman in the Wallpaper by Lora Jones is historical fiction with a fantastic premise: it’s Paris, 1789, two women go to work in a factory that makes beautiful (and bourgeoise) wallpaper. But! The wallpaper also depicts a woman who died in suspicious circumstances? And there’s that pesky revolution going on too. Perfect contender for my by-the-bed reading.

4. The Mark by Fríða Ísberg (translated by Larissa Kyzer) came out a little while ago, but I’m finally 60 pages in and hooked. It’s a realistic version of Iceland where the nation is about to vote on mandating an ‘empathy test’ that can predict anti-social behaviour. Neighbourhoods have started segregating themselves and those who refuse to take the test are (validly) concerned about their civil rights but also often dickheads. In one blurb I read ‘When does utopia become dystopia?’ and that just about nails it.

This Week’s Group Chat Hot Topic: Professional Envy

Note: For years now I’ve given away my weekly bad reviews, essays, rants, and gripes for free. The trouble is, News & Reviews is no longer a fun little sneaky thing. Substack won’t let me cull subscribers so we’ve hit 11,000 readers and despite my efforts, that number keeps growing. I was also inspired by this recent interview in which Tina Brown says ‘The irony is that you need to be really good to do the 800 word pieces.’ So! I’ve swapped the order and I’ll keep the good reviews up high above the paywall but I’m putting the bad reviews/juicy stuff and the giveaways down below. I’m experimenting with what to call it but the vibe is definitely ‘group chat hot topic’. As always, if you’re high enthusiasm and low funds, just reply to an email and I’ll comp you for six months. :)

This morning I read two separate articles that—twang!—sounded the same note in my inner ear; twins in the specificity of their off-key vibes. I shelved the book review I had drafted and instead I want to see if any of you can help me figure this out. I’m hearing a lot of bog-standard professional envy, but with a minor chord of entitlement, maybe? Let’s have a look.

When it comes to mega literary talent like David Sedaris, there are very few angles for a ‘hot take’. Sedaris has made a critically-acclaimed fortune from mining his own life’s embarrassing details, so there’s no dirt he himself hasn’t already dished. He doesn’t need to do interviews for publicity because he’s popular enough to sell out his own shows. But he’s visiting Sydney, right? So the SMH want to cover it in some way. The result is this headline. And shame on me for clicking on it.