Month: April 2010

Yesterday I had to catch the train home from work with a Venus Fly Trap plant in my handbag. I’m blaming Sir David Attenborough. His voice may be soft, but his enthusiasm is contagious, and after watching the epic documentary Earth recently and re-reading my copy of the Life of Mammals, I was filled with wonder and fascination for all things for all things natural.

So, when I wandered by a gardening centre and discovered they had a special on carnivorous plants, I just couldn’t resist the tiny Venus Fly Trap, with its fringed green and red maws open and begging for treats. But in my enthusiasm I had forgotten I was catching the train home. I wasn’t sure what to do with the plant. Taking a bunch of flowers on the train is one thing, but a carnivorous plant? People would think I was nuts. Perhaps I should play to the crowd. I considered glaring at nearby passengers while stroking the plant saying “soon, my pretty, soon.”

Common sense triumphed, however, and I managed to stash it in my huge handbag (all the better to carry books with, my dear) and get it home, where it now has pride of place on the top of the bookcase. It likes heat and humidity and plenty of light, and I’ll need to catch flies for it to keep it happy and grow it. I’m quite looking forward to seeing how it turns out.

It will, unfortunately, probably end up in the potplant graveyard on the balcony. Along with the geraniums, some big leafy things and the apparently “indestructible” ivy that I killed in a record three weeks.

My love for pretty houseplants is completely unrequited. I don’t so much have green fingers as black thumbs. Need to defeat the Triffids? Make my living room the first stop on their world conquering itinerary and they’ll be dead in a week. I alternate between utterly ignoring my plants for weeks on end and then deciding to lavish them with enthused, but ineffective, love.

My Mum, who has just arrived over from Ireland, is horrified by the potplant graveyard and asked how I’ve been treating the plants. On hearing I never fed them and they’ve been in the same pot for the last three years she looked at me like I had said I keep small children in the attic and feed them buckets of fish heads once a week. She thrust half a bottle of fertiliser and some pots at me and made “I’m going to call the Royal Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Plants” noises until I started to pay them attention. So my plants have been potted and composted and fed and watered and are currently getting lots of attention. They’d better enjoy it while it lasts.

Plants rarely survive in our house. We have bought several, but the only one to survive is some sort of potted stalky bamboo-y type thingy. (That’s the common name for it, of course. The Latin would be as Nescio Quis Abyssus, or the I Dunno What plant.) We ignore it apart from sporadic watering and occasional de-leaving when it goes brown, the tenacious thing continues to grow ever taller. Every few months it sprouts up another inch, and in the process puts out two improbably big leaves that quiver gently in the wind. All the leaves lower down have fallen off and now it resembles nothing so much as a tall skinny man wearing an absurdly large toupee. It hates attention. When we tried to move it to a better spot, it shed all its leaves. When we tried to repot it, it died for a few months. Basically, it finds my ministrations so abhorrent that it feigns death rather than put up with them.

Of course, if I don’t treat the Venus Flytrap right (Dionaea muscipula, which is actually its correct name), it is carnivorous. You have to wonder why they are having a special on these plants. Perhaps they eat the people who get it wrong. Perhaps the plants have sent something to extract vengeance for all their fallen kin on the balcony.

Or perhaps, this time, I should just pay the darn thing some attention and feed it before it eats me.

It is a truth universally acknowledged that any book in possession of popularity must be in want of literary merit. If it sells well, it must be lowbrow. And, when other popular writers are the ones to say this, it causes no end of fuss.

Last year Stephen King, the king of high-selling horror, took a pot shot at one of the biggest names out there, Stephenie Meyers. “Both Rowling and Meyer, they’re speaking directly to young people… The real difference is that Jo Rowling is a terrific writer and Stephenie Meyer can’t write worth a damn. She’s not very good.”

There was uproar. Not very good? Meyer’s star is currently at its peak, and her huge army of Twilight fans (or Twi-hards) were aghast on her behalf. According to some sources, they suggested drowning Stephen King in hate mail. (Bear in mind, Stephen King is a man in poor health in his sixties. You’d probably only need one small bag.)

Not very good? As of March 2010, the Twilight series has sold over 100 million copies and been translated into at least 38 different languages. It has inspired major movies, parodies and countless fan sites. How do you quantify “good” in something as subjective as writing if not by how many people like it, her fans asked? Meyers herself did not join the indignation. Some Twilight fans thought this might be because she was richer than the Queen and doesn’t care anymore. Perhaps Meyers was too busy drowning under cheques to respond to poor Stephen (who was, presumably, drowning in hate mail written on scented paper and in red ink)?

But, while it is true that the Twilight saga is selling by the bucketload, what the Twi-hards seem to miss is that popular authors taking a pop at each other is a time honoured tradition. And Stephen’s off the cuff insult was relatively mild compared to what some authors have had slung at them.

Jane Austen was the popular author of her day, but not everyone liked her. Fortunately didn’t live long enough to hear Mark Twain declare her so poor a writer he thought of desecrating her grave.

I haven’t any right to criticize books, and I don’t do it except when I hate them. I often want to criticize Jane Austen, but her books madden me so that I can’t conceal my frenzy from the reader; and therefore I have to stop every time I begin. Every time I read ‘Pride and Prejudice,’ I want to dig her up and hit her over the skull with her own shin-bone.

Mark Twain’s writing wasn’t so great either, according to William Faulkner. He believed the moustachioed Twain “[a] hack writer who would not have been considered fourth rate in Europe, who tricked out a few of the old proven sure fire literary skeletons with sufficient local colour to intrigue the superficial and the lazy.” Likewise, Evelyn Waugh was unimpressed by French novelist, Marcel Proust. “I am reading Proust for the first time. Very poor stuff. I think he was mentally defective.”

And acccording to James Dickey; “[if] it were thought that anything I wrote was influenced by Robert Frost, I would take that particular work of mine, shred it, and flush it down the toilet, hoping not to clog the pipes…”

It makes Stephen’s fit of pique look almost cute.

Meyer has not responded. Perhaps she recognises the clacking of typewritten literary insults for what they are – a membership card to the club of lucky authors whose books are popular enough to merit discussion by other authors. Perhaps she realises that Stephen King is, in his own snarky way, welcoming her onboard to the Big Boys club.

Or perhaps she’s still struggling under her royalty cheques.

For the record, I love King, like Austen, enjoy Twain and couldn’t get past Book 1 in the Twilight Saga. I haven’t read Faulker. He’s on the list of authors-I-swear-I-will-read-someday but keeps getting dumped for travelogues and chick lit. It’s a long list, full of very worthy books and authors, and probably a post for another day.

The traditional image of a writer is an eccentric eking out a lone living on a typewriter in the attic (fingerless mittens optional but encouraged). Indeed, for many aspiring artists labouring in office jobs, the lack of constant human contact and interference is a perk of the job.

But for some writers, and particularly writers of non-fiction, it’s a more social affair. When freelance science journalist Bianca Nogrady was offered to a chance to collaborate to collaborate with James Bradfield Moody (Executive Director, Development at CSIRO and a regular panellist on the ABC television show ‘The New Inventors’) on a concept for a new book, the Sixth Wave, did having two writers double the fun or the trouble?

What was your initial reaction when James suggested collaborating?

I was flattered that he thought so highly of me as a journalist! Then, once my ego settled down, I became very excited about the whole idea of the book. It’s a positive, exciting look at the next 30 years of humanity, which makes such a refreshing change from all the doom-and-gloom.

How did it work in practice?

We had a few face-to-face and over-the-phone brainstorms to work out the structure of the book. Then, with each chapter, James would map out the skeleton – sometimes it was a loose sketch, other times he would write out the entire chapter – then he would pass it to me.

I would research, interview and ‘sprinkle fairy dust’ – turn it into something that I like to think is readable, understandable and entertaining. Each chapter would go back and forward several times with each of us tweaking, reworking, adding and editing, before it was finished.

What was the biggest advantage of collaborating? And the biggest argument?

I believe everyone has a book in them, but I’m yet to find mine, so it was great to have someone else come to me with their idea, particularly someone as intelligent and full of good ideas as James is. We both brought so much to the table, and complemented each other’s skill sets and knowledge base. We had the same vision for the book so it was rare for us to disagree on something and when we did, we were always able to negotiate a compromise.

And while I like to think of myself as having some degree of fame and notoriety, James’ celebrity and networks far eclipse mine. He has contacts I can only dream of, which opened some very impressive doors, not the least of which those at Random House Australia.

The only significant downside is that instead of one person trying to meet a deadline, there are two, so things inevitably take longer than you think they will!

The Sixth Wave is your first book. Would you do another the same way?

I would definitely do this again. I think we were lucky in that we worked well together and found our working groove fairly quickly. We both knew our strengths and were happy to play to those rather than either of us trying to dominate the process.

And what advice would you give people on making co-operative writing work?

You have to get on with the person you’re working with! It might sound obvious, but I don’t think The Sixth Wave would have worked nearly as well if James and I had personality clashes.

Work out what you each can bring to the table in terms of skills and strengths. I’m a science journalist, not an economist or innovation theorist, so while I was confident to research and write about the science and technology, and confident in my skills as a writer, I was very happy to defer to James’ expertise when it came to the big picture, the economics, the theory etc.

Have a clear action plan and timeline. We worked chapter by chapter, which suited us, but we did end up with a last minute panic (that lasted about 3 months!). I remember one night where I was so stressed about getting it done that I ended up on the computer at 2am in the morning research carbon trading schemes. At the time my bub Nina was waking up every 1-2 hrs at night so I figured there wasn’t much point in lying in bed freaking out and waiting for her to wake up.

My other advice would be don’t try to conduct interviews with a baby around. I had one horrendous phone interview with a bloke in the UK, while Nina was doing her 100 decibel Bon Scott imitation from her cot in the next room. Does wonders for the concentration.

Finally, what advice would you give aspiring non-fiction writers?

I write about science because I find it fascinating, and I like to think that makes me a better writer, researcher and interviewer. I would say write about something that interests you, or find something interesting in what you write about. It’s very well to want to be a writer, but for me the more important question is ‘what do you want to write about?’.

Bianca Nogrady is a freelance science journalist and broadcaster who has written for publications such as Scientific American, The Australian and the Australian Broadcasting Corporation science and health websites. Bianca lives in the Blue Mountains with her husband and daughter.

Throughout modern history, the tide of innovation and progress has ebbed and flowed but a clear pattern exists – five waves of innovation, beginning with the Industrial Revolution, have each transformed society, economies and industry. The fifth wave was dominated by information and communications technology but a new, brighter star is emerging. The sixth wave of innovation will be about resources – natural resources, human resources and information. THE SIXTH WAVE is a business book, a motivational book, a bold prediction and a roadmap to the future, for anyone interested in understanding how the next wave of innovation will change our lives, and how to succeed in a resource-limited world.

There were undoubtedly some red faces at Penguin Group Australia yesterday when they announced they were reprinting 7,000 cookbooks over a recipe for pasta.  The “Pasta Bible” recipe for spelt tagliatelle with sardines and prosciutto was supposed to call for black pepper but due to a “silly mistake” by a proofreader, it specified a decidedly more macabre ingredient be used – “freshly ground black people”.

Penguin were quick to issue a statement and apologise to anyone offended.

“Misprints are always unfortunate and they are doubly unfortunate when they carry an unintended meaning. As the Pasta Bible is a cookbook, there was obviously no intent behind this mistake – it was simply a regrettable error. […] In this case it is clear that a spell-check error crept in, the recipe incorrectly suggesting the addition of salt and freshly ground black people instead of freshly ground black pepper. Normally such an error would be picked up by proof readers, but they would have been concentrating on checking quantities, a common source of error in cookbooks.”

7,000 copies of the Pasta Bible were immediately quarantined in Penguin’s warehouse and pulped, and revised edition of the Pasta Bible will be available from late May 2010. The recall will cost Penguin $20,000, according to the head of publishing, Bob Sessions,  in the Sydney Morning Herald . ”In one particular recipe [a] misprint occurs which obviously came from a spellchecker. When it comes to the proofreader, of course they should have picked it up, but proofreading a cookbook is an extremely difficult task. I find that quite forgivable.

As someone who tends to be a little slapdash with my keyboard and skim rather than re-read carefully, I’m sympathetic. I have sent out a few corkers in my time. Probably the most embarrassing was an e-mail I sent to several members of management in a company I had just started work with, cancelling a meeting and apologising for “any incontinence caused”.

I can tell you, when that meeting was rescheduled, no one wanted to sit next to me.

Still, Penguin aren’t the first publishers to have this problem. Printers’ errors are fairly common, and calling a book a Bible seems to be an invitation for trouble. In addition to occasional heavy-handed translation, the Good Book has an impressive history of errors and bloopers. Like the Pasta Bible, The Fools Bible of 1763 contained an expensive misprint; Psalm 14:1 reads “the fool hath said in his heart there is a God”, rather than “…there is no God”. The printers were fined three thousand pounds and all copies ordered destroyed.

Less expensive, but probably more embarrassing at family parties was the Lions Bible where Kings 8:19 reads “thy son that shall come forth out of thy lions”, rather than “loins”. Let’s not bring them to the zoo, shall we?

Some of the Bibles advocate unorthodox approaches to morality. The Unrighteous Bible or “Wicked Bible” published in 1653 by Cambridge Press omitted a “not” before the word “inherit”, making Corinthians 6:9 read “Know ye not that the unrighteous shall inherit the kingdom of God?” and the Sin On Bible of 1716 exhorts readers to “Go and sin on more” rather than “Go and sin no more”.

My favourite is the “Printers Bible”, of 1702 where Psalm 119:161 reads “Printers have persecuted me without cause.” The first word was changed, possibly by a disgruntled typesetter, from “Princes”.

I suspect that poor proofreader at Penguin Books knows exactly what they mean.

This day 99 years ago the Titanic sank into the Atlantic Ocean, taking 1,517 lives with it. I grew up ten miles from the Titanic’s last port of call – Cobh in County Cork, Ireland – and the sad tale of the ship was familiar to me from a young age. My Dad told me it.

And just down the road off the coast of Kinsale is the wreck of the RMS Lusitania, an ocean liner torpedoed by a German U-boat in May 1915. She sank in eighteen minutes, killing 1,198 of the 1,959 people aboard. In fact, there are over 65 known shipwrecks off Cork, which is even more horrifying when you realise the county is only eighty kilometres wide, almost all of which my father was only too delighted to share the terrifying details of.

So growing up with a father with a penchant for horror stories, as far as we were concerned, ships sank. A lot. The more “unsinkable” the better the odds they would be on the ocean floor by sundown. When my family’s first ever experience with rough weather at sea happened we were understandably nervous.

We were on a huge car ferry from Cork to France and a force nine gale had sprung up out of nowhere. The wind howled around the boat and the ship listed erratically from side to side, making walking around almost impossible. My father had been in the Navy and read several books on the wrecks. You would think he would have consoled his two children, one of whom needed to be seasick, with cheerful thoughts on how maritime law had been updated from the cautionary tale of the Titanic to provide enough lifeboats for everyone and how hardly any large passenger boats sank these days.

Oh no. My Dad saw a chance to regale a captive audience with tales of terror, and he went for it. They wouldn’t be able to send out the lifeboats, we’d be on our own. Our own lifeboats would capsize in the swells. And there was no point sticking on a lifejackets – if the boat sank, he explained, the wake of it would pull us down and we’d drown. Even if we avoided that, we’d get hypothermia. And possibly sharks. EVIL sharks.

The result? Two terrified and traumatized children, one of whom needed to be seasick. My Dad’s work here was done.

My father’s love of expanding on harmless situations by listing the worst available outcome may be where I get both my worry-wart tendencies and my interest in worst-case scenarios  and what happens when things go wrong. And specifically, how to survive it. To understand how people behave in a crisis is the first step, according to many books, in getting through that crisis. In the absence of clear instructions and peer action, people freeze. They don’t take advantage of what is called the “Golden Time”, the brief period where you can still affect what happens next.

To that end, I can only recommend the Worst-case Scenario series. Thick enough to use as a weapon and handily indexed for those moments when speed is of the essence, they provide a humorous but helpful guide to getting through disasters, perfect for the worry-wart in your family or for shutting up the disaster master when they are hauling you down Pessimism Alley.  Need to deal with a sinking ship, elephant stampede, mine collapse or a nuclear attack? Here’s your guide.

And, as an added tip, if my father starts telling you stories, you can hit him with it.

Clash of the Titans may be the latest 3D must-see movie, but I haven’t gone yet, and I am not sure I want to. I’m bizarrely attached to the old version from the 1980’s, complete with Harry Hamlin hamming, stop-motion monsters and a jerky Pegasus, and I’m not sure I want to see the new look version, shiny and all as it will undoubtedly be.

Clash of the Titans is an old favourite if mine for another reason – it started me looking at the stars. The movie has scenes where they overlay the constellations with images in the sky; an odd Y shape becomes the warrior Perseus, sword in hand, and a few twinkling lights becomes Pegasus, flying through the skies.  It was the first time I had heard that stories of the shapes of constellations. My uncle was a keen stargazer and, realising that he might be able to use my love of ponies to talk about something other than ponies (I was a very single-minded child), he took me out to show me the night sky through his telescope. I was hooked.

I stayed interested in star-gazing into adulthood – although in Ireland it can be a bit of a letdown, what with the near-permanent cloud-cover and rain for most of year. One of the reasons visiting Australia excited me was seeing the stars of the Southern Hemisphere for the first time. (Another, and please do not hold this against me, was to see if water flushed the other way round in the toilets once you crossed the equator due to the Coriolis effect.)

The majesty and mystery of the night sky has captured the imagination of many people, from our ancestors who looked up into the universe and saw their legends and gods, to the science fiction writers of today who imagine life amongst them. The stars have amazing stories and many people tell them well. While there are factual guides of the sky and useful atlases to find your way around, an excellent introduction to the sky that blends instruction with entertainment is Legends of the Stars, by Sir Patrick Moore. He brings the names of the stars and their ancient myths to life – Orion battles and Pegasus soars and for those of you worried you may be left behind, there are helpful celestial pictures to follow the action. If you are looking for a book to introduce the depths of the stars to a budding enthusiast, here is your Holy Grail.

Looking to explore the heavenly bodies that are a little closer to Earth? Legends of the Stars is a celestial guide with its feet firmly on the ground but Dava Sobel’s Planets defies classification. A lyrical biography of our near neighbours, mixing poetry by Blake and Tennyson with factual explanations of the deadly acid atmosphere of Venus, it is strange and wonderful guide to our Solar System. The planets are explored through myth, astrology, astronomy, music, literature and science-fiction and Sobel’s prose guides you surely from the Big Bang and the Sun in Genesis to the outer reaches of the Oort Cloud with both a sense of wonder and a sense of humour, in this surprisingly personal and intimate look at the planets.

For an even more human perspective on exploring the Solar System, Sobel’s Galileo’s Daughter is the story of the great Italian scientist Galileo and his daughter, Virginia, as told through their letters and contemporary accounts of their lives. Galileo – “the father of modern physics” – was a keen astronomer and scientistm was tried for heresy when he put forward the astounding proposition that the Earth actually moves around the Sun. His illegitimate daughter was a nun, and this book explores their relationship through their lives, the stars, and their shared interest in science and religion.

Whether you choose a classical, modern or human perspective on astromony, it’s a fascinatingly beautiful subject, and I’ll always have a soft spot for Clash of the Titans for bringing it into my life. What perspective on the skies do you enjoy, and do you have recommendations for budding astronomists?