This is one last post before I head off, I swear. Or I could possibly blog next week at some point, but that’d be unlikely. I’d like to sum up the top ten posts I wrote this year, according to what I thought were significant posts – even if they didn’t get that much attention.
A big shout out to Sam Van Zweden from Little Girl With A Big Pen who did a similar thing.
1. A dream-logic London squid riff: an interview with China Miéville (Part One and Part Two)
I said this was my highlight of 2010 yesterday. It’s my favourite post(s) too, and it’s not even on this blog. A joint interview with Angela Meyer on LiteraryMinded, we asked China all kinds of things and it came in two awesome parts.
2. Talking writing and politics with Kalinda Ashton (Part One, Part Two, Part Three and Part Four)
This was one whopping big interview. It blew my mind. After chatting with China Miéville earlier in the year, and all these questions coming up from festivals and from my politics and writing becoming closer together, I was very fortunate to nut out a whole heap of issues with Kalinda.
3. Capitalism and Consumerism: In Defence of Buying Stuff
This post was one I was grappling with for a while and I think I did pretty well to lay out what I think about the issues of consumerism, worker’s rights and where capitalist inequality comes from. It’s a timely one to highlight now given I always get pissed off around Christmas time when lefties attack workers for daring to buy presents.
4. Sorry, this title is unavailable: the state of digital book selling in Australia
Following purchasing a Sony Reader, I was disappointed to find an amazing gap in what books were available digitally, especially for Australian readers. This post and my others around digital publishing always managed to get a bit of attention, mainly thanks to the Meanland and AustLiterature twitter accounts.
5. Asylum seekers: Rejecting the logic of needing to turn the boats back
The debates around asylum seekers and mandatory detention were once again a major feature of this blog this year. And this post tackles the idea that ‘we all want to stop the boats’ that the right sometimes use to justify their disgusting policies under a more compassionate guise.
6. Atwood refuses to take a stand and accepts apartheid prize
This piece condemns Margaret Atwood for accepting the Dan David Prize for literature from an Israeli university, breaking the boycott and blockade of Israel. I looked at her response and reasoning for accepting such a prize and argue that writers like her ought to take a side.
7. On Short Fiction: Why it gets a better deal out of Digital Publishing
A pet favourite topic for me and this explains my position clearly though the barriers to this becoming true are largely due to the reasons I state in post no. 4 above.
8. Anti-Capitalist Themes in Fiction: Cliché or Over Scrutinized?
Following debates around Avatar and some criticism of my own work, I look at why people are saying anti-capitalist themes are cliché
9. Contradictions in the Vampirism to Homosexuality Analogy
I look at the politics of using vampires as an allegory for homosexuals, particularly in response to True Blood. It’s worth reading the comments to because the discussion clarifies things and my position changes a bit.
10. In defence of horror, writers’ sanity and the meaning behind it all
I defend why I like horror, what it all means, and why it’s not just about ‘enjoying’ dark things.
—
Perhaps some of those catch your eye if you missed them when they were first posted.
I’m not going to go into the top ten posts by hits, but it’s interesting to note that my review of American History X was the most visited post this year, mainly thanks to the odd workings of Google and it’s users. Two other movie reviews featured in that top 10 list.
Keep watch on my Twitter page and Facebook page for a link to a short story of mine that’s coming out in the next few days as part of Jodi Cleghorn’s ‘Deck the Halls’ which is part of a new project of ‘literary mix tapes.’
And I hope people enjoy their holidays and remember that we wouldn’t have them if it wasn’t for workers before us fighting for them. You can use that line when a right-wing relative tries the old ‘unions have done nothing for me’ line because they’d be working through Christmas if it wasn’t for unions (Yes, even if Christmas Day falls on a weekend because unions fought for the weekend too) /rant
