A Person Is Among All Else A Material Thing, Easily Torn Not Easily Mended.

Historical fact: people stopped being human in 1913. That was the year Henry Ford put his cars on rollers and made his workers adopt the speed of the assembly line. At first, workers rebelled. They quit in droves, unable to accustom their bodies to the new pace of the age. Since then, however, the adaptation has been passed down: we've all inherited it to some degree, so that we plug right into joysticks and remotes, to repetitive motions of a hundred kinds.

'Middlesex' by Jeffrey Eugenides  

I am a collection of oddities, a circus of neurons and electrons: my heart is the ringmaster, my soul is the trapeze artist, and the world is my audience. It sounds strange because it is, and it is, because I am strange.

Mosquitoland by David Arnold 

It's a weird smile, but it reaches his eyes and I bottle it. And I put it in my ammo pack that's kept right next to my soul and Justine's spirit and Siobhan's hope and Tara's passions. Because if I'm going to wake up one morning and not be able to get out of bed, I'm going to need everything I've got to fight this disease that could be sleeping inside of me.

'Saving Francesca' by Melina Marchetta 

I am a dreamer too, and I must wake into a world of dreamers. You can feel it – can’t you? – the peeling off of me, another small loss you have to bear. We all bear it, as best we can, this infinite chain of miniature losses, a hundred thousand stories, a hundred thousand endings. A rehearsal you could call it, for the last ending that’s bound to come, eventually, somewhere in the white space between here and dreaming.

'Only Ever Always' by Penni Russon

Little news ☺️ “Alyssa Miele at HarperCollins/Quill Tree Books has bought ‘The Year the Maps Changed’ … Publication is set for fall 2022; Annabel Barker at Annabel Barker Agency handled the deal via Jacinta di Mase at Jacinta di Mase Management.” 🗺 ‘Maps’ is a very Australian-focused book, and I am incredibly thankful that it’s been acquired by a US-publisher who is intending to keep it that way. Quill Tree has this motto; “Many branches, Many voices,” and I’m so grateful that with such an outlook, they saw fit to take onboard my little #LoveOzMG book. Most of you would probably know how important this particular aspect is to me, and I am truly just so floored and happy!