Thoughts on Mexican Gothic, the pandemic, and native crops

[jayeless]

I did say I was going to try and be more diligent about crossposting things here, and well… since I haven't been, I felt like a good round-up of links to some of the content I've been putting up might be close enough 😂

So first up, you might wish to read my review of Mexican Gothic (spoiler: I loved it). This has probably been one of the most hyped books of the year, and for me at least it did not disappoint. It's made me want to read more gothic literature too, and to this end I've downloaded a bunch of old classics like Wuthering Heights, Jane Eyre, Frankenstein and Dracula. The latter two I might already have read a decade ago or something, but I don't remember them (as opposed to what you know by osmosis about them, which I do remember), so I'mma read them again. If you have any recs for more modern gothic books btw, please do share!

Then on Saturday I posted some thoughts about the effectiveness of Victoria's lockdown; on that day we'd gone 15 days without a single new case, which is fantastic. It's hard to celebrate too much when you know many other parts of the world are really suffering, though.

Yesterday I wrote about Australia's native crops, and recent efforts to produce some of them commercially. Importantly, it's collectives of Aboriginal people who are able to capitalise on the growing interest in these foods. If native crops can start gaining serious ground over imported ones like wheat and Asian rice, that would be so much better for Australia's environment, too.

I've also posted a bunch of shorter and photo posts, so if you want to see photos of cats and dogs or the misir wot or the lemongrass and coconut soup I made this week then be my guest 😂

If you have any comments you'd like to leave on any of those entries, feel free to just leave those here! Micro.blog is a bit confusing with external comments (relying on Webmentions, which are not exactly mainstream at the moment) and I'll be notified and can reply just as easily over here. Not that you should feel any pressure to comment if you don't want to, of course.