{"id":41658,"date":"2023-11-16T06:30:56","date_gmt":"2023-11-15T17:30:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/?p=41658"},"modified":"2023-11-12T19:21:35","modified_gmt":"2023-11-12T06:21:35","slug":"a-final-riff-on-reading-the-axemans-carnival","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/2023\/11\/16\/a-final-riff-on-reading-the-axemans-carnival\/","title":{"rendered":"A Final Riff On Reading “The Axeman’s Carnival”"},"content":{"rendered":"

One anecdote I didn’t mention last week, when posting on reading<\/a> The Axeman’s Carnival<\/em> <\/strong>by Catherine Chidgey, and then again when I looked more closely<\/a> at some of the gorgeous words and turns of phrase that characterize the book, was that I read it when on my recent Auckland residency.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

The residency, as I omitted to mention here<\/a>, was in the realm of city lights and cafes on the doorstep (pretty much.) What I did mention was that while there I adopted a “ninja author” approach because “I wanted to take full advantage of the opportunity and keep all my attention on the book.”<\/em><\/p>\n

So despite having cafes on my doorstep, I was only in them every other day or so. And in order not to get sandbagged by reading, which has been known to happen with a good book, I kept my reading time to when I was having one of those cafe breaks.<\/p>\n

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One interesting aspect of reading The Axeman’s Carnival<\/em> in that way, was how many fellow caffiends approached me to ask about the book. For starters, because of the cover recognition (everyone, it seems, knows about Tama Magpie :D) and also the extent to which the book is known out there in the zeitgeist.(Am I envious — you bet I am! \ud83d\ude09 )<\/p>\n

The Axeman’s Carnival<\/em> did win both the Ockham NZ Book Award 2023 and the associated Readers’ Choice, as discussed here<\/a>, so this circumstance is probably not that surprising.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

What did surprise me a little, and fascinate at the same time, was that several people expressed diffidence about reading the book because they “don’t like birds.”<\/em><\/p>\n

Fascinated, because although I prefer some animal (vs vegetable and mineral)\u00a0 species over others, I don’t believe that would put me off reading if the story (in which one of the less favoured featured) was reputed to be good. What I said at the time, beyond that I was enjoying the book, was that it might help to think about the narrator, Tama Magpie, as a window into the story, rather than The Axeman’s Carnival<\/em> being a book “about birds.”<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

For the low(e)-down on what I think it’s actually about, check out last week’s post<\/a>. \ud83d\ude00<\/p>\n

Having said that, the narrator is<\/em> a magpie, and the narrative contains information about the species—both what we know of them as fact, and how we perceive them through folklore and myth—but it’s part of a much bigger story, as perceived slantwise, first through Tama’s right eye, then the left. And very occasionally, both eyes together.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One anecdote I didn’t mention last week, when posting on reading The Axeman’s Carnival by Catherine Chidgey, and then again when I looked more closely at some of the gorgeous words and turns of phrase that characterize the book, was that I read it when on my recent Auckland residency. The residency, as I omitted […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19,10,24],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-41658","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-funstuff","category-general","category-what-im-reading"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41658","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=41658"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41658\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":41669,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41658\/revisions\/41669"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41658"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=41658"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=41658"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}