Vegan sausages - Bunnings

The advertisement on a Fcaebook page checked out as being fair dinkum. I'll report back after attending this Sunday.

 

Shalom,

Ozhamada

Review of a novel, 'Sound Mind Dead body' by Dave Warner – a collection of editing comments part 1

Sound Mind Dead Body was a novel that offered up some curious text. The peak point of amusement comes when the author offers his readers the dimensions of a gardener’s shed. 

To understand this text, you need first understand that a valuable item of jewellery has been lost from the property. A male character named Willets is in search of the jewellery.

“It [a door] creaked slowly inwards, revealing a space no more than six foot high, about eight feet deep and the width of one and a half Willets” (Chapter 7, page 74)

Can someone tell me? What is the equivalent in feet of a Willet? Does one recognise a Willet as being the distance between the gentleman’s shoulders (as would befitting to the width of a shed). Or is a Willet identified to the gentleman’s height? 

Shalom,

Ozhamada

Other humour: 

-              Chapter 4 opens with some of the characters at a town “Shagwell”. In reality, there is no Shagwell; only Shadwell. The author may have had Austin Powers on his mind!

-              In Chapter 10 Willets arrives at a pharmacy with an open soup pail full of tea. He asks the pharmacist to test the tea for evidence of poison, Willets had done well to travel to the pharmacy, with an open soup pail, on his motorbike.

Review of a novel, 'Sound Mind Dead body' by Dave Warner – a collection of editing comments part 3

Sound Mind Dead Body was a novel that offered up some curious text. The curious text first arises in Chapter 1, page 14 (see part 2 of this blog) and then arises again in Chapter 2. Indeed, the first page of Chapter 2 includes:

•  The opening sentence with its personification of the sun: “The sun beat down out of the blue sky as if it had not a care in the world”
• The oddity of the sun being said to not have a care in the world when that is quite logical -  that it is suspended in space quite separate from the world,
• And, that opening sentence is long, assaulting the reader with too many nouns to digest: in turn: the sun, a woman, the lawn, Watkins the grocer, and the buiding’s name Harcrofts.

And then there is also:

• The positioning statement of the location of a beach as “only a couple of hundred yards” back over a character’s shoulder where the author had not first established where the character was standing.
•  And, a reference to a “usually private beach” where beaches tend to be considered private even where the occasional adventurer finds their way onto the beach. 

Opening sentences that are packed with many nouns can work. Some are marvellous (think for instance of the opening sentence of Chapter 1 of Pride and Prejudice). Yet, a reader will recognise a long opening sentence as gimmicky if it is not solid.

Shalom,

Ozhamada

Review of a novel, 'Sound Mind Dead body' by Dave Warner – a collection of editing comments part 2

 Sound Mind Dead Body – a collection of editing comments part 2

Sound Mind Dead Body was a novel that offered up some curious text. The curious text first arises in Chapter 1, page 14.

To understand this text, you need first understand that the named character; Lucas, is a Police deputy. The author is reporting on the directions that a senior officer to Lucas had given to Lucas.

“He’d instructed Lucas not to engage the men if he discovered them but to return to the town until he himself returned.” (Chapter 1, page 14)

Now, there are a few curious features of that text; that “He” gets a good run, with a switching between the “he” that is referred to. That there is the presumption that rogues are “men”. The word “return” is overused. It takes the brain a while to absorb the intended meaning. An alternate version of that sentence is:

“He’d instructed Lucas not to engage the rogues should they be located but instead to return to the town and await his arrival.” 

Shalom,

Ozhamada