I decided to read something I normally hate: a cosy mystery. You know one of those mysteries where everything is tidily wrapped up at the end and everyone lives happily ever after? An Agatha Christie kind of mystery. They are so not my thing. But then someone was raving about Barbara Neely's Blanche White books and they sounded interesting.

One of my fave TV shows is Into the Badlands because martial arts staged well and magically and saturated colours and eye candy and coherent plot and world building. It has a strong diverse cast.

Sure, Malcolm Turnbull is less anti-science and anti-culture than [Tony] Abbott, but low bar, and there's not a lot to show for it beyond rhetoric.

I was wowed by Margo Jefferson's memoir, Negroland, which is about growing up black and privileged in Chicago in the fifties and sixties. It was a window into an alien world. Obviously, I'm not black, but what was really alien to me was her family's focus on respectability. I was never taught when to wear white gloves, what length skirt is appropriate.

The new prime minister, Malcolm Turnbull, while a vast improvement on his predecessor is not doing much, if anything, to slow that process done.

I've known white Australian girls from wealthy families who were sent to posh private schools, who knew all of that stuff, and I think would recognise much in Jefferson's book. What I related to most strongly was the sexism and misogyny Margo Jefferson had to battle.

I can critique the bad; I can take the good, and I can add whatever I want.