Birth and Death
My mother worried about me as a teenager. She worried a lot. And one of the things she worried about was my choice in reading materials. With few entertainment options in our little town in regional NSW, the library was my life. I spent a lot of time there avoiding home, reading 3 month old copies of The Face and wishing I lived in Manchester (Cool Britannia! Britpop! Manbreak Ocean Colour Scene Manic Street Preachers Pulp The Bluetones heck Tony Blair before he turned evil who would want to live in an Australia falling under the grip of John Howard?). But I also discovered the 340 subdivision of the Dewey Decimal System. Specifically, I discovered true crime. Before the Internet and streaming, people still dug true crime, mostly in the form of pulp magazines and mass market paperbacks detailing grisly things that had happened to murdered people, most of whom seemed to be young, beautiful white women . I couldn't get my hands on the magazines, but I devoured the books, bringin