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Calendar
A collection of essays in the form of a daybook, written in real-time over a year. Calendar is about tuning in to the unexpected, playful and solemn lives of the objects around us.
Calendar is an essay collection in the form of a daybook, written in real-time over a year. The book takes inspiration from writers who use experiments and constraints, such as Georges Perec/Oulipo and Bernadette Mayer, as well as autobiographical writers who use inventive structures, such as Christina Sharpe in Ordinary Notes, and Sheila Heti in Alphabetical Diaries.
Calendar is based on the French Republican calendar of the late 18th century, in which every day was dedicated to an object, and applies this concept to objects of contemporary life.
For a year Berry paid attention to her encounters with objects over the course of the day, and every night wrote an essay based on one object, and drew an illustration of it. Combining the narrative of a year and stories of the 365 objects themselves, Calendar is about tuning in to the unexpected, playful and solemn lives of the objects around us.
Calendar is an essay collection in the form of a daybook, written in real-time over a year. The book takes inspiration from writers who use experiments and constraints, such as Georges Perec/Oulipo and Bernadette Mayer, as well as autobiographical writers who use inventive structures, such as Christina Sharpe in Ordinary Notes, and Sheila Heti in Alphabetical Diaries.
Calendar is based on the French Republican calendar of the late 18th century, in which every day was dedicated to an object, and applies this concept to objects of contemporary life.
For a year Berry paid attention to her encounters with objects over the course of the day, and every night wrote an essay based on one object, and drew an illustration of it. Combining the narrative of a year and stories of the 365 objects themselves, Calendar is about tuning in to the unexpected, playful and solemn lives of the objects around us.
- GenresNonfiction
549 pages, Kindle Edition
Published September 30, 2025
About the author
Vanessa Berry
12 books23 followersVanessa Berry is a Sydney writer and artist who works with history, memory and archives. She is the author of the memoir Ninety 9 (Giramondo 2013), the essay collection Strawberry Hills Forever (Local Consumption 2007), and the zine I Am a Camera (1999–2017). Since 2012 she has been writing the blog Mirror Sydney, on which this book is based, exploring the city’s marginal places and undercurrents. Her zines and hand-drawn maps have been exhibited in the Museum of Contemporary Art, the National Gallery of Australia and the Museum of Sydney.
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
November 6, 2025
exquisite, animated turns of phrases. however, not a strong narrative progression (despite the promise of one near the beginning). though this was sort of the intent, it made it less compelling to pick up.
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November 4, 2025Vanessa Berry's fifth book, Calendar, is a generous combination of visual and written art.
The book was born when Berry decided to write a calendar, inspired by the short-lived French Republican calendar, dedicating an object to each day of the year. She will not plan her calendar in advance, she says, but will "wait, every day, for an object to reveal itself to me."
Calendar is a meditation on the roles objects can have in our lives: a green raincoat like "a praying mantis or a string bean, hooked on the handle by its hood, waiting for rain"; a ballerina in a flipbook who, cartwheeling, "is forever within the motion of turning the world upside down."
As with her previous works, there is a very French vibe to the undertaking, recalling authors like Georges Perec or Raymond Queneau, who used formal constraints to better explore the ordinary and sometimes overlooked parts of life. Many of Berry's favourite cultural and literary reference points, too, are French.
Read on:
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-10-2...
The book was born when Berry decided to write a calendar, inspired by the short-lived French Republican calendar, dedicating an object to each day of the year. She will not plan her calendar in advance, she says, but will "wait, every day, for an object to reveal itself to me."
Calendar is a meditation on the roles objects can have in our lives: a green raincoat like "a praying mantis or a string bean, hooked on the handle by its hood, waiting for rain"; a ballerina in a flipbook who, cartwheeling, "is forever within the motion of turning the world upside down."
As with her previous works, there is a very French vibe to the undertaking, recalling authors like Georges Perec or Raymond Queneau, who used formal constraints to better explore the ordinary and sometimes overlooked parts of life. Many of Berry's favourite cultural and literary reference points, too, are French.
Read on:
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-10-2...
Did Not Finish
April 9, 2026Not going to rate this, as it wasn't my jam. It started off interesting, but got a bit...pointless? Boring? I imagine it's special to the author, and that's fine, however for me, it was just someone looking at objects. I connected more when she related them to herself - like the object that belonged to her dad and the feelings it brought up, or those when her partner was ill. As this is my personal opinion, no shade on the author, I'm not going to rate it.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews