But wouldn't it be nice if the expectations were not actually preconceptions, as in the recurrent case of people who decide that they will read A Random Romance (quite probably one from Quite A While Ago) and feel entirely qualified to amusingly crap all over a very varied genre.
Do people do this with any other genre? I am sure one could do this ( Read more... )

What I read
Finished The Angel of the Crows which, hmmmm, interesting, but the bar is set very high for Monette/Addison and I didn't think this quite came up to my expectations. Without those I might have been more impressed?
Zen Co, The Order of the Pure Moon Reflected in Water (2020): not sure if this was entirely the best thing to read after the ( Read more... )

I have probably previously mentioned the moral shift from, it was okay for men to maintain An Establishment outside marriage, to moral opprobrium for men, even in the Highest Rank, who did this, because of changing expectations of marriage, relationships and, of course, availability of divorce so that couples did not have to rub on together whether ( Read more... )

[Y]ou may not know what I mean by the Angel in the House. I will describe her as shortly as I can. She was intensely sympathetic. She was immensely charming. She was utterly unselfish. She excelled in the difficult arts of family life. She sacrificed herself daily. If there was chicken, she took the leg; if there was a draught she sat in it - in ( Read more... )

Fascinating piece by Rebecca Solnit in today's Guardian Weekend, which made me think (yet again) of that thing of the burden of expectations vs the feeling that any achievement is an accomplishment.
Years ago I knew a Promising Young (Male) Scholar, who - and maybe this was not the case, maybe he was just a mega-procrastinator - who never seemed to ( Read more... )

I was massively exasperated during the week by something that came across my Twitterfeed by somebody moaning that early modern handwriting was illegible and that archivists not transcribing things was systematic oppression.
Okay, I do not think the person (who I think has advanced degree/s) is a historian by training and it's possible, even if ( Read more... )

There seemed some kind of synergy between these three articles, though two of them appear to contradict one another:
Almost everyone who is single is single for the same reason - becos they is picky picky picky.
Which is one way of saying, they are no longer obliged to settle for what they can get as a necessary stage in the life-cycle.
Though I ( Read more... )

I was reading this interesting piece about sex positivity and critical analysis, and encountered the following about What Men Want:
they always tell me that they want a partner who’s down for whatever and wants it all the time.
Okay, in context that is really young men who have probably not done a lot of reality-testing about their desires and ( Read more... )

I will concede that there are certain hard deadlines, like having to give a talk on a given date.

And that if one is part of a joint project one should not faff around too much and go wildly beyond the deadline suggested -

- though sometimes I think this is more honoured in the breach, etc -

- also that if something is a special journal issue ( Read more... )

[A]University of Cambridge professor of modern German and comparative culture, Andrew Webber, branded the acclaimed literary novelist Philip Hensher "priggish and ungracious" for refusing to write an introduction to the academic's forthcoming guide to Berlin literature for free.

I do absolutely get this thing where people who make a living from ( Read more... )