Over the weekend I came across a twitter-thread going off on somebody for complaining that the world-building in some fantasy series was exhausting to to get to grips with -
And at first I thought, sigh, here was a person of the kind described by EM Forster in Aspects of the Novel (1927), who will not pay that additional sixpence of suspension of ( Read more... )

What I read
Finished Amberlough, and also read Armistice (The Amberlough Dossier #2) (2018) (though this was rather punctuated with new books turning up asking to be read).
Ursula K. Le Guin: The Last Interview: and Other Conversations (2019): she was wonderful (of course), and showed remarkable grace and patience with interviewers/interlocutors ( Read more... )

What I read
The Sex, Love and Letters volume on de Beauvoir and her correspondents took up a lot of my reading time for some reason - there was perhaps rather more Simone and less of her correspondents than I might have liked, i.e. how they were using her to think with, and how they were not necessarily just following her line but both inspired by/ ( Read more... )

This is really one for the annals of ill-advised presents from husbands to wives - had she ever, ever declared, 'Darling! the deepest desire of my heart is a prehistoric henge'? The Man Who Bought Stonehenge For His Wife: It was then gifted to the public because she didn’t like it. She had even asked him to buy the set of dining chairs that was in ( Read more... )

I thought I might be reduced to bemoaning the fact that I was obliged to, after resisting it for months, months, go onto Zoom in order to attend the virtual AGM of an organisation of which I have somehow become a trustee.
However, dr rdrz, your hearts will be gladdened to hear that instead of this, I perchanced to come across an interview with the ( Read more... )

Sitting and watching video content on my computer, unless it's really, really short.
But I was thinking of making an exception, because, hey, Ursula K Le Guin:
PBS’s Documentary About Ursula K. Le Guin is Free to Watch This Week
- except, apparently not in the UK?
Whinge, moan.
Though this is not the first time I have had similar disappointments ( Read more... )

Reverting once more to the issues I was thinking over in Tuesday's post -
- and there was definitely something for me about magic bullets and quick fixes and be careful what you wish for in that posited question.
I'm not saying precisely Monkey's Paw territory, but definitely maybe Unintended Consequences, and there are various versions of this ( Read more... )

The old one decided to expire on Saturday evening, on the Tube. After performing various measures upon it, I concluded that it had, indeed, gone to the great electronic library in the sky. I now have a new one which is thinner, lighter, and purports to do something clever with blue and yellow light over the course of the day.
A certain amount of ( Read more... )

In 1951 the literary scholar Muriel Bradbrook published Shakespeare and Elizabethan Poetry and, in the Girton Review, “The Ladder of Academic Success”, a snakes-and-ladders game on how to become a successful female academic at Cambridge. Years later, Bradbrook put some of the moves into practice herself when she was appointed Cambridge’s first ( Read more... )

(Two week's worth of reading)
What I read
Finished Carmilla - suspect it had more impact back in its day, but has perhaps been overwritten for the modern reader by later developments in the genre?
Finished Mistress of Ambiguities, which sort of tied up some loose ends. I also note that the series started being written by two hands collaborating ( Read more... )