There is something of a small, personal and perhaps entirely trivial pleasure in opening up the file of a review one is working on, thinking it needs a lot more work, and looking at it and realising that it's more nearly done than one supposed. Then tapping out a couple more paragraphs and deciding that, no, really, this is probably all that needs ( Read more... )

From cut-out confessions to cheese pages: browse the world's strangest books: Edward Brooke-Hitching set out to curate the ultimate collection of bizarre books down the ages. He leads us around the Madman’s Library
Speaking as someone who has worked in at least one of the collections which holds one of the items cited, several of those books are ( Read more... )

Naomi Wolf faces ‘new questions’ as US publisher postpones latest book.
And I also saw, somewhere in the depths of Twitter, that there is some question-mark over her famous Oxford thesis, that has to have various corrections made before it is available...
(We do wonder how far the academics there were bedazzled. We also think that she would have ( Read more... )

Today I excursed off to The National Archives at Kew with little optimism in my heart that I would actually find anything relevant to my current research enterprise, but one has to do these things, and at least I could get an uptodate reader's ticket out of it.
Fortunately today is cooler than it has been of late.
I am not sure it was really such a ( Read more... )

Or, the current situation apropos of mobile phone.
So, I did the factory reset thing.
And if anything, even though I have not restored anything like all the apps I personally formerly had on it, it is, if anything, draining the battery at an even greater rate.
Of course, this may be because, when one does the restore, besides restoring one's own ( Read more... )

Looking at the posters for the zumba classes at the local community centre, of which several adorn the approach to the pocket park behind the house, I discover that I have aged out of the possibility of going to these, as beyond a certain age-group they cannot get insurance.
(It is possibly the thought that zumba classes require insurance that puts ( Read more... )

Was somewhat irked to notice a book in the local independent bookshop, Housman Country: into the Heart of England. Which made me go, hello, Shropshire was the Welsh Marches, and this border history is reflected in the poetry. On further investigation, the book apparently deals with the 'landscape of the mind' presented in A Shropshire Lad, which is ( Read more... )

Jive talkin’: top philosopher says modern dance has lost its soul
(Enquiring minds wish to know, does Roger Scruton count as a top philosopher? Y/N)
This is particularly schadenfreudey for me to read, because what does Prof Scruton oppose to modern 'jerking like a frog’?
Why, good old, do I not remember an entirely similar moral panic about it (and ( Read more... )

Dept of Schadenfreude:
[A] dose of costumed Brit-flick sniggering.
Can you imagine a prequel to Naomi Wolf's Vagina: A New Biography with a screenplay by Richard Gordon, author of Doctor in the House? No, nor can I.

***

Dept of, As I Have Far Too Oft Had Occasion to Remark:
How not to write about libraries - some guidelines for reporters:
5. There ( Read more... )

I passed the Spearmint Rhino in Tottenham Court Road while out on an errand this lunchtime.

This 'flagship' of 'the world's largest chain of upscale gentlemen's* clubs' is currently advertising £5 lunches and £2 beer.

V gentlemanly and upscale -

Plus, clearly they need to exercise further incentives beyond their trademark scantily-clad wymmynz to ( Read more... )