One of those things where I look up from a book asking a question which seems legitimately askable in terms of what the book is saying but is not addressed.
I've been getting on with that London Clubland book, and after the introductory chapter it's rather good on how they drew the lines about who could join and the ways in which existing members ( Read more... )

I didn't realise it was a mystery, but this sad story of Constance Wilde, retrospective diagnosis, and medical malpractice looks like a classic case of 'anything wrong with a woman must be down to something in her reproductive organs'.
Crowdfunding saved Timbuktu’s manuscripts: [T]he woman behind T160K is relaunching it with a bigger team and ( Read more... )

Oh dear. I thought this was some journo's or editor's idea of a telling headline, but I discover that it is actually perpetrated by the University of Reading press release (o tempora, o mores): Research uncovers secrets of Oscar Wilde’s Reading Gaol sentence
No, really, gaining new insights into what life was like for prisoners in Reading Gaol in ( Read more... )

Some things just keep on giving.

Who, in an interview which is supposed to be about the books on their bookshelves

- which, you know, one would take to be about the books one is reading/has read/intends some day to read -

starts showing off the multilingual translations of their own books?

Okay, I have a brag shelf - actually, I have two, one at ( Read more... )

I've been musing a while on something that somebody wrote in a review of Jo Walton's new book (which I am champing at the bit waiting to actually be available), that they weren't sure it would work for people who didn't have a background in those specific works of sff that are alluded to in the text.

And I've been thinking about this and coming to ( Read more... )

Which was a thought I had just after getting some passport photos done*.

(Yes, I do know that my passport expires very shortly, passport control officer at Heathrow returning 2 weeks ago - the only person who actually mentioned it, I thought it might be an issue entering at O'Hare, but not.)

(And why I didn't renew it earlier, was because a) my ( Read more... )

Thought I have occasionally had: the classic c. 3 minute pop single based on the playing duration of the 45 rpm disc, at its best can be what Wilde defined as the perfect pleasure: 'It is exquisite; and it does not satisfy' (he was speaking of cigarettes).

***

This thought brought to you via Sam and Dave on the iPod on the treadmill at the gym: ( Read more... )