That's one Stacked librarian…

(That's a pun, by the way). Over at one of my favourite sites, Awful Library Books, they're contemplating in a postmodern self-reflexive way the romantic rendezvous' of librarians drawn to the dark side…

Students: this might help

You really need to check this out. Unfortunately, the Hegemon doesn't stock it. Nor do we have any difficult teachers. Cough.

We do carry Coping Successfully With Your Irritable Bowel and Coping With Aggressive Behaviour, which might contain similar advice, and Coping With France, which sounds borderline racist). Sadly for incompetent DIY fans, there's no Coping With Coping, which looks like a glaring opening in the market.

Coping With Difficult Teachers is just one of the gems unearthed by one of my favourite librarian sites, Awful Library Books. 

The drought continues

It's 5 days since I bought a book. That is the longest for many years.
Of course, I've bought other things - I purchased a sabre and a lamé mask bib at the weekend, at a combined cost of over £100, and books previously ordered are trickling in.

Delightful things have arrived today, definitely for pleasure rather than work: Infinite Crisis, and books by leading female musicians from the 90s, Lauren Laverne's CandyPop and Louise Wener's Different For Girls: My True-Life Adventures in Pop. I loved Laverne's Kenickie, and like her Radio 6 show. As for Sleeper - they were limited but fun, but Wener's interesting and engaging as an author and commentator.

Still, I think I can keep this going. Sponsor me?



That's all for today, folks.

Nuts to you

Much hilarity ensues in my departmental meeting as I open the parcel. Was it my new Mac? No, damn it.

It was this: the Margaret Thatcher Nutcracker. Misogynistic, yes. Funny? Definitely. Many thanks to The Well of Lost Blogs.

Meanwhile, on the theme of hated people:

from Awful Library Books

On the Ketamine…

Awful Library Books (run by rebel librarians) is fast becoming an addiction. Head over there to see today's work of genius, Latawyna, the Naughty Horse Learns to Say "No" to Drugs, in which said equine weans itself off smoking, drinking and drugs. It's illustrated too!

Can't help thinking that the author and publisher were on drugs themselves…

Hello Thursday people

Morning. You won't be hearing much from me today - I've got a load of teaching, marking and a union meeting to get to. I've also got to watch several hours of seminar teaching on video to prepare for the course I'm on tomorrow and Saturday ('How to be a good English teacher') and find intelligent things to say about 'Brokeback Mountain'. I'm a huge fan of Proulx's short stories and would love to teach them.

It's A Winter's Tale in Shakespeare today, to which I'm really looking forward. I hope the students are too…

We academics don't change much

I'm reading Schoenbaum's Shakespeare's Lives at the moment - it's very good. In it, I found this description of an 18th-century academic, which fits almost exactly the character and appearance of one of my colleagues. English lit students and staff are invited to speculate.

Of Farmer, it was said that he enjoyed three things above all else–old port, old clothes and old books–and that there were three things he could not be persuaded to do: rise in the morning, go to bed at night, and settle an account [this last doesn't apply, as my colleague always buys his round]. To such externals as his personal appearance he was happily indifferent… [he met the Archbishop of Canterbury] "dressed in stockings of unbleached thread, brown breeches, and a wig not worth a shilling"… his most delighted hours were spent over good wine, and amiable conversation in the common room…

To me, he sounds like the perfect academic, and great company.

Brotherly love and the cuckoo clock

Welcome to a site that's going to become a favourite of mine: Awful Library Books.

Emma, Gary and I went to see The Third Man at the Light House last night. I can't add anything to the superlatives already applied to this film, so I won't. It was great to see a lot of people there, one or two dressed in what they fondly and mistakenly thought was 1940s style. No trailers, no special effects, no stunts - just people acting, rather than mugging and emoting for the camera. It was such pleasure to be treated by a director like an adult for a couple of hours.

It's also the origin of this bleak little aperçu:

Like the fella says, in Italy for 30 years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder, and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love - they had 500 years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock.

None of this stopped Emma describing the movie as 'the original bromance'.