Weekend Miscellany

Hope y’all are having a great weekend, folks!  (I’ve been thinking about my autumnal trip to America, if that’s any excuse for that sentence – although ‘autumnal’ has rather scuppered that line of thought.)

It’s getting rather too hot again, so I shall collapse in a heap – before I do so, here’s a book, a blog post, and a link, as per.

1.) The book – Janet Todd wrote a fantastic book called Death and the Maidens a few years ago, and the Shelleys and Wollstonecrafts (read my review here) – I’ve heard that she’s now got a novel out reimagining Jane Austen’s Lady Susan. It’s only available as an ebook, so I can’t read it (and I haven’t even read Lady Susan yet, as I want to save something by Austen) – but perhaps you can.  Find out more here.

2.) The blog post – Hurrah and hurray for Vintage Books reprinting Stella Gibbons!  When I think I know about her output, still more appear – I’m currently reading Here Be Dragons, but for today, go and read Jane/Fleur Fisher’s fantastic and enticing review of The Rich House.

3.) The link – Nanny Net sent me a link to their 10 Nanny Themed Summer Reading Books… as target audiences go, this is up there with the person who emailed me recently saying they’d like to feature me on their TV show as ‘a book lover and mother of two’, but perhaps some of you will be intrigued!

There are three people I routinely refer to as my best friend (playing fast and loose with my superlatives) – one is my lovely brother Colin, one is my dear friend Washington Wife, and the third is wonderful Mel.  (Since her blog isn’t updated, I can link instead to a review she wrote for me, that was for a long time the most read page on my blog.)  They’re all enormously brilliant people, and I am very blessed to know them – and only one of them is biologically predetermined to like me.

I bring this up only because today is Mel’s wedding day, and I’m off to usher (ush?), give a reading, and probably cry.  I’ll leave you with a whole range of links, rather than the usual book, blog post, and link (because there are so many this week), but first of all – I’ve done the prize draw for Stephen Leacock’s Literary Lapses and the winner is Pam from Travellin’ Penguin!  Email me your address, and I’ll get it in the post.  I so enjoyed reading everyone’s favourite things about Canada, and it’s made me even more determined to visit one day.  And how serendipitous that I chose Canada Day to hold the draw!  Right – some links:

1.) You’ll love this list of ‘book titles with one letter missing‘, and accompanying illustrations.

2.) I wrote again for OxfordWords – this time, 5 Words That Are Older Than You Think.  Go and be surprised!

3.) So did Hayley!  She’s written all about the language of whisky.

4.) AND Washington Wife, aforementioned!  A really fantastic article on ‘journalese‘.

5.) Margaret sent me this fascinating article about the letters received after Shirley Jackson’s ‘The Lottery’ was first published in the New Yorker.  Warning: spoilers, so make sure you read the short story (which you can do here) first.

Have a great weekend, all!

It’s been a little while since I did one of these… and this one’s going to be brief, because the painkillers I’m on for endless headaches have made me very sleepy!  (They’re not especially heavy-duty painkillers, but… well, maybe I have a predisposition to sleepiness. It’s been noted before.)

1.) The book – is The Matriarch by G.B. Stern, which Daunt Books sent me a day or two ago – I’ve been wanting to read some of her fiction for ages, and this is a great opportunity in a lovely edition.

2.) The link – oh, just Buzzfeed. I spend my life there now.

3.) The blog post – Washington Wife has put up another two hilarious posts – read ’em here and here.

And the weekend comes at the end of the week which, in Britain, finally brought warm weather!  We seem to have skipped spring altogether, and moved straight to summer – which is a shame for me, because spring is easily my favourite season.  Ho-hum.

Today I’ll be going to a 1970s-themed murder mystery party… which I’m also writing.  And that tense is used intentionally, since I still haven’t finished writing it… eek!  Best get a move on; just time to tell you about a blog post, a book, and a link.

1.) The book – isn’t new, but is a mini-project between me and Karen / Kaggsy’s Bookish Ramblings, which we’re inviting everyone to join in with.  I love doing little readalongs with other bloggers, so if I see that they’ve recently bought a book I’ve been intending to read, I quite often pop a comment in, seeing if they’d like to read at the same time.  Karen and I talked about reading Nina Bawden together (an author I’ve yet to read, although I have a few of her books) and the only one we both owned was A Woman of My Age.  So we’ll be both be reading it, and probably posting about it sometime towards the end of the month.  Do join in!

2.) The link – I have got so obsessed BuzzFeed of late… yes, the cute animals, but also myriad other addictive lists.  I do love a list.  Most recently, I have been amazed by these optical illusions (particularly numbers 11 and 14).

3.) The blog post – read about the postal book group I’m in, and the fantastic book Danielle sent around this time, in her blog post here.

Happy weekend, everyone! I’m feeling in a good mood as I write this on Friday night, because I went back to the first chapter of my DPhil thesis for the first time in 3 years, and I still felt inspired to see how I could edit and re-frame it!  It’s been so long since I had time to work on my DPhil properly that I’d forgotten the thrill when planning goes right.  The only academic thing to compare is the thrill when archives turn up something wonderful.  There are plenty of downsides to spending four years earning very little money and working alongside very few people, but it has its upsides too.

So that’s put me in a cheery frame of mind for sharing a book, a link, and a blog post!

1.) The book – is one I was offered by the author.  I know I won’t have time to read it, so I haven’t accepted the review copy, but I still think it sounds very intriguing. It’s A Bright Moon For Fools by Jasper Gibson, and the cover art is enough to catch my attention…

I like the quick synopsis Jasper put in an email to me: “Though it is (I hope) funny in parts, it’s really about an ageing man, unable to get over the loss of his wife, crashing around rural Venezuela and getting into serious trouble.”

2.) The blog post – was a very easy choice this week, as it’s about a book I adored, but never wrote about: Economy Must Be Our Watchword by Joyce Dennys.  I didn’t write about it, because it was impossible to find and I didn’t want to fill people with hopeless desire to read this gem!  But I mentioned it when I took part in Lost in the Stacks over at A Work in Progress, and Danielle, marvellously, managed to find a copy through her library – and wrote a brilliant review here.  Go and check it out; it also includes lots of Dennys’s brilliant illustrations.

3.) The link – this video had my office in fits of laughter this week:

Happy weekend, everyone.  It’s finally starting to look a bit sunnier and – dare I say it – a touch less freezing here, so I’ll be spending my Saturday… at work.  Oh well, it’ll be nice to say hello to Bodleian people, and then I’m off to spend Saturday evening at my friend’s house, watching The Voice.  Very classy, me.  You can treat yourself better, by reading a weekend miscellany.

1.) The blog post – check out Hayley’s response to my recent On Not Knowing Art post, entitled On Knowing Art.

2.) The book – came courtesy of lovely Folio books, and is a beautiful copy of All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque – which I’ve been intending to read for ages.  Has anyone read it? (Follow that link to see the details of the Folio edition I was kindly sent.)

3.) The link – is silly. It just is silly. But I love it. Click here to ask one of nature’s great questions.

Hopefully I’m going to see some crocodiles this weekend… I’ll keep you posted, either on here or, more likely, on Twitter – where I’m @stuck_inabook, donchaknow.  I’m afraid I’m just as likely to talk about Neighbours or cats as I am books, but…

1.) The books – you know me, I love reprints – so it’s always exciting to unwrap an unsolicited publisher package and discover that it’s got reprints.  Even better, they’re by an author I like, and they’re books I don’t own – soon I’ll be trying The Boat and A Perfect Woman by L.P. Hartley (best known for the very good The Go-Between), courtesy of John Murray.  Click on the images for more info.

2.) The links – time for an update about OxfordWords blog posts, sneakily put in the ‘links’ section!  I’ve been calling in favours from the blogosphere, and a couple of posts appeared over the past weeks from names you’ll recognise… here are some of my favourite recent articles:

Harriet wrote about Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Rachel wrote about Vita Sackville-West
Andrew Motion wrote about poetry and memory
My lovely boss Malie wrote about My Fair Lady
I wrote about pronunciations of ‘scone‘.
Our ‘baby names generator‘ proved very popular!

3.) The blog post – do check out Karyn’s posts about her travels – especially if piles of Penguins get you all tingly.

Ok, I lied last week.  I said I’d sneak my OxfordWords highlights in after the book, link, and blog post – but this week I can’t resist devoting the post to two pieces over there which I think are really fantastic.  And one of them is partly by me, so I’m being a little bit egotistical…

1.) Baby Names Generator – go and find out what your baby should be called!  My colleague Rachel wrote great copy for it, but I mostly love it for the adorable pictures of babies…

2.) Dr. Seuss meet Dr. Murray – my colleague Malie and I wrote a poem about an imaginary meeting between a young Dr. Seuss and Dr. Murray, the famous Editor of the OED.  And a brilliant cartoonist called John Taylor drew Dr. Murray in his Scriptorium, in the style of Dr. Seuss.  It makes me so happy…

Have a great weekend, everyone!  I’ll be at the Bodleian tomorrow, but hoping to get some reading done in the evening.  I only finished three books in MarchFebruary, y’all…

Firstly – if you fancy a mosey around my bookshelves, Danielle has very kindly asked me to take part in her wonderful ongoing series of Lost in the Stacks: Home Edition.  It’s a mix of my bookcases in Oxford and Somerset, and some fun questions to answer.

Happy weekend!  My brother will be here, which will make my weekend fun.  There might even be cake.  You’ll just have to make do with a weekend miscellany…

1.) The blog post – is another great review of Guard Your Daughters, this time from Ali.  And she loved it!

2.) The book – I’m excited about A.L. Kennedy’s On Writing, which Jonathan Cape sent me recently – it’s going to be published on 7th March, so consider this early warning.  It’s chiefly a collection of articles about writing that Kennedy wrote for the Guardian, but there are also lots of other essays about writing, character, voice, being a writer etc.  Which one of us isn’t interested in this sort of thing, regardless of whether or not we intend to write ourselves?

3.) The link – I’m quite passionate about trying to get people (especially Americans) to watch the sitcom Happy Endings.  It’s on in the UK at some odd hour in the morning, but it’s on ABC in the US.  It looks like it might be cancelled after this third series.  But it’s so, so good.  Quickfire wit, the right amount of silliness… just brilliant.  This link gives 36 Reasons Happy Endings Is The Best Show on Television.  I’m not sure how accurate a depiction it is of the show, but… well, have a gander.  And watch the show!  It’s on a break (sigh) til Fri March 29, so watch it then, 8pm… and catch up on DVDs of earlier episodes!

4.) OxfordWords – whilst I’m working as the editor of Oxford Dictionaries’ OxfordWords blog, I’ll also post weekly highlights from it in my Weekend Miscellany.  I thought “hmm, will this get awkward, mixing my job with my personal blog”, but then I thought no, you’ll want to read some of the fantastic stuff that we publish there.  It’s all fantastic, obvs, but my personal highlight this week is the post about words which have newly entered Oxford Dictionaries Online – more here.  And I wrote a couple of pieces this week, too – What the Nobel Laureates did for us, and a (hopefully witty) article about horses in expressions and idioms.  Oh, and I got drawing in Paint again…

It’s been a tiring week, mostly because I came down with a virus last weekend (I’m very glad I scheduled four posts to appear before I was stricken!) so I’m looking forward to collapsing a bit.  AND seeing my dear friend Mel, who is visiting Oxford.  I hope you all have equally fun plans!  And if you don’t, solace yourself with a book, a link, and a blog post.

1.) The book – who’d have thought that one of the new books I’m most excited about would be a graphic novel?  I loved the colourful, gentle touch of Brecht Evens’ The Wrong Place, so different to the brash superhero-comic-style of many graphic novels (but not all, of course.)  So I asked Jonathan Cape if they’d be kind enough to send me his latest, and they very nicely did – it’s called The Making Of and it looks to have the same aesthetic.  I will, of course, tell you more when I’ve read it.

2.) The link – is to the first post I’ve written in my new job at OxfordWords!  Actually, the first one I wrote will be appearing on Tuesday – this post, on ‘5 Words You Didn’t Know Were Acronyms‘, was written yesterday as a quick substitute for something else – but it was great fun to write, and might surprise you.

3.) The blog post – I’m afraid I’ve been pretty rubbish at commenting on posts this week, from my sickbed, but I’ve been reading ’em.  Mary/Mrs. Miniver’s Daughter has some lovely mural images in her latest post.  She seems to be at an exhibition every other hour, and I must follow her example and try to get to the British Murals and Decorative Painting 1910-1970 exhibition before it closes on 9th March.