footnotes

[books downstairs - very sorted]

The title is ironic, especially after my recent thoughts on the complexities of academic writing. I always think that one of the great joys of blogs (as both a reader and a writer) is that you don't need abstracts, footnotes, bibliographies, and appendices. (I'm wondering if anyone knows of any good blogs that are literary, written from an academic standpoint, but without the impenetrable vocabulary and extra bits and pieces?)

:: A couple of postscripts on my 'What the Dickens' posts. Chloe of Oxslip kindly sent me a link to the Penguin Classics Charles Dickens readathon, which sounds like a literary decathlon with a pentathlon, marathon, and heptathlon thrown in for good measure. I really hope they make it to the last page of The Mystery of Edwin Drood. What's refreshing about the readathon posts so far, is that the responses are so enthusiastic and natural - no hint of posturing or point-scoring, just honest-to-goodness gut reactions.

:: Just when I was beginning to wonder if anyone would get round to it, Philip Dodd on Radio 3's excellent Night Waves (anything with Matthew Sweet, who often presents this, is worth listening to), cheered me up enormously by asking Claire Tomalin some of the questions that have been floating around in my mind. Thank goodness someone has at last broached the question of the dark side.

:: I wrote and published a post about nostalgia last week, prompted by seeing Midnight in Paris, a film about the pleasures and pitfalls of nostalgia. However, when I was in the middle of re-editing it, I pressed 'cut' instead of 'copy', and lost seven-eighths of the post. In the spirit of the subject, I decided not to regret something that was now in the past. But I was still cross with myself. The film is pure escapism - Paris never looked lovelier etc etc - but it's also funny and clever, and a lot more nuanced and layered than more recent WA films. WA also manages to remain ambivalent about nostalgia, rather than wallowing in it.

[image error]

:: Downton Abbey has gone barmy. By the end of last night's episode, I was beginning to expect French and Saunders or Victoria Wood and Julie Walters (or all four) to wander in and send the whole thing up. It might have been better if they had.

:: And I'm still wondering why chefs feel they have to pose for photographs like this.