Spoils

Stephen Moffat does write the best Doctor Who episodes. A planet which is one giant library? Yes, please! And that is all I will say as I do not want to give away any spoilers.. Now, as some longterm readers/friends may know, I'm absolutely obsessed by paratexts and paratextuality: tables of content, indices, illustrations, prefaces, typefaces, paper textures etc. Everything that makes a text a book, basically. I have found an absolute gem: A Book of Tables of Content. You can see a slideshow at the site and there is even a Flickr group where you can upload your own favourite Table of Content. Personally I have a thing about the ToC in Iain Banks' The Bridge (my favourite Banks novel, by the way). The novel takes place on the Firth of Forth Bridge and if you turn the ToC ninety degrees, it actually takes on the shape of that particular bridge. Nifty.

Finally, a very, very cool/scary photo of when volcanoes spew lightning.

PS. I have finished my first sweater and I'm very proud

On Parcels Expected And Unexpected

Isn't that just pretty?

My Canadian friend, Fearthainn, wrote to me asking for my snail mail when she realised that a) I had rediscovering crocheting and knitting and b) I had fallen ill.

And she has just sent me the most beautiful handspun yarn I have ever seen in my life. Yes, she is a yarn-spinner and a knitter and I'm a bit in awe. I have no idea what I'll make from these skeins of beauty (the picture does not do them justice - trust me) but I'll be beaming like an utter fool whilst knitting. Thank you, C. It may be a small gesture for you, but it means a lot to me.

In other news, my postman might just be a tiny bit scared of me because these past few days I have been eyeing him somewhat obsessively. I pre-ordered the new Philip Pullman from Amazon on March 23. Now I may have mixed up the dates slightly and have been looking forward to the book arriving as early as Tuesday (it's published today, Thursday), so apologies to the postie .. but it also turns out that a certain net-based bookseller has f'd up and I won't get my book until, er, Monday. Do you think if I scare my postman even more, he might be inclined to find the book parcel for me personally and bring it to me sooner than that?

Yes, I know there are bookshops in Glasgow and they'll have it in stock .. but I'm house-bound right now due to me being slightly too active earlier on this week. Boo. Hiss.

At least I have Radiohead playing live on the Beeb streaming through the speakers and so the world's okay and everything is in its right place. Except my book. Which should be in my hand.

Novy Odense

The pilot gingerly untangled his fingers from the rope he'd been holding on to, worked out which way up he was, shifted the tool box off his legs, wiped the oily water out of his eyes, and hauled himself upright.

"Well, Hester, looks like we're getting the hang of this," he said.

His dæmon, who looked like a small sardonic jackrabbit, flicked her ears as she clambered out of the tangle of tools, cold-weather clothing, broken instruments and rope. Everything was saturated.

"My feelings are too deep to express, Lee," she said.

You can read the excerpt from Philip Pullman's prequel to His Dark Materials here. Once Upon A Time in the North will be out on April 3 and is available to preorder from Amazon already.

Underneath the Trees

Ladies and gentlemen, we had snow the other day. You might think that my Viking Blood might've caused me to embrace the weather and frolic through the snow like some demented Norse god, but no. I hate snow. Blame it on too many schoolyard snowball fights which I always lost. No, I stayed indoors and read.

Speaking of which, today is World Book Day. Hooray. Worryingly the site has plenty of fun games involving Paddington Bear (who recently abandoned marmalade in favour of Marmite) and Jacqueline Wilson. I'm not so sure about the chosen strategy, but then again I'm an old hag who's currently more obsessed with yarn than books.

Selective linkage on the unrelated theme of anatomy (in the broadest sense) and art:
+ SteamPunk Lego Star Wars (yes, really)
+ Art resulting from asking children what they thought the body looked like “under the skin.”
+ InsectLab. Also rather steampunk and not for people with entomophobia.

Go forth and read. I'm curling up in front of the heater.

How are YOU Doin'?!

Thanks to Tina who's still in academia (and thus has access to Project MUSE and I'm not at all envious of this), I have learned that F. Scott Fitzgerald had many talents:

"In the collection of his papers at Princeton University, Fitzgerald's scrapbook contains newspaper clippings of his publicity photograph and the letters that he received in response; one writer urged Fitzgerald to consider working as a female impersonator. In the same book, he also clipped and saved newspaper articles in which college presidents debated the danger that cross-dressing posed to their students. Yale enacted a rule that men could only perform as women [End Page 27] once every two years, lest their sense of themselves as men be damaged. Perhaps disappointed over his suspension from the Triangle Club (and other extracurricular activities as a result of his grades), Fitzgerald took it upon himself to attend a University of Minnesota fraternity party in drag while home for Christmas vacation. This performance also hit the papers ("He's Belle of the Ball Until Astonished Co-eds Find Blond Wig on Chair") and appears in Fitzgerald's scrapbook."

(Source: Pearl James' "History and Masculinity in F. Scott Fitzgerald's this Side of Paradise", MFS Modern Fiction Studies 51.1 (2005) 1-33)

Snapshot

Shop assistant at the bookshop (precisely, slowly): "You .. want discount .. on books, don't you? I can .. sign you up for .. discount on .. books. Give me your .. email address."

Later I met my partner by the door to the book shop. He too had been cajoled into signing up for their newsletter by a shop assistant doing the scary voice-thing. Gosh, what does the Borders chain do to their staff?