Thanks for your kind messages about
funding - I'm not thinking about it for the next week, and will instead enjoy a week in Northern Ireland... might be a little damp, I hear. Still, I get to spend Saturday at the wedding of two friends, so that will be wonderful.This evening I had a meal out with my two closest friends at work, Clare and Lucy, as it was my last day in the Bodleian. We don't work in the same departments at the same time as each other, but always spend breaks and lunch together, and they are very, very dear to me. We've laughed our way through the year, and have dozens of in-jokes which would irritate everyone after moments. We all got each other parting gifts, and mine included two books: Mrs Woolf & the Servants by Alison Light, which I've had my eye on for ages, and The Autobiography of Sir Thomas Bodley. He of the Bodleian, you understand. One of our most repeated private jokes - basically, if you say 'Sir Thomas... Bodley?' eight hundred times, you'll be a step closer to understanding why we laugh at the sound of his name.
So, off I go to Northern Ireland... with seven books. I probably will only finish one or two, but the idea of being stranded without books... doesn't bear thinking about.
I've packed them now, so have to try and remember them from the photo...
-They Came Like Swallows by William Maxwell - a gift from Karen aka Cornflower
-A Passage to India by EM Forster - on my reading list for next term (have I updated you on reading lists yet? I fear not! More on't soon)
-Piccadilly Jim by PG Wodehouse - been meaning to read more Wodehouse for ages, and borrowed this from my aunt Jacq years ago
-The Bookshop by Penelope Fitzgerald - a gift from Lynne aka dovegreyreader
-The Man Who Knew Everything by Tom Stacey - review copy
-(not in picture) The Man Who Was Thursday by GK Chesterton - borrowed from Mel, my housemate
That's a fine selection of reading material! Just popped in to say have a lovely week away and, whilst you are not thinking about it, I do commiserate over the funding. AHRC seem to get worse and worse these days - I really wonder if anyone actually ever does get funding for anything. I'm beginning to doubt it. Good luck with college funding.
ReplyDeleteah! lovely post Simon, you are special to me too! Thank you also for my gifts, esp. The Spare Room which I expect you will want to borrow and blog about! Love you lots, have a great holiday. The Bod misses you already.
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The Man Who Was Thursday is an Absolutely Ripping Yarn! Adored it. The Bookshop was a great read, but a little depressing in places. Depends what mood you're in. GK will cheer you up, definitely, not bring you down.
ReplyDeleteGood call on the Wodehouse! I keep meaning to read more of his stuff, if only so that I can understand the endless Bertie Wooster references my family keeps making...
ReplyDeleteMaxwell is a fine, fine writer. I read THEY CAME LIKE SWALLOWS because of Cornflower's reading group, and am so glad to have done so. Hope you enjoy it as much as I did.
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