The week in bullet points

[dolorosa_12]

Working from home continues without change for us in the academic library world, in spite of the garbled, incoherent, irresponsible messaging from the government. I've had a pretty good working week — a bit of online teaching, a bunch of Twitter and website analytics (which basically just told me what I knew already), a lot of research support, and some very good professional news which I can't post about yet. It's looking like my university/employer is in this for the long haul.

This morning I chatted with my mother in Australia, this afternoon Matthias and I will be having virtual drinks with friends in Ely and Vienna, and next weekend we'll have a virtual catch-up with our friends in Devon, whose house we were meant to be visiting this time next week. That's probably about the amount of online socialising I can handle — I'm pretty introverted and find any more than that incredibly draining.

This weekend should be Eurovision, and Matthias and I would normally have hosted some kind of viewing party. Obviously the actual song contest is not going ahead, but the BBC are putting on a Eurovision retrospective/showcase thingy, so I think we'll watch that tonight.

Other than work and video calls, life is punctuated, as ever, by TV and books. I'm aiming to write a couple of longer roundup posts towards the end of the month.

I'm currently doing a Pagan Chronicles reread, which is my ultimate comfort series, and always makes me want to write Babylonne/Isidore fanfic. The trouble is that I find it hard to come up with plots beyond 'Babylonne and Isidore bicker amiably with each other about medieval theology.'

I hope you're all safe and well.

Comments

[lirazel]

Glad you're having a good week!

I am unfamiliar with the Pagan Chronicles, but I looked them up on goodreads just now, and someone said they were perfect for fans of Megan Whalen Turner, so I have added them to my to-read list!

[dolorosa_12]

Thank you!

The Pagan Chronicles has been one of my favourite stories for a good two-thirds of my life now, and looking back, I think if I'm honest it has probably had the greatest influence on my tastes in terms of tropes, character dynamics, and narrative choices. Certainly my love of found family and hurt/comfort can be traced back to those books, as well as my tendency to gravitate towards characters who are just seething with intense, frustrated irritation at the ridiculousness of the world while retaining a healthy sense of self-deprecation beneath layers of intellectual superiority.

I'm always hesitant to recommend things I love with any degree of passion and intensity, because people's tastes are so different, so I always feel like I need to provide a huge number of disclaimers: the five books in the series are written in very close first-person present tense. This is not normally a style I like, but I enjoy it immensely in these books because I love the narrators so much, so I enjoy spending so much time curled up with their internal monologue. But if you don't love books told from that perspective — or if you don't click with these narrators — you are likely to find the books really irritating.

[lirazel]

That's really good to know! I am super into found families and hurt/comfort, so it sounds like something I should check out while keeping in mind that if the voice doesn't work for me, I can always walk away.

[dolorosa_12]

Ooh, if you like hurt/comfort and found families, you will hopefully very much enjoy the series: it's basically forty years of an intergenerational found family who bond over emotional hurt/comfort.

[merit]

Yay re: the professional news! :D

I'm glad you're able to continue working from home considering the current situation in the UK.

[dolorosa_12]

Thank you. The government has created a situation where employees are utterly dependent on their employers choosing to be sensible and care about employees' health. I would be disturbed if a wealthy, prestigious university didn't at least initially make a sensible choice, but it's awful that workers in this country have been put in this situation.