Next Stop Procrastination #13: The Archive Edition
Posted 1st November 2024
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I’m not reading from other sources as much as I used to but, particularly with the demise of Twitter, there’s no really easy way to share other people’s written work at the moment. Threads and BlueSky aren’t really there (yet?), and I do like the idea that these posts are here to look back on rather than links shared one by one and gone in a matter of minutes on social media.
The list below is one I compiled over the course of months during that time I was blogging intermittently. Timely news has been edited out, evergreen content remains.
Author/Literary Figure Specific
How an 18th-Century Cookbook Offers Glimpses of Jane Austen’s Domestic Life
Helpful Men: Defending Philip Roth, Dismissing Virginia Woolf
40 Years Ago, Poet Lucille Clifton Lost Her House. This Year, Her Children Bought It Back
On the Friendship and Rivalry of Sylvia Plath and Anne Sexton
‘I learned about storytelling from Final Fantasy’: novelist Raven Leilani on Luster and video games
Makeshift Refuges: Edith Wharton’s Home-Building
Virginia Woolf on Why We Read and What Great Works of Art Have in Common
The Fashion of Jane Austen’s Novels
Is Jane Austen the Antidote to Social Media Overload?
“Only Lovers Live in the Present”: On the Notebooks of Patricia Highsmith
By the time L Frank Baum introduced the world to Dorothy and the gang, he’d already made his name as a shop window dresser par excellence
Emily Brontë’s Lost Second Novel
Book Specific
Was This Book The Original Eat, Pray, Love? (Mary Wollstonecraft)
The Mary Bennet Makeover: Postfeminist Media Culture and the Rewriting of Jane Austen’s Neglected Female Character
How the Women Became Little
About Writing
You Must Change Your Writing Style: Ward Farnsworth’s Guidebooks to English Virtuosity and Ancient Philosophy
On Setting YA Aside to Write a Novel for Adults (Nina LaCour on “Growing Up” Through Fiction
Libraries & Bookstores
Why a Bookstore’s Most Quiet Moments Are (Sometimes) Its Most Important
The Norwegian library with unreadable books
Misc. Literature
Better Than Nothing? Exploring the Limitations of AI-Narrated Audiobooks from a Disabled Person’s Perspective
Rachel Hore on Olga Gray, the historical figure behind her book, A Beautiful Spy
‘Alice door’ – inside this church is an obscure piece of art carved by the famous Alice Liddell
How a Team of Calligraphers Brought Jane Austen’s Fictional Letters to Life
Lydia Conklin on Writing Residencies and the Invaluable Gift of Permission
What’s In a Name? Tracing an Obsession with the Shakespeare Authorship Question
Other Links
Next Stop Procrastination #12
Posted 11th October 2019
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There have been some phenomenal literature-related articles recently, but perhaps the most intriguing find for me was a post on Medium, published two years ago. It’s under Miscellaneous – Jenny Odell’s speech transcript on how to do nothing. Given its original format, it’s a very long read, but utterly worth it. I also highly recommend the article about narrating audiobooks; it’s fascinating.
Author Specific
‘I knew Christopher Robin – the real Christopher Robin’
Sylvia Plath didn’t want her mother to know she’d written The Bell Jar
Interview with Philip Pullman ahead of The Secret Commonwealth
The journey that changed Geoffrey Chaucer’s life
How The Guardian became the first newspaper in Britain to use the F-word
The trial of Lady Chatterley’s Lover
Book Specific
The politically radical family that inspired Little Women
Considering the secret of Northanger Abbey
Teaching Jane Eyre: a teacher’s perspective
An appreciation of Claire Fraser (unfortunately this link has since been made inaccessible for readers in the EU)
On the magical landscapes of Anne of Green Gables
Olivia Laing on Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca, 80 years on
Writing
What is the difference between a preface, a foreword, and an introduction?
Maybe the secret to writing is not writing (on taking breaks)
Can language be understood as a spiritual medium?
When being a disabled writer means being an educator
Libraries & Bookstores
A photo appreciation of libraries
Saying goodbye to my beloved bookstore
On opening Ghana’s first subscription-model library
Misc. Literature
Authors and translators on their unique relationship
500 year old library catalogue reveals books lost to time
Why narrating an audiobook is a lot harder than you think
Picturing writerly demographics in the Norton Anthology of American Literature
2019 is the first year in 20 years that copyrighted works are entering the public domain (includes list and contextual information)
How to visit the graves of 75 famous writers
The curse of reading and forgetting
Other Links
(Reddit thread of the happiest facts people know)
What the blue hour is and how you can use it for photography
A disabled life in a superhero universe
Soft foods helped humans form ‘F’ and ‘V’ sounds
The crew of the Mary Rose may have included sailors of African heritage
The people who wear historical dress every day
Southampton’s medieval vaults
An unpublished essay by Judy Garland written to promote The Wizard of Oz
How to do nothing (long read)
Next Stop Procrastination #11
Posted 17th August 2018
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This photograph was taken by Clarence.
I knew when I started thinking about compiling another of these that it had been quite a while since the previous; it turned out to have been March last year. I wondered how I should go about it – would there be too many, would some be irrelevant? What I came to acknowledge was that some might be old postings, in relative terms, but they were still good. The list has been checked for broken links.
Book-Related Links
Is There Such a Thing as a Good Book Review?
When Being a Disabled Writer Means Being an Educator
Where Old, Unreadable Documents Go to Be Understood
Church in the Netherlands converted into transformer library: books by day, party room by night
My life as a bookworm: what children can teach us about how to read
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie Comes to Terms with Global Fame
The Secret Origins of Amy March (Which Might Make You Hate Her a Little Less)
What’s gnawing on Jane Austen’s hair?
Visiting an Experimental, Do-It-Yourself Library in Brooklyn
Samanta Schweblin on Revealing Darkness Through Fiction
‘Don’t do anything with long-term consequences’ (novelist Phillip Lewis looks at teenage fatherhood)
Amy’s Pickled Limes: Little Women
How libraries served soldiers and civilians during WWI and WWII
The Unsung Delight of a Well-Designed Endpaper
Found: Pages From One of the First Books Printed in England
The Other Stories in Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina: A Translator’s Perspective
Miscellaneous Links
Why do Dwarves Sound Scottish and Elves Sound Like Royalty?
Exit Interview: Scott Kelly, an Astronaut Who Spent a Year in Space
List of foods named after people (Wikipedia)
Have you found any interesting online articles you could share?
Next Stop Procrastination #10
Posted 17th March 2017
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I thought I’d do something different this time; there have been so many book-related happenings this week I thought it’d be good to list them all as well as my usual links. Lots of the award links are home pages so they will change over time.
Awards
The Man Booker International longlist
Wellcome Book Prize shortlist
The British Book Awards list
(Bailey’s) Women’s Prize For Fiction
London Book Fair and London Book & Screen Week
The new Hay Festival in Aarhus, Denmark
Winners of the Cameo award for adaptations
Highlights of the week
Individual Authors
Chigozie Obioma: who should I write for – Nigerians, Africans, or everyone?
Naomi Frisby’s awesome interview with Sarah Ladipo Manyika
Another Sarah Ladipo Manyika interview, focused on her newest work
Jessie Greengrass on the art of writing short stories and related information on the Great Auk
Mrs Austen’s opinion of Jane’s books
On Daphne Du Maurier and her Rebecca
Anne Brontë – the sister who got there first
Miscellaneous Book-Related Articles
British humiliation and The Cursed Child
Book Riot’s list of 100 must-read lesser-known classics (some aren’t so lesser-known). There’s also a list of 100 books about books
Sex, death, and the short story
By fellow book blogger, Jenny, A rallying cry for more subgenres
How we read and how it affects us
The lost art of illustrating your favourite books
Technology and the evolution of storytelling
Salvador Dali’s illustrations for Wonderland
A very brief piece: the Japanese word for buying books and not reading them
When celebrities are photographed with books (on Marilyn Monroe)
Forgotten libraries of the ancient world
Chetham’s Library in Manchester
Fiction vs non-fiction: English literature’s made-up divide
A look at the ‘___’s Daughter’ trend
When pop culture respects readers
The right book at the right time
Podcasts and literary criticism
Other
Sara Forbes Bonetta – the West African god daughter of Queen Victoria
Aphantasia – where one cannot visualise imagery
What ‘my body, my choice’ means to me as a woman with a disability
Newly discovered 700-year-old Knights Templar cave
In search of language’s missing link
Next Stop Procrastination #9
Posted 19th August 2016
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Today we’ve someone else’s article about Daphne Du Maurier’s jealousy because I’m definitely writing too much on that topic – and this one I’ve found is very interesting; we’ve a brief piece about Irving Bacheller’s work which I found whilst researching my discovery post; and some great stuff from The Toast which Mallory Ortberg has sadly stopped updating but is leaving online for further perusal. I’m liking this current format, fewer posts, more links in them. What do you think?
Ever wondered about the woman Daphne Du Maurier was jealous of?
About three of the houses Daphne Du Maurier used as inspiration.
A photographer writes about finding a rare edition of Irving Bacheller’s most famous book.
Google search tricks you may not know about.
Questions and answers with Ursula Le Guin.
Yay to a female scientist on Scottish banknotes, says York University, let’s have more.
Author Nicola Cornick discusses the historical Bluestockings literary group.
Lesser known old coming-of-age novels.
A hand-painted feature film about Van Gogh’s paintings.
In defence of literary conflict.
What makes a book a classic? asks children’s’ publisher Scholastic.
Out with the newer and in with the older: An abandoned Walmart is (or was at the time – I’ve included this for interest rather than breaking news) America’s biggest library.
On the rise of literary tourism.
Baffled by all the lights and darks? Here’s a guide to coffee roasts.
When a girl’s fiancé dumped her a month before the wedding she couldn’t cancel the reception so she threw a party for homeless women and children instead.
I wrote the accent: a black writer on urban romance.
A literary pilgrimage to the Jane Austen Centre.
We often look at our shelves and feel bad about all the unread books but here’s a thought: unread books are more valuable to our lives than read ones. There’s this article, too.
Any links you’d like to share with us?
