Confessions of a displaced hedgehog

A conversation with a 17-year-old

2012-01-27T19:24:00.000Z

Yet another thing Julia has written in her blog is a ten-minute conversation with her 17-year-old self. Now for her it's just over ten years ago, but if I were to address my 17-year-old self it would be bizarre. Or would it? What can you say to a desperate 17-year-old to make her listen? I would say: All your sorrows will go over and all the wounds will heal. To be fair, I'd add: There will be new sorrows and new wounds. I'd say: all your dreams will come true, but not in the way you think. I'd say: of all your bosom friends today, only one will stay with you through thick and thin. I'd say: You have just made a big mistake in your choice of education, but it will turn out well anyway. I'd say: Leave home as soon as possible and never look back. Although if she had followed the advice, I probably wouldn't be where I am now. I'd say: when they offer you that job in a student orchestra, take it! You will regret for the rest of your life that you didn't.

What I wouldn't say to my 17-year-old self, or to any 17-year-old, is: Your prince will never come, but there will still be moments of happiness.

And what would this 17-year-old, full of dreams and illusions, hopes and follies, say to me? Go jump the puddle, old hag, you know nothing about life.

Book of the week: A Monster Calls

2012-01-27T14:56:00.000Z

I started reading this highly appraised book yesterday as I went to bed, and after ten pages I wanted to put it away. Every single cliche was in it: a lonely, insecure protagonist bullied in school, an absent father with his new wife and baby, a sick mother, a busybody granny, an inconsiderate teacher, italics for the voice of the inner monster, and, well, the eponymous monster. I immediately thought about an award-winning and absolutely horrible Swedish young adult novel with almost identical initial set-up, that mostly renders the female protagonist's worries about getting rid of her virginity and finding ways of getting drunk on Fridays. Every now and then she visits her dying mother in hospital. I just couldn't stand another of these novels.

However, some of my students had read the book and said it was wonderful. (Not that I trust students' opinions, but I try at least to be informed about their likes and dislikes). So I gave it a chance. Then I couldn't put the book away and kept reading until well after midnight.

There are many children's and YA novels about "coping with death". I am generally not interested in the aboutness of literature, and I am definitely not interested in how to use books for therapeutic purposes. This book is the most profound narrative of denial and reconciliation I have read.

Another blog challenge from Julia

2012-01-27T11:26:00.000Z

I love these games. 31 – is it Propp's functions? And once again, you can see clearly that the questions were compiled by a very young person.

Where is you mobile phone? Somewhere in my backpack
Where is your significant other? Buying groceries
Your hair? Neat
You mother? Perhaps brewing a witch potion
Your father? Since I don't believe in afterlife, dissolved and fertilised the earth
The best thing you know? This was difficult. Probably walking in nature
You dream last night? For once, clear and significant. I dreamed that our cat was still alive but very tired and wanted to lie down, but there was another cat, a grey tom with white socks, who kept poking at her to keep her on her feet and walking. Dr Freud, please explain
Your goal? Live long enough to see my grandchildren grow up, perhaps see my great-grandchildren
What do you want to be in six years? Alive
The room you are in? My study at home. Large window toward the garden, and a squirrel up on the bird feeder. A mix of academic books and dollhouse gadgets
Your hobby? Gardening, dollhouse/miniature making
Your fear? Alzheimer
Where were you last night? If it counts as “night”, at a seminar with my students, then home enjoying a good meal, a fire in the fireplace and a really good book
What are you not? Territorial
One thing you wish for? Health
Where did you grow up? Half a mile from the Moscow Kremlin
The last thing you did? Checked my email
Your clothes? Since I work from home today, sweatpants and a sweatshirt
You tv? Switched off
Your pet? Died last week
Your computer? Two-year old HP laptop
Your mood? Generally positive
Do you miss anyone? My children
Your car? Eight-year old SAAB
What do you never wear? Fur
Favourite shop? Hobby shop/art supplies
Your summer? Last summer, cruise on the Amazonas. Coming summer: finish a book
Do you love anyone? Yes
Favourite colour? Green
When did you last laugh? A funny picture on Facebook yesterday
When did you last cry? When the cat died.

Julia's original 31 questions are here.

The year of the dragon

2012-01-23T20:31:00.000Z

Most people in my real and virtual social networks probably know that it is the Chinese New Year and that it is the year of the dragon. Whether you attach this fact any significance is as much your personal issue as the Zodiac signs. The year is significant for me since it completes the Big Year, the cycle of five times twelve years and returns to the starting point of the lunar calendar.

I know about the Chinese calendar from my mother who is an Oriental scholar. Like all expressions of faith, myth, superstition and other practices incompatible with the Only True Communist Doctrine, the Chinese calendar was forbidden. Somehow people would still find out when the new year started and which sign it was. We calculated who was born under which sign and what it meant, and who was best compatible with whom. Since you couldn't easily find votive pictures or figurines, we made them ourselves and gave each other as gifts. I had - and still have - a clay dragon whom I decorated with jewelry and fed from a tiny bowl of rice. I worshipped my dragon every year, but each year had its own animal who received their own tributes. I cannot say it gave the whole business a special thrill just because it was forbidden, but it was certainly less trivial when you couldn't easily get all information from a weekly magazine. I remember I was anxious when I was a couple of days overdue with my first child and he was born a Mouse. I don't think it has affected him that much.

Yet I lost track of the Chinese years when I moved to Sweden, just as I lost interest in many other forbidden and half-forbidden things. Also, to celebrate Chinese new year is only satisfactory if it's shared. It just so happened that I had no one to share it with. So my third and fourth Dragon years passed unnoticed. I bought a wonderful little jade dragon in China, and I always have it on my dressing table, but not until recently did I realise that my Big Year is coming to an end.

Reflections on age are always profound. I remember explaining the Chinese calendar to an aunt; I was perhaps seventeen. I said: "You are sixty, so it means..." She wasn't pleased to be reminded of her age. For me at that time, sixty was equal to eternity.

Julia's blog challenge

2012-01-22T10:53:00.001Z

Once again my daughter offers a blog challenge which I cannot resist. Here we go.

What were you doing ten years ago?

Trying to land after we had come back home from California. Fighting battles to get courses to teach and students to supervise. Finishing two books. Planning my 50th birthday party.

What were you doing a year ago?

Starting on a new term. Looking forward to Burns night. Editing a book.

Five snacks you like

I don't eat snacks, but if drink nibbles count: mixed nuts (no peanuts!), olives, feta cheese, carrot sticks with dip... hmmm... cucumber sticks with dip.

Five songs for which you know the whole text

Would be fifty rather than five, maybe five hundred. Romantic songs, funny songs, Soviet patriotic songs, and dirty songs.

Five things you would do if you were a multimillionaire

What is the definition of a millionaire? It also depends on the currency. Once upon a time I paid a million for a simple meal (late '80s in Poland, incredible inflation). But ok, it was multi-. Quit job. Pay off mortgage for ourselves and our children. Always fly business class. Get a personal trainer. Create a foundation for PhD studentships in children's literature.

Five bad habits

Work too much. Work too much. Work too much. Work too much. Work too much.

Five things you like doing

Gardening, walking in nature, talking to friends, reading, eating a good meal.

Five things you would never wear or buy

Never say never. A year ago I would say I would never wear a hat, and then I did. I used to wear high heels, but I would never do it again. I used to wear mini-skirts. I used to wear leather pants. I used to wear synthetic underwear. I used to wear very large ear-rings.

Five favourite toys

Victorian dollhouse, Tudor dollhouse, modern dollhouse, computer, camera

Ten people you would like to take this challenge

Alyona, Filip, Viktor, Agnes, Kory, Lotta, Lydia, Rachel, Ghada, Clementine,

How to write a research proposal

2012-01-21T18:39:00.000Z

As anyone close enough to academia knows, the only thing that matters nowadays it external funding. You may publish tons of award-winning books, be invited to zillions of prestigeous conferences, be elected to illustrous societies, but if you don't bring in external funding to your institution, you are worthless. It shouldn't be like this, especially since so much of an academic's life is spent on writing research bids instead of doing research. Some lucky people have research assistants who write the bids for them, but in order to have a research assistant you need to have received a research grant in the first place.

From this point of view, I am a worthless employee. The kind of research I am interested in will never win large bids, and the kind of projects that win large bids don't interest me. I am an individualist and can't work in teams. I cannot hire a research assistant to do my thinking for me, because the whole point of my thinking is that I am the only one who can do it. If someone else does it, it will not be mine anymore. I cannot even ask an assistant to do a literature review for me because they won't know what I am looking for.

Still, since I have agreed to play this game I must follow the rules. I keep submitting research proposals, which take a lot of my precious time and leave me with a track record of unsuccessful bids. What I am doing is not measurable and therefore unpredictable. Following the rules, I state that such and such target groups will benefit from my research, and I know that it is a bag of %£&!!%£, so of course it doesn't sound persuasive.

As a reseach leader, I need to encourage my team to submit bids and preferably participate in some. Right now we are in the final phase of submitting a proposal that I would definitely support if I were a referee, but then I felt like that about all my proposals. Note, we are not given extra time for writing proposals so we are either doing it in our spare time or instead of other tasks we are supposed to do. If I were a department head under the present circumstances I'd give all my employees a day every week for writing proposals. What luck I am not a department head.

Anyway, yesterday we had a proposal-writing day. For the purpose, we used some old grant money to retreat to a conference centre with ambient atmosphere and nice food. We had already filled in all the items in the online form, and we had written a dozen of versions of the 6-page proposal statement to be attached. You wouldn't think it takes a whole day for a team of five people to edit a 6-page document, but it does. First we talked through it, projecting the text from computer onto a screen. Then we split in two groups and worked on a bit each. Then we got together again and put our bits together and read them, sentence by sentence. Then we had lunch and talked about unrelated topics. Then we had another go. We made huge progress, but we still had to take some homework with us when we parted.

Now, you may ask, is this a good investment of time? Five people working a whole day is actually a whole week of work, and it wasn't the first week and possibly not the last. Certainly if we do get the grant, we'll hire two research assistants and a research sstudent to do our thinking for us, pay people's travel and hotels, arrange workshops and perhaps even come up with something measurable. But if we don't get it, all these weeks will have been a total waste of time.

Never mind. The lunch was good.

Do cats know that they are cats?

2012-01-20T18:10:00.000Z

For my current research I am reading about mysterious things such as emotions, memory and consciousness. The latter seems especially controversial. There seems to be no way of saying what consciousness is, what it is for, where exactly it is, or how it interacts with the rest of the world.

What has always fascinated me is the question whether human beings are the only living creatures that have consciousness. The clever book that I am reading claims, with reference to another clever book, that a bat only has consciousness if it is conscious of what it is like to be a bat. Since bats eat cats and cats eat bats, I can modify the issue. Are cats conscious of being cats?

Another question I have contemplated a lot is whether we are conscious of being alive. In Ray Bradbury's wonderful book Dandelion Wine, the young protagonist Douglas suddenly becomes conscious of being alive. Not unexpectedly, this discovery very soon leads him to the conclusion of being mortal. We all know that we will die, but are we conscious of being mortal? And are we conscious of dying when it comes to that? I know that my grandfather wasn't, the evening before he died. I wasn't there when my father dies, but according to my mother the last thing he said before drifting into merciful unconsciousness was: “So that's what it's like”. I don't know which is preferable.

But if cats are conscious of being cats, and if they know that they are alive, are they conscious of dying? Or maybe they don't have consciousness, but still know that they are dying. Maybe they are scared. Maybe they are trying to tell us something. Maybe they are trying to say goodbye. I am positively sure that Miso was trying to say goodbye

Watching a cat slowly and peacefully dying for ten days brings up lots of big questions. Farewell, Miso. You stayed with us more than a year after we thought we had lost you.

S.O.T.

2012-01-09T16:41:00.000Z

Honestly, it wasn't part of my plan for the Monday afternoon to give 200 tulips an individual spray of animal repellent. Not that tulips have a strong sense of individuality, but the beastly beasts who come and nibble the new shoots don't get the message otherwise.

I went out for some fresh air during the morning and had a look at my alpine patch to see whether the mini-daffodils were visible yet. Then I saw the tulips, or what was left of the tulips. Goodness, it's January! I saw some tiny shoots a couple of weeks ago, thought they were crazy and covered them with pine needles against frost. I don't know what happens if frost does come. On the other hand, daffodils are supposed to bloom in February here, and tulips in March, so I guess they are doing what they are supposed to be doing. It's just that the previous three winters were exceptionally cold.

I had a satchel of repellent left since last spring but it lasted for about one third of my tulip beds. S.O.T! (Save Our Tulips!) Torn between the garden and the computer, I asked Staffan to get some more, which he did, noble as he is, but I still had to spend three hours tidying the beds to find all the shoots. Bitter experience: miss one shoot, and it's gone. Meanwhile, I discovered daffodils, hyacinths, snowdrops and even bluebells. I know that animals don't like daffodils, but bluebells? I sprayed them just in case.

As every year, and more intensively each year, I feel the joy of seeing nature coming alive, every flower, every shrub, just as last year, with vigour and persistence that also make me feel envious and a bit sad. I hope there will be someone enjoying my tulips and daffodils when I am gone.

Professional knowledge

2012-01-04T21:19:00.000Z

Once a month I pamper myself with massage. And every time, while she is working on the tiniest muscle hiding behind five other muscles, I ask myself: how does she know? How can she feel what is tense and what needs special attention today? And then I tell myself: because she is a professional. Because she learned how to do it. Just as you once learned how to analyse a literary text and how to recognise all the tiny details that make a literary text a masterpiece and other details that make it a pile of garbage. And just as she knows what the matter is with your muscles and what to do about it, you know what the matter is with a poor essay draft and what to do with it to make it better. So I don'r feel bad because somebody is taking care of my tired body. I am professional in my own way.

New Year resolutions

2011-12-31T14:07:00.000Z

work less
replace broken glass in the greenhouse
get a smartphone (maybe)
start driving to Stansted on my own
work less
re-join the fitness club (no, too trivial)
put up the second tool panel in the utility room
visit Cornwall
work less
paint the window sills
resists temptations of conferences, festivals, juries, and editorial boards
drink less coffee
update my profile page
work less
reconcile with the fact that I will be sixty this year

Highlights of 2011

2011-12-31T13:14:00.001Z

Looking back at the year that is just about to end, I state once again that it has been long. People always say that as you get older years just rush by, but they don't for me. I guess it's because I live an intense life, and each day is full of things.

I have re-read my blog posts for this year and found that I seldom write on actual events of my life, and the posts do not always reflect what is going on with and around me. I will have to rely on my memory (and my diary) to sum up the year.

The central family event was Julia's wedding. Jakob and Therese also got married. And three grandchildren entered the mysterious period of teen.

Some great people have died: Bo Carpelan, Diana Wynne Jones, Russell Hoban. Two close friends from my youth died.

In terms of academic achievements, the year was meagre. No books, a handful of articles, some conference presentations. I didn't make much of my study leave. All the more joy from students, who win awards, get published, go through their vivas and submit their chapters. The PhD group is growing. We have still more applications for next year. There have been some set-backs at work, but that's not a proper subject for a New Year Eve chronicle.

I have travelled less than usual, clever girl, and mostly for work: Norway twice, Sweden, Finland, Germany; but the highlight was naturally the Amazonas. This had been my big dream for many, many years, and I still feel a bit empty when it has come true.

We finally put up my Tiffany lamp. We gave up on malfunctioning dishwasher and bought a new one. I have made some small improvements in the house and great improvements in the garden. I have done some more work on my various dollhouses and room boxes.

I have succumbed to Kindle, and I still love it. I haven't stopped reading printed books, and there is actually not a huge difference.

Julia and Pontus visited twice, Anton and Kory once together and Anton on his own again; and Agnes spent a delightful week with us. We also had more visitors, both colleagues and friends. We had families cat- and house-sitting while we were away. My bed-and-breakfast skills are getting better and better.

Christmas horrors

2011-12-25T11:35:00.000Z

Christmas is not about peace and quiet and family values. Christmas is a trial, an ordeal, and a matter of anxiety for any family. You start preparing long in advance. You make lists so as not to forget anyone. You swear over all those relatives who have everything. You try to remember what you gave them last year not to give the same again. You try to remember what they gave you last year not to give it back. You decide not to give any presents to adults, only to children. You consult the in-laws not to give the children the same thing from the wish-list. You see some things you really want to give someone and then have to give something to everyone. You try to remember what kind of wrapping paper your in-laws use so as to not use the same. You realise that you won't have time to write all Christmas cards and decide that this year you will just send an email greeting. Then you get lots of cards and feel bad.

If you host the Christmas meal you start worrying a month in advance that your new in-laws won't like your very very special inescapable all-time family favourite salad. You realise that your new in-laws have a completely different schedule for the holidays. That they exchange their presents on Christmas Eve morning/afternoon/evening/Christmas Day morning/evening while everybody knows that it must be done on Christmas Eve morning/afternoon/evening/Christmas Day morning/evening (delete as required). That they open all presents at the same itme, when they must be opened one at a time and admired. That the label should say who the present is from – or just say Merry Christmas from Santa. That wrapping paper should be immediately disposed of in a huge black bin liner, or smoothed out and saved for undefined purpose.

You realise that they decorate the tree together on Christmas Eve morning while in your family it is always decorated on the day before – or perhaps has already been decorated for a week. That they put all their decorations even on a minimal tree and hide it completely under tinsel. That they actually have an artificial tree and believe that a real tree in unecological. They won't tell you, but there will be a tension in the air, or a young innocent child will declare it in the middle of present-sharing.

You realise that your in-laws have their meal punctually at one/two/three/four/five/six and cannot imagine anything else. That they cannot imagine a Christmas meal without homemade meatballs/jellied fish/mashed turnips, and they would have brought their own of they had only known that there won't be any.

You worry that you haven't cleaned your house well enough for their keen eyes, that you haven't got special Christmas curtains, tablecloth and napkins, that they would have brought their special Christmas plates if they have only known...

You realise that they never watch your favourite Christmas programme, but have their own that they cannot live without. That they think that mulled wine is wrong for Christmas, but how can you image Christmas without Christmas pudding? That they always go to Evensong on Christmas Eve, right when your family watches the indispensable tv-programme, which, God forbid! cannot be recorded and wacthed later. That they sing their carols rather than listening to that wonderful CD. That they go to visit great-Aunt Drusilla on Christmas Day morning. That they have their special songs they sing over their herring, and you don't know the words. That they spend all Christmas Day doing a jigsaw puzzle. That they go for a walk even when it's freezing cold. That they feel offended when Father withdraws after the meal for his traditional Christmas nap. That the youngest child, and not the oldest female lights the candles. That the father of the family, and not the youngest child dives under the tree to share out presents. That you don't count how many presents you have got and compare to your sibling. That you don't open all presents on Christmas Eve morning so that half of the family have no presents under the tree. Sorry, I seem to have gone full circle.

For many years we tried to escape the anxieties of Christmas by going away. However, before going away we still had to invite the rest of the family to exchange presents and have a meal, and the whole nightmare was just shifted a week earlier.

You are bitter, upset and disappointed. You know that the way Christmas was celebrated in your family when you were a child is the only right way. That is, if your family celebrated Christmas at all.

Acceptance

2011-12-21T19:56:00.000Z

I posted a casual note on Facebook today, saying that an article had been accepted for publication. Within an hour, I had over twenty "likes". I am not sure how to interpret it. Had friends given up hope that I would ever be accepted? (No, I think they were sincerely enthusiastic).

I have several times written in this blog about being rejected and about other obstacles and disappointments in an academic career, so I will for once write about the joy of being accepted. You may think that after thirty plus years another accepted article would not matter that much, but it does. Anyway, this article does. Some articles matter more than other articles.

These days I mostly write on request, and book chapters rather than articles. It has happened to me that an article or chapter written on request got rejected, but it doesn't happen often because after all if they asked you they probably want your contribution. So it isn't a big surprise to have your work accepted, it's just a matter of doing it on time and to the best of your abilities, and being prepared to make some revisions, particularly if the editor is good. There is no article so perfect that it cannot be improved by advice from a good editor. A good editor is a blessing. A bad editor is a nightmare... err, I was going to be positive today.

When you are asked to contribute to a volume or a journal it is likely within your area of expertise. You are asked because the editor knows your work and wants you to do more of the same. It is flattering, but not necessarily challenging. I don't blame editors: they know what I have published, but not what I am currently doing secretly at my writing desk. Oftentimes I offer to write something slightly different, something looking forward rather than backward. Frequently I do a conference paper which I then revise for publication. But it does happen that you are invited to write something unexpected which makes you wonder: Why me? Can I really do it? How exciting!

I am enthusiastic about the accepted article because it matters a lot. Frankly, I don't remember when an article mattered that much, except for the first dozen or so, which all mattered a lot. This article matters because it is a new territory for me. Because I am not sure whether I am doing the right thing. Now I know that I am. It's very good for self-esteem that after thirty plus years I can come up with something new that at least two colleagues who don't know who the author is think worth publishing.

The bottom line is that no matter how many articles you have published there will always be this special one that makes you feel proud.

What professors do during breaks

2011-12-18T14:43:00.000Z

It is now holiday period, aka research period. The new term starts on January 16, and I don't have to go to work until then. However, I need to plan carefully how to make the most of my time. Some things are inevitable. I have to grade a pile of essays by Jan 9, and I have to read through a certain number of colleagues' collected works by Jan 19. The latter is part of the Faculty research assessment, and I really don't understand why it has to be done during the holiday season. But alas! this is not negotiable.

I have to make some progress on the book I am writing. If I make considerable progress on the book by mid-January I won't feel anxious about it anymore since I will have two more research periods before the deadline. The thing is, I'd much rather be working on a different book, but I must finish the first book because I have a contract. I may get a contract for the second book soon, and then I am in real trouble. Which means I really, really need to make good progress on the first book. For the second book, I am writing a number of papers that will hopefully develop into chapters. I need to keep the first and the second book separate because they are on different topics. It is difficult to keep two projects separate because they interfere with each other. It takes me at least a day to get into an ongoing project so I cannot afford jumping between the two.

I need to read through the pile of books I have been pushing aside for a while. Most of the books are related to the second project and therefore interfere with the first project. I need to read and re-read some books for the first project. (Are you still with me?) These options are negotiable, and I need to negotiate with myself. I can withdraw papers and cancel conferences. I don't have to sign the second contract. In fact, I can withdraw the first project, but my reputation will suffer. So I'd better make some progress...

I now know better than ever that I won't have time for research during full term. I need to plan. I don't want to plan. People who envy professors because they have long breaks are missing the point.

What professors do when they are not being professors

2011-12-17T21:52:00.002Z

Believe me or not, but every now and then I take a break. Usually it happens when I have a visit, and that's exactly what happened last week. My dear childhood friend Alyona came to see me. We talk on Skype often and thus keep in touch, but some time ago we stated with amazement that we hadn't met for two long years.

I had carefully prepared for the visit by attending to all urgent business and putting off everything that was even slightly less urgent. I did check my email in case anyone wanted to give me the Nobel Prize (nobody did) but short of that I was away from the academic world.

Alyona had visited me twice before, and some years ago we spent ten days in London together, making all the tourist things so there is not much we haven't seen and done in London, and we had exhausted most of the options in and around Cambridge during her previous visits. Thus the first day we went to see the Vermeer exhibition and walked around in town. I had a concert ticket and we tried to get another one, but it was sold out. We were not tremendiously upset because by the time we came home we really didn't want to go anywhere again. We sat by the fire and had tea and talked.

The next day we went first to our local garden centre and got a Christmas tree, because I thought that, since she happened to be around almost at the right time, we could put up the tree a bit earlier this year. While we were at it, we bought some pansies for the garden, only we never got round to planting them (I did it after she had left). Instead we went to Ely and the market, and we got a Botanic Garden cake stand from the same lady I had bought two cups before. She didn't remember me but pretended she did and gave me £1 discount. I had been looking for a cake stand, but hadn't seen any that I liked. Just another useless object. It is perfectly fine to put cakes on an ordinary plate. Or is it?

The Fire Engine teashop was booked up again, but we went to another place that I like and had tea; and then we spent quite a long time in the big antique shop without any particular ideas in mind, but playing our favourite game: guessing what different objects are for. Do you know what "a single rose vessel" is? I do now. We bought it. We didn't go into the Cathedral at all.

The next day, which was a Sunday, and therefore I wanted to get away from Christmas crowds, we went to Royston. Now, Royston does not feature in guidebooks as a huge tourist attraction, and I wouldn't know about its existence if London trains didn't stop there every now and then. But Royston is the home of what boasts to be the largest dollhouse shop in Europe and therefore a great temptation which I have been fighting for the past two years. The thing is, I don't really want anything from there because I have stated once and for all that things I make are better and more imaginative, and yet... Anyway, we spent about two hours driving around on motorways and small roads, and once again I thought that a smartphone with GPS might be a good thing to put on Christmas wish list. Fortunately, Alyona is just like me in this respect. But we didn't give up and eventually found the d-d shop and even managed not to buy that much, except that I discovered that a revolution has occurred in dollhouse making, but this is another story. Back home, we made a miniature Victorian wine table and almost made a cake stand, and it was definitely a memorable day.

I didn't want to go to London, but I felt that Alyona did, so on Monday we went, but we didn't even try to see the da Vinci exhibition. Instead, we went to the British Museum where you always make a discovery. Mine was this time the colour schemes of Philipp Otto Runge, which I am sure I had seen before, but you need a little impulse to really notice something. Then we wandered through the Egyptian rooms, fascinating as ever; then we took a walk to Covent Garden and browsed through the market and went into the newly opened Moomin Store, and then I suddenly remembered the Transport Museum. I had been there before, with a grandchild who is passionate about trains, but I realised that I had recently read so many 19th-century English novels where they ride horse-and-carriage, omnibus and the railroad, and indeed the display made much more sense after this reading. I can warmly recommend this museum, but stay away from the cafeteria!

We had bought off-peak train tickets, so when we were finished with taxis and buses we still had three hours to kill and went to V&A. Yes, I know, three museums in a day is way too much, but you can always find something new to see at V&A or revisit an old favourite. And we played the "what-is-it" game again. I notice that I am more interested in material culture these days than in painting.

Speaking of which, we spent Alyona's last day in Cambridge shopping. She had to get some Christmas presents to take home, and I had saved my shopping to do it with her. If you have followed my blog for a while you know how much I hated shopping for my daughter's wedding, and although I had much more prosaic goals thsi time, I surely needed support. We had great luck and found a variety of tops on sale; I tried on eight and bought four of them, so it was time and money well spent.

Somewhere along the road we decorated the tree. During all these days we kept chatting as usual, and for once I feel that we have covered most of urgent issues, such as husbands, mothers, children, career, illness, ageing and lost illusions; although we have already Skyped and emailed about all the important things we had forgotten.

When I emerged from this time-out I felt that I had been away for years.

Book of the year

2011-12-17T10:20:00.002Z

I was too quick to proclaim the best books of 2011. In fact, this is the best book of the year. Autofiction, metafiction, whatever, I don't care. It's witty, intricately crafted, powerfully engaging, self-ironic, reader-friendly and everything you want from a contemporary piece of prose. If you read Swedish - grab it! If not you'll have to wait until it is translated. Poor you.

Russell Hoban in memoriam

2011-12-14T20:51:00.000Z

Another great children's author gone.

This is what I wrote in 1989.

The Mouse and His Child, by Russell Hoban. New York: Harper & Row, 1967.

A large number of modern children's classics have recently been reprinted, which is more than welcome. Among them, The Mouse and His Child is far from a self-evident title. This book appears sparsely on recommendation lists and in textbooks. It must be one of the most underestimated masterpieces of children's literature.

There may be many reasons for this. The best-known and constantly reprinted books by Russell Hoban are his nice, simple picturebooks about the badger girl Frances. When you see another title mentioning nice animals, you may think that this is another book in the same style. But this is not the case. It is a long, sad, not to say tragic story about toys that are exposed to the fate of all toys when they get broken. If this book had not been published and marketed as a children's book, it would have become one of the greatest works of existentialism.

The plot is reminiscent of Hans Christian Andersen's "The Steadfast Tin Soldier," which I, strangely enough, have not seen any critic mention. The two toy mice have to go through many painful trials, through anxiety and sorrow, slavery and humiliation, actually through physical disintegration. They meet friends and enemies, but - as in real life, no villains are totally evil, and no friend is totally good and nice. The characters in the book are colorful and unique: the greedy slave-driver Manny, the unreliable Frog, the cunning thinker Muskrat, the self-centered poet Serpentina. The toys meet with much treachery and evil, but also loyalty and unselfish courage. During their adventures and bitter defeat the two mice sustain their longing for a home and their childish hope for a happy ending. It is not a coincidence that the mouse child is stronger in spirit than the father, and he never loses faith.

Hoban is a incredibly skillful writer. All details and events in the book are interconnected in a way that we normally associate with great mainstream novels. To let an empty can of dog food be the central symbol of the story would be daring even in an adult novel. The chapter about the Crows' Art Experimental Theater Group ought to be a universal classic.

The ending is happy in a way, at least from a young reader's viewpoint. Adult readers cannot but notice its deep tragic undertones. Nothing will ever be the same again - the toys can never become new again, just as humans cannot become young again.

The book is multidimensional and can be read at many different levels. As an exciting and moving fairy tale for the youngest. Or as a philosophical fable for teenagers and adults. It is possible that it will not be appreciated by children who believe that they have grown out of fairy tales, while they instead have not grown into them. In any case, children who will read Hoban's book perhaps need some help from adults. The book presents grateful material for discussions of essential life questions. What is beyond the last visible dog?

Opsis Kalopsis 1989:2

Best books of 2011

2011-12-07T20:50:00.000Z

This time of year, all media write about best books of the year. Here is my choice. Note: not the best books published in 2011, but the best books I read in 2011

Best novel: Solar, by Ian McEwan

Best classic: Moll Flanders, by Daniel Defoe

Best humour: Jennings Goes to school, by Anthony Buckeridge

Best young adult novel: Midwinterblood, by Marcus Sedgwick

Best picturebook: The Lost Thing, by Shaun Tan

Best nonfiction: The Morville Hours, by Katherine Swift

Best reference: The dictionary of imaginary places, by Alberto Manguel et al

Best literary criticism: Why do we care about literary characters? by Blakey Vermeule

Best on children's literature: Children's Literature: A very short introduction, by Kimberley Reynolds.

Best book I have contributed to: The Phantom Tollbooth, 50th anniversary edition, by Norton Juster

Best dollhouse book: The Authentic Georgian Dolls' Houses, by Brian Long

Best unexpected: Mathematics: A very short introduction, by Timothy Gowers

Famous ladies

2011-12-03T10:19:00.000Z

A very long time ago, two lives ago, the most famous paiting in the world was exhibited in Moscow. Mona Lisa of course. There were horror stories about queues, and it was in summer when my mother, who knew the ins and outs of Moscow museums, was away on holiday. We were a gang of friends eager to see one of the wonders of the world, so we got up very early one day and went to the museum to stand in line. There were about three million people who had the same idea; in fact, people would queue throughout the night. The ticket office opened at ten, by which time there were perhaps as many people behind us as in front of us, which is always inspiring. Queuing has its own rules, and with very long queues, peole have to take sanitary and nutritious breaks. I don't know how other people coped, but we would take turns to go home every now and then since we all lived close to the museum. There was no risk of missing the entrance since clever people had calculated how many metres of the queue would reasonably get through in an hour. However, by six in the evening, our area of the queue started getting nervous. The museum closed at eight. The line behind us began to disperse, except for the most persistent who determined to stay overnight. At a quarter to eight we had our coveted tickets, were admitted to the museum, run through narrow corridors like cattle, run past the painting hidden behind three layers of bullet-proof glass, and that was it.

Many years later, when I was in Paris, I considered going to the Louvre and see the lady properly, but in fact I didn't really feel like it. Besides, I had by then encountered my true love. Lady with an Ermine didn't cause half a much fuss in Moscow. There were reasonable queues, but once you were there, you were allowed to stay as much as you liked, which I did. And I came back. And came back again. Some years later I was in Krakow, the home of the Lady, and I even have a photo of me in front of it. Then it came to Stockholm.

It is now in London, and I was stupid enough to believe that I could go and see it whenever I wanted. But all advance tickets are sold, and the website warns that the queues may be three hours long. For someone who has queued twelve hours to run past Mona Lisa it doesn't sound too bad. My childhood friend is coming to visit next week, and I think we'll go to see Lady with an Ermine. We usually chat aroung the clock when we meet, so we can just as well chat while we queue.

Book of the week: The Morville Hours

2011-12-03T09:27:00.000Z

I am always glad when a friend recommends a book that I would have never discovered on my own. Why on earth would I pay attention to the title The Morville Hours: The Story of a Garden? Well by chance perhaps, searching for something on gardenin, but I don't think I would believe that the book was something for me. But a friend whose opinon I value has recommended it, and it had been on my Shelfari list for ages before I discovered, last week, that it was available on Kindle and bought it. Kindle is dangerous, much too easy to buy.

I don't know how to characterise the book - perhaps I have never read anything lke it. I don't read a lot of nonfiction (except for professional literature), and this isn't pure nonfiction either. It's autobiography, popular history, popular everything - a bit like Bryson's A short history of everything - a bit of this and a piece of that, classic mythology and Christian saints; painting and geology, gardening manual and family story. It is superficially about making a garden, and I feel envious when I read that she planted 600 yew trees. Not that I would have space for them, but planting trees presupposes that you expect to see them grow. It becomes clear eventually that the garden took her twenty years to complete, full-time. I feel more envious because I do not have the necessary twenty years, and the trees I planted twenty years ago are left behind (she writes about it as well).

What I enjoyed most is her elegant writing, the neatness with which she weaves in all the scores upon scores of side stories, known and less known facts, sensitive personal memories and poetry quotations and philosophical reflections. I never expected to enjoy a nonfiction book for the quality of prose. And you don't have to love gardening to enjoy it.

What professors do in the last week of term

2011-12-02T21:07:00.000Z

I have repeatedly commented on the brevity of Cambridge terms: Michaelmas has just sbout started, and incredibly, today is the last day of term, and some students have already left. Last week of term is stressful because all students submit their essays at the same time, and some of them seem to only have discovered on Monday that the essays were due on Friday at 4pm (which in Cambridge means Friday 4 pm, not 4:01pm) and of course they panic, and of course I have to balance between threat and reassurance.

So the week has been stressful. After a relaxing weekend, with some gardening (yes, last weekend of November!) and some baking, I had huge plans for Monday, to do some work of my own, but -surprise! - essays came tumbling into my email box, and good ones may take an hour to read, while poor ones, that need lots of comments, may take anything up to five-six hours. But most of my precious time on Monday went to writing various administrative reports, which, believe me or not, was a useful exercise, although completely exhausting.

On Tuesday I had a registration viva, which means that a PhD student goes over from probation to regular PhD status. For my part, it involved reading a 20,000-word document finding all possible faults in it in a way that would be helpful for the student. It is a very stimulating task, especially since there are two assessors, and you have a chance to discuss with a colleague the strength and weakness of the project. There was no doubt that the student would pass.

Then I had a supervision session with one of those desperate students who still hadn't produced much of the essay due on Friday at 4pm; and after that my favourite class on picturebooks, the one in which I pour a pile of books on the table and let the students explore. There is always something new I learn from them, and this time I learned two new things about a book I have taught for the past ten years, whitten about a dozen times and thought I knew inside out. I enjoyed the class - I hope the students did too. After the class, since it was the last class of term, we had tea and cakes with the students, but there was still some business to be done, yet another desperate student who was about to submit her PhD proposal and needed help, right then. The day was concluded by a seminar on Caribbean poetry, with recitals, music and almost dancing. It can be argued that it's not really work, and yet...

On Wednesday, I was on strike. I think, first time ever. Somehow I had always missed strike actions. But this time we had cancelled classes, supervisions, meetings, a research seminar and an end-of-term party, most of which would have been pleasurable things, so it wasn't a easy decision to make. But I believe in solidarity. And I really and honestly did not work that day.

Which of course made Thursday a nightmare. For instance, I had been wondering over a mystical event in my diary next week, with a vague memory of having promised to do something for somebody, and fortunately this somebody emailed me a reminder on Wednesday evening, so I had to prepare that. I had also realised that I needed to apply for my next study leave, in Lent 2013, NOW! Which takes some time, because you have to collect signatures of all course managers stating that you are not indispensible. Then, as usual, when you least expect it, a copy-edited article that you have given up on for the last year, comes and needs immediate attention; and another copy-edited article that does not need any attention but still needs to be opened and read through. Another desperate student draft, a bunch of reference letters, a telephone interview for The Guardian on why today's children like books about idyllic past. And a very, very long conversation over lunch, which is, as I have explained many times, a significant part of my job. The day concluded with a social event for all PhD students in my academic group, which to my joy was highly appreciated, and people stayed for much longer than I had expected and seemed to have fun talking to each other.

Today, Friday, another student draft in the morning; research team meeting - very fruitful; more references and applications, written report from Tuesday's viva, a colleague's book launch, some more admin. And the highlight of the week: the Jacqueline Wilson Award Ceremony. Last year, Jacqueline Wilson could not attend the ceremony because of a snow storm. Today I was anticipating railway strikes, floods, earthquakes - but she arrived safely, and all went well, and the winner was radiant, and the current masters students watched enviously, but one of them will get the award next year.

That was the last week of term. On Monday, there will be a pile of essays to grade in my pigeonhole; a meeting with my Head of Faculty; more applications and references; College Governing Body Meeting and dinner. Tuesday: meeting with a visitor from South Africa and Faculty Academic Staff meeting; Wednesday, a workshop; about a hundred accumulated emails to reply to (as of today; by Monday there will be more). First round of general Faculty assessment; academic group long-term strategy statement; a research grant apllication, quality assessement, moderation meetings. So much for short terms and long breaks. Happy holidays!

Getting developed

2011-11-22T18:29:00.000Z

I stayed away from a children's literature reading group today where this wonderful book was to be discussed, because I was hoping to finish a chapter I had so fruitfully worked on during the weekend. Instead, I received a reminder to turn in my homework for a workshop on professional development next Monday.

In my last year in Stockholm, we were all ordered to take a professional development course for PhD supervisors. I didn't know it was my last year in Stockholm, so I had to attend, and then I never finished it and remained undeveloped. (I hope my PhD students haven't noticed).

Now I have been told that I need to take a professional development course in professional development. Every now and then I have to conduct a professional development review with people in my research group, and every now and then I have to be developed by someone else. Anyone in academia will recognise the process. Actually, I think it is quite useful if done properly, but mostly it is just another of those pointless academic routines that take a lot of time and energy and don't lead anywhere. At the last Faculty Board, a brave colleague mentioned that he had been developed twice during his long professonal career and hadn't been better or worse for it, so was it really necessary?

But now it's not just be being developed or me developing someone else, it's me developing my skills of developing others. They promised the homework would take no more than an hour. Maybe you can do it in an hour, but I found myself getting quite absorbed in it, trying to evaluate myself. It took at least three hours of my precious time when I could have been professionally developing (that is, writing my book). Yet I couldn't help it. Am I a good manager? What makes me think I am a good manager? What are my strong sides? What do I need to - well, develop? One of the questions I had to consider was: What do you do if your reviewee bursts into tears? Good question, it has happened to me. Have a tissue ready.

If you take this seriously, I have no training in leadership or management or whatever, and I probably really need to develop my skills. I used to attend workshops on web-based teaching and always learned something useful. So perhaps I will develop on Monday. Unless I am hopessly beyond developmentability.

Frustration

2011-11-16T21:21:00.000Z

If you are anywhere near the academia you are at regular intervals required to submit a report of your recent publications and other relevant activities. You are normally asked to do it annually, but every now and then there is a Big Huge Humongous report that determines everybody's life and, frankly, is highly disruptive. All my UK colleagues have lived in its shadow for a couple of years now; it is discussed at every meeting and generates tons of paperwork, and I am sure it costs National Health Service fortunes in antidepressants and counselling. This time round it is called REF, Research Excellence Framework. Last time it was called something else, but it was before I came to the UK, and in Sweden they haven't yet invented this elaborate torture, but wait, they will soon.

For the uninitiated, you are asked to submit at least four publications since the last Whatever-It-Was-Called that meet the vague and subjective criteria of research quality of international standard. It is said that the journal or publisher makes no difference as long as your publication is of high quality, but who decides what is quality? How can you measure quality of research? Because measuring it what it is all about. There is a ranking list of journals, and if you have a rotten, derivative and boring article in an A* journal (and who gave them the A* if I may ask?) you are better off than if you have a brilliant article in a journal that according to somebody is not of similarly high prestige.

To make it worse, in humanities we tend to write books and chapters in books, and these are not worth anything in such reports. Books and chapters do not feature in databases; they are not measurable in terms of "most downloaded", and there is no software to trace who has quoted whom and how much. No matter how often my vanity is satisfied by seeing my name in somebody's bibliography, it's all just vanity. A couple of years ago I searched myself in the most prestigeous database Web of Science and was very upset, because of all of my 400+ publications, I only found a couple of book reviews in a journal ranked as C (I won't name the journal not to hurt their feelings). From the point of view of this database I have never published anything other than a handful of book reviews that haven't been cited in any other publications. So much for international reputation.

Well, that time I could $£&%!!*&$ Web of Science and submit my impressive list of publications in the old-fashioned way. Not anymore. This year we are required to submit our report electronically, through software that - yes, you've guessed it! - searches Web of Science and picks up all your precious publications. You just need to click and confirm that you are the author. I must say that I firmly denied the authorship of my book reviews, especially since they were published long before the current REF period.

When I created an account on academia.edu (a strictly academic network I warmly recommend), it did a search for me and picked up most of the books, including those in Swedish and other languages, and about fifty papers, of which just a couple were inaccurate. The software asked me, very politely, whether I was the author of the publications, which I admitted, in a couple of cases reluctantly. The rest I added manually. The platform updates my stuff and adds buttons where direct links or downloads are available. (It does many other great things, but that's another story). I get about 400 hits a month - I have no idea how it compares with colleagues, but it's definitely more than Web of Science will ever acknowledge.

The bottom line is that my REF report is terribly depressing. For the past four years - and actually for my whole professional career - I haven't published anything worth including in a respected database. How did they give me a chair in Cambridge? Certainly not for my beautiful blue eyes.

Book of the month: A Tale Dark and Grimm

2011-11-14T18:46:00.000Z

Aren't I lucky to have a great advisor for newly published children's books? What would I do without the fabulous Marilyn Brocklehurst at Norfolk Children's Book Centre? I have praised her several times in this blog, and if you don't know her bookshop, you should! It is impossible these days to keep track of books, and frankly, I don't trust award shortlists, but I do trust Marilyn. So when I found A Tale of Dark and Grimm in my mail the other day, I pushed aside all books piled by my bed and started reading. I would never ever have chosen this book myself, certainly not with this cover.There is another cover which I might have chosen:

I have read a lot of fractured fairy tales and novels based on fairy tales. In fact, one of Marilyn's earlier recommendations was Tender Morsels. And I have just read proofs of my essay on The Witch's Boy that will appear in the next issue of Marvels & Tales (goodness, I have plenty of links today!). I wish I had read Dark and Grimm when I was writing on The Witch Boy, but of course it wasn't published yet. Both The Witch's Boy and Tender Morsels are elegantly crafted in playing games with readers and challenging them to recognise fairy tales they may or may not know. Dark and Grimm is no worse and perhaps better. It has a wonderful metafictional voice. Yet he admits that he hadn't read the "real" Grimms until he was gownup.

Last week I was discussing fairy tales in my undergrad class, and as usual I tried hard to shock them with some versions that they didn't know. This week, I will read to them the beginning of Dark and Grimm. So that they really wake up.

Book of the week: The Willoughbys

2011-11-12T11:15:00.001Z

The day before yesterday I finished George Elliot's Daniel Deronda which I had never read before. One of those slow reads that I have been enjoying the past few years, savouring every word; although I must admit that until the last fifty pages I wasn't certain who is getting whom, who will die and who will inherit a fortune. It is a much more complex story than Middlemarch and Mill on the Floss, that I also re-read recently. It also has the extra dimension of Judaism. Among the books stored on my Kindle I have Adam Bede and The Return of the Native, so we'll see what I choose next. With Kindle, you cannot choose the book by the cover.

Slow reading contributes to the accumulation of "real", printed books on my shelf, many of which are quick reads, and yesterday evening I read one and enjoyed it immensely. I would probably not have read it if it hadn't been chosen for our reading group. The Willoughbys, by Lois Lowry. If you are tired of dystopias, vampires, drugs, incest and other pleasures of today's children's literature, this is a book for you. Lowry had written dystopias herself, including The Giver and Gathering Blue, so I wouldn't have expected her to have written a brilliant parody on almost everything, every imaginable convention of children's literature with a glossary in the end, explaining words such as auspicious, ignominous, irascible and obsequious (just to irritate educationalists who claim that young readers hate adjectives), and a bibliography of classical books about orphans. If this isn't an example of the "both" of the eternal dilemma of children's literature - entertainment or education - nothing is. There isn't a sentence, a scene, a character in this book that isn't magnificent.

I thought I was long past getting enthusiastic over a children's book; in fact, I tell myself every now and then that I will never read another children's book again because nobody can invent anything new. But see, how wrong I am. I almost prefer The Willoughbys to Daniel Deronda (which, indientally, illustrates my old observation that general novels have the protagonist's name in the title, while children's book titles feature a group). More like this, please.

Let there be light

2011-11-11T16:08:00.000Z

Some years ago I gave myself a present. I had previously been satisfied with standard lamps and paper lampshades from IKEA; but as a part of my personal development toward a more liberal attitude to material possessions, I decided I wanted a new light for the dining room. It may make sense to mention that it was the first time ever we had a dining room, when all the children had moved out and what used to be first our bedroom and then my study could be turned into something as useless in a child-dense household as a dining room. While it was my study, I had a minimalistic office lamp. Now the environment with the oak table and the pretty carved cupboard with china display called for something better. And one day I saw it in a shop window and wondered how I could have done without it. A Tiffany lamp. It was terribly expensive, and it was a whole story to put it up, but it made all the difference. Then I decided I wanted a table lamp to match, and it took ages for the shop to order a matching one, but it added to the glory of my dining room.

I brought the lamps with me, and Staffan changed the plug on the table lamp. The ceiling lamp we couldn't use in the house we rented, so it spent several months in the storage. When we moved to Old School Lane, I carefully unpacked the lamp and was about to ask Staffan to assist me in putting it up in our new dining room when we realised that the fitting was wrong. Not only plugs, but all electric fittings in the UK are different from the rest of the world.

We had enough of other concerns, such as kitchen and bathroom, heating, plumbing and gas leaks. Every now and then we would have electicians in the house to do all kinds of jobs, and we would show them the tiffany lamp and ask whether they could change the fittings. Invariably, they confirmed that it was "doable", and invariably, they never came back and did not answer their phone. Until today. Two and a half years after we have moved in, my tiffany lamp is up, smiling happily at its little cousin on the table.

A busy week

2011-11-10T18:53:00.000Z

It so happened that this week was tightly packed with academic events. It started last Saturday with the Open Day at our research centre, in which I wasn't involved in (because our brilliant students did all the work), but attended and was excited about. The purpose of a Open Day is to recruit students. When we had an Open Day last spring, I think most people came to listen to our guest speaker, Michael Rosen; although we did recruit three masters students to the current course. This time, I believe that most people came because they were interested in the course (not that the guest speaker was less attractive). There were some people who had come from as far away as Manchester and York because they were curious about the course, and I hope we'll get their applications soon. They will find out in due time that the course is not all about cupcakes.

On Sunday, my dear friend Lydia came to visit. This was an improvisation, but I couldn't help telling her that there was a children's literature symposium on Monday and she was welcome to join. This symposium grew out of two colleagues, from Sweden and Denmark, independently of each other, wishing to come to Cambridge and bring their PhD students to meet our students. I didn't mind as long as they paid for themselves (I wish I had money to be generous!). We had long deliberations about this, and finally I suggested that both groups come at the same time. I was a bit uneasy whether our students would think it was a good idea and would be prepared to have a whole-day workshop, but they did. Good students, always ready to work harder. Then it took ages to find a date that would suit everyone, which I know from experience never ever happens, so eventually the Danish colleague said: "We are coming on November 7, and whoever likes can join us". Which was the only clever solution. Then the whole thing started expanding. When I was in Glasgow last month, my friend Jean Webb told me cheerfully: "See you soon!" How soon, I wondered. Well, she was coming to my Scandinavian symposium and bringing three students. Hmmm, thanks for telling me. I also had a guest lecture planned, since half a year ago, on November 9. Unfortunately, this speaker, Elina Druker, could not come on Monday, but with Lydia and all other people it turned out impressively international anyway. The presentations were good, the discussion stimulating, and the lunch horrible - I will never use our Faculty caterers again. But then we had a party at my place, with nice food provided by Skott Bed & Breakfast, and I think everybody was happy. Lydia earned her keep at Skott B&B by helping clean the kitchen.

But it wasn't over yet. Nina, my Danish colleague, had thought that it would be a pity, once we were there, not to have another event with senior scholars, so she organised it (I just booked a room), and it was truly a most gratifying professional experience. When do we have the luxury of sitting down for two hours, talking about profound issues of our discipline! That was a joy. Then we had a quick lunch - at the Hall, so it was a huge improvement on the previous day - and the guests left, and I had two meetings, while I was obliged to ask a student to take care of our next visitor who arrived at the time of my second meeting. When I finally got out of the meeting - I was chairing it, so I couldn't leave before it was finished - I took Elina to an exhibition by a Homerton colleague, and then to Formal Hall.

Are you still with me? Because I am not done yet. Yesterday we did some standard Cambridge sightseeing in the morning and early afternoon, and then Elina gave her fascinating talk on ABC books, and I did remember to bring nuts and olives for the post-sem refreshments, which I am myself amazed at, so much other stuff I had to have in mind.

And finally today I did the class moved from last week when I had my eye surgery. Believe it or not, I was terribly apprehensive about this class. I had only met them once, on the first day when the whole teaching team popped in and waved and said Hello, see you soon in class. I have blogged about my horror of the first encounter with a new class, and in this case they had already met my brilliant colleagues, and how could I ever be as good, and they just wouldn't turn up, and they wouldn't have prepared for the class, and they would think me boring... They did turn up, and they were well prepared and talkative and responsive, and I was really, really pleased with this class and only did half of what I had planned to do, which I always view as a successful class.

So here I am, Thursday evening of a very busy and hightly stimulating week, and I am trying not to think about all the zillions of things that had accumulated while I was having fun. I am going to take a day off tomorrow.

Nightmare

2011-11-04T11:16:00.000Z

We all have our various nightmares, and something that isn't a big deal for one can be horrifying for someone else. I am mortally scared of anything coming close to my eyes and would probably do anything under threat of torture. I cannot watch a movie in which something is done to someone's eyes, and I can hardly read about it. The most terrifying scene of anything I have seen in movies is from Star Wars in which Anakin is getting his black mask on. The shot is from his point of view, and we have a full sense that the mask is being put on us, coming closer and closer to cover our face. In my mind, this scene has inexplicably - or maybe not - connected with something my father once told me. When he was three years old, he had a complicated ear surgery and had general anaesthesia. They didn't tell him what they were going to do, and when the mask came he thought they were going to suffocate him.

I had a minor surgery on my eyelid yesterday, and apart from my general anxiety it also turned out that they put a cloth over my face, with a little hole for the eye. I was Anakin with a mask on my face. Through the hole, I could see strong white light. Something came through the hole.

It took no more than ten minutes. I didn't feel anything. Except utter horror.

Close encounters with children's writers, part 5

2011-11-02T20:35:00.000Z

The memories of my deported family brought forward other reminiscences. A couple of times in the early '90s I went to Russia for various children's literature events where I would meet children's writers from all over the world. At one of these gatherings I met Otfried Preussler. He used to be a special favourite, one of those whose books I and my friends read when we were quite grownup and loved: The Little Witch, The Little Ghost, The Little Water-Sprite. The Little Witch was in Russian called The Little Baba-Yaga. Thinking back, I am not sure whether it was a lucky translation. But the books were wonderful. Remember, we didn't have access to much of the Western children's literature, so the many stories about nice witches and scared ghosts were not known to us, therefore Preussler's books felt so different and fresh, and they were humorous and witty and lacked the didacticism we were fed up with. The little Baba-Yaga was a bit like Pippi Longstocking, whom we didn't know either before we were grownup. We used to read the books aloud for each other.

As a grownup, I certainly prefer The Satanic Mill, but that's another story.

Imagine how thrilled I was to meet this great writer. Children's literature gatherings are always lively social events, so there were long dinners with plenty of strong beverages, and at some point I was sitting beside Preussler who started talking Russian to me. Perfect Russian. He had learned it in a Russian POW camp. To that, I could only reply by telling the story of my German family, stating that there was presumably little difference between POW camps and labour camps for deported Germans.

After which we started singing German songs. First children's songs, crying and laughing in turns. But after another shot of vodka, we went over to dirty songs. That a nice well-behaved Russian girl resident in Sweden knew German dirty songs might have come as a surprise, but by that time nothing mattered beside our common cultural heritage.

Simple joys

2011-10-30T20:13:00.001Z

Julia and her, I always want to say boyfriend, but he is actually her husband, came to visit for two days. Or rather Pontus came for two days, and she joined him 24 hours later. They were supposed to come together, but she was invited to participate in a fancy TV show, who wanted her so much that they paid her airfare, which must have been atrocious two days in advance. We enjoyed the company of our son-in-law for a whole day. Usually Julia does all the talking, so this time I felt I got to know him better. It also coincided with our new fireplace which we inaugurated in the evening. Nothing like a good fire to get a conversation going.

Then Staffan and Pontus went to Stansted to pick up Julia, but it was very late and I went to bed, so I saw her first in the morning. I hadn't met her since her wedding. She hasn't changed much, or perhaps she is still more happy and harmonious.

We hadn't planned any activities, but I suggested that we might go and see the Vermeer exhibition at Fitzwilliam, and if they hadn't seen the Tintin movie, I could perhaps be persuaded. We had a long lazy discussion during the prolonged breakfast and decided that what we really wanted to do was some serious shopping. They are both dedicated antique shoppers and great fun to shop with. After some deliberations we agreed on Ely, because it has a regular flea and craft market on Saturdays, a street of charity shops, a street of antique shops and three floors of antiques in an old factory building. So for once, I was in Ely and didn't go to the cathedral, except for tea, because at my favourite teashop, The Fire Engine, lunch was over and tea didn't even contemplate starting yet (this sounds like a quote from Winnie-the-Pooh, and it is meant to).

We began with the market because it usually closes by two, and the first thing Julia saw were two tea cups from the Botanic Garden series, that I had been looking for, since Staffan had recently broken one just as he had developed a particular fondness of them. So I bought those, and as I had paid Julia also saw a matching teabag saucer, which I bought, and some other items I didn't. Then we went on browsing, and my favourite stand with keyrings and other trash wasn't there, and I lost them, but finally found them at the stand with Swedish glasswear, in a vivid discussion with the seller on the various qualities of Swedish glass design. They bought two candlesticks and got £2 discount for the conversation.

Then we combed through the charity shops which didn't yield anything this time, and through some antique shops, where I found a matching plastic armchair for my 1:24 scale roombox at the incredible price of £1. The shopkeeper had no idea what I was talking about when I mentioned 1:24. It must have been an unusual item among her china shepherdesses and silver spoons.

But the serious shopping was still waiting, and we had our cream tea in the Cathedral teashop, to keep us going. It wasn't anywhere in the vicinity of The Fire Engine, but you cannot have everything.

Now, I own more things than I will ever need, and I left so many things behind when we moved from Sweden that it feels to start gathering things again, but there is one object that I have coveted for a long time: nesting tables. There are usually dozens of sets in antique shops, but so far I hadn't seen any that I definitely liked and that would fit with the rest of my interior. I had told the kids that I was looking for nesting tables, so they were not at least impressed when I pointed to a set which was just the one I wanted. Mind, I had been looking for the last three years. They were searching for barometers and old tools, but eventually bought a magazine rack (yes, they managed to fit it into their suitcase), a Chinese abacus and a fancy handbag. As I say, it's fun shopping with them. The abacus will look fabulous beside the iPad.

Then we went home and celebrated the purchases drinking wine on the patio. It was a wonderful warm arfternoon, still light, since we hadn't yet switched to winter time. They left this morning. We hadn't seen the exhibition or done any other intellectual stuff.

Professional and personal

2011-10-30T09:16:00.000Z

Last week, at a formal dinner in Homerton I met a group of colleagues from Kazakhstan. Most people won't even know where it is. Our Faculty is running a project with Kazakhstan to enlighten this poor primitive nation. At least that's what their idiom suggests: "We will teach them..." (rather than, for instance, " we will exchange experience"). But this is another story.

A Cambridge colleague introduced me, also suggesting that I spoke Russian. Another blunder: they do have a language of their own in Kazakhstan, apart from speaking Russian and English and Turkish and possibly some other language. In fact, their English was excellent. But since my Russian was mentioned, subsequent questions were inevitable, and I had to admit that I was born in Moscow, and yes, I have been to Kazakhstan, more precisely to Qustanai, and the reason was that my familty was deported there. The Cambridge colleagues stared in horror. The Kazakh colleagues got agitated. What sort of deportees? (there were dozens of nationalities among them). Germans? Oh we love Germans, they are so nice, and they did so much for our education and culture, opened schools and theatres and were so friendly. Any relatives left? No, I had to say, everybody repatriated to Germany in the '90s. Kazakh colleague: Yes, we miss them. In my school, I was the only Kazakh pupil, all the rest we Germans.

The Cambridge colleagues grew more and more perplexed. Not only was their knowledge of geography insufficient, but their knowledge of 20th century history outside the UK was non-existent. I explained briefly, without any graphic details. They stared at me with awe. I doubt that they understood.

Books about books

2011-10-15T19:45:00.000+01:00

I have just returned from a workshop in Glasgow, the first of a series, with the title "Reading fictions". The title is a bit misleading, but the subject was children's books in which a book or several books or reading in general play a significant role. One of the participants claimed that all children's books (and perhaps all books) are about the power and joy of reading, in which case there isn't much to discuss. But we tried to be more specific than that, to see how books are introduced within other books, and what readers can make out of it. There were many interesting things that we identified, for instance, the idea of books and reading as something forbidden, something to hide from others. I won't go into detail because it was just a very preliminary discussion, but, as with many similar focused topics, once you have started searching for them in literature you cannot help finding them everywhere. A participant pointed out that we hardly remembered Richmal Crompton's William as an avid reader, whereupon she read a longish quote about William hiding in the attic with his favourite snacks and a book. My own reflection is that we hardly remember Tom Sawyer as an avid reader, but all the games he plays with his friends are based on books.

Among the books we discussed yesterday was The Book Thief, quite a predictable example when you think of it. Some of my favourite examples are:

The neverending story, by Michael Ende. The protagonist steals a book from a bookshop and reads it until he is literally drawn into the story.

Seven-day magic, by Edward Eager. The children take a book from a library and it turns out to be magic, however for a week only since they must return it to the library.

Elidor, by Alan Garner. The children find a magical book in which they are portrayed. (Garner also has The Stone Book)

The dark is rising, by Susan Cooper. Another magical book.

Not to forget Harry Potter and all the important books encountered there - and I guess we don't think of Harry as an avid reader.

There are scores of books in which other books are mentioned or alluded to, and I have always wondered (and occasionally written about) whether authors are trying to legitimise their own position ("I am in good company"), or guide the readers ("That's the way you should understand my story - it is based on..."), or invite readers to share their own superiority ("Have you read and recognised all titles mentioned?"). All writers do this, from Bridge to Terabithia to Twilight. Sometimes they mention "the assistant pigkeeper", and if you get the allusion, good for you, and if not - you still know it must be a book. Books that Jerusha Abbot realises she has not read. The book that the three March sisters use to set up their own trials.

And also characters who are illiterate and still happy. Pippi Longstocking has all kinds of exciting things in her house, but not a single book. Charlie Bucket has no books. Mary Lennox receives book parcels, but remains indifferent and prefers to be in the garden. The Moomins have no books (although Moomnpappa writes one). What are the authors trying to tell us? I cannot imagine that Astrid Lindgren was against literacy.

long long time ago in another life

2011-10-13T20:10:00.000+01:00

I learned this morning that a very good friend from my pre-previous life had died. Apparently, he was celebrating his 65th birthday with a group of former fellow students, fell over the stairs while leaving the restaurant and died instantly. While this is the kind of death I envy, it is still very sad, and he could have lived many years yet. Although I am not sure he really wanted to.

He was my first husband's best friend, and they were highly ceremonial toward each other, as part of the game, calling each other "milord" and such. They had long philosophical conversations, and my husband explained to me that as a woman I would never ever comprehend the depth of their minds. Yet when we divorced, Alik remained my friend and gladly shared his mind with me. We attempted to have a relationship, stated it wouldn't work and decided that being good friends was more gratifying. He had an exquisite taste. Back in the old days in Moscow when there was little choice in flowers he would bring me iris and cyclamen (had orchids been available I am sure they would be his favourite). He managed to find the most incredible wines and the most exotic cake. He found the only place in Moscow where they served hot chocolate. And he liked skating - we would go skating every now and then, and I have vivid memories of snowflakes dancing in the light of coloured lamps over the skating rink. Grown-up people - we loved it. He would come to my birthday parties and occasionally New Year parties, but he preferred to meet me alone, over a good homemade meal and a bottle of wine.

When I moved to Sweden, the first ten years I was incredibly stupid and invited all friends to come and see me at once. It was crowded, chaotic and never allowed any time to talk. So eventually I learned to see friends one at a time, portioning out my precious hours in Moscow, inevitably favouring some over others. Alik lived in a far-away suburb, it was an adventure to get there, and we had a tendency to sit up late, so I would often stay overnight. He had become a grumpy old bachelor, complaining over the world, over people, and his own miserable life. He would prepare a meal, and after the meal he would smoke a pipe. We would catch up on the past years' experience. I know it's a banal simile, but it was like a time bubble.

Knowing his taste for good food, I tried to invite him to the newly emerging gourmet restaurants in Moscow. He said he couldn't afford to invite me and would never accept that a woman paid for his meal. But he appreciated good tobacco that I brought from Sweden.

I also tried to invite him to visit me in Stockholm, and he said he didn't want to come as a poor relative. He had only been abroad once, in Belgium.

By the way, he was an outstanding philosopher and sociologist. He worked at the Institute for International Working-class Movement, which was, in those old days, the hub for the best philosophers in Russia.

At my father's funeral, after a couple of glasses he tried to explain to those present that they underestimated my father who was the greatest intellectual he had ever met.

During my last visit to Moscow, for my school reunion, I didn't tell anyone that I was there, because I just couldn't cope with it, but I called Alik, told him that I would be in Moscow for a day and a half and wondered whether he was free to see me. We had a four-hour-long lunch in a Persian restaurant. He paid the bill.

Honestly, just a couple of days ago I told myself that I should call Alik to see how he was. He didn't use email or still less facebook, so we were out of touch.

And now it's too late.

Close encounters with children's writers, part 4

2011-10-10T22:09:00.000+01:00

I have been extensively quoted in The New Yorker. I am very proud of it. I would have been proud of being quoted in The New Yorker on any occasion, but I am honoured to be mentioned as Norton Juster's choice of comment on The Phantom Tollbooth. I am certainly in good company in this anniversaty edition - just look at the names mentioned as "esteemed authors, educators, and artists" (I guess I qualify as an educator for this occasion).

Norton has been a very good friend for many years now, which is a huge privilege, and the story of our friendship is worth telling. When I lived in Amherst, Massachussets, in 1993, I heard from my university colleagues, who knew I was one of those crazy child lit people, that Amherst was famous for its children's authors, and among the many great names there was Norton Juster. I had read The Phantom Tollbooth many years before, in Russia, and I had even tried to translate it. So I thought maybe I could try to meet the author. Amherst authors were easily approachable and appeared on many social and academic occasions, but I was told that Mr Juster was a bit of an hermit. He only lived three blocks from my university appartment, but after this warning, I really didn't want to hang outside his house. I wrote him a letter, explaining who I was and why I'd like to meet him. He phoned me very soon and invited me to come over to his place, "after dinner", a transparent hint about the brevity of the granted interview.

I went over, at about eight, and suddenly, as it sometimes happens, it was past midnight, and we hadn't yet told each other everything we had to tell, so Norton said: "Next time you must come for dinner". And I did, and at that dinner I also met Eric Carle, another local author; and I went over several times, for dinners and coffees and teas. When I was leaving, I called Norton to say goodbye, which made him really anxious. "You must come over one last time, he said, I must give you my special watermelon jam to take home!"

Since then, I have visited Norton several times in Amherst; we also met in San Diego when we lived there, and some years ago Norton and his wife Jeanne visited Stockholm. Staffan took them to see a famous 13th century church; Norton took a glance at it and said: "That's not 13th century". With authority - he is an architect. Although when they had walked around a bit, he had to admit that some parts of the church were indeed 13th century. Staffan's honour was saved.

Never have I felt so lonely...

2011-10-06T20:07:00.001+01:00

In my diary for today I have a pink post-it with an arrow pointed to noon, saying "Nobel prize". At noon I rolled out of a three-hour long meeting, running to the dining hall to grab some lunch before the next meeting, back-to-back with a third meeting, and then a private and confidential conversation with a colleague, and then a student coming in for a chat, and after he was gone I saw the pink post-it. It was almost half past six, empty corridor and no one to shout to: "Yes!". Except for Mary Anne in the office next door, bless her! - I most humbly asked her to share my joy and have a sip of wine.

If Staffan had been at home, he would have met me with champagne and the best cut-glass crockery (and he would have probably phoned and emailed me fifteen times by now). But he is in the middle of the Baltic Sea, and I assume that someone on that boat listened to the radio, and the whole boat has been celebrating ever since.

Of course Miso is an incredibly intelligent cat, but I am not sure she appreciates poetry. So I will now go to bed and read Tomas Tranströmer, the Nobel Prize winner, to myself.

Reflections on solitude

2011-10-04T21:40:00.000+01:00

For several months this old blog post has been steadily on the list of five most visited pages. I wonder why. It is a most inconspicuous, unspectacular blog post without even a punchline. It has a boring tag that doesn't say anything. It follows upon another blog post in which I explain the difference between loneliness and solitude, and which has no visitors at all.

Desert island picturebooks

2011-10-04T21:07:00.002+01:00

A new challenge from Philip Nel, and the first element of the challenge is spelling. (For the unitiated, it is a neverending battle).

Like Philip, I know "Top ten" etc is highly subjective; in fact, I am involved in a research project on exactly this matter, but that's another story. I think I must also make a difference between books that I cannot live without (desert island books) and books that I would recommend to a novice. I can live without Peter Rabbit, but I wouldn't omit it from a reading list.

Actually, I am not sure I would take picturebooks to a desert island. They are too short. I'd take ten books of 800 pages each. (A friend once asked, when we were playing this game, whether Collected Works of Shakespeare counted as one book).

However, if I were to choose ten indispensible picturbooks (in fact, I did once choose ten indispensible picturebooks, in my book on picturebooks, but it was ten years ago, and books ahv changed and I have changed), there wouldn't be a single common denominator with Philip's books - so that we can swim from island to island and exchange, making it twenty between ourselves.

Here we go.

1. Where the Wild Things Are, Maurice Sendak. The picturebook. Predictable, I know, but I cannot imagine how you can talk about picturebooks without starting there. Every time I re-read it, I find something new. Every time I approach it with a new tool, it just opens into new dimensions. In other words, if I am only allowed one picturebook on my island, that's it.

2. The Tunnel, Anthony Browne. Everything you want from a picturebook is there: simple story and complex narrative, clever and emotional, all kinds of complex relationships, incredibly rich imagery, irony and self-irony. Profound book.

3. Pancakes for Findus, Sven Nordqvist. It's my favourite Findus and Pettson book, but all of them are equally brilliant. Witty, clever, rich in details, warm, but never losing the complexity of relationships.

4. Little Blue and Little Yellow, Leo Lionni. Amazing what you can do with characters who do not even have faces.

5, Granpa, John Burningham. Piercing story in which words stop when they no longer can express the feelings.

6. The Red Tree, Shaun Tan. Could be The Lost Thing too, but The Red Tree is deeper in meaning, emotional appeal and visual language.

7. Who will comfort Toffle? Tove Jansson. Again, a hard choice between her books, but this is my favourite. Brilliant visual language, and such a magnificent story.

8. Me and my Cat, Satoshi Kitamura. Just to be original - everybody else will choose Lily Takes a Walk. Excellent illustration of how words and images work together.

9. Visit of Little Death, Kitty Crowther. In tough competition, the best picturebook about death. Even better than Granpa.

10. OK, I give in. The Cat in the Hat. Loved it long before I knew what a picturebook was.

Welcome to my island.

And if you want to know more about my favourite books, visit my bookshelf.

Banned books, revisited

2011-10-02T10:11:00.000+01:00

It's the last day of Banned Books Week, and I have once again been thinking about censorship. I am against all kinds of censorship, in any form, yet cancelling an author's school visit because some stupid parent thinks one of her books is offensive is somewhat different from banning 90% of world literature on loose grounds.

In the country where I was born, the list of banned books would fill a library in itself. Just some examples:

The Bible was banned because "religion is the opium of the people" (Marx). All other religious books were banned for the same reason. All books by Western philosophers not featured in Lenin's article "Three sources and three constituents of Marxism" were banned. All books by Russian philosophers who did not subscribe to Marxism were banned.

All books by Russian emigrees were banned because they were enemies of the people. All books by relatives of the emigrees were banned. All books by Russian writers repressed by the regime were banned. The Russian literary martyrology - writers murdered, sent to labour camps, famished to death - carries at least 2,500 names, whose only crime was their words. All books by relatives of the repressed were banned. All books by people who protested against repressions were banned. All books that even vaguely alluded to the Great Terror were banned. All books that even vaguely expressed sympathy with characters representing the opponents of communism were banned. All books by the Nobel Prize winner Joseph Brodsky were banned because his country had sent him to exile.

All foreign books that did not portray class struggle were banned. Ulysses and Remembrance of Things Past were banned bacause they did not portray the inhuman conditions of the working class under capitalism. For whom the Bell Tolls was banned because it portrayed the Spanish civil war that did not exist according to Soviet history books. All books by foreign writers who had made the tiniest utterance questioning the country of the victorious communism were banned. All books that did not show life as it should be according to the communist worldview were banned.

All books that had the slightest allusion to human reproduction were banned. That doesn't leave much of world literature.

Still, I repeat: I am firmly against ALL forms of censorship. Including cancelling a school visit.

Someone to remember

2011-10-01T20:13:00.000+01:00

I am reading a biography of a person whom I admire and whom I have had the privilege of knowing. Many, many years ago in my previous life, Staffan and I were interpreting at a meeting between Russian and Nordic theatre people. We were doing it as a favour to colleagues, without payment, and as anyone who has ever interpreted knows, it is easier to interpet from your mother tongue to a foreign language, so I was interpreting from Russian into Swedish, and Staffan from Swedish into Russian. After a while, a formidable woman in her sixties interrupted quite rudely: "Why don't you do it the other way round?" I was deeply offended, and Staffan phoned the culprit the day after and gave her third degree. This was how we first met the legendary Vivica Bandler. The result of the encounter was that Staffan and Vivica wrote a musical together. I was rather jealous of Vivica at the time because I didn't see much of Staffan for weeks, and he seemed to be having fun. I was consulted about a couple of Russian details that Vivica dismissed as theatrically insignificant.

We were both invited to Vivica's seventieth birthday in Helsinki, which was a parade of cultural celebrities. It started with drinks in the theatre where she had been director and producer, continuied with a splendid dinner in her magnificent mansion, and when Staffan and I, around 2 am, prepared to leave, Vivica said: "So early? We are going back to the theatre for nibbles!"

A couple of years later Vivica called me and asked whether I would like to translate a play. As her biographer points out - a well-known fact to all who have ever met her - "nobody could say no to her on the phone". She was organising a Finnish theatre festival in Moscow, and she wanted one play to be done in Russian, with two actors of Russian ancestry. The play guested Stockholm, and Vivica took me to see it twice before I started the translation. It was a challenge, because the actors' Russian was nursery talk, while the play used modern, colloquial, not to say explicit idiom which they found totally alien.

We flew to Moscow, me joining them in Helsinki. Nobody met us when we emerged through passport control and customs. Vivica was angry. In fact she was furious. Vivica furious was a sight. An hour later, she was paged. Our hosts were waiting for her in the VIP room. I didn't see much of her during the festival week because she was a Very Important Guest and I was just a translator (as well as a prompter, since the actors kept losing their swearwords). Yet it was fun to be part of her entourage. At one point, she was asked whether she had been to Russia before. "Yes, she said, in 1943". The hosts were awed. "During the war?" "Yes, Vivica confirmed, when little Finland tried to invade the Soviet Union". This was Vivica's typical sarcasm, possibly lost on the hosts. She had served in women's auxilliary forces at the front.

Regrettably, after that we lost touch and only met occasionally. It was with deep sorrow Staffan and I read about her death in 2004. The biography I am reading brings back many details I have heard and some that I have witnessed about this truly remarkable person.

If you wonder why you would bother about a stranger, many people know her well as Vifslan (Bob in English) in Tove Jansson's Moomin books.

Five hundred silly texts

2011-10-01T18:46:00.000+01:00

This is my five-hundredth blog post. To commemorate it, I have changed the design. I feel very ambivalent toward this change. I have got used to my page, plain and dull, exactly the way Julia created it three years ago, with a cheerful comment: "You can change it later". Well, after three years, I have.

I don't quite understand why people keep changing their profile pictures on Facebook, especially when they set in pictures of their children, cats or favourite cakes. A picture should reasonably show what you look like. I am terribly conventional. Anyway, the new pucture is taken by Elise Walck, and it is the best picture anyone has taken of me in many, many years. I am one of those people who always turn out horrid in pictures, yawning, gaping, cross-eyed, unkempt. But this picture shows what I really look like. I think.

I have stopped blogging a couple of times, but there was always someone who encouraged me to go on. So I go on. Watch out for blog post number 501.

Looking for roots

2011-09-25T11:16:00.001+01:00

I have just visited my historical Heimat. The branch of my family that I know best and that I have always identified with came from Schwabia. We know nothing about them; they could have been peasants, wine mechants or craftsmen. Maybe they lived in one of these magnificent houses. Most likely, not. My great-great-great-great-great-grandfather was born in Danzig, now Gdansk, in 1753. What his parents did in Gdansk is unknown. Perhaps they moved to seek their fortune; perhaps the father was the youngest son who did not inherit his father's business. We know that this ancestor of mine, Paul Tietz, came to Russia in 1788, on foot and with a violin as his only possession. (the latter is perhaps a family legend, but a later ancestor mentioned the violin in his memoirs, so somewhere it did exist). Paul was one among many Germans on their way to the Holy Land. Somehow they got stuck in Northern Caucasus and settled there, becoming farmers, millers, and wine merchants. My great-great-grandfather - and this is no longer a legend - owned a mill and quite a lot of land. My great-grandfather, the youngest brother of three... it would be termpting to say that he inherited a cat and eventually married a princess, but the three brothers were in full agreement and worked the mill togehther, although my great-grandfather also loved arts and supported young artists and musicians. He didn't marry a princess, but my great-grandmother, the daughter of another German settler.

I won't dwell on what happened to them after the Catastrophe; instead I'll go back to Tubingen where I should have felt that I belonged. I didn't. If I had known more I might have gone to the city museum; I might have visited archives; I should have looked for headstones in the cemetery.

I envy people who can with confidence say: "This is where I come from". People from the USA, Canada, Australia, who go Europe to find places where their roots are. People in Sweden who can idenitify the little village where the parish church books have dates of births, weddings and funerals. People whose families lived in the same place for generation after generation.

My family, this branch that I feel I come from, were nomads. I can trace their wanderings through Europe, Russia, Transcaucasus, Middle East. Some ended up in Australia. Today, most of their descendants have returned to Germany, after more than two hundred years. They have found their roots.

What is a book without words, Alice thought

2011-09-23T17:37:00.000+01:00

In conference sessions today, I learned about wordless picturebooks, almost wordless picturebooks and quasi-wordless picturebooks.

I am at a conference on picturebooks, so I am not surprised that people show tons of pictures. Some try to show three hundred pictures in thirty minutes. It's a relief to hear a paper not accompanied by a single image. A pictureless paper. A paper containing words. As a compromise, an almost pictureless paper, with plenty of good, solid words.

I find it a bit of a problem with picturebook conferences. Of course a picture says more than a thousand words, but I am not sure that showing three hundred pictures can substitute for well-posed scholarly argument. At a conference on musicology, would people play music and let it speak for itself? Or at a film conference, show a movie? Maybe that's exactly what they do. I don't know how to deal with it. We are all passionate about our material and eager to share our favourites and new discoveries with our colleagues. But again, had it been a poetry conference, would any of us simply recite poems? (as a matter of fact, yes, some of us would).

I am fascinated by the scores of images I've seen these days, but as I return to my room and try to take a few notes for future contemplation I cannot help feeling that I have been to a huge exhibition with brief catalogue entries. It is very tempting to hide behind pictures, and I am sure I am doing it myself.

Professional (and inevitably personal) memories

2011-09-17T09:40:00.001+01:00

I have a visitor this weekend who brings a long chain of memories. We met first time at the IRSCL conference in Paris in 1991, which is, it occurs to me now, exactly twenty years ago. I had read the paper, which was circulated in advance, and was interested in the topic and made a mental note that I must go and listen to this paper and get to know the person, who also was from a university where I knew somebody (a good conversation opener: "You must know XX...") By that time I was almost a veteran of IRSCL, was running for the Board and knew quite a few people. It was that kind of conference I strongly dislike, where people stay in different hotels, the sessions are at two venues, and there are no organised meals. One day some people of the old Board and the incoming Board we sitting in a pavement cafe at lunchtime, and I saw this colleague walking past with the expression on her face that I recognised from my own previous experience: Here I am, I don't know anybody, nobody knows me, everybody knows everybody else, and they all go out for lunch together while I am all on my own... So of course I called and invited her to join us. We have been good friends ever since.

In fact, two years later, when I was running for President and was looking around for new Board members I told myself: This is a person I think I could work with. The election committee asked her, and she said yes. So we worked close together on the Board, which implied Board meeeting twice a year here and there and everywhere over the globe, including Stockholm, Pretoria, San Diego and York, UK; and of course we also met at other conventions, and then worked within the Nordic Network, and - now I cannot keep it anonymous anymore, we wrote a book together. But this is another story.

I have already written about my separation anxiety from IRSCL, but these days I am overwhelmed by the memories, and I hope the present IRSCL Board has just a much fun as we had all those years ago in the Ice Age.

Shakespeare, Discworld and other old friends

2011-09-10T19:27:00.001+01:00

This weekend I am attending a conference on Shakespeare. Shakespeare is not my primary research object, and I wouldn't have gone to this conference if it had been elsewhere, but since it is on my own campus I am attending it and even giving a paper. The theme of the conference is "Sources and Adaptations" which can include absolutely anything. However, in one discussion we agreed it was quite remarkable that when we say "Shakespeare adaptations" we mean adaptations of Shakespeare's texts by later writers or performers, but not Shakespeare's adaptations of previous work, aka pinching.

The session in which this discussion occurred was on Terry Pratchett's Discworld. It was great. The two plenaries I have attended were fabulous, one by Michael Rosen, the other by the Poet Laureate Carol Ann Duffy. I didn't go to academic plenaries. I didn't go to many other sessions either. It is tempting, when you are on your own campus, to sneak away to your office and mark some theses that have miraculously invaded my pigeonhole again.

For obvious reasons I don't know many people at this conference, and I can once again state that the gender balance is different from children's literature conferences. I made some acquaintances at the conference dinner yesterday. I asked one of them if she were a Shakespeare scholar. No, she said, she just needed a reason to come to Cambridge. She had found some soap opera with a balcony scene.

My paper is in one of seven parallel sessions, and the audience is small. Just before we start, a very professiorial-looking man enters the room and says, quite audibly, to the other presenter: "I don't care about the first paper, but I'll come and listen to you". Very encouraging. If I were the moderator, I would have switched the order of papers, just for spite (I did it once when I moderated a session, to prevent people from coming and going). At the very end of the discussion, someone in the audience asks: "By the way, what is children's literature? Is it books with simple language?"

Nobody at the conference seems to have heard of the book Shakespeare's Brain.

Close encounters with children's writers, part 3

2011-09-09T23:31:00.000+01:00

In 1991 I was spending three weeks as a guest lecturer at the University of Reading. My good friend and colleague Tony Watkins mentioned, among many other exciting things going on, that there was a writer in residence, "not a very famous one, but he has written some good historical novels". Sadly, I had to leave in the middle of my visit due to family circumstances, so I never got to meet the historical novelist, who, some years later, became famous for something else.

In February 2005, the Swedish Embassy in London gave a reception for all British nominees for the Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award. The embassy employees were perplexed. "What is it about children's literature? We invited these people, and they all came!" Yes, they all came, Diana Wynne Jones and Shirley Hughes and John Burningham and Philip Pullman and all cream of the cream of British children's literature. They all said it was a great honour to have been nominated. I shook hands with them, I said how delighted I was to meet them. I was delighted to meet them. I was especially delighted to meet someone I knew was getting the award, but of course I wasn't allowed even to hint. Yet I did. I said: "I hope to see you in Stockholm soon". I did, three months later, at the award ceremony.

Yesterday, at the Philippa Pearce memorial lecture, I asked my dear friend Morag for a special privilege: could she ask the Author to sign a book for my granddaughter. There was a signing session, but since my book was pre-signed, I jumped the line to collect it and say a quick thank you. The Author looked up from the piles of books he was signing and said: "Good to see you. Was it in Stockholm I saw you last?" "No, I said, it was in Oxford. Also known as the Other Place". The Author smiled.

Q&A

2011-09-06T17:53:00.000+01:00

Pinched from my daughter's blog, pinched from someone else. Some of the questions are obviously asked – and supposed to be answered – by a very young person, but most of them feel quite relevant. So here we go:
Do you normally arrive on time?
Yes, usually well ahead of time.
Are you in good shape?
Not really, haven't been to a gym for ages, but work regularly in the garden if it counts
When did you last have your picture taken?
At a farewell party with our visiting scholars
How do you feel right now?
Hungry, looking forward to dinner
Most common colour of your clothes?
Black
Can you cook?
Yes, and love it. But my husband does most of the cooking
What are you studying right now
Cognitive science, on post-professorial level
Are photos of you any good?
No!
When and why did you cry last time?
At my daughter's wedding, for obvious reasons
Was it embarrassing to answer the previous question?
Not at all
Did you have a good evening yesterday?
Yes, after a nice dinner I spent an hour and a half talking to my childhood friend on the phone (I mean on the phone, landline, Stone Age-wise)
Your favourite morning beverage?
Freshly pressed orange juice
Are you useful?
I think so
Did you ever have a job?
That's a tricky one; but I think, yes, quite a few times
Are you shy?
I have several social phobias, which is a more clinical way of saying "shy"
When did you get up this morning?
Half past seven
What TV game did you play last?
Machinarium, but perhaps it's a computer game, not a TV game
Which TV game is your favourite?
Actually, I don't play games
How much does it take you to get drunk?
Depends on how you define “drunk”
Have you ever been sick in public?
Yes, but not because I was drunk, but because I was motion-sick.
I sleep...
...with my window open
What was the most recent thing you said?
“I'll just check my email...”
Did you go to a festival last summer?
Yes, Shakespeare festival.
Who do you phone when you are angry or upset?
My husband
What would you need right now?
A seminar with my graduate students
Have you got pretty shoes?
I only wear Ecco shoes, and believe me or not, some of them are pretty
What was the first thing you said this morning?
“No!” (as a reply to my husband's “Good morning”)
Did you sleep in your own bed last night?
Yes. I am not going to a conference for another two weeks
Did anyone else sleep in your bed last night?
My husband and my cat
Have you got a driving licence?
Yes, since twenty-five years (got it late). Once also had a Californian licence, but it has expired
Are you alone now?
No, I have my husband, my cat, my flowers and a greenfinch at the bird feeder
What are you looking forward to this week?
A talk by Philip Pullman

Three years in the system

2011-09-01T18:39:00.000+01:00

Today is exactly three years since I started my employment in Cambridge. This is what I wrote three years ago. I do remember the feeling of being new, but it is strange to think back to the time when everything was new. I am still the new girl at school though; I am sure if you asked my colleagues how long I've been around they'd say, a year maybe. There are some people who were employed after me, but not many, because I had just about squeezed in before all hires stopped. There are dozens of people who have left and will be leaving by the end of this month. Nobody is replaced so everybody will have to work harder. We have a new Head of Faculty. We are getting a new Faculty Secretary. Fortunately, I can so far keep my own secretary who is amazing.

I am looking forward to the new academic year. My first PhD student is in her last year. I am getting three or four new PhD students. I am involved in dozens of committees and working groups, but I now can say no to still more committees or choose the most interesting or the least boring committees. I have learned the jargon - or so I think. At least I know that a paper is a course and an essay is a paper.

I am not in my office today because, although I am the new girl, I am a grownup girl and know that I don't have to be in my office all the time.

A veteran's memories

2011-08-31T15:35:00.000+01:00

I have just learned that my colleague and blog chum, the autodidact Philip Nel is replacing Jack Zipes as the editor of the Routledge series in children's literature. I am sorry that Jack is leaving, but I do understand him. I am happy Philip has been offered the job and taken it - hope he knows what he is doing. This is a big event in the international children's literature community, and it brings back memories since I was involved with the series from start, once upon a time, before the dawn of time.

I had just finished a draft for a book in Swedish, the first big work after my PhD, summing up all my post-doc endeavours. I offered the ms to the series published by the Swedish Institute for Children's Books, because it was the obvious place to offer it to, and they had also published my thesis as a book. They do not publish on their own, but in collaboration with different Swedish publishers, but most children's lit scholarship appears in this series. So I sent the draft to the editor, and I also presented it at an open research seminar in my department. The seminar participants didn't say much, and neither did the editor, but from the notes on the draft I got back it was clear that my research was utter rubbish and wasn't even remotedly publishable. It was quite discouraging, especially since some bits of it had already been published as articles. I tried to offer the ms to some Swedish publishers without including it in the series, and they all said they couldn't, because it was only by being part of the series that a book had a chance to be adopted as a course textbook. (Which was nonsense; academic books are very seldom adopted as textbooks, and my proposed book was not meant to be a textbook).

Anyway, I saw an announcement in Children's Literature Association Quarterly that Jack Zipes was starting a series on children's literature at Garland. Jack Zipes was a Famous Scholar, and I was an anonymous postdoc from an obscure country, but I wrote to him immediately (you see, it was in Stone Age, when you actually wrote letters on paper and sent them in envelopes with stamps on) with my book proposal, and he got back saying that yes, he was interested. It so happened that I had a Fulbright grant at UMass, Amherst, and while I was there I was invited to give a talk at the Kerlan Collections, University of Minnesota, which was Jack Zipes's place. I wrote to him, on paper, etc, seeking an appointment, and he took me out for lunch. He said he liked my proposal, and how long did I think it would take me to finish the project. I explained that I was on a Fulbright with a tolerable amount of teaching and would start the next day, and I actually had a full draft in Swedish. I also mentioned that since English wasn't my native tongue I'd make sure I had a native reader before I submitted the draft. "Well, I am not going to edit your draft for you", said Jack cheerfully as ever. So we parted, and in due time my book appeared as the very first volume in the series. It is still quoted a lot, although I think I have written several better books since then.

A few years later I met Jack at a conference where he was a star, and I am always reluctant to display my familiarity with stars so I waved to Jack from a distance, but he came closer, saying: "It's a long time since you've contributed a book to my series". What do you say to this? I said: "I am working on picturebooks, will you be interested?" "I will, he said, I will take anything you have written". Now, you don't hear THAT every day; I had to refrain from covering Jack with kisses. So this is how the picturebook volume appeared in the series.

By which time, I had got involved with another publisher because they brought out the series for Children's Literature Association, and I was commissioned to do a book for them. Scarecrow was a good publisher to work with, and I published four books with them, three single-authored and one co-edited. But then something happened, perhaps they changed the acquisition editor; so when I sent in the next proposal they never got back, and suddenly I remembered that unforgettable: "I'll take anything you have written".(Meanwhile, Jack had taken a lot of stuff I had written for his fabulous encyclopedias). So I sent in a proposal with three finished chapters, and the book was out within a year.

There is nothing to boost your creativity like a publisher's contract. But an editor's enthusiasm cannot be overestimated. Thank you, Jack, for all your support - and I know I share my gratitude with many colleagues all over the world.

So Philip has a lot to live up to. But I hope he will be as supportive and generous toward younger colleagues as Jack has been toward me.

One ordinary day

2011-08-30T18:56:00.000+01:00

Yesterday was a bank holiday, and today I realised that summer is over because work-related emails have started arriving: meetings, inductions, requests to join committees and other exciting business. Note that we are still five weeks before classes start, but these reminders bring me back to earth from my ivory tower.

I stated in the beginning of this month that I had just about embarked on my so-called research period that unitiated people call summer holidays. Although I have done some of my own work, today is a very good example of what a very ordinary day during your holiday/research period may be like. I was fully determined to work on my own stuff this morning, and - what a blessing! - there was an interruption in our internet connection, meaning that I did start working on my own stuff and probably wrote a page or two before the connection was back, and then it all began. There was an urgent thing to do on that edited volume (on which I spent the whole day yesterday, bank holiday or not, and no more comment), and I was on the phone with my co-editor for half an hour, then fixed the bibliography, and by the time I made myself a cup of coffee I knew that my inspiration was gone.

That's the big problem - my big problem, but I know I share it with other people. I used to be able to work an hour here and an hour there, especially when the kids were small; I used to be able to work late. I cannot do it anymore, and if I am distracted mid-morning, the day is lost. So I didn't even try. Instead, I went first through my list of urgent things to do and then through my emails looking for - well, urgent things to do. One email was about a copy-edited text for an article, not due until mid-September, but just as well to get rid of it. That took the rest of the morning. It was quite pleasant because I wrote this article some time ago and still like it. In fact, like it very much. So much I wish I had written it, if you see what I mean.

The list of urgent matters reminded me of another deadline that I had completely forgotten because it was so far away once, but not anymore. This article was more or less finished, but as soon as I consulted the stylesheet I realised that it would take some hours to fix all the commas and fullstops. Frankly, it is ridiculous - although I would deny it if a student pointed it out to me - to have full bibliographic information when you can these days easily search the web for anything. And the three miliion different formats for references that journals use is elaborate power exercise. (And don't tell me you can use Endnotes; there isn't such a journal that couldn't invent a format Endnotes hasn't conceived of).

Anyway, that took care of most of my afternoon, and then I submitted it to the journal which these days is also a weird experience, with passwords and double-blind copies. I knew I had a password for this particular journal, but it took me several attempts before I gave up and used the "Forgot password" button. Then the system asked for this and that, and I was just hoping that there wouldn't be any internet interruption. Or maybe I hoped there would.

Meanwhile I replied to scores of emails, checked the schedule of the conference where I am giving a paper next week and checked that I actually had finished the paper - sometimes I think I have and discover I haven't which is awkward. While I was at it, I checked whether I had finsihed the slide show for another conference paper that I am giving later in September, and guess what? I haven't.

Five minutes ago I got an email asking me to review a paper submitted to a journal. I should have said no. But I can resist anything but temptation.

Book of the week: The Borrowers

2011-08-22T20:20:00.000+01:00

Last week I went to see the new Japanese animation, Arrietty, based on an old favourite, Mary Norton's The Borrowers. I work from home these days, but I happened to be in the office for a moment so I took home my battered copy and re-read it. This is the cover of my edition:

I bought it in Russia, sometime in the late '70s, for a royal sum of 5 roubles. I am not ironic: it was 5% of my salary. Would you pay 5% of your salary for a used paperback? The reason I bought the book was twofold. I had read about it in Margery Fisher's Intent Upon Reading, the major source of information about British children's literature available in the Moscow Foreign Literature Library. I had also seen it at the exhibition of children's books organised by the British Council in 1975, the catalogue of which became the source of all information about British children's literature for many years coming. But actually - who needs a reason for buying a book! I had a special interest in The Borrowers because I was writing an article about fantasy which eventually, in my next life, became my PhD. Miniature people was among many aspects I considered. There is a very interesting Russian classic about miniature people, but the charm of The Borrowers is their subtle interaction with the world of human beans which is the plot engine, the comedy and the tragedy.

As usual when you re-read a book that you think you remember well, there are many details I had forgotten, and many details are different from the film. The standard interpretation is Arrietty's coming of age, and watching the movie with a 15-year-old I couldn't help wondering how much of that she recognised. As a parent with an empty nest, I recognise the parents' separation anxiety.

I also remembered the metafictional aspect, the story within a story, and the eternal question: did it really happen. Even when I read it first, long before I knew the word metafiction, I enjoyed this playfulness and mystery. The Russian midget story was nothing as sophisticated.

As I remembered, this book was about the impossible love, because the boy can never shrink to Arrietty's size and she cannot grow to his. There is a short story by Astrid Lindgren in which there is a magical word which allows the protagonist to shrink. It makes it all much easier. And although I have read the sequels, Arrietty's and the boy's farewell is irreversible. (Books like this shouldn't have sequels, but that's another matter).

What has always fascinated me about the borrowers was all the intricate ways they used the borrowed objects. And suddenly it filled with new significance. I am a borrower! That's exactly what I do when I make my dollhouses. In the book, there are both minute descriptions and illustrations. I must now put it on the shelf together with all my other dollhouse-maker books.

Lost and found

2011-08-20T19:54:00.001+01:00

Wait a minute, I said to myself over a cappucchino and carrot cake after I had safely delivered my granddaughter to the other set of grandparents who would take her home to Stockholm. Wait a minute. I am in London. On my own. On a Saturday. Portobello Road!

And off I went to Portobello Road. It was crowded, as it always is, and I went in zigzags from shop to shop, from stall to stall. There was one with lots of dollhouse stuff, but stuff that I don't buy anymore because I can make much better myself. And then I found this fabulous little shop on the upper floor, where I happily parted with all my cash and where I could have stayed longer just looking at things. Eventually I left, heading north toward an underground station which turned out to be permanently closed, so I had to walk all the way back to Notting Hill Gate. By this time, it suddenly started raining, and every stall was offering umbrellas and ponchos, so I dived into my bag to get two pounds - and couldn't find my purse. Now, in such situations I know that I mustn't panic. It happens to me all the time that I cannot find my purse or my keys or my card in the depths of my bag, and I know that I just have to go through it carefully. Since it was pouring rain, I couldn't get out all my purchases and my London map and my cell phone and my Kindle and my car keys and put them on the pavement, and it was anyway much too crowded. When I finally stated that my purse was simply not there, I rather optimistically concluded that I had had my bag on my stomach all the time, so it was unlikely that the purse was stolen, but I must have dropped it in the shop. The thing was, I didn't remember which shop, and there are hundreds of them along Portobello Road. Since I didn't have money to buy an umbrella or poncho, I just walked on, soaked to the bone, looking into every shop and hoping to recognise the right one, which I finally did. Before I could open my mouth, the lady in the shop cried: "Relax, I have it". I sank on the floor. They got me a cup of tea and entertained me with stories of how they had lost and found their purses and how other people had been kind to them.

I was still wet through when I left the shop, so it didn't make much sense to buy a poncho. I marched to the station and came to King's Cross just in time for a quarter-past train. As I sat there, I couldn't help thinking of the could-have-been if it hadn't rained and I hadn't discovered the loss of my purse until maybe the day after tomorrow, and I felt that I had had a tremendously lucky day.

This is what I bought. If you don't know what a Dutch doll is, there is vast literature on the subject.

My road to children's literature

2011-08-19T17:39:00.000+01:00

Me the copycat is once again responding to Philip Nel's blog post. I think his story is more typical than mine: someone discovering that children's literature is fun and successively making it the focus of study. In my case, I always wanted to study children's literature. When I was finishing middle school/junior high/whatever; when I was 15 I was seriously considering quitting my very prestigeous school and change to a library college because they taught children's literature. But they taught a lot of other things I wasn't interested in, so finally I didn't. Schools of librarianship were the only places you could do children's lit, but there was another path: translation, and that was the path I took. And then, by serendipity - as everything else - I met an editor from the only Russian professional journal in children's literature, which mostly targeted librarians, but at least I found myself in a community of devotees.

The rest is history, but I'll tell it very briefly. Since I could not do children's lit for a living, I did it in my spare time, writing essays, book reviews and stuff. So in this respect, I was an autodidact, like Philip. But later I took undergrad and masters in child lit in Stockholm, did my PhD in child lit, so I actually have formal qualifications for what I am doing now. In contrast, I have been obliged to publish on general literature (two single-authored books, several edited volumes, scores of articles) for promotion, and I have taught almost everything, except ancient and medieval literature: Dante, Shakespeare, Dostoyevsky, Austin, Swedish Romantic poetry, Russian magical realism, Imre Kertesz, feminist theory, you name it. And supervised on almost anything one can think of.

Children's literature is my Rachel, everything else my Leah, and I have worked hard for both.

Wings of history

2011-08-19T09:57:00.001+01:00

Twenty year ago today I was in Moscow to attend the Congress of Compatriots. I still don't know who invited me and why; I was a Swedish citizen by then, but I guess the Soviet Embassy kept an eye on us expats. The Congress was one of many events that marked the new openness after Gorbachov's ascent to power; a huge gathering of diaspora from all over the world. I wasn't particularly keen to go because I was, as usual, suspicious of anything to do with the official side of my former Motherland, but Staffan was eager, and he wasn't invited. So we went by car, loaded with wheelchairs, Bibles and soft toys because I was at the time involved with charity work in Moscow.

We were placed in the monstrous hotel Russia overlooking the Kremlin, and in the morning, twenty years ago, we went down to breakfast, and then we were meeting one of my contacts who would collect the wheelchairs. We overslept after the long travel the day before and hadn't listened to the news. In the gigantic restaurant, two ladies were talking agitated at the table next to us. We addressed them politely saying that we couldn't help hearing their conversation, so could they please explain what was going on. After half a sentence, we left our breakfast unfunished and rushed to our room. The radio was playing classical music, the TV was showing an old movie, and we knew it was really bad. We were in the middle of a coup d'etat.

My wheelchair contact did turn up, only to say that as a medical doctor he had to be on the barricades in case of casualties. There were tanks in the city centre. We called our friends; they were packing emergency bags and expecting arrests (when it was all over, lists oif people to be arrested were indeed found, and all our friends were on those). We went to a newspaper office where all major dailies, already prohibited by the new authorities, were producing a joint flyer Everywhere we saw people bringing food to people oin barricades.The Congress of Compatriots continued as planned.

If you hear anyone say that they knew from start that it would all end well - that's not true! Everyone was in panic because everyone had their own or their family's memories of the Great Terror of the 1930s. The Swedish Embassy encouraged all Swedish visitors to go home. Many did. We were trying to figure out how many friends' children we would be able to save, and how. The radio was playing classical music, and TV was running old comedies. We listened to world news on our short-wave.

Don't believe foreign correspondents and casual eye-witnesses that claim they were not scared. We all were. But we, the visitors, at least knew that in real emergency we would find shelter in our embassies. Our Russian friends had no protection.

It was on the afternoon of the third day that classical music was interrupted by news from an independent station. The coup was suppressed, Gorbachov was back in Moscow after three days of house arrest. Statues of former KGB generals were pulled down. The Communist Party headquarters was sealed off. The hated regime was overthrown, although we didn't know it yet.

I was there.

Me and my teenager

2011-08-17T10:09:00.001+01:00

Yesterday morning when our cleaning lady came I asked her to wait with the vacuum cleaner because I had a teenager asleep in the guest room. Her reaction, when I explained the circumstances, was perplexing: "So you are taking her shopping?" I decided I'd better not dicuss the plans I had for my teenager. But apparently it was a typical reaction since later the same day I asked a colleague with a number of kids of relevant age what a fifteen-year-old might want to do in Cambridge and got the answer: "Sleep and shop".

What we did yesterday, my teenager and me, was visit King's Chapel with a lengthy discussion of fan vaults, Christian motifs in stain-glass windows and the symbolism of the red and the white roses; we studied the architecture of Tudor houses and the advantages and disadvantages of half-timber structures; we visited Clare Fellows' Garden, we went punting where I learned some new stories (all punters tell different stories and assure you that they are absolutely true), and generally had a pleasant and mutually enriching conversation. In the evening we went out for a fancy meal.

I am not at all surprised - although I realise now I should be - because I was like this myself once upon a time in Stone Age. I was curious about almost everything and appreciated being taken around on trips. Don't misunderstand me now: I was also a normal teenager with horrible moods, rude and unhappy, and the only reason I didn't enjoy shopping was that there wasn't much to shop for when I was growing up.

Our further plans include Ely Cathedral, Anglesey Abbey and Lode mill, the medieval town of Lavenham, Shakespeare in the gardens and a highbrow movie. We will go shopping too. We are in urgent need of Philip Pullman's most recent book. But she also gets up late and spends hours in the shower, so I am not worried about her.

I am very proud of my teenager.

The OMG stage

2011-08-11T20:49:00.000+01:00

Yesterday I finally started writing a new book. I should have started about three months ago, but I only got my written contract last week, and although my editor assured me that it was absolutely certain, I am a bit superstitious. And... oh well, I just didn't get down to it. There were too many other things.

You would assume that for someone who has written a score of books embarking on a new project won't be a big deal. Yet the anxiety of a blank page is inevitable, for expert as well as beginner.

I have written most of my academic books on the basis of articles and conference papers. This is a lot of work, as everyone knows who has tried. Sometimes I think that it is much harder to turn an assortment of articles into a coherent book. But right now I wish I had something to give me a start. I am writing this book from scratch. I have my proposal and some general ideas, and I know well what I don't want this book to be like, but I really don't know how to begin. I wrote in the proposal that I anticipated that this book would be the most difficult project in my life, and it is true. It's one of those books that take a lifetime to be able to write. But it doesn't matter. Even if it were the easiest thing to write, I'll still be paralysed.

When a student tells me she is in this phase, I can give plenty of good advice. Like: start somewhere in the middle. Start with something you are most enthusiastic about. Or start with the most boring bit, to have it done as soon as possible. I always say that we all have different ways of writing, and there are no ready recipes. Usually I write an article or chapter in my head, then sit down and put it on paper quickly. I can easily write five thousand words in a day if I have it all ready in my mind. The thing with this new book is that I have too many ideas and no clear plan yet where they will go. It does look very neat in my proposal, and obviously whoever accepted the proposal thought it would work, but there is a loooong way from proposal to finished manuscript. Or even to first draft.

So here I am, as helpless as an undergrad writing her first thesis.

Yesterday, after having stared for a while at my proposal, I browsed through my whole archive looking for something to recycle. This is not very helpful, although you can always cut and paste a couple of paragraphs that will have to go after the first edit. Occasionally you find notes from a conference three years ago, which you took specifically for this project and then forgot. So it is not directly a waste of time, but not an efficient use of time. There is a name for it: procrastination.

Today I told myself to stop fooling around and start writing. I divided the proposal into ten separate files and jotted down some subheadings to create a structure. This is what I always tell my students: create a structure, and the rest will come. “Take care of the sounds, and the sense will take care of itself”. Well, it didn't. I got sidetracked and spent some hours on the Internet reading about celebrity children's books. Highly educative, but didn't not take me any further. So I decided that I need a timeline. Timelines are almost as alien to my way of writing as mindmaps. However, I promised in my proposal that there would be a timeline in my book, so I can just as well get it done. Start with the boring bit.

I like my timeline. It is very illuminating. I have never reflected upon the fact that Ulysses was published the same yeas as Just William.

I can keep adding to the timeline forever, but I won't. Tomorrow I will start writing. Somewhere in the middle. Something I am really enthusiastic about.

I know my students are reading this blog, so I envision you all saying: “Serves her right!”

Courses no one wants to take

2011-08-11T09:10:00.002+01:00

A Swedish newspaper yesterday had a piece about courses at Stockholm University that nobody applied to. While there were 6,000 applicants to law and business management, there were 173 courses or programmes that didn't have a single application. While this is the bitter truth of academic life, I wonder how narrow a specialisation can go before it becomes ridiculous. It is a shame that nobody wants to study classic languages, but there are very few career opportunities with such a degree, and no one can afford these days to study a subject for fun. Here is a selection of indemanded courses:

Master programme in Religious studies
Master programme in comparative literature with focus on Ancient Greek
Postcolonial theory
Theatre history
Norwegian language and culture
Czech fiction and non-fiction
Culture and politics in Slavonic countries
Portuguese sociolinguistics
Arabic with focus on Islamic studies
International and comparative education
Psychology of sports
Meteorology
Swedish natural geography
Evolution of dinosaurs
Nutrition
Teaching English in secondary school

Three years in diaspora

2011-08-10T21:29:00.000+01:00

The day before yesterday, at breakfast, Staffan said he was going to buy champagne. We have long since stopped celebrating published articles, book contracts, unexpected royalties and other work-related events; I was sure it wasn't my or his birthday or our anniversary, so I was a question mark. "Use your brain", he said. I did. Nothing happened. "Three years since I came to Cambridge", he said. It means today it is three years since I came to Cambridge. I am not sure whether it is an occasion for celebration or reflection.

The natural thing now would be to look back at these three years, but I won't. I can just read through this blog from the very beginning. This is exactly why I started blogging. I won't think about everything I left behind, because it is pointless. Instead, I am thinking about what my life might have been if we hadn't moved to Cambridge. And I am not talking about the serendipity of that dinner conversation in Barcelona, but about my conscious choice. I believe that human beings have a free will. But I also believe, at least a bit, in that parallel world in which I made a different choice.

What we had decided before I got the job here in Cambridge was that I would quit my job in Stockholm. So I assume that I would have done so. My idea for a living was to write textbooks. I have two textbooks on the market and get nice royalties, so if I could write a couple of textbooks every year we'd manage. I would also do workshops and advertise myself worldwide as guest lecturer. I would spend much more time in Finland and teach and supervise there. I wouldn't want to be without students. I would - as I actually do - teach online courses. I would continue on the ALMA jury. I would review books and do all those odd jobs a freelance academic can do. I could even do some translation.

I would possibly go to conferences, but I probably wouldn't be invited to many conferences without an academic affiliation. Or maybe I would. I had a solid reputation three years ago already. But I would have less time for academic writing if I were to write for my bread.

I would probably see my grandchildren a bit more often, but I am not sure. They are all very busy.

It would be very upsetting to think about everything I would have missed.

What professors do in summer

2011-08-05T17:01:00.000+01:00

One of the numerous myths about academic life that Philip Nel and myself have addressed in our respective blogs is those long lazy summers that university teachers enjoy every year. Let me tell you that here in Cambridge we don't have vacations, we have research periods. Although our job specifications say that we have 50% research time, the conspicuous existence of research periods implies that no one can do any research in term time, given the amount of teaching and admin we do. However, we are expected to produce research results as if we had 50% research time all year round, and vacation is something we don't need. We have those long lazy summers, remember?

I am technically halfway through my research period, and I haven't yet started on what I had planned to do. Of course, I have been to Brazil for ten days, of which only four were actually holiday. But until July 22 I was still fully engaged in various meetings, some of them quite stormy. Until July 18 I was officially supervising my masters students (and they made the most of it until the very last day!), and because one got extension I was effectively available for supervision until August 1. PhD supervisions are not affected by research periods or study leaves, and one of my students is upgrading in October, and another is contemplating her next step, and yet another writing up (to be fair, she has troubled me least). There are students asking for advice for their future careers, and students asking for advice on how to turn a thesis into a publication, and students who need recommendations, and students who just want to stay in touch. I could have turned on the out-of-office message on my email, but I can't. I am just not that kind of person.

There have been visiting scholars arriving and leaving; there have been student interviews; there was a summer school where I judged final projects. There has been a day-long professorial appointment interview. There have been various inquiries from media and a request to participate as an informant for a masters project.

On July 18, I picked up six masters theses that I have to grade by August 22. Don't know about colleagues, but it takes me at least a day, often more, to grade a thesis, especially since we have to write a 400-word formative feedback.

I have reviewed a paper submitted for a journal. It takes at least a day, especially if you write some feedback, which I do, because in a similar situation I'd like to have feedback rather than simply a rejection.

I have said no to writing a promotion blurb for a book, which was a matter of professional integrity, but also because it takes a couple of days to read a book in order to write a blurb.

I have written an abstract for an article I had earlier agreed to contribute and now wish I hadn't; and I have discussed an article project with a colleague, which I really want to write, but doubt whether I'll have time to do. Not this summer anyway.

Another colleague and I have received comments from a reader for our submitted edited volume. We needed to go through the comments and decide what to do with them and contact our contributors. We shared the work. It takes a day or two to go through a book chapter and write suggestions for contributors.

There are warnings for page proofs for two articles in the next few days.

I have revised one of the papers I did in Brazil for publication in Portuguese. You think it will take two hours, and it takes too days.

I am just finishing an article that I definitely shouldn't have promised to write, but that I enjoy writing. It has taken considerably longer than expected, not least because there were so many things coming in between. With luck, I will finish it this weekend.

Then I can start on the project that I was supposed to be working on all this long, lazy summer.

Things I don't do anymore

2011-08-05T14:44:00.001+01:00

I frequently refect upon the fact that things that were indispensible once aren't any longer. I don't mean that few of us use typewriters because we have a better technology, but something that you used to do a lot and then stopped for some reason or other, although it is still easily available.

I used to cross-country ski - not that I particularly liked it, but that's what we did in my time in my country, perhaps because it was the cheapest and easiest winter sport.I haven't done it since I moved to Sweden. I also used to skate a lot, even when I was quite grown up; I had a good skating partner. I brought my skates to Sweden, and we went skating a couple of times when the kids were small, but it never became a must like it used to be.

Fishing was the most important summer pastime; I just couldn't imagine my life without fishing. Interestingly enough, Staffan was also a passionate fisher, but we both stopped since we got married. He claims that nothing can compare with his former wife's fishing waters (thus emphasising what a sacrifice he made for my sake). There is enough fishing space in the archipelago or in the inland lakes and rivers, but for some reason it never became a habit. Sergej used to bring home pike from local lakes, and we even cooked and ate them. But he soon found other pleasures.

I don't knit. Knitting was obsessive when I was young. For one thing, this was the only way to make an original piece of clothing, but it was also highly social: we would sit and knit and talk, or listen to music. We exchanged patterns and ideas. My daughters both knit a lot, but I quit when they were still small. I cannot really explain it because it is still nice to have an original piece of clothing, and it is still relaxing. Probably it's the social bit that is lacking.

I don't make clothes because nobody wants homemade clothes these days.

I don't play cards, or any other games. In my youth, we played cards, Scrabble and mahjong. For poker, a friend used to have a five-liter jar of pennies we used as chips. Our first Scrabble sets were made of school erasers cut in four bits with letters written in ink. Our first mahjong set was made from dominoes. Games were bridges between young and old, children and adults.

We played simple card games with our children, as well as Scrabble and Trivial Pursuit, but it felt much more playing for their sake. I never found good mahjong partners in Sweden.Staffan promtly refuses to play Scrabble or Mastermind with me - I wonder why?

Of course I do other things these days, although most of them solitary rather tahn social. Yet it is strange how all these things just fade away.

roomboxes

2011-08-03T09:50:00.000+01:00

In a comment to my recent blog post I was asked what a roombox was. I won't repeat my reply to that, but I'll show some pictures.

Antique shop

Lord Asriel's room

Bridal chamber

Nursery

Teashop

Victorian parlour

Blog compulsion

2011-07-30T11:32:00.000+01:00

"You haven't blogged for over a week", Staffan says. Yes, I know. Luckily, I have never committed myself to regular blogging so I don't go around tortured by anguish. I blog when I feel I have something to say. I have a line-up of topics in my mind: why Moll Flanders is a great novel (and not at all how you may remember it), and what a Dean is in Cambridge as opposed to everywhere else, and how much you learn about the history of shoes when making a roombox. However, the recent events in Norway have rendered me dumb. To blog about them is impossible because there are no words to describe my feelings. To blog about anything else is still more impossible and highly disrespectful. Yet I know that we will eventually "get over it" as we got over Estonia, 9-11, tsunami. Not in the sense of forgetting, not in the sense of going back to normal, because you can never go back to normal after a tragedy, whether large or small. But many people have repeated, in connection with all those horrors, that the best thing we survivors can do is to go on living and thus honour the dead. Not to allow fear dominate our existence. To raise our children, to produce great art (to everyone's ability), to tend our relationships, to go on being human.

So, My Dear Reader (if there is such a thing), just give me some time, I'll be back.

My further love affair with Kindle

2011-07-19T19:57:00.000+01:00

I have now lived with a Kindle for six weeks. In my previous post, with the novelty of experience, I claimed that Kindle was just a book. I now know better.

It is certainly a neverending book, which was very practical while on travel. No problem with finishing a novel right in the middle of a transatlantic flight. Don't even have to open the overhead bin to take out another book of the huge portable library. Just browse through the e-library downloaded in the little thing and decide whether it's Mill on the Floss or Jude the Obscure next. I wonder how I've missed all these great books - me with my English degree. But I know I wouldn't have appreciated them so much when I was seventeen. Anyway, I would probably not have bought them all in printed versions and denied myself a great pleasure.

I have also discovered that Kindle is very convenient at the hairdresser's, instead of the silly glossy magazines.

When I read the Kindle manual, I was quite skeptical about the numerous options: highlight, take notes, look up words in a dictionary. But it so happened that I am writing an essay about a book which I read last year, didn't like and gave away. I am writing about it because it felt very good for my purpose. I tried to figure out whom I gave my copy to, but after the first three close associates denied it, I gave up. I bought a new copy - for Kindle. While I was at it, I decided to try all those wonderful options. Highly recommended for academic purposes. Everything I used to do with pencil and Post-Its, scribbles in the margins, exclamations marks - I can do with the Kindle copy. I highlight a quotation, and I can write a memo note or a comment. Then I can go through them all quickly. I can copy and paste quotes directly into my own text. Unfortunately, Kindle doesn't have the correct pagination. I believe that it will be a recurrent issue in future academic publications.

Now that I know how clever my Kindle is, I may try some other functions. I may even finally learn to look up words in a dictionary.

Immortal classics

2011-07-14T20:10:00.000+01:00

Am I the only one among friends and colleagues who is not re-reading, re-watching, re-living - and mourning the wonderful years that are over now? I don't want to sound like a snob but I honestly don't understand what it is all about. Come on, folks, the stories are not over after a movie opening! They will be there forever, or at least as long as there are readers who are interested enough, and that's something nobody can predict.

I cannot imagine similar laments when The Last Battle was published. It was just the beginning of a new story. And as promised, new stories came and will always be coming, and some of the old ones will stay and some will perish and some will be rediscovered. For some readers, Harry Potter will always have been around, just as for me Alice in Wonderland has always been around. But I don't mourn that Carroll is dead and will not write more Alice. Other people have done this after his death, both More Alice, and Automated Alice and Digital Alice, you name it. There will be more Tim Burtons to make new movies.

And Harry Potter will be forgotten or remembered, and there will be new generations of readers who have never read Harry Potter, and there will be people who have lived and died without having read or watched Harry Potter, and there will be people who start reading Harry Potter and don't know now it ends, and there will be people paying fancy prices for first editions (I have some), and there will be readers saying that Tolkien and C S Lewis pinched all their ideas from Harry Potter, and there will be critics putting Harry Potter in footnotes as a minor text from the turn of the century, only of interest as a context for Skellig.

Mind, I have written extensively on Harry Potter, and I re-read the first six volumes when the final one was about to be released, but only because I had an essay to revise urgently, taking the last novel into consideration. I think I have seen the first three movies - they are all mixed up in my memory. I have taught a whole course on Harry Potter several times, and I always re-read books that I teach. I may re-read them all again at some point, and I may even watch the new movie when it's available on DVD.

Away at home

2011-07-12T22:04:00.000+01:00

Today I hosted an awayday once again. An awayday, as I learned exactly three years ago, is a whole-day meeting with a particular group or research team, removed from the regular environment, preferably to a ambient place with good food. Three years ago, before I was formally hired, I attended an awayday with my future academic group, getting to know the people and learning the ways and the jargon. The meeting was at a colleague's place, with everybody bringing a dish to share. A year later, when the group was discussing the imminent awayday, somehow everybody looked at me. We had just bought the house and had a housewarming party, so everybody knew I had room for twenty people. I had no other way than to agree. To be professional, I borrowed a flip chart and a projector from the Faculty. No problem with the projector, but the d-d flip chart was heavy! Last year we had not spent all our money and could afford a proper awayday at Madingley Hall which is a posh conference centre where you really feel away from the everyday.

This year we have successfully used up our budget and couldn't go to Madingley or anything extravagant, and at the meeting when we planned the awayday everybody looked at me. I said I would do it, but could we please use catering. It is a bit too much to be a hostess and chair a meeting at the same time. You get torn between the projector and the coffee pot. Everybody seemed to have agreed, but in some mysterious way it still ended up with everybody bringing a dish, which of course was much better than any catering can provide. I borrowed a projector, but skipped the flip chart.

The thing is that while everybody enjoyed the awayday, I wasn't away. I was at home.

Awakening

2011-07-08T17:43:00.000+01:00

So now I have been to the Amazon. It was my ultimate dream, what shall I do now? There are things I would like to do, but know that I can't, like a cruise to Antarktis (they are expensive, but not tremendously expensive; however, I get seasick, so we can forget it). Of all the wonders of the civilised world, I'd like to see the Pyramids, but it doesn't feel the right time now. Maybe, at some point. Of the many wonders of the natural world - yes, there are many, but nothing that I can't get off my mind, like I had with the Amazon. I mean, something that I tell myself I need to see before I die.

I hope to live some years still, but if I take one long trip every year, there are not that many left (and I have promised never to travel again). What are my priorities? Do I have any?

I am reading all these clever books about the philosophy of time that argue that there is neither the past nor the future, just the present; which I have always said, without reading clever books. Does it mean that the Amazon does not exist, has never existed, been a dream, is a dream? Yes, I know it's all quite pointless.

Yet I feel a huge emptiness and sorrow. I know I will soon fill it with something new, but right now I feel a weird kind of disappointment: it's over, this big huge enormous dream that was so wonderful that I really have no words to describe it, but would so much like to. But, as all dreams, when you wake up, it's gone.

Separation anxiety

2011-07-04T20:32:00.001+01:00

Most of the world's children's literature scholars are these days in Brisbane, for the biennial conference of IRSCL, the International Research Society for Children's Literature. I am not there because it's too far away, too expensive and too close to my travel to Brazil. I am disappointed that I am not there because I feel strong bonds with this organisation.

I learned about it in mid-'70s when I was writing my first reviews and articles on children's literature. There was a short report from a conference in the Russian professional journal. IRSCL was a magical word that opened Aladdin's caves of children's literature. I knew some people who knew other people who had attended the conference. Then suddenly, in 1981, the conference was in Moscow. I couldn't even dream of participating, but I offered my services as an interpreter. I was the only interpreter at this conference who was interested in children's literature, all the others saw it as just another conference topic, somewhere between biochemistry and political economy.

Then I moved to Sweden, and everything became possible. I became a member and started attending conferences, all of them from 1983 to 1999. In 1991 I became a board member, in 1993 I was elected President, and in 1995 I ran a conference in Stockholm. I invested a lot of time and energy in this organisation. I am happy to see it thriving, but I am upset that I have lost touch with it. It's not my fault. It just so happened. In 2001, I missed it because it was right after we had moved back home from California. A trip to South Africa didn't look too attractive at the moment. And then, for many long years, I couldn't travel at all. One time, I was registered and had paid the fees and bought tickets, but had to cancel at short notice.

Two years ago I went for a nostalgic IRSCL conference in Frankfurt. I think I knew already then that I wouldn't be going to Australia.

I am looking at the conference programme and see many familiar names. I also see many, many unfamiliar names, and I am happy that so many new people from so many contries have discovered the joys of children's literature scholarship.

I am a bit sad.

Amazonas photos

2011-07-02T19:42:00.000+01:00

https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.251115611570394.80706.100000158706260&l=371bf808e7

Travel emergencies

2011-07-01T20:39:00.000+01:00

There is a happy subspecies of homo sapiens that has never experienced travel sickness. I am talking Travel Sickness, not just occasional dizziness or nausea; sickness that knocks you out and stays for weeks, that comes unexpectedly and unpredictably, that is humiliating and excruciatingly painful. If you are now wondering: "What is she talking about?", you belong to that happy subspecies.

When I was a child, nobody took it seriously; it was rather a norm that children were travelsick. However, my mother had it too, and so it was harder to dismiss. Then somebody brought a magical remedy from abroad, and for some years we both travelled without problems. But as I said, unexpectedly and unpredictably; nothing to do with turbulence and independent of what I have eaten, of whether I have slept well, of whether I take medication or not, of whether the travel takes half an hour or thirty hours. I can get sick on planes, trains, buses, boats and merry-go-rounds. The latter I have eventually learned to avoid, but for the rest the alternative is never to leave home, and it is a professional handicap, if not otherwise.

At one point I went through a thorough examination by Sweden's (and world's) leading expert on MdDS, which spells out as mal de debarquement syndrome. They rolled and swayed and centrifuged me, pumped hot and cold water into my ears, gave me injections to cause motion sickness and measure it, and concluded that there was nothing wrong with me. That was extremely helpful.

About eight years ago I had to cancel all commitments involving travel. I missed conferences, guest lectures and many other interesting events. Some of these I had to cancel at short notice, jeopardizing my reputation. I thought I would never be able to travel again. Fortunately, it's a bit like childbirth: if you remember the horror, you'd never do it again. So I started to travel again, with varying results and thus high risk-taking. My calculation shows that one of ten trips is a catastrophe. Take it or leave it. And the flight from Manaus happened to be that one of ten.

Staffan has seen me in my worst shape several times, but each time he is reluctant to believe me - which I fully understand as his survival strategy. So when I told him, direct after landing in Sao Paulo, that nothing could make me board another plane, his reaction was: "But the cat can die!" I was too feeble to reply: "So you'd rather I should die?" But I was strong enough to act - thinking back, I admire myself. As I was leaving the plane, crawling more than walking, I told the radiantly smiling flight attendant that I needed a doctor. She obvioulsy wasn't prepared for such an outrageous request, but told me there was medical help available in the terminal. The bus from the plane to the terminal took ages, but as soon as we were inside I attacked the first uniformed man I saw. Presumably, Portuguese for doctor is doctor, since he understood that much, conjured a wheelchair and raced through the terminal, with Staffan in tow. Imagine, first time ever I had a ride in a wheelchair and I couldn't even enhoy it.

In the Emergency room, nobody spoke any English. My general message was: "I cannot travel" (our flight was leaving in two hours), but it didn't quite come across. However, the male nurse did the reasonable things you do with someone coming to Emergency: took my temperature, pulse and blood pressure. After that, all those present, including the airline representative, talked to each other in great agitation, and the message they managed to get across to Staffan and me was: "You cannot travel". At least we were in agreement on one point. They didn't care about my travel sickness, but they were seriously concerned about my blood pressure. Somehow, I think there was a connection.

They put me on a drip, all the time talking cheerfully in Portuguese. The airline representative explained in broken English that our luggage would be taken off the flight, that she would book us for the next day (did I think I would be able to travel then?), and that as soon as I had rested, they would transport us to a hotel with meal vouchers and free intercontinental phone calls. I wish I could enjoy the hospitality. Staffan said the food was good, and they didn't even charge him for whisky.

Twenty-four hours later I still felt rotten, but since I couldn't stay in Brazil for the rest of my life (although it was tempting), I boarded the plane, took a double doze of sleeping pills and woke up an hour before landing at Heathrow at 3pm local time. The long travel by underground and train to Cambridge was child's play.

Moral? Obviously, I should never travel again. Unfortunately, I happen to live on a island, so wherever I want to go I need to take a plane, a boat or a superspeed train. So I guess I am stuck. Friends and relatives will have to come here to visit. I WILL NEVER TRAVEL AGAIN. (Let's see how long it lasts).

Amazonas adventure Day 4

2011-06-30T22:30:00.000+01:00

The initial order was 5.30 for sunrise but the majority negotiated it to 5.45. The morning was cloudy so it didn't make any difference. There was one last big attraction to see: Victoria lily, the legendary plant that I remember from geography lessons in school and that I recently got to know better through Attenborough's Life of Plants. What shall I say? I have run of adjectives. Amazing, remarkable, incredible, awsome...?

There are many amazing, remarkable, incredible features about this plant. It blooms white on the first evening and is male, attracting pollinating insects and trapping them as it closes. Then it changes gender, blooms pink, releases the insects, and they fly away and pollinate other flowers. Or something like that. It's just too overwhelming, too clever.

There were many birds walking on the leaves - I am afraid I haven't managed to capture them.

On return, we had breakfast and packed while the boat navigated toward Manaus that we reached about midday. Hugs, goodbyes, promises to stay in touch, share photos. Back to the hotel, retrieving the stored luggage and taxi to the airport.

The rest is history.

Amazonas adventure Day 3

2011-06-29T23:36:00.000+01:00

No early morning activities, but I woke up at seven and went up on deck for a cup of coffee. We started to sail downstream toward Manaus, with the goal of seeing the Meeting of Waters, the black of Rio Negro (although it is actually dark blue) and the white (in fact, yellow) of the Solimoes. Ruben was very emphatic about the Amazon only existing after the two rivers meet. I have seen pictures, but you cannot imagine it from a picture - well, you can try. The waters do not mix for about four kilometres because they have different speed, different temperature and different chemical ingredients. It's truly amazing.

Manaus is a huge city. When I first started thinking about this trip, three years ago, I thought Manaus was a little village where you went by a tiny plane. There must be places like that further up the rivers, but Manaus has a population of 2 million and it isn't precisely a beautiful city, at least not from the river. We saw the famous Opera House and decided that we didn't need to see it again. The long stretch of shore was docks and oil tanks. And many boats. During the first two days we hardly saw any boats and just a couple of houses.

After Meeting of Waters we went upstream on the Solimoes (note that I am using the correct name!) to the place where we anchored for the night and took another canoe trip. I must say that it felt a bit like anticlimax, because we did some more fishing and some more caiman patting, but I may be unfair. The vegetation was completely different, and there were lots of birds – all because the Solimoes (note the name!) is six degrees cooler than the Rio Negro, which is simply too hot for most forms of aquatic life. Apparently, the gender of caimans is dependent on the temperature: in hotter waters they hatch as males and in cooler water as females. Somehow they must meet in between. Quite right, the Rio Negro caimans were boys and the Solimoes caimans were girls, whom we named Margarita and Josefina before Ruben threw them back in the river. By that time Viki became so brave that she held the beasts, and Enrico and Costa did too. I now regret that I didn't. I am not scared of crocodiles, not like snakes.

Fishing was fun too, and some of the fish were catfish that look like something from a horror movie. I didn't get any and mostly sat and watched birds in my binoculars.

Viki had to go back to Manaus in the evening because she had to catch a 1 am flight to Sao Paulo (for some reason, Brazilian airlines have these crazy flight schedules). We were all curious about how she was going to get there – helicopter perhaps? No, she said, James Bond style, by speedboat. We stayed on deck to watch her leave. There were all kinds of boats passing by, in pitch darkness, without lights. At ten sharp, Ruben came up on deck and beckoned to Viki: “Ready? Let's go!” Guess what? The promised speedboat was the canoe. Frankly, I wouldn't feel safe going in a little boat on the big, big river in pitch darkness without lights or life jackets. I am not sure Viki was so happy either, but did she have a choice? According to Ruben, it took no more than forty minutes. But by the time they gor back we were asleep because the next morning we we getting up early to watch the sunrise.

Enrico and Josefina

Amazonas adventure Day 2

2011-06-28T23:14:00.000+01:00

We got up at 6, and fortunately there was some coffee waiting, as breakfast was not until 8. Down in the canoe, into the flooded forest, out with fishing rods. I haven't angled in the past twenty years at least so it was very exciting, only there was no fish. Normally, you are supposed to be quiet when you fish, but Ruben showed us how to make huge noise by tapping the water fiercely with your rod. Piranhas was supposedly attracted by the noise thinking that there was a fight going on, so there will be a corpse waiting.

Of course I wished with all my heart that I would catch something, but I would be happy if someone else did, and actually I was just happy to be there, once again watching the reflections of trees and plants in the blank water. We changed places three times, and suddenly fish began to bite. Manolo, who steers the canoe, got two, and we all took pictures and admired, then Ruben got one, and then Enrico got one. I was all the time feeling gentle nibbles, and the hook came up empty, so I thought perhaps I forgot how to set up bait. And then, suddenly, I had a fish! A real, live little piranha! And then another one. So Enrico and I ended up saving the honour of the guests against the hosts.

Then we went back to the boat to have breakfast, and then another excursion into one of the tributaries and into the thicket where we were suddenly surrounded by monkeys. Small squirrel monkeys, so cute (hate this word, but it's the only adequate one). We had bananas with us, and the monkeys came and took bananas from our hands. And we learned how to talk to monkeys: ”Cheep, chip” apparently means: ”Come, lunch is served”.

Then it was time to learn dolphin language, as we tried to attract the dolphins' attention by beating the water surface with the fish we had caught in the morning. There were at least half a dozen pink dolphins around, and finally they came and feasted on our fish. It is very hard to capture the moment when a dolphin reaches for fish, so I have no good pictures. But it was amazing.

Then we sailed on for a while and anchored by a little village - I expected an ethnographic show with song and dance, and small boys trying to sell souvenirs, but there was fortunately nothing of the kind, they just went about their own business. We saw more dolphins by the shore, but of another kind, grey.

Waiting a bit until the worst heat was over, we started on the next adventure which was a hike in the rainforest. A very easy hike, but it was terribly hot, my shirt was absolutely wet. There were many remarkable things we saw, and some I have managed to get good pictures of, but no picture can do it justice. It was a fantastic feeling just to be there. And of course I know that the trail has been used by hundreds before us, and yet it was easy to imagine that we were really the first ever explorers.

I was hot and tired when we returned, but there was the final excursion of the day, looking for tree boas. I am not particularly fond of snakes, and told Ruben so, but he assured me that we won't get too intimate and that boas were not aggressive. We didn't find any snakes, just a couple of tree frogs, but it was once again that magical feeling of gliding in mid-air when you couldn't tell when real world stopped and reflection began. It was pitch dark, and Ruben had a torch. It was weird. Like a fantasy film, but real.

We were all very tired and went straight to bed.

Amazonas adventure Day 1

2011-06-28T22:56:00.000+01:00

After our interrupted sleep, I was sure we'd sleep at least until 10, when they stopped serving breakfast. However, we woke up, fresh and full of energy at seven, as usual. It was much too hot to go to Manaus, opera house or not, so we started by visiting the hotel zoo, which did feature the promised jaguar, but otherwise rather pathetic. I went down to the river, following the sign ”Embarkation”, only to find a little beach. Apparently embarkation was somewhere else. They promised at the reception desk that the company would fetch us at 1pm. The internet connection in the room was ridiculously expensive, so I sat in the lobby, responding to dozens of urgent emails by saying: ”Sorry, I am in the heart of darkness, will get back some time”.

We checked out at 12 and sat further in the bar/lobby, Staffan drinking beer to kill the time, and me getting anxious again that something was wrong. Finally, a quarter past one, somebody did ask for us and introduced himself as Ruben, our English-speaking guide, telling us cheerfully that they never picked up their guests earlier than a quarter past two. This information made us suddenly very hungry, and we ordered a light lunch. Then Ruben came back, and an old man got hold of our suitcase (we had deposited the second one at the hotel), while Ruben introduced us to our fellow passengers: Viki from London, Madeleine and Enrico from Barcelona, Ciara and Constantino from Rome. That's it.

When I booked this trip and looked up options, given that I was very late because of the ever changing dates of my commitment in Rio de Janeiro, I immediately picked up Desafio as my type of trip: small boat for maximum twenty people, personal, no bars, karaoke or swimming pools. But alas, the only cruise available on the dates we could do was one of those huge boats. Well, beggars are no choosers, and I agreed to that: however, the travel agent got back after a few days to tell me that the Iberostar was chartered. There went my dream, but still a few days later, the agent emailed to say that he had an option, which was Desafio, which I wanted in the first place.

So there are just the seven of us. We were taken to the beach on the path I had followed in the morning, and there she was, some hundred metres from the shore, and a little motorboat to take us there. By that time, the river got waves, and I almost got seasick watching them. My dream was quickly turning into a nightmare, and I already saw myself flat seasick in the cabin for the next four days. Staffan on the other hand had some difficulty getting into the canoe and when we eventually came on board swore that he would never set his foot into that boat again, which is a shame, since it is the boat used for excursions.

I sat on the open deck, trying not to think of being sick, while we sailed away and everybody was given a welcome drink. I had expected a long session with safety instructions, but there wasn't any. Ruben started directly with sailor's yarn about all the anacondas he had encountered, and everybody was happy except for me. I was apprehensive.

Of course I have seen dozens of films about the Amazonas, but no picture can do justice to this huge span of water, and we were going right into it. I sat in my deck chair while everybody else went to inspect the cabins, scared even to move. Presently, the waves calmed down, and we entered one of the tributaries and anchored. I ventured into the cabin, too anxious to notice how tiny it was as compared to the picture in the brochure – but I know how such pictures are taken. I decided that I'll worry about it later, because we were now going out in the canoe, and that's what we had come there to do. No safety instructions, just a couple of life jackets thrown casually into the canoe. It was a pity Staffan didn't come, but I fully understand it, because you don't sit particularly comfortably in a canoe. Off we went, entering yet another tributary or flooded forest. Again, I have seen it in films, but no films can convey the sense of being there, with blank surface of water, reflecting the vegetation in quickly fading daylight. We saw a sloth, a couple of herons, but I would have been just as happy with gliding there over the water, listening to cicadas and birds.

Then we got back, were served a sumptuous meal, and off again, in pitch darkness, Ruben with a torch. In the thicket of the forest, first a porcupine – frankly, I didn't know they lived in trees – then a whole family of porcupines. I didn't bring my camera because it is a very simple one and doesn't do good pictures with flash. It was all spooky and incredibly beautiful. Then Ruben caught some caimans with his bare hands and held them for us to pat. The starry sky was amazing. I have seen the Southern Hemisphere skies several times, and it is always a wonder.

By the time we got back it was half past ten. And we were to get up at six next morning to go fishing. So I went down to the cabin and was sound asleep within five minutes. I had forgotten all about being sick.

Amazonas adventure: Day -1

2011-06-23T16:33:00.000+01:00

So yesterday my work in Brazil was over, and holiday started. Night flight from Rio to Manaus. We kept the hotel room as long as they would allow us, until 6pm. Suddenly my credit card didn't work (it had worked both before and after). Fortunately Staffan had some US dollars in cash. We took a taxi to the airport, and, well-travelled as I am, I have never been in a worst nightmare. It was as if all 10 million Rio-inhabitants were on the same motorway, each in at least two cars. After an hour of slow crawling, our driver took off on a small road, through villages and slums and whatnot; pity he was not the only one with this clever idea. I must confess that I broke down, not because I was afraid to miss the plane - we were really well ahead - but because I was sure we'd never get out of it alive, with what Staffan calls creative traffic slalom.

After more than two hours we were finally at the airport, and then everything went smoothly. I had four solid hours of sleep, the luggage arrived safely, we were pciked up as promised and taken to our hotel where, half past three in the morning, I feel happily asleep again.

We are going aboard in a couple of hours. There will be no internet access on the boat, so all reports are coming on Sunday at the earliest. If not - we have fallen victims to caimans or piranyas.

Green is good for your soul

2011-06-21T12:47:00.000+01:00

I first saw a rainforest in Australia in 1993. It was love at first sight, and I was convinced that I would never live to see anything more sublime. The day after I went to the Great Barrier Reef and had to admit that it had its points as well. Finally, I went to the desert, and a good portion of my heart has remained in deserts ever after.

A desert may seem a complete opposite of a rainforest, but it isn't. Life in a desert is more subtle, hidden, disguised, but it's there nevertheless. A desert in bloom is unforgettable.

And yet there is something very special about the rainforest. As with most things, you must take your time. There are amazing details in a symbiosis of plants. There are forms you have never seen before. It is possible that David Attenborough's The Secret Life of Plants has made me more sensitive. I cannot compete with Attenborough, but here are some attempts to share my fascination.

Close encounters with children's writers, part 2

2011-06-21T01:22:00.002+01:00

Here is the next installment of my encounters, prompted by my present location. I happen to have a decent knowledge of Brazilian children's literature because some of it is translated into Russian and Swedish. Ana Maria Machado is by far the most famous, and I have read some of her books in Swedish. She is a great writer, or Writer, or crosswriter. She has received all possible awards, including the Andersen Medal. At the time, I was in San Diego, and the editor of the IBBY journal Bookbird approached me before the winner was announced to ask whether I would be prepared to write about the winner very quickly for the special Andersen Medal issue. I'd have to do it within two weeks after the announcement. I looked at the list of nominees and said to myself, OMG, hope it's someone I know well. I was delighted that Ana Maria Machado won, not only because she was worth it, but also because it was a joy - and a challenge - to write about her. My text was sent to Brazil for approval, and the Bookbird editor got back to me with a comment: "Who is this person and how can she understand Brazilian children's literature without being Brazilian?" I asked the editor to forward my reply: "I grew up under dictatorship".

Since then I met Ana Maria several times at book fairs and other events. She is an extremely warm and generous person and has sent me loads of books, some of which I have read, with my non-existent Portuguese.

I know that writers of her rank are busy, so I was a bit uncertain when I tentatively responded to my Brazilian hosts' question about any special wishes during my visit. I don't know whether they were surprised or impressed or whatever, but today I had the privilege to have lunch with the most famous and loved Brazilian children's writer, and, incidentally, the President of the Brazilian Academy of Letters. All because I grew up under dictatorship.

Mother of the bride

2011-06-19T15:22:00.000+01:00

I am fully aware that I have not shared my experience of being the mother of the bride. Those of you who may have read about my shopping for my wedding outfit are probably expecting a report on how it felt to be wearing it. I have during the past week started a blog post several times and given up. What can I say? That I cried exactly when I was supposed to cry? That the bride was pretty? That they looked each other in the eyes so that I would have been envious if I hadn't been so endlessly happy? That every detail in the wedding was perfect, and there were wonderful funny touches, such as the bride being kidnapped by a bunch of Finnish cousins, so that the groom had to pay ransome (apparently this is a Finnish custom)?

Here are pictures that supposedly say more than a thousand words. You can see my outfit, that almost everybody complimented me for.

What has changed for me now that my baby is a married lady? If anything changed, it happened a year and a half ago when she told me she had met the right one.

I know it's a privilege to be happy on behalf of your children.

Academic serendipities

2011-06-19T13:46:00.000+01:00

My Brazilian contacts are, like almost everything, the result of serendipity. Six years ago (as we figured out yesterday) a younger colleague from Brazil who had a fellowship at the International Youth Library in Munich, contacted me because he wanted to take some side trips while in Europe. I wasn't in a position to invite him to Stockholm, but offered Åbo as second-best, and he did an excellent presentation at the children's literature colloquium, and I also remember some nice meals together. As usual, we talked a lot about my coming to Brazil, but if I pursued all casual invitations to diferent parts of the world, I would never have time for anything else (I also tell everybody I meet: "You must come and visit us in Cambridge").

However, three years ago I received a proper invitation to a conference in Sao Paolo, and then I contacted André and came over for a few days to Rio de Janeiro and the wonderful Catedra de Leitura. I have a strong interest in Brazilian children's literature because of two great writers, Lygia Bojunga and Ana Maria Machado. I met Lygia in Stockholm in mid-80s, and then she won the ALMA award and came to collect it, so we met again. I met Ana Maria Machado on several occasions. I have written about both, and I find thier books absolutely fascinating and like nothing else. For obvious reasons I am interersted in children's literature in totalitarian and post-totalitarian countries. In passing, I have also discovered that Brazil has some marvelous picturebooks.

So this is what brought me here this time, picturebooks. My book, co-authored with Carole Scott, How Picturebooks Work, has been translated into Portuguese (Livro illustrado: palavras e imagens), and yesterday it was officially launched, accompanied by a day symposium. The speakers were a great mix of academics and non-academics, and the organisers managed to find an illustrator who can talk about picturebooks (far from self-evident); the audience was enthusiastic and asked so many questions that the round table would never end. Afterwards, I sat at a table, next to another launched author, and signed the book. There were people who actually bought my book! Presumably because they were interested. These moments make the pains of writing academic books worth while.

More travel concerns

2011-06-18T00:08:00.001+01:00

Apparently me and travel to Brazil don't go together. After my misadventures three years ago I couldn't imagine anything worse, but here we go. The travel agent told me that the flight would stop at Sao Paolo, but I didn't have to change planes. At check in they said the luggage was going straight to Rio de Janeiro. To be on the safe side, I asked the flight attendant, and no, it wasn't the same plane and I had to disembark. What about my luggage? I must take it through customs in Sao Paolo. Fair enough. The line for passport control is worse than Heathrow and Moscow together. Takes almost an hour of my precious hour and a half until next flight. My luggage is not on the band, and when I ask and show my boarding pass, they tell me that my luggage has indeed gone straight to Rio, and if I run very fast I may catch my flight. I run as fast as I can, but the airport is huge, and nobody can give me directions, and I miss the plane and have to stand in another long line to get a new flight, and nobody speaks English, and I know that my good angel Renata is waiting for me in Rio de Janeiro. When I have the new boarding pass for a flight two hours later, I try various ways to reach Renata. My British phone says "Thank you for taking me to Brazil" (honestly, that's what the message said!), but when it comes to ringing or texting, it just went dead. The public phone didn't take credit cards. I tried email, Skype and Facebook, but the connection broke all the time, and there wasn't any public computer around (of course, everybody has a laptop these days). I imagined myself in Renata's place (been there) and decided that she either waits until the next flight or assumes that I am a grownup person who can take care of herself.

At the gate, I tried to get some cash, but there were no cash machines in sight, and in the money exchange booth they didn't take cards. I changed the miraculously saved forty pounds and got a cup of something that was supposed to be cappuchino, but was more like brown syrup. I was the only alien on the flight, so the new passport control went smoothly. Don't ask me why the flight between Sao Paolo and Rio de Janeiro counts as international.

With all these changes I was fully prepared not to see my luggage on the band, and it wasn't. I went to talk to the airline representative, who didn't speak English, but after some thinking said very confidently; "Wait" and produced my bag like a conjuror. It had come on the previous flight.

I still had some vague hope to see Renata, but I didn't. There were several booths offering taxi service to the city, and I decided that if I pre-pay maybe there was a chance that the driver would take me where I wanted to go. And they took credit cards, and it only took two attempts before it worked. The hotel reception did have my reservation and, bless her, the receptionist called Renata who had, clever girl, left her number.

So the story has a happy ending, and I had a lovely long Brazilian lunch and a lovely walk on the beach. Yet: why does this always have to happen to me?

Moominmamma's concerns

2011-06-16T15:46:00.000+01:00

It just so happens that during our three years in the UK Staffan and I have not travelled together. We do not travel together often as we both usually travel on business and do not share each other's business. We have both travelled a lot these three years, but this is the first time we were away from home and had to ask someone to take care of the cat and the garden.

It is not very hard to find someone to cat- and house-sit in a large, well-equipped house in Cambridge, so we had a father and son from Finland staying here over the last weekend, and now that we are going away to Brazil, another family is coming.

In the Moomin stories, Moominmamma always asks guests and newcomers how many pillows they need and what they want for breakfast. Concerning pillows, I give the guests two each, and if they only need one they can throw the other in the corner. I asked the Finnish father and son what they wanted for breakfast and got a very detailed description of what kind of bread they preferred and the boy sometimes liked youghurt, but only banana youghurt, and the father wanted chicken or turkey for his sandwich, but not ham. I am glad I asked, for there were none of the aforementioned items available in the house. The family coming this weekend didn't specify what kind of bread they wanted. I hope they find something to their liking.

We will be away when they arrive, and we are leaving detailed instructions, including things such as remote control for the garage, rainwater tub by the greenhouse, garbage recycling and other things you normally don't notice. I am walking around the house thinking of daily routines and adding to the list: "Extra towels in the bathroom cabinet..."

I remind myself that I have borrowed or rented other people's houses and always survived.

Me and my Kindle

2011-06-04T17:11:00.000+01:00

When I worked as a tour guide, rule number one was when the tourists asked how long it would take us to get where we were going, to add at least fifteen minutes to the estimated time and let it be a nice surspise when we are early. The other way round, you get grumpy tourists.

Amazon seems to follow the same principle. They give you an estimate delivery date with a wide margin, and you get happy when you get your order earlier. Since three days ago, I am a happy owner of a Kindle.

Being a professional reader, I cannot but reflect on the implications. I showed my new toy to a Russian friend with whom I was talking on Skype, and she commented, unimpressed, "Oh yes, I have one too". Apparently people do not make much fuss about their Kindles. However, I have resisted so long that I really need to contemplate the pros and cons.

It is vey small. Smaller than I thought it would be. It is smaller than a paperback book, and the screen is smaller yet. My first reaction was, I can't read that small text. But yes, I can. It is a pleasurable font size and background, and I don't feel any radical difference from reading a paper book. I don't mind having one page at a time, and I can get two pages if I want. It is very light and easy to hold, and after ten minutes I turn pages without thinking about it. After the initial settings, I don't use the keyboard because I find it too small and inconvenient to use. I have downloaded the first fifteen free classics that I wanted to re-read anyway, and they will keep me busy for a while. I downloaded them through my compuer, which I think is very good service. I feel much more comfortable with my computer with its large keyboard and mouse.

I have played a bit with the toy, reading the manual and testing what it can do. So far, I don't need anything that it can do. I don't want to clip my favourite passages and share them on Facebook. I may want at some point to clip quotes to paste them direct into my own writing, but I am not there yet. I don't need to read my Facebook or check my email on the run - I don't have a smartphone either.

So what is a Kindle for me? IT'S A BOOK!

Further reflections on e-books

2011-06-01T20:42:00.000+01:00

Yesterday night I read some more Tess, this time on my little laptop, and it was just as easy and not as heavy. The cat was happy beside it. Apart from enjoying the book very much (I was too young to enjoy it when I read it first time), I tried to think what was actually different from reading a paper book. One thing, of course, is that you cannot physically see how much you have read and how much is still to read. Although Kindle told me, when I put in a bookmark, that I had read 15%. Putting in a bookmark is good, and unlike a physical bookmark, you cannot lose it. I have all kinds of fancy bookmarks, but I always end up using a receipt or a boarding pass.

What I definitely miss is the paratexts. As one of my students would expertly explain, paratexts is everything that is not part of the text. The cover, for instance. There is no cover on my Kindle Tess, and thus no cover image. I don't really mind it, but still worth noting. What I mind - or at least lack - is the back cover, with a publisher blurb. I tell my students to skip blurbs because they are stupid, but I always read blurbs carefully, perhaps exactly because they are stupid. Especially when you have read the book before and know how stupid the blurb is.

I also miss the pages where the author is presented.I miss the copyright page. I miss the table of contents - I always go back to it several times when I read a book. For Tess particularly, I miss the Introduction, timeline and notes they have in Penguin Classics. I usually read notes in advance because I don't wnat to be interrupted in my reading, but don't want to miss the comments. I guess there is another e-edition of Tess that has notes hyperlinked. Kindle has, without my consent, downloaded Oxford American (!) dictionary so that I can look up words I don't know. I haven't tried it yet, but it might prove useful. They say you ought to read books to learn.

I do not not miss the gentle rustle of pages, nor the feel of paper. Is there anything fundamentally wrong with me?

Final surrender

2011-05-31T21:23:00.000+01:00

Let me get it right - I love books. Have always loved books, have always bought too many books, have several times got rid of huge numbers of my books for various reasons: moving countries is a good reason. Or running out of shelf space.Then I buy more books.

I have great respect for books. I don't write or highlight or underline in books (if I work with a book, I use post-its). In my youth, books were hard to get hold of. Books were valuable. I could occasionally pay a monthly salary for a very attractive book (were books expensive or was my salary miserable?).

On the other hand, I have no reverence for first or rare editions, and I like paperbacks, not only because they are cheaper, but because they are lighter and easier to read in bed or bring on a trip. And I have long ago discovered the practicality of Project Guthenberg when you are looking for a quote.

Yet I have so far not succumbed for reading devices.

I wonder whether having a Kindle is something literature people don't talk about, like a shameful disease. Because we all love books. Because books are so important, and all these horrible electronic things imply demise of the book. No literary scholar with self-respect will ever fall as low as reading e-books. Although for me it is most often the text that is important, not the physical object.

Anyway, yesterday as I started thinking about what books I want to take with me when I go to Sweden next week and then to Brazil the week after... and I remembered last time I was in Brazil and ran out of books and all those transatlantic flights when you finish a book in the middle of the trip and have no other choice than to start all over (you can do it with some books, but not all). And all the times you open a book you've brought on the plane and discover that you just don't want to read it right now, but you have to because there is nothing else to read except the inflight magazine.

I went on amazon and started looking, to begin with, whether any books I have on my current reading list were available as e-books, and of course they were, and since I am in the period of re-reading major classics, most of them are free. As I was clicking around I saw a link saying "Download Kindle for your PC". I thought I would try to see whether I sort of generally, in principle, hypothetically would be happy to read a novel on a screen. Because if it was awful there'd be no point in getting a Kindle.

I downloaded it, and I downloaded a book that had been on my reading list for a while, Tess of the d'Urbervilles. I read Mayor of Castebridge a couple of months ago, and it was magnificent. A good, solid, crisp, smelly Penguin Classic. Could it be as good on screen? Yes, it was. It actually made no difference at all, except that when I had my laptop in bed, there was no room for the cat, so she was upset and left and never came back. But I read Tess of the d'Urbervilles for a couple of hours, and it made no difference whatsoever, and I played a bit with changing font size and opening two pages on screen, but it really didn't matter. Only my laptop is definitely heavier than a paperback, and it also gets very hot. I have a smaller laptop that I take with me on travel, and this morning I downloaded Kindle onto it and discovered, to my joy, that my Tess was there as well. And yet...

The estimated delivery of my Kindle is next Monday. I'll keep you posted.

“Based on a true story...”

2011-05-28T17:47:00.001+01:00

A friend gave me a book that she thought I should read. I am always grateful for reading suggestions because there are too many books our there, impossible to keep track of. It isn't a well-written book in my humble opinion, but I am glad I have read it because it will certainly get a lot of attention and likely to win awards because of its subject matter. Between Shades of Gray is the first novel by the American writer Ruta Sepetys, of Lithuanian origin, and it is a story (“based on first-hand family accounts and memories”, the back cover informs) about the deportation of Lithuanians after the Soviet occupation in 1939. For someone who has read a least some Holocaust literature, including children's literature, the gruesome details are not particularly shocking. For someone who has read books about Soviet labour camps, nothing is particularly new, and with all the horror and misery, the story is relatively idyllic. For someone like me, who learned the words “deportation” and “labour camp” among the very first, much is recognisable from family history: my great-grandfather, too, was thrown out of a cattle car when he died under transport. And yes, it is true that you could be shot if you stole a beet.

The writer has obviously done some serious research, visiting Lithuania and collecting evidence about the events she describes through the eyes of a fifteen-year-old. Since it is a book of fiction, she is not telling a story about any individual, but a collective story of a nation among other nations, and it is quite natural that in a novel everything is deliberately amplified and many stories brought together. Sepetys has got almost everything right. But it is this tiny “almost” that spoils the book for me.

It is, for instance, highly unlikely that a deportee would be allowed to keep a sketch pad and pencils, not to mention a fountain pen. This is one of the premisses of the plot, and I can accept it as poetic licence; however, the metaphor might have been stronger if the protagonist's drawings were imaginary rather than material. A deportee would definitely not be allowed to keep a Bible, which was forbidden under the Soviet regime even outside the penitentiary system.

When the Lithuanian are taken from a Siberian railway station to a labour camp, the truck stops in the middle of nothing, and the deportees are ordered into a building to take a shower. This is a poignant scene reflecting the humiliation of the female prisoners who must undress in front of the male guards. Apparently, Sepetys cannot imagine that in the region she depicts there is still no running water today, seventy years later. Sepetys describes in great detail the squalor of the local population, so where would a shower come from in the desolate Siberian steppes? (Showers are generally not a feature of Russia).

As they settle in the camp, some deportees write letters to surviving relatives and friends in Lithuania – and get replies. Lithuania is now under Nazi occupation; there is no way a letter from a Soviet prison camp would be delivered, and no letter “with Lithuanian stamps” would ever reach Siberia. The truth about totalitarian regimes is so unfathomable that no research helps you to comprehend it.

I would really like to believe that Sepetys has done her research properly, but there are too many gaps between her informants' evidence that she fills inadequately. The final drop comes when the protagonist gets a book for her sixteenth birthday. Well, by some serendipity a pretty, hardbound book with golden lettering might have found its way into a Siberian village. The protagonist is thrilled, because it is a book by her favourite author, Dickens, and a title she has not read, Dombey and Son. Then she opens the book and is utterly disappointed: the book is in Russian, which she cannot read. So how could she read the name of the author and the title? Shouldn't a writer who sets her story in Russia know that Russian language uses a different alphabet?

You may think it doesn't matter in a story of unimaginable suffering, and most readers will never notice. But if a writer decides to “tell ye your children...” she has to be credible all the way through.

Close encounters with children's writers

2011-05-27T21:14:00.000+01:00

For obvious reasons I have met quite a few children's writers. One day I may write a proper memoir, but I can start with some episodes of entertaining nature.

Some years ago the Swedish Institute for Cultural Exchange sent me to Moldova. Most people don't even know where Moldova is or that there is such a country, and quite correctly, it only became an independent country recently. The check-in attendant at Stockholm airport hadn't heard of such a country and refused to check me in.

I was going, together with a young employee from the Institute, to explore whether Moldova was of any interest at all for Swedish cultural engagement. Our liaison was a suspect NGO that was supposed to get us in touch with libraries, the writers' union, publishing houses and higher education institutions. In their emails, the NGO wondered whether we had any special wishes. I said I would like to meet Spiridon Vangeli.

Now, if you were a British NGO and there was a visitor coming from Sweden asking to meet Philip Pullman, you'd probably say to yourself: "Yes, and HRM as well" and forget all about it. This is what the Moldovian NGO did. However, when we were there and went through the very tight programme, I wondered whether they had contacted Vangeli, as I had requested. They looked uncomfortable, not knowing how to tell me that the famous author was probably busy, and who was I anyway. I insisted mildly, and the young lady made a call, during which her face expression was transformed from puzzlement to astonishment to full shock. She put down the receiver and said: "He is coming over this very minute, with his car and driver, and he will take you to meet his friends and have dinner..."

I had a wonderful time with Spiridon Vangeli, a marvelous children's writer whom I had met in Moscow and whose signed books I still cherish. The young lady from the NGO was very respectful toward me for the rest of my visit.

Surprise parties

2011-05-22T14:24:00.000+01:00

I haven't got much experience of surprise parties, and it's perhaps just as well. When Staffan turned 50 he escaped from celebrations and went biking in France, but when he came back his friends started plotting. They hired a place, sent out invitations, divided tasks and prepared everything. Two friends were supposed to take him out for lunch and instead bring him to the venue. My role was simply to come over as soon as they had left, but not dress up before that, not to raise his suspicions.

On the morning of the day, Staffan announced that he had a cold and phoned the two friends to cancel the lunch. They called me in despair and after a brief war council we decided that they would come over to us and then pretend they wanted a particular blend of whisky (for lunch! highly plausible) and persuade Staffan to go together to the liquor store. Somehow they did manage to persuade him - he must have been off guard because of his cold. He had not showered that morning and was wearing his shabbiest jeans and shirt. Frankly, he looked awful. As soon as they had left, I put on my party clothes and makeup and hurried to the venue where some thirty guests were waiting with champagne bottles ready. Some minutes later, one of the kidnappers came in, frustrated. As soon as they had driven past the liquor store and toward the centre, Staffan got suspicious, and when they parked, he promptly refused to get out of the car. I had to go and talk to him, and when he saw me in my fancy dress - half an hour after he had seen me at home in my track suit - he finally relised what was going on, and his reluctance grew. I was uncertain what tactics to use, but eventually told him not to be a wet blanket but come in and see his friends who had taken all the trouble.

I don't think he has forgiven me yet, although it wasn't my idea.

Unlike Staffan, I love celebrations, and when I turned 50 I gave a huge dinner party which I had planned almost a year in advance. (That is another story which I may tell sometime). But I also knew that at work we usually celebrated people's birthdays with a cake at our weekly afternoon coffee, so although I had no classes that day I decided to attend the coffee and allow myself to be celebrated. Since I also knew that we usually collected money for a gift and consulted a family member about what might be desirable, I had told Staffan that if anyone consulted him, I wanted a gym card and no cut flowers. They did indeed consult them, and apparently he knew about the surprise.

I was marking essays or something like that in the morning when Staffan inquired whether I was quite sure that the celebration was in the afternoon, and I told him I was. Two-thirty, as usual. Behind my back, Staffan called my department, and soon after there came a call from a friend who wondered whether I was aware that there was a surprise lunch for me at twelve. My first reaction was to jump into my car and drive as far away as possible from Stockholm and my department. I knew I would have enjoyed a surprise party, but they could have made sure I turned up. I finally did turn up and even enjoyed it, but there was a little cloud in the silver lining.

All this to thank my wonderful students for the surprise party for which they really made sure I was there. They had planned it for my actual birthday last Monday. Morag's role was to invite me to have a cup of birthday tea after my class, and I never had the slighest suspicion, just thinking how sweet of Morag. The day before I learned that my dear son would be in London for a couple of hours on Monday - the best birthday present I could have - so I cancelled the class to go and see him. I can imagine the students' disappointment! However, after I had humbly apologised and assured them I would let myself be celebrated next year, I had no clue that the party was still on. (They had created a Facebook event for it - I almost start crying now as I think about it). So last Friday, as I finished the class moved from Monday and was putting away my things, the door opened and in they marched, not just those attending in the class, but the whole bunch of masters, coming in specially, on a Friday afternoon! With cake and all.

It is such moments that make everything worth while, even fighting the windmills of University administration.

Masterpieces I have missed

2011-05-19T20:42:00.000+01:00

I cherish the idea that I am quite well-read in children's literature. Of course nobody today can really keep abreast with everything that is published, but I have always imagined that I have read the most important children's books from a number of cultures and languages. My initial interest was fantasy, so it took me some time to discover the pleasures of Anne of Green Gables, The Secret Garden and Heidi, and I have been working hard to fill the gaps. Therefore I was a bit worried when our children's literature reading group decided to choose Anthony Buckeridge's Jennings Goes to School. Conceited as I am, I couldn't imagine there was a classic I hadn't read. A classic worth reading.

Usually when someone suggests a book for the reading group it's because they like it. It means that when you read the book someone has chosen you try to see why this person liked it, or at least what may be intresting to discuss. I hadn't done my homework by the time we met, and it so happened that the person who had suggested it couldn't come, so there was the whole group hating this book and no one to defend it, until someone said, rather timidly, that it was actually funny. The rest of the group protested loudly. Humour is a very serious matter, it is not only culturally dependent - and our group is highly multicultural - but individual. I don't find Just William particularly funny. Except for one person, the group claimed that Jennings was not funny. Yet something in the advocate's description, accompanied by a few quotes, made me curious. Apparently, it was linguistic humour, not situational humour. A student gave me her copy with the comment that she never wanted to see it again. So the other night I gave it a chance.

Staffan came running from the kitchen anxious that I was having a bad cough attack - but I was laughing and just couldn't stop. I hadn't laughed so much over a book since I read Three Men in a Boat. Jennings - I am your fan club. How could I have missed this absolutely marvelous book? It was published the same year as The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.

Once upon a time I made my way dutifully through Tom Brown's Schooldays and even forced my students to read it as a background to Harry Potter. Now I see that Harry Potter does not owe to Tom Brown, it owes to Jennings. How could I have missed it and why haven't I seen anyone mention it, for it must have been mentioned in every Harry Potter essay.

Here is a taster. I take all the trouble to type it.

"His name's Temple, and his initials are CAT, so naturally we call him Dog."
"But you didn't call him Dog, you called him Bod," argued Jennings.
"Give a chap a chance to get a word in," said Venables. "I haven't finished yet. It's a bit of a sweat calling him Dog, so we call him Dogsbody for short."
"But it isn't short," protested Jennings. "Dogsbody's much longer than Dog."
"Okay, then," replied Venables, logically, "it needs shortening. Bod short for Body, and Dogsbody short for Dog".

Is this where Neil Gaiman's Bod comes from?

There are twenty-five Jennings novels. My summer reading list is full.

Getting there

2011-05-18T22:40:00.000+01:00

Good news today: my co-editor and I are getting a book contract.

Several people have asked me recently whether the volume coming out of the conference last autumn has been published yet. Which shows how little they know about book publishing.

For the conference, we asked for full papers. It means that we had a vague idea of what people would be talking about. We went deliberately to different sessions to hear as many papers as possible. A good written paper doesn't always make a good presentation, and a conference paper does not necessarily make a good volume chapter. Publishers don't want conference proceedings these days, because these don't sell. And frankly, I hate conference proceedings that lack coherence and are very uneven in quality. So we decided from the beginning that we would select no more than twelve papers. It was a hard decision, because there were many good papers that simply didn't fit into the book. I sincerely hope they have been or will soon be published elsewhere.

The conference was last September, and by the end of October we had made our selection, informed the lucky few and asked them for abstracts to be included in the proposal, at the same time asking them to revise and expand the papers to almost three times the length. I have never yet met an author who was upset by the request to expand their paper. Mostly we are asked to cut them down.

By December, we had collected all abstracts and written an introduction. We had completely opposite ideas about what an introduction is supposed to be doing, so it was a very useful exercise. We also wrote a formal proposal with specifications of audience, competition on the market, estimated length and other stuff. I have a file in my computer for this, where I just insert the relevant info.We submitted the proposal early in January. We also sent the outline to our authors asking them to take each other's chapters into consideration.

Sometime mid-March we received the positive first response from the editor who requested two sample chapters, one by an established and one by a less known scholar. Since we had asked all our contributors to submit their finished chapters by first of March, and surprisingly enough some of them did, we chose two and resubmitted. Meanwhile we chased the rest of our authors and edited all chapters for correct format. At least a couple of submissions were really late, but it didn't matter much at this point. We kept our authors posted about the progress. Authors tend to get impatient because they want to include their chapters in their CVs as forthcoming. We told them they could do it at their own risk. Personally, I'd never put anything on my CV before I had a contract.

About a month ago we had a generally positive response from the editor who had received two reader reviews. Now, reader reviews can be extremely helpful or they can be hopelessly stupid. Most of the comments were helpful, some were stupid, but what we were asked to do was address every single comment, either agreeing with it or arguing why we didn't agree. The fact that we didn't quite agree between ourselves wasn't quite helpful, but we did it. Meanwhile, we chased the tardy authors and corrected format and footnotes. If you ask authors to correct the footnotes you can be sure that they will make new errors, so it's just as well to do it yourself.

Today - happy news! The Board has approved the proposal, and we are getting a contract. So when is the book coming out? Take it easy. Since we have been so optimistic and prepared the manuscript while we were waiting, we can now submit it very quickly, probably next week. The editor has sent us, once again, Author Guidelines, with a really helpful note that we don't have to keep to them. So much for all our efforts. After we have submitted, the ms will go out to another round of reviews. It means that it is pointless to ask the authors for further revisions, even though we would like some. But we'll wait till we have the reviews, which may be helpful or stupid. In any case, we will have to report back to the editor how we are going to address the comments and then send the chapters back to authors for revisions. Are you with me? We are now probably in September-October. We will have to give our authors a couple of months for revisions. Meanwhile, we cannot do anything. When we have received all revisions, we will do the final editing and send the ms to the editor. It will then go to copy-editor and return to us with queries, helpful or stupid. Some copy-editors like to show that they have done their job well and change your spelling from British to American or the other way round, or change double quotes to single, or insert new paragraphs where you don't want them.

I think we are well over Christmas now. Copy-editors deserve their Christmas holidays. A few months later there will be page proofs, which always, I mean always, come when you least want them, and it's always urgent, after all those months. Hopefully, this publisher will not send out proofs to all authors individually. I much prefer to proofread myself than chase contributors who happen to spend their sabbatical in Antarctis without internet access.

Eventually, about two years after the conference, the book will be out. Our publisher is very proud of their short production cycle.

This is the most exciting book ever written

2011-05-15T19:53:00.000+01:00

There is a new academic activity I have recently become engaged in: writing blurbs for people's books. It has always been a mystery to me. I understand that a paperback edition can carry quotes from positive reviews on the back cover. But when some for me totally unknown professor This and That from Such and Such obscure university is quoted stating that it is the most amazing book on the subject, I feel skeptical. Has this professor actually read the book? Did the publisher pay them to read the manuscript or is it just a friendly gesture?

The practice seems to get more and more common, as I have been asked to write blurbs for several books during the past few months. First, no, the publishers don't pay you for this; at best, you will get a free copy of the book when it is published. Let's say that an average academic book costs £30, and it takes me four to five hours to read an average academic book if I read it quickly (if I read it properly, it takes four to five days), the hourly rate is rather low. In some cases, I had read the book at manuscript stage and was presumably familiar with it. It is, however, a huge difference between writing a critical review of a manuscript, aimed at helping the author to improve it, and writing a blurb that will entice readers to purchase it. You cannot go into technicalities in a blurb. Above all, you cannot be critical. So how much is it worth? I don't have to read the whole book in ordet to write some casual words about its merits. Amazing! Outstanding! Innovative! The rest you just infer from the table on contents.

As in all academic games, this is a matter between you and your conscience. Personally, I cannot endorse a book that I haven't read, even if I know the author's earlier work well. It is possible to tell the publisher: "This book is a pile of s-t, and I cannot say anything positive about it, but don't tell the author". Still, when you agree to write a blurb for a book you haven't read, you assume that you will be able to write something positive, but what if it is seriously bad? Isn't it safer to decide once and for all that you will never, ever write blurbs?

However, it is so easy to be seduced. After all, it is flattering to be asked. It is more than a free copy of the book. You are also advertising yourself, so that someone reading the book wonders: "And who the h-l is this professor saying all this s-t about this lousy book?" Advertising space is valuable in academic games. Another consideration is, as with many other things, mutual gain. Today I endorse your book, tomorrow you will support my grant application. But also, frankly, it is a pleasure to praise a good book.

Yet even when the book is excellent, writing a blurb is not particularly exciting. This is why I am blogging rather than reading this wonderful, fabulous, extraordinary, outstanding, ground-breaking, cutting edge book.

On evil stepmothers

2011-05-08T11:42:00.000+01:00

Mother's Day feels the right time to contemplate the odious figure of the evil stepmother. It is a hugely sensitive issue, but I cannot read all these odes to wonderful mothers on Facebook without thinking about what lies behind. The evil stepmother of the folktale is a complex figure, since she is both a reflection of hard facts and a highly symbolic image. In old times, stepmothers were the necessary evil - and in many cases a blessing - because of high childbirth mortality, and mortality in general, so it was imperative for a man to remarry to have someone to take care of his children. If the woman brought in children from her previous marriage or if she had more children in the new marriage, it was natural that she preferred her own flesh and resented the stepchildren. Today stepparents are a result of divorce rather than death, but who can blame a woman who loves her own child more than a stepchild? It would be perverse otherwise. This is the Cinderella version.

The Snow White version is more complex and more repulsive. The stepmother is young, perhaps almost as young as the stepdaughter who is just coming into fertility. The stepdaughter is a rival, not only for her father's love (connected with the memory of love for the first wife), but the love and admiration of all other eligible men. The stepmother is jealous, and who can blame her?

If you were paying attention in your fairy tale class, or if you have read your Bettelheim carefully, you know that the stepmother is a circumscription of a biological mother. The idea of a mother hating her daughter and being jealous is so forbidden in a civilised society, as we claim we belong to, that storytellers prefer to substitute a stepmother, so that it would be less offensive. In many other fairy tales, the mother figure is a witch. Symbolically, the mother is split into two agents, a good, benevolent, biological mother and a wicked, jealous stepmother. The young girl has to accept that her mother has both these sides, and the mother has to accept, negotiate and control her contradictory feelings toward her daugher. Most women manage it, at least superficially - who knows what's going on in their minds. Some women don't manage it and turn into wicked witches.

I once attended a seminar on Anna Karenina, where someone wondered why Anna loved her son from a cold marriage and was indifferent toward her daughter conceived in passion. I explained, cynically and provocatively, that Anna's love focused on her son when she had no one else to love, but she saw her daughter as a future rival for her lover's attention. The woman who had posed the question got furious. She yelled that I apparently had no children and didn't know what I was talking about. I said that I had two sons, a daughter and two stepchildren and knew very well what I was talking about. I also pointed out that Anna Karenina was a piece of fiction and thus carried metaphorical as well as realist levels. My opponent was not convinced. So strong is our reluctance to admit the forbidden. So hard is our struggle between the animalistic instinct and the civilised, socially imposed ethics. Thanks goodness we have literature to provide outlet for our most hidden feelings.

In fairy tales, the evil stepmother is punished, often in a most awful manner. Symbolically, it means that the young girl has accepted and exterminated the evil side of her mother, and for the mother, it means that she has admited and learned to control the evil side of herself. The good biological mother is either resurrected or reincarnated as a fairy godmother or simply watches from her heaven her daugher's wedding. If she has really won over the evil stepmother, she is thinking about how she will become immortal through her daughter's children.

All this to say that I wish I had a mother whom I could celebrate on Mother's Day.

Reunion

2011-05-07T19:55:00.001+01:00

Staffan is in Sweden for school reunion. Isn't it cool? He has been saying for weeks: "What am I going to do with all these old ladies?" But it seems to have gone smoothly.

I have realised that I never blogged about my school reunion a year and a half ago. I know why. I only went for two days and didn't tell anyone, except for my best friend and classmate Alyona, who had persuaded me to come. I didn't want to blog so that someone in Moscow could read it and feel offended. It's all ancient history now, and I cannot help going back to it in my memory, now that Staffan is meeting his old ladies.

I didn't have many good friends in school; in fact, I was one of those kids who are not directly bullied but effectively excluded; a weirdo in eyeglasses, top grades and book lover. I did a lot to gain popularity, including smoking and almost getting expelled for it, but I was never invited to parties and I didn't have a boyfriend in school. In fact, I have never ever had a boyfriend, but it is another story.

I went to a reunion two years after graduation, mostly to see some of my favourite teachers. Then I lost touch with all my classmates, except for Alyona, who is still my best friend, despite and not because. Then I moved to Sweden and actually met an old classmate there, but he wasn't exactly one I wanted to meet. Alyona went to a couple of reunions and reported, but I didn't care much, beyond the normal human interest for gossip.

A few years ago Alyona told me about the Russian version of Stayfriends - or was it the other way round? Anyway, we discovered this site, and I found quite a few classmates, despersed over the whole world, who were all extremely glad to hear from me. It must be nostalgia or some other similar feeling which, as you get old, compels you to seek people you knew when you were young (that's why Staffan was after all so eager to meet his old ladies). They mustn't necessarily have been close friends, but you sat in the same room for years, read the same books, broke the same rules. One of the former classmates I found on Stayfriends was expelled from school for antisocial behaviour. I won't reveal what has become of him because it is easily identifyable. In fact, many of my classmates have become something grand and have professorships at world's leading universities and medical clinics, and have made brilliant political or financial careers, or own theatres, or write novels. We discovered this when we finally met, but I am going ahead of the story. As we realised that a 40th reunion was approaching, some classmates took the initiative, the bankers gave money, the theatre owners made venues avalaible, and I was appointed liaison for diaspora.

I didn't want to go to Moscow for a number of reasons, but Alyona persuaded me that I could come solely for the reunion and never tell anyone. Which I did, and I am glad I did. I have never, before or after, experienced the temperature of hugs and kisses, and although there were a couple of people who had to remind each other who they were, almost everyone was recognisable, and the reminiscences came in floods. We were about eighty in my year, and thirty came to the reunion, from far and wide.The meal was plentiful, as it should be in Russia; we moved around the table to talk to everyone, took pictures, shared pictures of grandchildren, gossiped about absent friends, honoured some of the teachers with a toast and some with a moment of silence. We agreed that we were an exceptionally privileged year, and we were. The really bad times followed soon after our graduation.That's why so many are abroad.

Shopping binge

2011-05-07T12:53:00.000+01:00

I have certain serious defficiences. I don't like spectator sports, I almost never watch television, I don't understand contemporary music, and I hate shopping. I enjoy buying kitchen utencils and office supplies, and I love flea markets, but buying clothes is a nightmare. If I need a piece of clothing, I dash into a shop, preferably one I have known for years, find the item, try it on, pay and run. I have on severeal occations walked around in the company of shopaholics, and I don't really mind if they try on dozens of things, as long as I don't have to. When I need anything extraordinary, it's a pain.

The main reason, I think, is my background. When I was young in Moscow, there was nothing in the shops worth buying, and we had tailors and seamstresses to make our clothes, and later I made my own clothes and knitted sweaters and cardigans. It was also a common practice to swap clothes when you got tired of them.

When I came to Sweden and could potentially buy anything I fancied, I didn't have income of my own the first years, and although I am sure my husband would have never denied me money, I continued making the children's clothes from my old blouses and pants, learned quickly to use post order (the Russian community in Stockholm shared the secrets), watched out for sales, and made the most of the Swedish tendency toward casual attire.

As a result, I never developed the taste for leisure shopping, for either spending hours and days in search of anything particular or browsing shops in search of anything interesting. I eventually stopped buying canvas strap shoes and cheap t-shirts. In San Diego, I found a shop that suited my taste, age, social status and purse, and when we came back to Sweden, I searched and found an analogue. Only once when I was in London, about five years ago, I bought several nice and expensive outfits. I own an evening gown that I bought for $30 at Nordstrom Rack in San Diego and have so far worn three times; I own an incredibly expensive cocktail dress from Stockmann in Finland, that I have worn on dozens of occasions, and I own a black formal suit that I inherited from my daughter.

The necessity to get an outfit for the imminent wedding hovered heavily on me ever since the wedding was announced last year, especially when the bride-to-be insisted that the mother of the bride must wear a hat. I have never worn a hat in my whole life (except for beach hats). The other kids did not require hats when they were married, and I don't remember getting any special outfits for their weddings. I had hoped to use one of my existing nice dresses, possibly getting a hat to match, but after the Royal wedding I realised what my daughter expects me to look like. Goodness! Am I supposed to outdo Mrs Middleton?

In any other situation, I would ask my clever, supportive daugher with good taste and profound knowledge of fashion brands, to assist me. She has on several occasions helped me to find the right item for award ceremonies and job interviews. But in this one case, my dress must be a surprise for her. And there is no one here in Cambridge to turn to - so I thought. But as it happens, the world is full of eager shopping advisors. Earlier this week, I shared my concerns with one of my PhD students, Ghada, who immediately told me that I had to go London to shop, whereupon I asked humbly whether she would be kind enough to assist me - provided it would be in Cambridge. Presumably, proxy shopping is just as attractive for genuine shopaholics, so she got highly enthusiastic

Yesterday morning, I reluctantly went to town to meet Ghada at the shopping mall. We started with a cup of coffee and discussed our strategy. Ghada wanted us to get a dress first, and she had a firm idea about the colour, which made me wince. I suggested looking at hats first because if I saw a hat that I fell in love with, we'd buy a dress to match the hat. Ghada was sceptical, but as we took the first round of shops in search of a hat, we saw a dress that I thought was perfect and happened to be the colour Ghada had in mind. I tried it on and asked the shop assistant to hold it for me, and we went on. Two hours later, we had been to all fashion shops in Cambridge, selected a pair of shoes, found a possible hat, and, exhausted, sat down for lunch. Now the plan was to go back quickly to the very first shop with the very first dress, try it on again, quickly get the hat and the shoes and wind down with another cup of coffee. Ghada was meeting up with some fellow students later, and as they exchanged texts, the others bombarding Ghada with eager questions about their professor's shopping ordeal, I suggested that she invite Clementine to join us. By the time we were back in the first shop and stated that the dress I had tried and found perfect wasn't after all, Clementine arrived, and the orgy began. If you have seen a Hollywood movie in which a woman does some serious shopping, use your imagination. Together with the shop assistant, three young ladies brought me heaps of dresses, in all colours and designs, alternating "Maybe" and "NO!" and "YES, this is perfect...no, not really". By that point, I had resigned and would buy a potato sack if they recommended it, and I was getting more and more depressed as I couldn't squeeze into some really nice things. Yet finally, by a majority vote of three to one, we made a decision, and the minority admited that it was acceptable, and it was not until then I looked at the price, and it was too late to change my mind.

By this time, new forces joined us, and we marched to the hat place, only to discover that the hat Ghada and I were sure was exactly the same colour as the dress, actually wasn't. It may be that we didn't buy the original dress, or that we are colour blind, but Debbie was adamant that the hat did not match the dress. We had to break the neat package to be absolutely sure, and Debbie was right. The hunt continued, and we had fun trying on all those completley impossible hats and fascinators - a word none of us knew before last week - until suddenly we all, at the same moment, saw The Hat, and that was the end of it. Getting shoes was simple, and, loaded with bags, we went to a restaurant, and I got us a bottle of sparkling and a glass of cranberry juice for Clementine who does not drink alcohol, clever girl.

When I got to the parking structure, I had been in town for seven hours. Shopping. I simply cannot believe it. However, as Debbie pointed out, I actually had found everything I needed. It would have been frustrating to spend seven hours shopping and come home with empty hands.

Joys of mathematics

2011-05-02T20:01:00.000+01:00

I am reading a book called Mathematics: A very short introduction.

I am reading this book because a mathematician at Homerton recommended it last year when I listened to his lecture. I was fascinated by what he was saying and asked whether there was something an ignoramus like me could read to learn more. It took me a long time to get the book, but here I am. Among many other brilliant things, it explains why so many people hate mathematics, or think they hate it. If I had been taught in school all these wonderful, mystical things, instead of boring sums and equations, I would have loved it, just as I loved physics. I hated sums, but I was in love with irrational numbers and the square root of 2. I hated the routine, I loved the weirdness.

Already from that lecture, and still more when I am reading the book, I understand that mathematics is about abstract thinking. About patterns and ideas, and never mind the exact facts. Gowers says explicitly that mathematicians do not use computers, that their tools are a piece a paper and a pencil. He doesn't say it, but I would guess that he does most of his work walking, biking or gardening. Or maybe not. Maybe he sits in his office in Wilberforce Road and thinks.

I admire people who can explain complicated things in a comprehensible way. I have always been fascinated by high-level dimensions, but Gowers has explained them so that I can explain it to someone else, and then you have really understood it. He says that in mathematics you just have to ignore the physicality of space and dimensions. He shows how to go on from three dimensions to four to five to thirty-seven. He shows how to multiply very large numbers without caring about errors in the region of a million. I love it.

And I have learned a new word, torus. It is the surface of an object in the shape of a doughnut.

May Day

2011-05-01T19:08:00.000+01:00

"Today, today
is the first of May,
on this happy day in May
little children dance and play"

I have no idea where this masterpiece comes from; not from Mother Goose, for sure. We had to recite it in our English class when I was a kid.

For many people, the first of May is important, and it is for me, or used to be, in a peculiar way. Long before I was old enough to see through the official lies and propaganda, I hurried to switch on the television in the morning of the first of May to watch the May parade on Red Square. It was impressive, and it went for hours. Military parade first, then civil parade, called "workers' demonstration". My grandfather had to go on that, and I always begged him to take me along. I thought it would be grand to march there, waving flags and flowers.

My patriotic feelings died eventually, and May Day became just one of those few holidays the Soviet authorities granted their citizens. May holidays - with luck, you could get four days including the weekend - implied an exciting trip, highly unlike the standard summar holidays. It would be something like a boat cruise from Moscow to Gorky where the Oka river joins the Volga; or hiking in Armenia to see the mountain monasteries from the 3rd century, or exploring the less touristy beaches of the Crimea.

However, in my first undergrad year I was, like my grandfather before me, ordered to join the civil parade on Red Square and show my enthusiasm and support for the land of triumphant socialism. This was imperative: truancy could lead to suspension. Some days before the event, we were gathered to make paper flowers and banners ("Language students toward communism!"). On the day, we were told to arrive at eight in the morning and were taken by buses to the place, half way to Leningrad, from which we were supposed to march. It was terribly cold, and some of the boys had cleverly brought strong spirits which they generously shared. Our teachers, who were just like us ordered to participate, closed their eyes - or perhaps accepted the drink. We were all hungry, for nobody had thought about bringing food. About eleven we started moving slowly, and well over midday we were outside my house, two blocks from the Kremlin, It was tempting to bolt through the police chain and go home to have lunch, but it wouldn't do. You had to be loyal to your friends. Nobody asked to be part of the circus. We were rushed through Red Square like cattle, hardly having time to wave our flowers or display the banners. The problem was then to get home, since all traffic in the centre was stopped. I had to call a friend who lived on the other side of the river and invite myself for a cup of tea. It was not until late afternoon the city got back to normal. I understood why grandfather had not been too eager to bring me along.

My first year in Sweden, Staffan took me to a May Day celebration, with paper flowers, slogans and speeches. I was chocked to realise that for some people, this day actually meant something. Twenty years later, I went to listen to my daughter speak on the first of May. We hold hands and sang The Internationale. I still feel ambivalent about it.

Memories of Royal weddings

2011-04-29T17:44:00.000+01:00

Thirty years ago I was invited to contribute to a British academic journal. It doesn't sound extraordinary, but at that time I was living in the Soviet Union, and if I hadn't known that I would soon move to Sweden, I would have ignored the invitation and hoped that the postal service censor wouldn't report my inappropriate correspondence. As it was, I decided that a publication in a British journal would be a good start for my new career, so I wrote the piece and asked a foreign journalist I knew to mail it for me. Some weeks later I received a postal note to collect an overseas parcel. Again, in a different situation I would have burned the note, but I went to the post office and had to pay import tax which I am sure exceded by far the value of the parcel, at least in proportion to my salary. There was a short letter from the editor: "I have been told that it would be pointless to send you a fee, so please receive this as a token of appreciation". The parcel was a tin of biscuits with a picture of the Royal couple, HRH Prince Charles and Diana.

My friends were impressed by the tin, but less by the biscuits. I didn't take the tin with me to Sweden, so I guess one of my friends kept it and may have it still. It must be worth a fortune now.

How to be rejected

2011-04-27T20:40:00.000+01:00

Yesterday I posted a status update on Facebook sharing the fact that an academic journal had rejected an article that they had asked me to submit. I posted it deliberately for some younger colleagues to note that being senior, established, renowned and so on is not a guarantee that everything you offer will be published, and not even that everything that is commissioned will be published. I got many responses to this post, exactly of the type I had expected, and it feels there is more to be said.

I once gave a paper at a conference where several academic journal editors were fishing for good stuff, and after my session the editor of the most prestigeous journal asked me to expand the paper into a full-scale article. Which I did, because the subject was something I thought important, and the journal prestigeous. I put a lot of work into it, and it went out to readers who very obvioulsy didn't understand what I was doing. They made some, in my eyes, irrelevant comments, enough to get the article rejected, but they didn't seem to have noticed my completely revolutionary approach! I eventually published it elsewhere and got my brilliant new ideas across, but it did hurt.

I am sure that I occasionally do the same when I am asked to read a manuscript for a journal. Fail to see the new revolutionary ideas. Hopefully, the authors publish elsewhere.

I think this is something we need to accept as academics. Sometimes we are lucky, and a good journal or essay collection will take your piece, with small revisions (no articles go to press without revisions). Sometimes, after having been rejected by high-profile journals, you publish in a less esteemed one. I have published in Swedish something that had been rejected in English. And the other way round (in fact, my first real book, Children's Literature Comes of Age, was rejected by a Swedish publisher, so I re-wrote it in English). I also have publications in Croatian and Slovenian that haven't been published anywhere else.

I still have plenty of unpublished stuff in my computer. Every now and then I go through it thinking that I ought to do something about it, such as a short and comprehensive introduction to Bakhtin, or a comparative study of illustrations to Hans Christian Andersen's fairy tales, or my brilliant Francelia Butler memorial lecture on bridges in children's literature (I hope some editors are reading this). But I am doing other stuff now. It's too late.

It hurts a lot when you are rejected, especially when you are convinced that you piece is good. Sometimes you submit something written half-heartedly or marginal to what you are doing or something that will be included in another piece. But when you know it's good, the only way to handle it is try again. Some of the readers' comments may actually be helpful. Even if they have completely misunderstood you, it is worth contemplating why.

And whatever happens, we need to remember that we have chosen to play this game, and every now and then we win.

Easter

2011-04-25T21:52:00.001+01:00

Easter time is when my identity gets most confused. Russian and Western Easter do not always coincide and can be as far apart as five weeks. We always celebrated Russian Easter in Moscow, even though my family was Lutheran. When I moved to Sweden I of course started celebrating Swedish/Western Easter, but I brought my Russian customs with me. Russian customs include Russian food: the Easter saffron cake, kulich, and Easter spicy cheese, paskha. At the same time, as a child I was supposed to believe in Easter Bunny, in the good German tradition. I had to prepare a plate with some moss or pretty leaves and put it under my bed on Easter eve. In the morning the Bunny would have hidden the plate, and when I found it, it had a little kulich, a pretty egg and perhaps a little toy. No chocolate eggs. Easter was officially forbidden, so there was no commerce around it. Yet you could buy kulich in a bakery, only they called it "Spring cake". People with self respect baked their own. There were no special paints for eggs, we would use onion skins and other natural dyes. We shared family secrets.

We played the egg game at breakfast, knocking egg against egg to break it. But one year when we were visiting some German relatives in Northern Caucasus, they took us to the churchyard to roll eggs on graves, which was utterly perplexing. Many years later, I saw remains of hardboiled eggs in Russian churchyards in Moscow. Visiting graves on Easter Day was not part of my family customs. Later, the authorities in Moscow organised shuttle buses from undeground stations to nearest churchyards on Easter Day, to avoid chaos. Still they didn't admit it was Easter.

In Sweden, when the kids were small - and actually when they were grown-up - we filled cardboard eggs with sweets and hid for them to hunt for. A big cultural clash happened during my first Easter in Sweden, when I had carefully prepared the food, painted eggs, set the table on the eve, and in the morning Staffan started boiling eggs for breakfast. On the other hand, he expected me to make a leg of lamb for Easter dinner, and I thought it was barbarian. Eventually, we reconciled it all, taking the best of everything.

In my youth, we would go to Easter vigil, which was forbidden. To discourage young people from attending Easter services, attractive American films and shows were broadcast on television well beyond the normal broadcast time. Around the few remaining churches in Moscow, police and volunteers from Young Communists made human chains, but were instructed to let the believers in. Which implied old women in headscarves, but if you went past with determined steps they'd let you in. The church was overcrowded (in Russian Orthodox churches there are no pews, you stand), it was unbearably hot from hundreds of candles. Once you've squeezed in, you couldn't get out, and the service went on for hours. Sometimes we stayed outside and watched the priests come out to call: "Christ is risen". I knew very little of the implications, but it was a celebration we shared and valued. The Russian custom was to carry a burning candle all the way home. Luckily, I lived just next to a church, so I managed. Sometimes we would go to a different church, and the game was to bring it home in a taxi (it didn't work). Once I attended a service as a guest of honour, allowed to stand with the choir. I received a blessed egg from the priest. People said that blessed eggs didn't rot, you could save them for years.

In Stockholm I used to go to the Russian church for Easter vigil, even when I didn't otherwise go regularly, and in San Diego I managed to find a tiny Russian church. When the Russian and Western Easter did not coincide, I would celebrate first with the family, at home, and then with Russian friends, in church. I would make Easter food twice. Occasionally I would go to a Swedish Easter service. In Sweden, Good Friday (strange name for a day when God is murdered) is a holiday. In the US and here, in the UK, it isn't. You get out of phase. Add all your Jewish friends and friends of other confessions and atheist friends... Yet much like Christmas, Easter for me is mostly about the family. We could never get the whole family together for Christmas Eve, but they all came for Easter brunch.

This year, Julia made Russian Easter food and invited her little brother. I don't think she realises how happy she made me. Somehow this multicultural, confused tradition is carried on.

I am not on study leave any more

2011-04-19T18:29:00.000+01:00

As the new term starts next week, I suppose my study leave is over. Supervisions, a business lunch and mountains of paperwork today, a meeting tomorrow. Yes, I know it's Easter week. It doesn't count. We are getting three bank holidays on top of each other next week and the week after.

Paradoxically, I have just come into a good writing mood and managed to finish the most challenging piece I have ever written. (Except maybe my very first article - that was tough too). I have a definite feeling that I have wasted my study leave on zillions of small tasks when I should have been writing my Book. That's what I said I would do in my study leave application. Well, I haven't written much on my Book, it's sufficient to look at the dates of the most recent versions of my files. December? So what have I been doing since?

Perhaps it's inevitable, and perhaps my book project has in fact benefitted from a break. I have written several related papers, I have done a lot of reading. I have also done a lot of thinking. The latter is very hard to put into a report.

My first encounter with trash

2011-04-16T16:15:00.000+01:00

Susan's blog post reminded me of a weird experience many years ago. I was a voracious reader and was brought up with high quality literature, and besides there wasn't a lot of what you call "mass-market" literature in my country at that time. Since we were not exposed to it, we didn't really know the difference, and we would read Arthur Hailey alongside John Updike. I read a lot in English, and English paperbacks were hard to get hold of, so you read what was available, what privileged friends brought from abroad, what you could occasionally buy in second-hand book shops. A used paperback cost 4-5 roubles, and my salary was 100. Don't ask me how I managed.

One summer a friend and I went on holiday to Latvia, and although we had brought plenty of books, we ran out of them. We found a second-hand book shop in the capital, and they had a small shelf with English paperbacks. We chose a book each, in the standard way: judging by the cover. I don't remember the title or the author of course, but it was about a family on holiday in the mountains who find a stranger almost frosen to death, and they save him, and the daughter falls in love with him. Half way through the book I started wondering. I expected something to happen. That the stranger turns out ot be a spy, or a former lover tries to claim her back, or something. I was used to books having a plot, a complication, a moral dilemma. But the book just went on with this happy romance. I was puzzled because I had never before met a book that was so profoundly bad. Twilight is a masterpiece in comparison.

Requiem

2011-04-14T17:28:00.000+01:00

We met for the first time in their tiny bed-and-sitter in a Moscow suburb. Natasha, his wife, was my first husband's former fellow student. I was heavily pregnant, their daughter some months old. Later we would babysit for each other.

Volodya and Natasha were refuseniks, denied permit to emigrate. In such situations, people no longer cared about the authorities. They constantly had foreign journalists in their home. Volodya went on hunger strikes. I helped translate petitions into English.

Then suddenly they were granted exit and the limbo was over. We all helped to pack and clean and throw away. There was a huge farewell party, with mixed feelings of joy and sorrow. At that time, we knew for sure that we would never see each other again. I remember my husband was away at his archaeological excavations, but came to Moscow just in time to say goodbye at the airport. We received bits of information; first they were in Italy, then moved to Sweden, as they had intended.

Seven years later I moved to Sweden and found them in the phone book. Natasha said: “Come over this very moment”. We have been close ever since. We went to Volodya's exhibitions, we saw him change styles. He gave a print to each of my children. He wasn't hugely famous, but many people loved and bought his paintings and watercolours.

Then one day we became professional partners. We did two picturebooks together, and Volodya did the cover for one of my novels. The publishers didn't appreciate his illustrations, saying they were too elegant. Swedish children didn't like beautiful pictures.

We didn't meet often, but we were always glad to see each other. Volodya and I always pretended we had been lovers, which wasn't true, just a game. He played the same game with dozens of other women. He swore marvellously.

Staffan and I repeatedly talked about asking Volodya to paint a portrait of me. Now it is too late.

Final report from Norway

2011-04-11T20:52:00.000+01:00

What can I add to my students' witty reports? What did I take with me home? I think this was the first conference ever which I attended exclusively as a shepherd... umh, mentor. I was at a late stage asked to moderate sessions and be on the final panel, but that's not why I was there. I wasn't there to see old friends - although it was really wonderful to catch up with some of them whom I hadn't seen for a long time. It was absolutely wonderful to listen to Svein Nyhus whom I admire so much, and to see a glimpse of a sketch he drew of me four months ago at the PhD defence in Oslo. I don't think he had his old sketchbook with him by accident. But he didn't let me have the sketch.

I was there to support my students, and - let me admit it - show off. I am so endlessly privileged to have them, and it is so gratifying to hear compliments from colleagues, some with a touch of envy. Allow me the pleasure, I think I have deserved it.

The conference was inspiring, but not without glitches. A female participant from an Arab country talked about images of nature in some Arabic picturebooks. We asked what "Arabic" meant, and whether there was such a thing as "Arabic" children's literature. My student from Kuwait said there wasn't. No more than there is a "European" children's literature, which another paper focused on. Then there was a male participant who talked about Islamic children's literature, with many illuminating examples. It was quite frightening and reminded me of the worst Soviet propaganda. The female Muslim speaker protested but was dismissed by the male colleague. We didn't know what to make of it. Later, my student from Kuwait made a brief comment from which it became clear that the male speaker was in actual fact critical of what he was talking about. The audience perceived it as exactly the opposite of what he meant. Cultural clash? Language barrier? Suppose I didn't have a student who could clarify this total misunderstanding?