foxed

So I haven't written a post in, oh, a decade. I shall give you an excuse explanation. Well, you see, it's been Christmas, and as you know from previous posts I've been more than a tad excitable of late, and I have allowed preparations for the festive season to pretty much commandeer my life for the past few weeks.

Also, I've started a new notebook (journal, of sorts) after finishing my latest one a few weeks ago. It is, needless to say, a thing of utter and complete beauty and I'm pretty attached. It always takes a little while to get used to a new notebook and to get over initial excitement about binding, paper quality, and to decide whether a .5 or .7 nib would be best, etc. (yes, I know...). 

However! the preliminary zeal has somewhat subsided so I've now begun to think of my poor neglected blog once again.

Well, that was until I discovered this. Or, rather, my excellent mum bought me a year's subscription to it as a Christmas present. It is difficult - nay, impossible - to convey the sheer beauty and perfection of 'the real reader's quarterly'. Suffice it to say, it came tied in a green ribbon and asked me to put aside 'the challenge of the e-book and other similar worries' in the note from the editors. Need I go on?

I spent much of this afternoon curled up in front of the fire, gliding my way through my first issue (no. 28) and dreaming of working for such a gorgeous company. If you're remotely interested in reading, I beseech you - try it.

So, in short, all these things have led to the neglect of ol' goshkate.blogspot. So, in the next few days and weeks I shall address this injustice (as well as the hideously lingering guilt of the inexcusable abandonment of the goshkate presence on YouTube), and cast aside my new glittering literary appendages in favour of the old dependable blog.

Huzzah for that!

books

I took a trip to Blackwells today to buy another couple of books for my modules this semester (yeah, I know it's more expensive that way, but I'm one of those people who likes to - you know - have the smell of a bookshop in my nose as I browse). The first was this little delight:

Not exactly a saucy riot, but actually surprisingly interesting. Now, I know you're not supposed to judge a book etc., but this isn't exactly a cover to set your heart pounding. But I must admit that I enjoyed it much more than I thought I would - it's got some interesting (and some barmy) ideas.

The second (for my children's lit module) was much more appealing:

Now, any book with a Quentin Blake on the cover is enough for me, but more than that I love its shape. Tricky to tell from the picture, but it's actually shorter (height-wise) than a standard-sized book. It's stocky and cuddly enough to make losers like me salivate on sight. It set my fingers a-trembling, let me tell you.

Puffin Classics have obviously done a bit of a revamp, and I would love to have been there when they decided what to change. How do they come up with these things? I imagine the meeting: "Hey, guys, I've got an idea - why don't we just make them shorter?" Genius. 

Anyway, enough of that geekishness.