Author Archives: ghw

gearing up

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In case I should meet the Queen, I’ve packed a decent blazer. Hmm, I should probably include a tie.

  • Passport? check
  • Currency? check
  • Tickets? check
  • iPod? check
  • Camera? check
  • Laptop? check
  • Comfy clothes for travel? check
  • Books to read on flight? check

My first tran-Atlantic flight took place in 1979 when we moved to Belgium. Back then, people dressed up because flying felt like a special occasion. I wore a polyester 3-piece suit. I wish I was kidding. This time it’s jeans, a t-shirt, and a hoody. The temperature will hover in the mid-60s in London this week, which sounds pretty nice

I completely overhauled the laptop earlier today and somehow ended up with 15 gigs of free disk space I didn’t know I had. Need to make sure I take an ethernet cable and a lock to secure the computer when I’m away from my room.

My itinerary tomorrow takes me first to Houston, which means a 9-hour flight from there to London. Ugh. If the first leg instead took me to Newark, I’d be in the UK much sooner. Well, at least I might have a chance to snap a shot of that weird statue of Bush the Elder they have in the Houston airport. If I do, you’ll be the first to know, dear reader.

travel

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If you can hear a piano fall, you can here me comin’ down the hall.

Monday morning I wake up in London. I’m nowhere near as nervous as I was two years ago.

L and me

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Together 13 years today. Woo-hoo!

We had a celebratory day of morning massages, lunchtime seafood and chocolate, afternoon clothes and music shopping, a trip to a local art exhibit that was cut short by a trip to the doctor’s office for treatment of a mysterious bout of vertigo (love will do that to you), and then Asian fusion cuisine for dinner. Whew! Here’s lookin’ at you, kid.

what kind of irony?

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Can someone clarify for me the type of irony involved in an actor having to apologize for his real-life violent behavior while on a press tour to promote a movie celebrating a man’s redemption through beating the crap out of people?

print cultur(e/al) studies

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Three emails caught my eye on SHARP-L this morning. I’m not awake enough yet to say anything clever about them.

  1. A conference entitled Fairs, Markets and the Itinerant Book Trade, will be held in late November at the Society of Antiquaries in London:

    Leading book historians will discuss the presence of the book trade in the streets and public spaces of Britain and continental Europe. From the Frankfurt book fair in the 16th century to the Farringdon Road barrows in the 20th, speakers will range across geographical as well as chronological frontiers to follow the movement of books and people.

  2. This year’s Print Networks conference on the History of the British Book Trade will take place at the University of Birmingham in late July (after I’m back in the U.S., unfortunately). The keynote speaker is John Feather.
  3. Routledge will publish An Introduction to Book History, by David Finkelstein and Alistair McCleery, later this summer as a companion to The Book History Reader that Finkelstein and McCleery edited. The table of contents for the Intro is as follows:

    Chapter 1: Theorising the History of the Book
    Chapter 2: Orality to Literacy
    Chapter 3: The Coming of Print
    Chapter 4: Authors, Authorship and Authority
    Chapter 5: Printers, Booksellers, Publishers, Agents
    Chapter 6: Readers and Reading
    Chapter 7: The Future of the Book