Even More for my Reading List

Aha. I’ve been meaning to get around to some Doris Lessing for a long time. The Academy is trying to tell me something:

The Nobel Prize in Literature for 2007 is awarded to the English writer Doris Lessing “that epicist of the female experience, who with scepticism, fire and visionary power has subjected a divided civilisation to scrutiny”.

Do you have any favourites of hers you recommend?

Here are some passages from her biography on the Nobel site, talking about some of the works that really got her a great deal of wider recognition, emphasizing her important intersection with other genres such as feminism and science fiction (to pick […] Click to continue reading this post

Coffee Thoughts

Well, it’s almost the end of the morning, I’ve just finished one set of tasks and about to move on to another and I thought I’d sit down and chat with a cup of coffee. This morning has largely been about three different outreach-type tasks. I hope to spend the entire afternoon on Physics research. I’m an optimist.

Here’s the shape of this morning:

At 7:00am I checked my email and found that an editor at a magazine was looking for something different from what I initially wrote in response to a question of hers about art and science. I’d spent some of the evening before writing something and sent it along, adding a couple of sentences at the end as a sort of final thought. Of course, she liked the last two sentences and not the rest so much (it was not getting directly at what she wanted me to speak to). So, a bit crestfallen, I tried again. In fact, I had indeed spoken to the issue, but had sort of buried it a bit. So I spent some time scraping away the unnecessary and bending and reshaping the text. Amazing how long that takes when you’ve got a word limit. I sent it along eventually. I’m not sure it is actually as good as what I wrote last night in terms of literature, but it is more to the point of what their feature is about, and so in that sense it is better. From the response I got back, it seems to be more like what they’re looking for now. I’ll tell you more about it when it appears… it’s all about a personal take on the interaction between art and science as far as inspiration goes, with a single piece to illustrate it. It’s the picking of a single piece that was the true difficulty. Took me days to decide. In the end, I had to make some hard choices indeed. I actually enjoyed thinking about the issue though. Sort of re-invigorating. I’d be happy to hear your thoughts about the matter in the comments. I’ll come back to this once the piece appears – if it does.

At 10:00am I called a television production company to talk about a new TV show for […] Click to continue reading this post