New Year, New Books

The New Year post has brought me a copy of Jean Aitchison's The Articulate Mammal, an introduction to psycholinguistics that is at once highly readable and knowledgeable. It's one of those fascinating books that makes you turn to your spouse as you sit up reading in bed and say 'Well, I never knew that.....', it's full of insights and supplies an excellent overview of the development of the discipline.
A friend of mine has lent me her copy of Harry Thompson's novel This Thing of Darkness, which she rated as her absolutely best read of 2009. It was longlisted for the 2005 Booker prize and sadly the author died only a year later. I've read several reviews of it and they are all equally laudatory, and having started it over the Christmas holidays, it's starting to grow on me. I was initially put off by the '40 years before the mast' detail, which seemed reminiscent of a Patrick O'Brien tale, all poopdecks and marlin spikes, but the quality of the writing is undeniable. I shall persist with it. Boswell's Life of Johnson, although excellent, can tend towards same-iness if read in too large a chunk.
The AHRC funding has happily allowed me to order a couple of books for my studies: George Steiner's After Babel, and another Wallace Chafe book, the Meaning and Structure of Language, both of which I am hoping will provide additional grist for the linguistic doctoral mill. My mother, who has become very interested in the subject of the Crusades, will additionally receive Amin Maalouf's The Crusades Through Arab Eyes, in the interests of maintaining a balanced, scholarly approach.
Hopefully, the severe wintery weather will not delay their delivery by too much

Force of Habit

I've been reading Simone de Beauvoir's Force of Circumstance and, to tell the truth, I'm finding this volume of her autobiography slightly dull. Starting at the end of the war, it concentrates on the period of her literary heyday, her strange relationship with Sartre and her many political and social connections. And I think this last is the main problem: I've never heard of most of them, but she takes it as given that these faceless names mean something to the reader. There's also a lack of personal reflection (at least as far as I've read) that made the previous two volumes interesting. I don't care who she knew - I want to know what she thought. As it is, it reads a bit like a meeting schedule. It may improve, but it had better do so pretty damn soon!

I've also been trying to bone up on the basics of linguistics, and to that end purchased a Hodder 'Teach Yourself' linguistics book. It is utterly fascinating -no, it's better than that. If I was going to do another degree, this is the subject that I'd study. The book is by Jean Aitchison, although I didn't realise this until just now, when I looked for the author's name (not very prominent). This is the linguist recommended to me by my doctoral supervisor as being clear and accessible - and I have to agree. It's rivetting stuff.

Before long I'm going to have to sort out a 'holiday book' again. As I'm anticipating doing a lot of wine-soaked lazing about in the sun, I want something not too heavy, amusing but well written with enough pages to keep me going throughout the whole week. If I get the selection wrong, I stamp my tiny foot, pout and sulk, so I had better start looking soon! I must also get over the temptation to take anything scholarly with me: I'm pretty good at pretending to read the heavy stuff, i.e. moving my eyes over the page at a convincing rate, but actually thinking about something entirely different (and usually banale). Usually food.