For new readers, the Walpurgisnacht primer in three easy lessons that I wrote a year ago.

Happy Valborg!

Web site I just found: the Creatures in my Head. Get your daily critter here, they are luvverly!

Yay! I’ll get to share a 2-person office instead of a 5+-person one! This will make it much easier to actually work when I’m at the department; the large office room is nice and all but it’s too much of a freeway, with people walking in and out all the time — and behind my back is a computer that’s free for anybody to use which increases the traffic in here even more. Also, I’ll share the room with another linguist so that will be good.

Must…write…more…about…books….

Johan just published a nifty list he made of the 53 most frequent authors (i e the ones we own the most books by) in our book collection. Together they have written 37% of the fiction we own. Since the books are mine, too, and since Johan’s posting is in Swedish, I’ll take the liberty to publish the list here, too, so I can comment on it (the numbers in brackets are the number of books we have by each author):

Moorcock, Michael (64)

Vance, Jack (61)

Tolkien, J. R. R. (45)

Pratchett, Terry (39)

Shakespeare, William (39)

Wodehouse, P. G. (30)

Jones, Diana Wynne (28)

Alving, Barbro (24)

Jansson, Tove (23)

Dick, Philip K. (22)

Howard, Robert E. (21)

Banks, Iain (20)

Leiber, Fritz (19)

Aldiss, Brian (17)

Brust, Steven (17)

Lagerlöf, Selma (17)

Lewis, C. S. (17)

O’Brian, Patrick (17)

Burroughs, Edgar Rice (15)

Christie, Agatha (15)

Zelazny, Roger (15)

Priest, Christopher (14)

Vonnegut, Kurt (14)

Henrikson, Alf (13)

Lang, Andrew (13)

Lundwall, Sam J. (13)

Nesser, Håkan (13)

Dickens, Charles (12)

Durrell, Gerald (12)

Heinlein, Robert A. (12)

James, P. D. (12)

Jordan, Robert (12)

Sandman Lilius, Irmelin (12)

Sayers, Dorothy L. (12)

Simak, Clifford (12)

Ahlin, Lars (11)

Delany, Samuel R. (11)

George, Elizabeth (11)

Gray, Alasdair (11)

Lindgren, Astrid (11)

Nesbit, Edith (11)

Orwell, George (11)

Asimov, Isaac (10)

Ballard, J. G. (10)

Cabell, James Branch (10)

Claesson, Stig (10)

Dagerman, Stig (10)

de Camp, L. Sprague (10)

Donaldson, Stephen (10)

Faulkner, William (10)

Greene, Graham (10)

McDonald, Ian (10)

Silverberg, Robert (10)

Not so very interesting to anyone else, perhaps; yet there are a couple of things that occur to my naked eye as I look at the list. While many of the names belong to authors we buy everything by, some of them — Christie, Jordan, de Camp — are writers neither of us like at all. I had a Christie period in my teens, and still read the occasional one, but when I do I usually find myself wondering why I do. Robert Jordan. . . well, he wouldn’t be on the list if Johan hadn’t been collecting everything Conan, years ago — and the same goes for de Camp. Moorcock was one of the authors Johan used to edit the Swedish translations of (hence getting free copies), but he is also a “buy everything” author, like Pratchett, Jones, Alving and Jansson. We’re trying to get a complete Shakespeare collection (apart from the three one-volume Complete Works we own — those are not annotated) but it’s a matter of finding them in good editions. The situation with Vance is more complicated — he is certainly an author I’ve been buying everything I could find by, but we also have two copies of some titles now that batch 1 of the VIE has arrived. Not that we are getting rid of the old copies — the VIE is a brand new edition, after all; the texts are not the same — but neither do I buy the ones we don’t yet have, since we are going to get them soon enough anyway.

Anyway. Books make me happy. I like to be surrounded by books. I really like the list above, it makes me feel rich, even though I know it’s nothing compared to what a lot of people have. But that doesn’t matter. It’s not a competition, I think.

Went to the antiquarian book fair, returned with spoils:

Calvino, Italo Den obefintlige riddaren Bonniers 1961

Holmgren-Strömbom, Greta Ur den blåmålade kistan – Om August Bondeson Bonniers 1913

Hyltén-Cavallius, G. O. & George Stephens Svenska sagor 1-5 Kungl. Gustav Adolfs Akademien 1943

Wodehouse, P. G. The Clicking of Cuthbert Herbert Jenkins 196?

Sayers, Dorothy L. The Unplesantness at the Bellona Club Gollancz 1937

Swahn, Jan-Öjvind Fionns äventyr och andra irländska sagor Natur och Kultur 1963

Tikkanen, Henrik Paddys land – Irländska skisser Natur och Kultur 1957

Tolkien, J. R. R. Bilbo – en hobbits äventyr (ill. by Tove Jansson) Rabén & Sjögren 1962

Yikes! Couldn’t anybody have told me that I’d pasted in the wrong URL in yesterday’s posting? Here is Robo Runner (I also corrected the link in the previous post.) And thank you Jonas for letting me know. . . I am faffing around with too many links, is my problem.

Not that there’s anything wrong with the site I actually linked to yesterday: the juveline felis catus review, an evaluation of a kitten from an IT point of view.

Not quite back to normality yet. Whatever that is.

Today’s discovery: RoboRally online — well, it’s not really RoboRally, the game is called Robo Runner and there are a few things added, but basically it’s the same. It’s not a real-time game; the turn is not executed until every player has arranged a programme sequence and that can take hours or days; meanwhile everybody’s moves are saved. I am the robot Apteryx, in case anybody wants to challenge me.

What I did on my holidays.

Today I’ve mostly been headachy and post-conventional. Hopefully I’ll be back to normality soon.

Off to Eastercon very soon, so here’s to a happy Easter to all. I’ll be back on the 22nd.

I chatted with flerdle, who pointed me at a really fascinating poetic duel, which took place in the Australian newspaper The Bulletin, 1892-1894. The combatants were A B “Banjo” Paterson and Henry Lawson; the subject was the poetic description of rural Australia as either idyllic or gloomy, and other contemporary poets entered on either side. Here is the controversy in its entirety, although to appreciate it fully you should read this short poem first.

Excellent stuff, this. That’s the way to duel!