Can't make it this week, but this promises to be fascinating - d'Eon is a figure of enduring intrigue. I've signed up to attend the other seminars for the term online now! #c18 #long18thcentury #history #genderstudies #academia

The new LP issue has arrived: 'Romantic Shock and Surprise,' edited by David Duff (Queen Mary University of London) and Laurent Folliot @sorbonne-universite.fr. Université Cover design by Karolína Bendová. Read in open access: litterariapragensia.ff.cuni.cz/magazin/2025...

Sorry for never being on Bluesky anymore, BUT I had my first article published @litterariaprag.bsky.social! Here it is, free to read: Radical Reform and the Shock of the Past in Mary Robinson's Vancenza #gothic #C18 #romanticism #academia #womenwriters litterariapragensia.ff.cuni.cz/wp-content/u...

#20booksofsummer 7 (forgot to link to reviews of 4-6 but they're on the blog too!): Passing, by Nella Larsen, a novel whose extreme self-awareness stops it from being too schematic, offering instead an exploration of safety and freedom ellethinks.wordpress.com/2025/06/25/2... #books #reading

Remembering former weaver Finton Burgin, who died on this day in 1860 at the age of 18. He was the son of the widowed Catherine Burgin, died 23rd March 1866, aged 50.

So excited about this year's 20 Books of Summer project, I'm out of the blocks fast! Here's what I thought of the first three: ellethinks.wordpress.com/2025/06/05/2... #bookstagram #books #reading #bookreview #20booksofsummer

I clung on to May by my fingernails—this is everything I read that WASN'T from the library, including three re-reads, two gripping new/forthcoming releases, and one 99p Kindle punt: ellethinks.wordpress.com/2025/05/31/m... #reading #books #bookreview

🪨🪨🪨

The pleasure was all mine! What a fantastic weekend at the London-Paris Romanticism Seminar's annual symposium, this year at the Sorbonne on Romantic Shock and Surprise. A convivial group of brilliant and, above all, generous scholars—much to ponder and follow up on.

Everything else I read in April, from fifth-century Northumbria to rural Massachusetts: ellethinks.wordpress.com/2025/05/01/a...

April's library reading: brief, but magical. ellethinks.wordpress.com/2025/04/28/l... #loveyourlibrary #reading #books #bookreview

The demonisation of trans people isn't normal. People pretend that it is, but it's a culture war that's been manufactured in the past decade. Trans people are here and real and who they say they are. Get with it.

not to invalidate my trans siblings but, personally, cis allies loudly declaring support for us right now does help keep despair at bay even if it changes nothing. I don’t care how you phrase it, how clumsy. Please be there for/with us, loudly. It fights the voices that scream everyone hates us.

James Clifford, writing on C18 biography in 1968: "The purpose of this essay is to attempt some hasty generalisations." I'll know I've made it when I can write *that* in an academic essay with confidence.

March's library reading: from Dostoevsky to carnivorous aliens. ellethinks.wordpress.com/2025/03/31/l... #loveyourlibrary #books #bookreview

Here are my thoughts on everything that I read in February that wasn't from libraries. It was a good month. ellethinks.wordpress.com/2025/02/28/f... #loveyourlibrary #reading #bookreview

I read five books from libraries in February, ranging from one of the thicker—and more brilliant—19th century classics to theory of education as revolutionary praxis to a 21st-century classic of how what we remember makes us ourselves. Here's what I thought: ellethinks.wordpress.com/2025/02/24/l...

This year I got some book tokens for Christmas as well as some actual, physical books! Here's how I ended up spending them. ellethinks.wordpress.com/2025/02/20/p...

2 brand-new paperbacks for free! (Well—on @waterstones.bsky.social loyalty points.) The Deep Sky as recommended by @lauratisdall.bsky.social; Bridge just because.

More short stories! One I loved, one I really didn't love, three (coincidentally the ones I didn't listen to but read with my eyes) that were just fine. ellethinks.wordpress.com/2025/02/11/s...

I finished fourteen books in January; here's what I thought of most of them. ellethinks.wordpress.com/2025/01/31/j...

I fear to report that I have just laughed aloud while reading The Pickwick Papers, and can therefore no longer be considered young.

Most of what I've been reading in January has been Christmas presents or secondhand purchases, but here's the scant handful of this month's library books, and what I thought: ellethinks.wordpress.com/2025/01/22/l... #LoveYourLibrary

Important #DigitalFriday update, it's not just costa that has free access to the BNA! (100% not a Weatherspoons endorsement, many other venues are available)

Two fantastic Appalachian family novels, considered together: Lee Smith's Oral History and Kaye Gibbons's A Cure for Dreams ellethinks.wordpress.com/2025/01/15/t...

More New Yorker stories! Three I really liked, two that may not stay with me, one I'll remember but didn't love (yes, you counted right, they let Rachel Cusk talk about TWO Duras stories at once) ellethinks.wordpress.com/2025/01/10/s...

More places should do this. I am 100% confident it would generate more sales/borrows than staff recommendation shelves.

It's here! The long-awaited (lol) Best Books of 2024 according to me (by which I mean the best books I read this year, not the best books published this year). ellethinks.wordpress.com/2024/12/20/b...

A most unprecedented development!

Round two of considering the New Yorker Fiction Podcast short stories (plus two from the most recent editions of the magazine): ellethinks.wordpress.com/2024/12/11/s...

Interesting thread, with lots of good points…

One caveat: that for a variety of logistical/legal reasons PG used a lot of 19th century editions of older texts, which were often heavily bowdlerized or just aren’t reliable. In some cases this doesn’t impact much. In others it can mean something as major as “the ending of the novel is different”

Many bodes are fored by such a notice...

The rest of November's reading, from sci fi about bodily autonomy to neo-Victoriana to a Murakami that I actually really liked! ellethinks.wordpress.com/2024/11/30/n... #books #reading #bookreview

OBSESSED with this. Like a Georgian version of underwear that says "Spank me" on the butt. (Or, like, "Harris Walz 2024", I guess)

I like to claim a strong antipathy towards a) short stories, and b) absorbing fiction via audio. Still, I've been listening to the New Yorker Fiction Podcast, and... really enjoying it? Herewith, some consideration of the stories I’ve listened to so far. ellethinks.wordpress.com/2024/11/28/s...

What's your favourite track/song with bouncy brass and/or keys? For a playsuit provisionally entitled "happy striding". Currently contains things like House of My Soul by Langhorne Slim, Shame Shame Shame by Shirley and Company, and Midnight Rider by Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings.

A good library month! I read the rest of the new purchases I asked them for, found the end of Mary Stewart’s original Arthurian saga (obsessed), and dipped a toe into graphic memoir. Thoughts here: ellethinks.wordpress.com/2024/11/25/l... #loveyourlibrary #books #reading #bookreview

Visit to bestie @ellakirsh.bsky.social at Cambridge this weekend! 14 years ago this term, we missed the last bus back to Oxford and slept on a fellow student's floor. Things have rather improved since.

What a great talk from Lama Elsharif, illustrating how the language used to describe C18th North African corsairs (or pirates, or privateers) was an effective tool for legitimising, glorifying, or diplomatically negotiating around them. Salutary to be reminded that vocabulary often has an agenda!

Are we doing those old-school, meandering, ludicrous threads here? They were the best thing about ol’ Twitter. And, hoo boy, have I got one for you. Buckle up. We need to talk about Gromit. 🪡 🧵 🪡

Bye bye, Bezos! Who do I know who's on Storygraph? I'm eleanorfranzen there, as everywhere.

Really loving how many people are on Bluesky all of a sudden. Welcome, bleeple! This place has been a bit quiet but hopefully it'll liven up now. Come hang out with me if you want to talk(/yell) about books, writing, the C18th, historic sex work, choral music. Not usually all at once.

Because It Was There: notes on recent proximity-based reading ellethinks.wordpress.com/2024/11/13/b...

Hurrah for this! Orbital is a deserving winner, as beautiful as everyone says it is, a wafer-thin book which packs extraordinary amounts of wonder, beauty, and human connection into its page count. And it's the first Booker Prize winner set in space!

Reminder that some of the hotlines people are sharing for crisis conversations 𝐰𝐢𝐥𝐥 𝐜𝐚𝐥𝐥 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐩𝐨𝐥𝐢𝐜𝐞 𝐨𝐧 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐝𝐮𝐫𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐚 𝐦𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐚𝐥 𝐡𝐞𝐚𝐥𝐭𝐡 𝐜𝐫𝐢𝐬𝐢𝐬, regardless of what your wishes are. These ones won't. Add'l notes in the 🧵

Right. Here's your to-do list for the next two months to put you in the best possible position to survive what's coming: 1. Renew your passport (or apply for a passport) this week even if it is not expiring in the next four years. Renewing early will give you the maximum 10-year validity period.

To be truly radical is to make hope possible rather than despair convincing—Raymond Williams

My brother, who is in his mid-20s, has to teach earth science to high schoolers in New York City today. I cannot imagine what his day is going to be like.

A reminder for the next few days when each of these may be harder than normal to remember