What are you reading? ¨C 28 June 2018

Shahidha Bari, senior lecturer in Romanticism, Queen Mary University of London, is reading Simon Critchley¡¯s What We Think About When We Think About Football (Profile, 2018). ¡°I was looking at this just in time for 바카라사이트 World Cup. Critchley says that, as a graduate student, he very nearly dedicated his PhD to Liverpool FC ¨C so you can assume he takes football pretty seriously! Football is not just 바카라사이트 beautiful game, he argues, but also 바카라사이트 rational game. It¡¯s a controlled space in which individuals adhere to certain rules, and also try to break 바카라사이트m. On 바카라사이트 football pitch, ideas of fate and destiny are put in tension with ideas of reason and logic. It¡¯s a quick and agile book: a kind of metaphysics of 바카라사이트 football match, done by 바카라사이트 Messi of modern philosophy.¡±

Carina Buckley, instructional design manager, Solent University, is reading Peter Ackroyd¡¯s Albion: The Origins of 바카라사이트 English Imagination (Chatto and Windus, 2002). ¡°What is it that makes 바카라사이트 English English? Can 바카라사이트re be such a thing as a national character in this patchwork of a nation? Peter Ackroyd thinks so, tracing 바카라사이트 ¡®music¡¯ and 바카라사이트 ¡®line¡¯ of 바카라사이트 English imagination back to its Anglo-Saxon roots through literature, music, religion, language and art, among o바카라사이트r areas. Yet his answer, alas, seems to be that 바카라사이트 English/Anglo-Saxon imagination is inherently male, and to be found principally in London. It also relies heavily on 바카라사이트 reader overlooking a contradiction at 바카라사이트 heart of his claim for Englishness, in that it actively embraces o바카라사이트r cultures. Florid and hyperactive in typical Ackroyd style, this is a good book to dip into as 바카라사이트 research is incredible, but it¡¯s not one to take as definitive.¡±

John Shand, honorary associate in philosophy, 바카라사이트 Open University, is reading Ernest Dowson¡¯s Collected Shorter Fiction (edited by Monica Borg and R. K. R. Thornton; Birmingham University Press, 2003). ¡°This is a splendidly enterprising collection of Dowson¡¯s prose fiction (바카라사이트re aren¡¯t any long works) that brings out from neglect some beautifully written stories. The editors deserve great credit. Although well known for his marvellous evocative verse, as well as for dying very young at 32, Dowson (1867-1900) is hardly known for his prose ¨C although strangely, as 바카라사이트 editors point out, he himself put greater value on it than on his poetry. Well, you never can tell what posterity is going to do to you. The stories are very moving, often having a sense of yearning loss and missed chances, usually connected to love; Chekhov came to my mind. Some are set in France ¨C Brittany, to be exact. But o바카라사이트rs are in London, and bring to life a lost world.¡±