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Spotted it randomly while showing my dad around Oodi (Helsinki central library) yesterday. Borrowed it on impulse.

Lainasin tämän kirjastosta, ja reseptit ovat todella houkuttelevia. En kuitenkaan ehtinyt lukemaan sitä, ennen kuin joudun palauttaamaan kirjan. Pitää lainata uudestan. Haluaisin kokeilla vaikkapa liinajuuston valmistamista tai löytää uusia tapoja nauttia naurista.

I discovered my copy of this book again a few months ago and decided to finish reading it after maybe 13 years. It was not particularly easy going for me, even though the descriptions of nature and how humans interact with their surroundings are laden with lovely imagery. I can see why I stopped reading it many years ago, but I am also glad to have finished it.

Somehow the writing reminds me a bit of Nan Shepherd's The Weatherhouse in how it is both meaningful and beautiful, and yet hard to get into.

Now that I can read Norwegian, if I had the time I would like to try reading it in the original language to see how it works. I'd also be interested in reading more works by Tarjei Vesaas.

The started reading date is an estimate, but I certainly bought this in-person from a branch of Daunt Books before I moved away from London, which dates it to before mid-2011. That makes it quite possibly the book I have spent the longest reading.

This is from Naomi Mitchison's short story Beyond this Limit, a collaboration with the illustrator Wyndham Lewis.

I love the imagery of the dialectic as a machine, almost like a legendary device akin to the sampo.

I got this book out the library a while ago and only got around to starting it last month, and today I have to return it... I made it about halfway through so far. The stories inside are by turns moving, heartwarming and also a bit sad.

But there are positive threads running throughout the book: the belief that things can get better - and that they are getting better, and pride in the contributors' intersecting queer and Sami identities.

This was an excellent and highly readable biography!

I find Naomi Mitchison an absolutely fascinating person. Inspiring in some ways, of her time in others, and (she would be the first to admit) outrageously privileged. But she also - to use a metaphor repeated throughout this book - swam against the current in every stage of her life. She championed unpopular ideas or spoke uncomfortable truths. Furthermore she was prevented from pursuing a scientific career because she was a women in a British upper class household in the early 20th century.

I’ve mostly read her diaries (Among You Keeping Notes…), memoirs (You May Well Ask) and poetry (The Cleansing of the Knife), but next I want to give her historical fiction (The Conquered, The Bull Calves) and science fiction (Memoirs of a Spacewoman) a try.

Popular maths books have come a long way over the years, and that's a very good thing. I read this book as an antidote to other, weightier things – both fiction and nonfiction – that I have borrowed from the library. It is fun, humourous, and richly illustrated. I strongly recommend it, and urge you to give into temptation and try the games as you go along!

(I also got an idea for my teaching from it afterwards, but I read it for pure diversion and entertainment in the first place)

This quote sums up to me the importance of physical instutional libraries - academic or public. It's crucial that we are able to browse, to come upon the unexpected.

I really enjoyed this book. The author recounts their experiences as an young Ahmadi in Lahore, fleeing Pakistan, escaping arranged marriage and discovering their queerness. I found it engaging, inspiring and deeply thought-provoking. There were several passages I read aloud to people around me because they seemed so important, or so well expressed. The book, particularly its final couple of chapters, also serves as an important reminder of the privilege that many of us white queers enjoy and take for granted.

Jouduin palauttamaan kirjastoon, varaan sen uudestaan.