It's been two weeks since I last wrote a blog post. Nothing much happened; I returned from Belfast, I've been ill for a few days, I've had some classes, I've been trying to write research proposals both for applying to PhD programmes (which I should start doing in about a month) and for my dissertation, I've been reading a lot and watching some TV series.
Oh, and my paper on The Picture of Dorian Gray is now available on the PALA website via the Conference Proceedings http://www.pala.ac.uk/resources/proceedings/2012/index.html.
So what have I been reading and watching?
I finally got round to Lucky Jim, which has been recommended to me by a bunch of people over the last two years. Of all places, Leicester is the best place to read it, if only because Kingsley Amis was supposedly inspired to write it when or after he visited Philip Larkin, who at that time was the librarian for what was then still the Leicester University College Library (I wonder what he'd make of the David Wilson library now, which is great and very nice but also very glass-and-steel). Philip Larkin lived on Dixon Drive at the time (if you haven't read it, the last name of main character Jim is Dixon), which is only a 20 minute walk from where I live. I might just walk by it some day soon just because.
I liked the book. It was funny in a sort of understated way. Can't really say much more about it though, except for the fact that there are some things in it that do remind of Leicester. Not all, and especially parts that have to do with the University itself are very hard to place, probably also because there've been so many buildings built on campus over the last fifty years, although "across a small lawn towards the front of the main building" does make sense if the Fielding Johnson was the main building at the time, since there is in fact something that could be described as a small lawn there, and I suppose 'College Road' should be replaced with 'University Road' as indeed there's a cemetery on the other side of it (though I have yet to hear any professor refer to it, which is quite extraordinary since of all people, Criminologists are among those with the sickest sense of humour - my favourite type of humour, that is). College Road is being described a road to be climbed by the car, which isn't the case for University Road at all, though. Welch lives in a town on a hill, which is interesting since it is something of a climb to, for instance, get to Oadby (I would know, I cycled to Oadby yesterday for the big Sainsbury's for supplies for my split-pea-soup). But no one who lives close to the University would have to catch a bus to the station - you'd probably be faster if you just ran the half-mile. But in any case I claim Jim Dixon for Leicester, because the city does need a bit more than just the corpse of Richard III to remain interesting.
I finally finished watching The Wire, also because I'd been putting off the fifth series for months now because though I like it (it reminds me very much of accounts of preparations and difficulties in the run-up to the Maxi Processo), it's somehow too gritty to watch in a row, and seeing as I'd worked through the first four series in about two months over summer, I needed something of a break.
I also began watching Dexter, of which I've now finished the first two series and which I'm finding very addictive because it's glossy (i.e. easy to watch) and because I like the moral ambiguity of murdering murderers.
For academic reading, I've read mainly books on Corporate Crime, because they tie in with my research plan. It's an absolutely fascinating topic and I can't be but grateful that RA offered me the opportunity to take Economics classes, because without it there'd be so much I wouldn't necessarily get, even though Economics is, above all other things, the science of rational common sense and calculation. Of course, one of the things missing from this is the absolute frenzy of bubbles and despair of recessions. I hope to think some more on the thing soon, so look out for an opinion piece like Criminology as a Field. I've been reading on Strain theory and labelling and all that lately, so it'll probably have something of that in there too.
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