Just finished re-reading…

Just finished re-reading Gaudy Night, as splendid as ever -- really, one of the most perfect mysteries I've ever read. And a fabulous book to read the week before I go back to professoring, though UIC is not as lovely as Oxford, I must admit. UIC's Brutalist architecture may have its virtuous points, but it doesn't sing to the soul the way Oxford's dreaming spires do.

There are days when I am a bit regretful that I didn't try to talk Kevin into taking that position at Oxford five years ago -- although, on the other hand, I think it would have been hard, having him be the professor and me the dutiful adjunct, no matter how lovely the buildings and the town and the river. It's better for my ego, I suspect, that I have my own professorship, as odd and complicated as my position may be. My raging Anglophilia may mourn the loss of Oxford, but I console myself with the thought that the general academic atmosphere at UIC is not so dissimilar. I am looking forward to returning to it -- anxious students, stimulating lectures, autumnal frenzy and all.

I am tempted to fill the rest of next week with reading academic novels. I should probably clean my basement instead, or at least do my own writing. But perhaps I can squeeze in a quick skim of David Lodge's Small World or some such. Academics, ridiculous but also charming, in their own benighted way. O, the humanity!