Bought this book today

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 It's called Atomic Habits by James Clear. I don't normally buy self-help books but here it is. I was looking for second-hand books on linguistics for my MA course but couldn't find much. Long gone are the days where you could find many decent second-hand bookshops in Oxford... I remember, there used to be one in Park End Street, a paradise on several floors, and one on the High, a long corridor full of treasures, now replaced by pseudo-ancient English sweets. Oh well... that guy sits in front of me while I was waiting for the bus, and said this book was good, he said, you need to think small and not think you are a writer (not sure why he gave that example), think 50 words a day... so can I do 50 words a day right now?

I could do a mini-diary, a la Pepys, not for 10 years though... till October, when I will at last be able to write more creatively. I have nothing against my MA in English but frankly I'm a bit fed up now with writing academically... it's not for me. Useful for my students in my paid work I suppose as I'm a librarian (for those of you who suffer from lack of sleep at night, or librarians, check out Still a Librarian on blogspot).

Anyway, it's been quite a day today as it was the funeral of an ex-colleague, Chris Fowler from Oxford Brookes. It was a good ceremony, humanist, and it was nice to see some ex-colleagues from there, and then some, but I will not go into that here. Too public!

Back in Oxford, I thought I would still spend some time with Chris spirit by going to the latest MAO exhibition (Chris was Art Subject Librarian, amongst other things). Not sure if I can upload a picture from the exhibition, but perhaps a shadow from the art works by Ruth Asawa? 


Chris would always tell her students to go and see exhibitions, and sometimes I would sneak in her webpage at Brookes to see what the latest stuff to see was. I think last time I saw her was in Jericho, she was going to the cinema, probably to later tell her students about it. Well I shut up now, and put another picture up. Maybe others will think about her now.

People are not dead if we remember them.



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