rabbit hearted girl

If you don't follow me on twitter or instagram you most likely won't have heard that I have started a Book Club for 2024.

I decided to base this book club around short but powerful texts, because not all of us are fast readers, or able to access texts easily (I will endeavor to locate PDF's of the texts for you) and a lot of you will also be working and studying. There is also a lot of literary and artistic merit to short and concise prose that I look forward to reading with you all.  We are also going to focus on narratives that cross genre boundaries and are written by female, non-binary and international authors.

I sent the first email out yesterday announcing the first title, but because so many people have been messaging me after the deadline I have made the first title public: Simple Passion by Annie Ernaux.

I will be adding more people to the Book Club list for February. I'm not accepting new emails just yet, but if you keep an eye out on my instagram you will see when I am.

Desk essentials: journal, book, lip balm and a pen.

Not Louise Gluck.... rest in peace </3

I’ve got the flat to myself for the next couple weeks so I’m going to make myself some ramen, have a beer, finish my Development Application and read this short story collection

I'm feeling so back. I am in a reading and writing frenzy. Please tell me about which books or essays you have been reading and loving recently!!!

I finished Babel

I love you, October. I’ve been due a change for a while now.

Today, at The Independent Cafe in Oxford, I drank two lattes and almost completed my Writing Development Programme application. Almost.

No one was kidding when they said how good this book is - and Fantasy really isn't my usual genre. I had no plans on buying it just before visiting Oxford but I picked it up in a bookshop I hadn't planned on going to before I left and haven't put it back down.

I was curious to see what type of manuscripts were inside the Bodleian so searched through the online catalogue looking for Christine de Pizan (whom I based my BA dissertation on). There are a few manuscripts featuring here and luckily one of the digitised manuscripts is this codex featuring Pizan’s Epistre Othea. Not only that - but here’s a rare pic of her writing at her desk!!!! I’m so thrilled 😭❤️

Tomorrow morning I'm going to a cafe somewhere in Oxford to (hopefully) finally finish my application to a writing development programme that has a deadline in a couple weeks. Then I can move on to continuing my MSt application and research and finishing the book I'm currently reading.

The view from the Duke Humfrey's reading room in The Bodleian Library.

This is one part of The Duke Humfrey's Library which was added by Sir Thomas Bodley (who the Bodleian is now named after) who offered to restore it in 1598. When he was attending Oxford University, the library did not even have a ceiling as it had been stripped and abandoned during the Reformation.

The Duke Humfrey’s Library - the oldest reading room in the Bodleian Library at the University of Oxford.

The view of Oxford from St Mary’s tower.

Obligatory Radcliffe Camera post.