Amusement

I am mildly amused by the music for the SUSCDF dem.

Also a bit amused by the fact I managed to get three links into that sentence.

More plans

There is also a Historical Sociolinguistics conference slash workshop thing in Greece starting on 21 August. Which would make the Faroese teaching completely impossible. Or, alternatively, I could not go to Montreal, do the Faroese course, leave early and move on to Greece.

I have also been sent a job advert about a lecturership in Scandinavian Studies in Aberdeen. Probably a bit early and also not completely tailor-made to what I've done (i.e. it involves literature), but perhaps worth applying for or otherwise making sure that the people in Aberdeen know who I am.

Summer plans

Sigh. Choose.

• 18th International Conference on Historical Linguistics. Montreal (Canada), 6-11 August 2007.
• Faroese Language Summer Course. Torshavn (Faroes), 1-22 August 2007.

Why do they clash with each other, and not conveniently with the Dunedin Festival, which would give me a winning argument in the endless debates with Fiona Gardner about whether or not I should dance in the festival.

More books

It’s been five months since I last posted a list of books that I’d read. I’ve been very bad and haven’t read a massive amount more. I finished the Einstein biography, none of the books that were on the ‘to read’ list, and apart from that:

• Tony Grant (ed.), From our own correspondent: a celebration of fifty years of the BBC radio programme. LINK
  
• Robert Druce (ed.), An Irishman abroad: Cuey-na-Gael’s An Irishman’s difficulties with the Dutch language and Jack O’Neill’s further adventures in Holland. LINK
  
• Alexander McCall Smith, The right attitude to rain. LINK
  

A nice range from non-fiction, via unsure, to fiction.

Now reading:

• Vilborg Davíðsdóttir, Galdur. LINK
  

I bought it from the author at the Scottish Society for Northern Studies annual conference yesterday. She talked to me in Icelandic, I told her I had no idea what she was saying, and she wondered that if I didn’t speak Icelandic, why was I wanting to buy a book in Icelandic. Oh, the wonders of inter-Scandinavian intellegibility (at least in writing). It’s quite slow, I managed to read five pages today. But I might go faster if I stop reading everything out loud to myself with a thick Faroese accent (i.e. as if it were Faroese) so that I can get over the strange word image. Vilborg lives in Viewforth by the way.

Bedtime.