When a literary writer such as Atkinson takes on genre fiction, it's often with an immense amount of fanfare, chest-thumping and flag-planting: "I claim thee for literary fiction, you wretched little untamed genre!" And the results are anti-climactic. Atkinson made no such claim for her work. She has in fact, been open about her admiration for the form. And while it is common to say such books transcend the genre, I think "Case Histories" enlarged it. Defensive as I am about the crime genre, "Case Histories" showed me new possibilities; it was like seeing my hometown through the eyes of an astute, affectionate visitor. I hope she comes back.

The interrelationship of literature and genre is something I am thinking of a lot right now, for a panel discussion on Margaret Atwood's Oryx and Crake in which I am participating at the Academic Conference on Canadian SF and Fantasy in Toronto on June 4.

Oh, I suddenly feel overwhelmed. It may be awhile before I get to Case Histories.

Apparently my categories will turn up sometime soon.

And another weird thing: I keep getting email notices of spam comments and trackbacks, but can't sign in to the old version of MT Blacklist anymore to blast them. Anyway, the alleged comments etc. are not appearing on the sites themselves. And the URLs have not changed. I am imagining a set of ghostly blogs in some half-real realm, flooded with spam messages but beyond my help or even knowledge. What a nightmare.

Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell has got under my skin. What a wonderful book!

Bye bye drugs.
Bye bye bigger breasts.
Hello real comments.
I think I'm gonna cry.
Bye bye, cheap porn, bye bye.

And I just want to say, I love Donald. And thanks, Elise. Go to her if you have any questions or problems with MT.

Oh, darling, let's never quarrel again.

One Welsh woman tells another that Myfanwy is shortly to be married.
"Married? I didn't even know she was pregnant!"
"She's not pregnant."
"Getting married, and not pregnant! There's posh!"

My people. The Welsh used to consider themselves married after jumping over a broom placed across the threshold. Most practical.

The Women of ST:OS (link from Plep).

(And, who knew there was a "Groovy Sixties Women" webring?)

Sharon also notes that the Celebration of Women Writers project has its own blog, and I promptly blogrolled it.

Heritage Scrapbooks: a site from the U of Alberta "documenting a variety of scrapbooks on a variety of topics throughout the last 300 years," powered by Streetprint Engine , to which I linked before. Interesting to see some of the uses to which it can be put. Not all of the pages of each scrapbook seem to have been included, however, which makes it a little less useful. But lovely, nonetheless.

The Quilt Index: "an online research and reference tool designed to provide unprecedented access to contextual information and images of quilts held in private and public collections."

(both links from Plep).

Silent Witness: "The story of a dress donated to the US Holocaust Memorial Museum by Lola Rein (via growabrain).

(link from Life in the Present).

I'm sorry not to be on Lauren's blogroll any more, but as she no longer has a blogroll I can hardly take it personally. She, and Shelley and Joseph, shall remain on mine, because I like all three of their blogs a lot and can't imagine not reading them (Shelley didn't have a blogroll anyway). Besides, various other bloggers I like and have blogrolled either haven't linked back or don't have blogrolls and I still link them so why should I treat Lauren et al. any differently? Of these latter — I am thinking of Jill Walker and Liz Lawley, neither of whom have blogrolls — I have assumed that this was more of an aesthetic choice than anything else: a desire for slicker, sleeker blog design. I periodically envy these more pared-down blogs, but as I am more of a pack rat than a minimalist, I always end up adding rather than subtracting. If I were convinced of the political argument that blogrolls actually impede diversity I would of course reconsider, but perhaps I'm being dense but I just don't follow the logic. So, the blogroll that ate the eastern seaboard, to the right there, is safe for the time being.

Looking a little grainy, it's true; but no lady is at her best just after having dealt with the rakish despoiler of her younger sister. Let us never speak of it again.

The marvellous Isil just told me that our wonderful webteam people have just purchased a site license for MT3 and are in the process of testing it. They are going to set me up a test blog. So! Now the great migration.

Has anyone read Monty Goes South by Mark Tetro? It's one of the Jinker Boy's favourites.

Update for the uninitiated: MT3 (Movable Type 3) is the newest version of the software used for this and other UNBSJ weblogs. It offers more features, and is apparently much better at dealing with spam in the comments.