Closing some tabs

And with unusual finality - I was finally due for a new computer from Columbia (we're on a four-year cycle), it arrived yesterday and I had an emergency meeting this morning at 9:30 with a faculty desktop support guy who set it up all up for me - I'm leaving tomorrow morning for a lovely but complicated trip to Cayman, England and Iceland, and it is a boon to have this new tiny computer to travel with rather than the current BEHEMOTH!

(Which I will now leave in my office so that I have a computer permanently there, and it may be the source of future blog postings, but it will no longer be the main device....)

Links:

Neglected books still neglected, including a very funny one noted by Anthony Burgess (clearly a major source for his own somewhat neglected novel The Wanting Seed). (Via.)

Listen to all ten of August Wilson's plays for free between now and the end of August!

What would Daniel Kahnemann eliminate if he had a magic wand?

Jane Goodall on 55 years at Gombe.

Sarah Waters' ten rules for writing fiction.

A delightful roundup at the TLS on four recent books about the history of British cooking and Steven Shapin at the LRB on the history of tea (subscriber-only I think).

Two teas in London

This, this.

Finger sandwiches

A pair of words my heart thrills to.  Tea at the King Edward Hotel, Toronto.

"A smirr of rain, snoking for supper"

I believe it is behind the subscriber paywall, but Andrew Hagan's lovely long meandering LRB piece about travels with Seamus Heaney and Karl Miller through Scotland and Ireland is well worthwhile if you have access that way or through a print edition.

"It was prime rib and plain steak"

Stephen Fry takes tea with Lady Gaga for the FT (site registration required)!

(The cakes on the tiered stand look pretty appealing also...)

A cup of tea

I can't find a good source for it, and I apologize in advance for copyright infringement, but Mapplethorpe's portrait of Marianne Faithfull will perhaps serve as some minor redress for the interview I linked to previously....

(Picture reproduced from this site via Google Images.)

Authorship, insomnia?

Hilary Mantel on a Manchester doctor's diaries from the 1960s: "Jan 17th: At 5.20 am, extreme angor animae [fear of death]. Eased off after hot tea."