Good Lord! Has it been that long?

I knew I had been slacking but even I am shocked that I could have left it so long between posts! On the off chance that somebody will actually read this then here’s a bit of a catch up.

We’re still meeting, albeit not every single month – though we have managed to make it fairly regularly. Over the summer there was a bit of a hiatus, mostly due to holidays and various of us swanning off to conferences around the globe – sounds exotic but probably less so than you might imagine… Kevin and I managed to make it to our favourite conference, COMET, this year held in Boston, next year it will be in Nottingham! Bit of a flying visit for me, I think Kevin got a few extra days, though I acheived one of the things on my Bucket List – seeing the Red Sox play at Fenway Park – they even won, 8-5 against the Rays, Big Pappy scored a three run homer, it was heaven! Course they’ve had a rubbish season since then, mostly due to an unprecedented number of injuries – oh, did I get distracted there for a minute?

The other highlight of the summer for us was the inaugural Madness and Literature conference which went very well, though I managed to miss the first day due to some badly planned vacation time, yes away on the boat again…

The conference seemed to be the beginning of things, like a community coming together, almost a gathering of lost souls who’d finally found kindred spirits and embraced them. It also felt like the beginning of a much bigger endeavour, a collaboration of scholars who’d hitherto worked alone, but now knew that they were no longer alone. Hopefully the site will continue to build on this feel and work towards the next conference in a couple of years time in Denver. Some of the presentations are available online, enough to get a feel for the kind of thing that was going on.

For me personally another literary even was the invention of the Kindle… I think it’s a wonderful invention, but I know some traditionalists will not agree. Anyway I’ve read a few books on it now (I have the wi-fi version with a nice burgundy cover) I’ll maybe do a full blog entry extolling its virtues in the near future. If you’re lucky!

Anyway, probably best if I get back to the Lunar Society thing. I’ll try and catch up with some summaries of the books we have read over the last year. In a few days we will be discussing Mark A Radcliffe’s book Gabriel’s Angel…

Oh, and our favourite beer Harvest Pale won beer of the year – which shows what great taste we have…