Doctored!

So I have received a letter to the following effect:

Dear Dr [livredor]

I am very pleased to let you know that the Senatus Academicus has considered the report of the Examining Committee on your Thesis and decided to grand you the degree of PhD.

Yours sincerely &c

I'm going to Dundee to graduate at the beginning of next week. The ceremony is very much along the same lines as the faux-mediaevalism of the notification letter, complete with entirely anachronistic Latin, but hey, it should be fun. Getting there is going to be interesting, I suspect; I have booked train journeys that avoid London, but it might be awkward all the same.

---

Less dramatically, have book reviews of:
-David Baddiel: The secret purposes
-Joanna Trollope: A passionate man

Icon thoughts

That meme that's doing the rounds about how British people deal with crises by making cups of tea is annoying me. I don't know quite why, because I normally like tea-related silliness. I think it's the national stereotyping thing, even though that particular stereotype happens to be true of me.

My other grandmother¹ used to say:

If it's mechanical, oil it, if it's electrical, change the fuse, and if it's human, give it a cup of tea.

I like that better, somehow. And if I needed more tea-related icons, which I don't, I might make it into an icon.

As distinct from the grandmother whom some of you have met; I don't think anyone reading this has met my other grandmother, since she died in 1991.

Book: The Handmaid's Tale

Author: Margaret Atwood

Details: (c) 1985 OW Toad Ltd; Pub Virago Press Ltd 1991; ISBN 0-86068-866-6

Verdict: The Handmaid's Tale is too unsubtly polemical to be a real success, and on the whole I found it rather boring.

Reasons for reading it: It seems to get referred to a lot by people worrying about current political trends. And it's a bit of a feminist classic, so I'd been vaguely meaning to read it for a while.

How it came into my hands: Another one I scored in Ely last week.

( detailed review )

I hope this negative review doesn't give the impression that I don't care about sexism and misogyny. That's not at all the case, I just don't think that the novel contributes anything to improving the lot of women in society. I mean, if you already believe that there is systematic oppression of women, you're just going to be nodding along with tHT and thinking, oh yes, aren't men bastards and what wouldn't they do if they had the opportunity. And if you don't accept this premise, (or some milder version of it), I can't see that the book is going to change anyone's mind.