Blogging Woolf

Alexandra Harris. Her name is on my lips for good reason.

Romantic Moderns, which just won the Guardian First Book Award, arrived on my doorstep last week. I am itching to read it, but things keep getting in the way. Things like grading fall semester essays. The holidays. Prepping for spring semester. And the overwhelming desire to read something light that won’t strain my incredibly tired brain.

And now I read that Harris has been signed by Thames and Hudson to produce two more books. The first, a short biography of Woolf titled Brief Lives: Virginia Woolf, will be published in spring 2011. Yeah for that.

The second, titled The Weather Glass, will discuss the British preoccupation with weather. That made me gasp right out loud. And I am not exaggerating.

Reading of her plan to write about the British interest in weather made me realize that Verita Sriratana and I are not the only ones  interested in reading the skies — as they relate to Woolf and other writers.

For her doctoral thesis, Verita is writing about weather in The Years. In Reading the Skies, I discuss Woolf’s use of weather in Mrs. Dalloway, To the Lighthouse, and Orlando. And Harris plans to begin her study with Beowulf and work her way up — hopefully to Woolf. 

Meanwhile, here’s another fun weather read — especially at this time of year in places where snow is likely. It’s called The Wrong Kind of Snow: The Complete Daily Companion to the British Weather.