Musing on another "beguiling" little book and its companionable relationship to His Dark Materials and The Book of Dust. Not the "little green book" we were (possibly?) promised, about Will as a surgeon and all, but a dark green one anyway in which his absence and other absences are palpable.

Interview by Susie Mesure - https://inews.co.uk/culture/books/philip-pullman-serpentine-book-of-dust-his-dark-materials-interview-725816?srsltid=AfmBOorzuJh6_mN4ZWya9_FHMCQLm5yApiYihnTQ4th_L-4dlgwSHn2c Thanks for listening.

More episodes and resources: https://newschoolnotes.blogspot.com/2026/01/out-of-ground-reading-book-of-dust-by.html

Ariosto's epic-romantic song of knights and magic, spared from the burning of the books in Don Quixote. Thanks for listening.

AKA Blade Runner. We consider the source material by Philip K Dick. Thanks for listening.

Another little book in the His Dark Materials/Book of Dust series, not about Lyra but her mother. Sort of.

Recommended:

Kate Bush, Lyra - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AE5PmGIBfNg About the dedication - https://www.thebookseller.com/news/audible-offers-strike-relief-free-pullman-story-441276 Duparc, Lenore

Millais, Portrait of Ruskin

Charpentier, https://www.nga.gov/artworks/215417-death-archimedes Crashaw, https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44061/wishes-to-his-supposed-mistress and "unknown worlds" in his "The Name of Jesus"? - https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/richard-crashaw Wilde, Picture of Dorian Gray

Poe, "The Cask of Amontillado"

Neruda, "Childhood and Poetry" - https://videogameacademia.org/2022/07/12/a-wild-sheep-chase-from-childhood-and-poetry-by-pablo-neruda/

Balthus and more on art and history via https://calmgrove.wordpress.com/2022/12/27/coll/ And more on "research as leisure activity," see Celine Nguyen's substack - https://www.personalcanon.com/p/im-teaching-2-workshops-this-summer

Thanks for listening.

Continuing our playthrough of Final Fantasy Tactics with a review of events leading up to the battle at Zeirchele Falls.

Thanks for listening!

On summer break, we three night scholars have decided to try reading outside our usual canons and genres, starting with the highly allusive, at times bizarre, but overall quite epic and gripping sci-fi novel Hyperion by Dan Simmons.

Up next: Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K Dick (aka Blade Runner)

Thanks for listening.

Gaetan is a longtime denizen of Cittagazze, the premier French-language source for news and gathering-place for readers of Philip Pullman. Among his contributions, the page dedicated to the poetry of The Book of Dust: https://www.cittagazze.com/univers/poesie.php?version=en Thanks for listening!

Dr Elizabeth Walsh is a Teaching Associate at the University of Cambridge and has written on the curation of Pullman's work and inspirations in museums.

His Dark Materials Among the Displays, the Pitt Rivers Museum, December 12, 2022 to December 31, 2023 

University of Cambridge Department of Geography faculty page for Dr Walsh 

Another resource for The Peril of the Pole game included in Once Upon a Time in the North

And for more about this project: https://newschoolnotes.blogspot.com/2026/01/out-of-ground-reading-book-of-dust-by.html Thanks for listening!

We final-fantastically get back into Tactics Ivalice Edition on Switch, recapping most of what makes it fun and at times tedious up through the end of the first chapter.

Thanks for listening.

Concluding our series on The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gent. Next we're weighing Ariosto or Rabelais, and in the meantime, Hyperion by Dan Simmons.

Maira Kalman on "Time wastes too fast" - https://archive.nytimes.com/kalman.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/06/25/time-wastes-too-fast/

Thanks for listening