Please do you have any recs for books set in Oxford beyond the classics (e.g. Brideshead Revisited, Gaudy Night, Morse)?
Oh I do! The difficulty is that there are so many 'classics.' Among these I would count, for instance, Max Beerbohm's Zuleika Dobson, but I am mentioning it here anyway because it is utterly delightful. Its subtitle, “An Oxford Love Story,” indicates that it is a story about a romance with Oxford, as well as a love story set within it.
Testament of Youth, Vera Brittain, describes the memoirist's time at Oxford in the early C20, including her encounters with Sayers and her experiences of reading Rupert Brooke's sonnets.
Landscape With Dead Dons, Robert Robinson, is an absurdist mystery with a geographically-specific chase scene so funny that I had to put down the book and make undignified noises about it.
The Gervase Fen series, Edmund Crispin, also delights in a comedic (and deeply affectionate) skewering of specifically Oxonian eccentricities. I think my favorite of his is Swan Song, which features pedantry about Wagner, though the one that most often makes it onto "best of" whodunit lists is The Moving Toyshop.
The Oxford Murders, Guillermo Martínez. I feel that I should have enjoyed this book more than I did, but it is skillfully crafted (and Martínez himself did a postdoc at Oxford.)
Engleby, Sebastian Faulks, is set at a deliberately unspecified university... either Oxford or the other place. The fact that the protagonist studies natural sciences might imply Cambridge. I confess I don’t remember enough details of the setting to state my own view.
Jude the Obscure, Thomas Hardy. I recommend this with the caveat that it wrecked me, but it’s supposed to. It has searing and indelible prose, and it writes about the life of the mind with exquisite yearning. Like Gaudy Night, too, it asks the central question of what happens when the life of the mind encounters the life of the heart, and what can happen if those in "a castle manned by scholarship and religion” pretend they can ignore the messiness of human realities.
To Say Nothing of the Dog, Connie Willis. This book is an absolute delight, and it defies description. There is punting. There are Wimsey references. There are Victorian monstrosities. There is time travel.
LA IMPOSICIÓN DE UN CANDIDATO PERREDISTA EN ETZATLÁN DIVIDE AL PAN
El Partido Acción Nacional (PAN) se ha caracterizado por ser una fuerza política que defiende los principios democráticos, la participación ciudadana y la pluralidad de ideas. Sin embargo, en el municipio de Etzatlán, Jalisco, parece que estos valores han sido olvidados por un grupo de caciques políticos que pretenden imponer a un candidato que no representa los intereses ni la identidad de los…
y'know truthfully i can't help but feel like the jays clean house after this season. it'll probably only be the coaching staff but they've been maybe the most disappointing team in the AL this season (behind the white sox), and i feel like heads might roll in the offseason. all depends on what happens if/when they make the playoffs.
Apologies if I already asked this, but recs for campus detective novels? I will be buried with my copies of Gaudy Night, but I want to try some other authors over the summer in between researching for my prospectus.
I do! Also set in Oxford is Robert Robertson's Landscape with Dead Dons, and it is uproariously funny.
Obviously the premise of the campus novel relies on an American setting, but if we do take Oxford (bless it) as providing an insulated setting suitable to the requirements of the genre, Edmund Crispin's Gervase Fen novels would count. And Swan Song contains so many Wagner jokes... which I realize will only be a recommendation if you like that sort of thing (I do.)
Guillermo Martínez, The Oxford Murders, is (obviously) still in Oxford. It might be a shade over-clever for my taste, which I astonish myself by saying. Perhaps the problem is that it's written by a mathematician and I will take any amount of excessive cleverness dished out by my fellow humanists.
Sebastian Faulks, Engleby, is a dark and extremely intelligent mystery that starts at a university, and arguably would not have developed in the way that it did without the university setting.
Nayana Currimbhoy, Miss Timmins' School for Girls, is a satisfying classic mystery plot with a richly atmospheric evocation of the place and time (and monsoon season!) in which it is set.
Geoff Cebula, Adjunct, is brilliant, inventive, and will make you laugh-cry about the realism of its academic setting, I suspect, if you've ever been precariously employed at a university.
Carol Goodman, The Lake of Dead Languages, would count, I think, but I remember its prose (favorably!) better than its plot.
Elaine Hsieh Chou, Disorientation, is an academic mystery rather than the murderous kind, but no less satisfying as a classic detective puzzle for that, in my view.
I'll also add this list of campus mysteries for good measure, though I've read few of them myself.
I did the Exterior design for the Dinostop set in the Mitchells vs the Machines. It was a challenging assignment as the set had already gone through multiple artists before it landed on my desk. My Final version is influenced heavily by an earlier version done by my boss, Production Designer (and genius) Lindsey Olivares, as well as by the hilarious story boards from Head of Story Guillermo Martinez. The Director, Mike Rianda as constantly pushing me to exaggerate the Dino designs to make sure they retained the comedic impact of the Boards. Its amazing how much back and forth there was to make sure this set was stupid as fuck. Had a blast doing this full painting as well as all of the bits and pieces.
this is just for fun, realistically i know we will probably never see the teen/ adult versions of most of these characters, but it is fun to think who could play them.
p.s i am going to continue to think of more sostay tuned for part 2!