{"id":434,"date":"2026-06-27T20:46:58","date_gmt":"2026-06-27T19:46:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/welspgr\/?p=434"},"modified":"2026-04-27T20:58:27","modified_gmt":"2026-04-27T19:58:27","slug":"what-have-i-been-am-i-reading-by-jonathon-hughes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/welspgr\/index.php\/2026\/06\/27\/what-have-i-been-am-i-reading-by-jonathon-hughes\/","title":{"rendered":"What have I been\/am I reading by Jonathon Hughes"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Alain de Botton (1997:46) in\u00a0<\/span>How Proust can change your life<\/span><\/i><\/a>\u00a0<\/span><\/i>notes that Marcel Proust’s Maurice\u00a0Duplay\u00a0said that when Proust\u00a0couldn\u2019t\u00a0get to sleep, he most liked to read a train timetable.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

De Botton continues:<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The departure time of the St\u00a0Lazaire\u00a0train was not the point for the man who found no reason to leave Paris for the last 8 years of his\u00a0life.\u00a0Rather the\u00a0timetable was read as though it were a gripping novel about country life, because the mere names of the provincial train stations provided Proust\u2019s imagination with material to elaborate entire\u00a0worlds,\u00a0to picture domestic dramas in rural villages, shenanigans in local government and life out in the fields\u00a0<\/span><\/i>(1997:47).<\/span><\/a>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

In this spirit I offer a list of my current reading (unlike the provincial French train stations in no\u00a0order, but as they occur to me):\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n