The very best part of our entire afternoon at the Tower of London:

From Molly in London

And, of course, Molly gazing fatuously at Zombie Oscar Wilde. Seriously, no offense to the artist intended, but he is clearly a zombie. Leaving aside the coffin-shaped statue base and green, Medusa-like snake hair (and the green carnation, but that was a given), there are mysterious starfish inside his head.

From Molly in London

This year’s winners are:

The Knife of Never Letting Go by Patrick Ness
& Filter House by Nisi Shawl.

Congratulations to them both!

I have not yet read either book, but I’m looking forward to them. Further information about the winners, the jury, this year’s short list, and the award itself can be found at the Tiptree Award website. The Tiptree is given every year (and frequently presented at WisCon, the world’s first feminist science fiction convention, also known in my family as our annual family reunion), for science fiction or fantasy that expands or explores our understanding of gender.

From MHC

The library of my undergraduate institution (above) is extraordinary. From the outside, it looks like a castle; inside, you walk through a marble atrium and up the stairs into a long, red-carpeted Reference Room with a high, vaulted ceiling crossed with wooden beams. The light comes in through tall, arched windows decorated with stained-glass. It is, in all things, a reading room befitting the castle in which it is housed. The arm chairs and the carpet are shabby, the long wooden tables are scuffed, the reference books are well-thumbed, and the whole room glows with knowledge. My story is a familiar one, among the alumnae of my college: it was the library in general and the Reference Room in particular that wooed and won me, and I never looked back.

I loved – and love – the Reference Room, but I didn’t always work there. In my final year I had a carrel on the sixth floor, tucked into a back corner of the unfashionable side of the sixth floor stacks, somewhere in Modern English and American Literature – short stories, if I remember rightly – and not far from the Renaissance and Early Modern section. In April of that year, I wandered the stacks almost daily, puzzling out mental tangles in my thesis, and letting a poem a day for National Poetry Month jump out at me from the rows and rows of books. I don’t need call numbers, in that library, anymore. The sense memory is enough.

There are other, more beautiful libraries, and many libraries that are older, or more extensive, or more profound. In my heart of hearts, I want to live in the library from the Disney Beauty and the Beast movie. But I may never find a library that is so emotionally resonant; my undergraduate library is my library, even though (maybe especially because) it only belonged to me for four years, and I share it with so many others. For the most part, the constant comparison doesn’t detract too much from my affection for other libraries.

I was surprised, however, that I did not fall for the British Library immediately. At first, it made me incredibly uncomfortable; I didn’t want to work there, and I didn’t like it at all. That almost never happens to me with libraries. I thought it might be impostor syndrome – I had plenty of impostor syndrome in the Manuscripts Room – but it wasn’t quite that. It also wasn’t that I didn’t like the building, or the aesthetics of the reading rooms, or the character of the inhabitants. I liked all that, and I certainly liked the access: source of the world’s knowledge, or whatever it is the website says. I wasn’t thrilled by the restrictions, but I understood them. I adjusted to using pencils instead of pens, and to taking breaks for water and tea instead of bringing them in with me.

What it took me much longer to adjust to – and what ultimately put me off – was the call system. I got it for Manuscripts, but I did not like that there were no stacks for me to wander in search of literature and scholarship, and that I could not simply find the right section of the Library of Congress shelf marks and browse the shelves until I found what I was looking for – or something even better, something that I wasn’t looking for. There’s a lot to be said for the call system – for one thing, it allows for so many more books. There is even something to be said for not being able to take books out; I think I work a little more sensibly when I attempt to keep to library hours, even though keeping to library hours is terribly inconvenient. I’ve adjusted, more or less. I’ve learned my way around the Integrated Catalogue, and gotten in the habit of calling things up in advance. When I really need stacks, I go to the University of London Senate House Library, and browse, and check books out, and then, when I am feeling especially perverse, I bring my Senate House Books to the British Library.

I love the British Library, and I’m going to miss it. I hope I’ll be back a whole lot in the future. Did I mention the resources? But you never really forget your first love, do you? I don’t want to forget mine. Even if, in the grand scheme of books and knowledge and history, and the library we saw in Leiden, or the Bodleian, or Jesus College Cambridge, or the Reading Room of the British Museum, it is nothing so very special or old or grand, it is glorious, and I will always love it best.

Closing the book, I find I have left my head
inside. It is dark in here, but the chapters open
their beautiful spaces and give a rustling sound,
words adjusting themselves to their meaning.
Long passages open at successive pages. An echo,
continuous from the title onward, hums
behind me. From in here, the world looms,
a jungle redeemed by these linked sentences
carved out when an author traveled and a reader
kept the way open. When this book ends
I will pull it inside-out like a sock
and throw it back in the library. But the rumor
of it will haunt all that follows in my life.
A candleflame in Tibet leans when I move.

~Mary Oliver, ‘An Afternoon In The Stacks’.

1. That thing about everybody in the Netherlands riding bicycles is not, as I previously suspected, a myth. Everyone. Rides. Bicycles. There are more bicycles in Holland than I have ever seen in my life. I was nearly killed by bicyclists at least fifty times.
2. The Queen of Sweden is more elusive than one might expect.
3. I am not in fact capable of keeping up when it comes to drinking with the English. I max out at three drinks, and sometimes I can fake it, but not, apparently, on a European Tour.
4. The Dutch are incredibly friendly, awesome, and very knowledgeable.
5. I love old books. (I may have known that already.)
6. If you give me a camera, I am liable to go a little crazy.

On Tuesday, we met at St. Pancras very early in the morning, and caught the Eurostar to Brussels, where we changed trains and journeyed on to Den Haag. After arriving in The Hague, we checked into our hostel – which, by the way, was extremely nice – and then set out in search of money, food, and culture. The Hague was not, on first impression, very pretty, although it was a little ridiculous.

From Leiden

After I acquired cash and food, The Hague became rather prettier.

From Leiden

From Leiden

From Leiden

From Leiden

I had not slept at all on Monday night, though – packing, plus trip-related and work-related stress and a genuine fear that I would miss the train if I went to sleep at all – and I rode the adrenaline high for most of the day, but it all caught up with me eventually. I only had the energy for about half a drink with the group, and I wandered back to the hostel on my own pretty early in the evening, admiring the scenery along the way, and snapping pictures of things that caught my eye.

From Leiden

Theaterrestaurant! A mash-up of joy!

From Leiden

There are a lot of canals in Holland. This should not come as a surprise to anyone.

From Leiden

I went to bed early – really early, I was the least exciting traveling companion ever – and woke up early, and we caught the train to Leiden at about 9:30 on Wednesday morning. Upon our arrival, we were rather overwhelmed by the vast quantity of bicycles. By the end of the day we’d mostly stopped noticing them, but seriously. Bicycles. Everywhere.

From Leiden

We walked to the Museum Boerhaave from the station, and somewhere along the way it really hit me that we were in Holland. Not that I had failed to notice in The Hague, what with the bicycles and the Dutch and everything, but something about the windmill really clinched it.

From Leiden

I was a little hesitant about taking pictures in the museum itself, and consequently do not have any photos of the amazing reconstruction of the 1594 Theatrum Anatomicum, or any of the microscopes and lenses and astrolabes and medical instruments on which we gazed in wonder. It was also a little dark in the first room of wonders to take photos without flash – and I was certainly not about to take photos with flash – but in the last room we did all take pictures of the planetariums and weights and measurements and telescopes and things.

From Leiden

I am not really an early science person, but the museum was amazing; there’s something about 16th and 17th century science – for me, mostly, the astronomy, but also the rest of it – that’s inextricably tangled up with the literature and culture and history; the Renaissance, the Enlightenment, the fundamental desire for knowledge, for learning from the classics and expanding on them, outward, upward – that’s poetic, too. Maybe essential. I think if I’d had instruments like those, at a time like that, I might even have been a scientist.

After the Museum Boerhaave we wandered along a market street next to the canal, resisting all the stalls selling fruit and cheese and other wonderful things, and seeking coffee. We eventually settled on a cafe, and ate and drank in the sunshine, on a tethered boat on the canal.

From Leiden

Our extremely friendly and gossipy Dutch waiter directed us to Leiden’s “excuse for a castle” across the canal, and we meandered over the bicycle-bedecked bridge after lunch. Along the way, I was distracted by an e.e. cummings poem painted on the wall of a building. I think the poem was part of a series – we saw many other poems, in all different languages, and they were all numbered. Any town where the buildings are decorated in poetry wins my heart in a second.

From Leiden

From Leiden

On the way to the castle, we stopped at a second-hand junk shop and bought a lot of really random miscellaneous stuff. T bought a pair of maracas, a mustachioed and helmeted German figurine, and wooden dog’s head on a stick (I do not have any pictures of the dog, but it became something of a trip mascot), and W purchased a bundle of knives (not as worrying as it sounds), and K found one of those miracle devices for making popsicles out of juice, and I acquired (prize and glory of the expedition), a tiny tray, about 4 inches by 3, painted with an artistic portrait of Elizabeth I. It has since been gifted to the faculty, and I stupidly did not take any pictures, but it is awesome.

The castle, when we finally got there, was not very large, but it was very pretty, and the view from the ramparts made the climb well worth it. I am perhaps excessively obsessed with rooftops.

From Leiden

From Leiden

From Leiden

From Leiden

Did I mention that Leiden is gorgeous? Leiden is really gorgeous.

After the castle we set out for the Botanical Gardens. On the way, we got a little lost. We did what any rational students of old documents would do, and consulted a much more reliable map than the ones in our guidebooks.

From Leiden

From Leiden

On our way again, we cut through a beautiful old church, and I took more photos of rooftops, with bonus Justice.

From Leiden

Eventually, we came to a bridge. On the other side of the bridge were the Botanical Gardens, but between us and them were a police barricade, several police on motorbikes in white leather jackets (I am baffled by the sartorial choices of the Leiden police force), and many people milling about. “But there is no crime in Holland!” we cried. It was a beautiful day, however, and we were intrigued, so we loitered on the bridge, and eventually a very nice Dutch woman explained to us that the barricade and the people were all there for the Queen of Sweden, who was inside the University building on the other side of the bridge. She was supposed to emerge shortly, and the motorcade would depart, and she would be queenly and probably wave or something. We probably could have gone through the barricade and avoided the shenanigans entirely, but what the hell, we decided, why not wait around to see the Queen of Sweden? We waited, and waited, and many people who were not royalty emerged from behind the barricade, and we chatted with the nice Dutch lady, who told us more things about the Queen of Sweden, and we waited some more, and the motorcade got itself together, and went past, without the Queen of Sweden, who had apparently gone out the back.

The police wouldn’t let us through the barricade after that, so we gave up and went to a pub, and eventually we caught a glimpse of the Queen of Sweden’s hat. By then, we were almost due at our next scheduled engagement, but D and LW and I made a brief detour to the Botanical Gardens on the way. We learned later that the Botanical Gardens were actually closed that day, possibly because of the Queen of Sweden, so we may actually have broken into the Botanical Gardens by accident. Um. There is no crime in Holland!

From Leiden

From Leiden

Our evening engagement was a visit to the Bibliotheca Thysiana, which was utterly, spectacularly extraordinary. I’m not sure I can do it justice in description or photography. I have seen a lot of amazing libraries, this year – including the Wren Library and the Jesus College Library at Cambridge, neither of which are to be scoffed at – and touched a wide variety of extraordinary old books and documents, but the Bibliotheca Thysiana is – special. There’s something about being in a purpose-built 17th century library, the original fabric of building and library intact, that defies description and exceeds expectations; it’s more like being there than any other part of this study, standing around at the tall table or the book wheel (a book wheel, oh my god), looking at the books the librarian brought out for us, that really felt like being part of something three-hundred years old, and older.

Like I said, I can’t really do it justice in words, but I didn’t want to leave. I don’t ever really want to leave.

From Leiden

From Leiden

From Leiden

From Leiden

The faculty took us out to dinner after – all of us still reeling a little from the Bibliotheca Thysiana – at a really excellent Dutch-Indonesian restaurant, where we wined and dined and talked and enjoyed ourselves immensely, and then went to a pub with a spectacular painted ceiling and pretty decent gin and tonics, and then caught the last train back to The Hague. I begged off another drink – I am really not that much fun, honest – and went to bed.

Sometime on Wednesday, we had decided that we might as well go to the Plantin Museum in Antwerp after all, since our Eurostar train was not until Thursday evening, and we had more-or-less unlimited train tickets for the Netherlands. We checked out of the hostel and caught the train to Antwerp, where we locked up our baggage in lockers (packing genius was involved; I longed for Jeeves, but K and LW and LM worked magic), and went out in search of lunch, coffee, waffles, and the printing museum. I took fewer pictures in Antwerp, but I did get lunch, coffee, waffles, and the printing museum. Plus bonus angels with lighting bolts.

From Leiden

The Plantin Museum came close to being too much – it went on for ages, winding up and up through the entire enormous building, books and books and printing presses and copperplate engravings and woodcuts and maps and more books in glass cases, and we only had about an hour and a half to revel in it. I did revel, but I was a little glazed-eyed by the end. I’d like to go back, sometime, and actually give it the time it probably deserves. Although one good thing about being time-limited is that I was more overwhelmed by quantity than by exhaustion. It is a very impressive museum. Sadly, the courtyard was under construction, and I was not about to take any pictures inside.

From Leiden

From Leiden

After the Plantin, we all bought some fancy chocolate, and then went back to the train station, where there was a minor snafu with what train to catch to Brussels. We didn’t really have enough time in Belgium, but one nice bonus of this trip is that I now know how incredibly easy it is to travel to the continent. Despite the confusion, we made it to the Eurostar in Brussels with time to spare, and the train home was equally lovely. I adore traveling by train, and we had spectacular weather all three days. Then I came home, learned from flatmate F that someone had tried to break into our flat while I was away, but had been scared away by flatmate P, who is not very scary at all but is 6’5″, said, “Huh, all the wacky things happen when I’m not here,” and went up to my room to sleep the sleep of the well-traveled.

Unfortunately – or perhaps fortunately for me, as I am currently deeply invested in Elizabeth of Bohemia and Dudley Carleton and the Thirty Years’ War – we students are staying at a hostel in The Hague, because we cannot actually afford to stay in Leiden with the staff. (While our events and one fancy meal will be covered by the Department, we are paying for most of our own food and lodging and transport). I am okay with this, because a) I really like train travel, and b) I will get to see more of Holland. I am unlikely to actually do any work in The Hague (although I may have to, essays are due next Monday), but I can wander the streets and think about history, which, really, is my typical modus operendi while in Europe.

I expect there will be pictures when I get back!

1. Renaissance and Early Modern Studies, treatises and commentary on, discussion of, and jokes about. I will probably be a little coded when I talk about my own work. I’m a graduate student. I know nothing, and aim to know everything.
2. Book reviews, book recommendations, and rambling on about books.
3. I am (at least for another few months) an American living in London. I doubt this will turn into a travel blog, but I am sure there will be stories, especially if I manage to do some actual traveling beyond the (no longer extant, and actually I live beyond them anyway) city walls.
4. I have a baking obsession. There will probably be food posts.
5. Speculative fiction, discussions of, commentary on, and references to. I grew up in science fiction fandom. It’s pretty much like home.
6. Parenthetical phrases. Classical allusions. Obscure popular culture. Latin. Poetry. Less obscure popular culture. Some sex, probably no drugs, and a fair amount of rock’n'roll. Links to things I like. Recipes. American politics. Social issues. World events. Judaism. Serial commas. Misuse of semicolons. Office supplies. Rhetoric. Theater. Queerness. An extreme prejudice against prejudice. Socks. Chocolate.

Stick around. Should be fun.