Midweek #1

As mentioned last week, here’s something that I may do as a regular ‘feature’. It will normally come out on a Wednesday, in honour of how for most of the students that I teach, Wednesday afternoons (being free of lectures and seminars) is where they can spend some quality time with other interests. Normally, this means sports clubs and student societies, or for some a seat at the bar. Now we who teach don’t get a corresponding afternoon – my Wednesdays are usually filled up quite quickly with meetings, training courses and research seminars, as it’s the only clear spot on staff timetables – so these will be ‘midweek’ links rather than precise Wednesday afternoons. The idea is to share a few things (no more than 10) that I have been reading that are a little bit (or a lot) off-topic; links that are relevant but don’t get a post of their own are found on my Twitter feed, and a roundup of Twitter links will also appear about once a week. (If you have a hunger for more frequent fun links, good examples include Damien Mulley’s Fluffy Links and Alexia Golez’s Red Links.

So with further adieu, this week’s links are:

• BBC Music Blog, Best Albums of 2009. Lots of video clips embedded.
• Ian Hocking, Guest post at Scott Pack’s Me And My Big Mouth on his personal experience of e-readers.
• AO Scott, Review of ‘Leap Year’ in the New York Times. When will these movies about Ireland (complete with supremely dodgy Irish accents) end?
• Channel 4 News, Royal Mail launches rock album stamps. Ever wanted to send a letter with Tubular Bells on the envelope? Now you can.
• Charlie Brooker writes a fantasy election manifesto. Including free croissants on buses.