iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Timothy C. Baker @timothycbaker.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

I admire my library catalogue's commitment to the bit.

Copy of Robert Louis Stevenson's Kidnapped, with a library self issue receipt giving the title as 'Kidnapped : being memoirs of the adventures of David Balfour in the year 1751, how he was kidnapped and cast away, his sufferings in a desert isle, his journey in the wild Highlands, his acquaintance with Alan Breck Stewart and other notorious Highland Jacobites, with all that he suffered at the hands of his uncle Ebeenzer Balfour of Shaws, falsely so-called.'

Timothy C. Baker @timothycbaker.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

(Not as a plug, but this week is the fourth anniversary of the book I wrote about my mother and reading, and next week would've been her birthday, and I talk about Dillard there, and today is just so sad.)

Cover of Reading My Mother Back: A Memoir in Animal Stories. A rabbit with long ears is in the foreground, another behind it, and behind that text from Watership Down.

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Timothy C. Baker @timothycbaker.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

Christmas 1977 my uncle gave my mother a copy of Annie Dillard's Holy the Firm. It is the book in which I keep my mother's memorial prayer cards, the item I would first save in a house fire, because those pages, turned by my mother and I, are one of the closest connections I have to her.

The first edition of Holy the firm. On a beige background are mirrored images of a phoenix rising from, or descending from, a fire.

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Timothy C. Baker @timothycbaker.bsky.social · 01/09/2026

I'm watching Superman II for the first time, and it is so much dumber, and so much more delightful, than I anticipated. But mainly I love everything Reeve wears as Clark Kent.

Black and white picture of Christopher Reeve as Clark Kent in a shirt and ribbed cardigan with a wide collar, holding his spectacles in his hand.

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Timothy C. Baker @timothycbaker.bsky.social · 08/07/2026

Norman Nicholson's A Local Habitation (1972), which I thought was really good, and definitely would have approached differently if I knew he looked like this

Portrait of a man with kind eyes, bushy eyebrows, and the largest muttonchops you've ever seen outside of amateur drama.

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Timothy C. Baker @timothycbaker.bsky.social · 29/06/2026

I appreciate the previous reader of this library book using sticky notes with squirrels.

In the margin of an academic book is placed a thin grey sticky note depicting an upside down squirrel. The reader has written ‘why?’

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Timothy C. Baker @timothycbaker.bsky.social · 25/06/2026

My entire approach to my job is just being Zero Mostel yelling 'you stupid bunnies!'

Still from Watership Down. A cross-looking seagull, with bright blue wings, smacks a bunny.

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Timothy C. Baker @timothycbaker.bsky.social · 08/06/2026

Look, it’s been a really rough term.

DVD box set of Buffy the Vsmpire Slayer, with the first season open.

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Timothy C. Baker @timothycbaker.bsky.social · 28/05/2026

Exciting to have the Court meeting that'll decide my institution's future addressed by the First Minister today.

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Timothy C. Baker @timothycbaker.bsky.social · 25/05/2026

Just received my first AI-generated publicity spam (for my 2022 memoir), and it is sending me.

There is a tendency in memoirs of grief to focus on the loss, on the absence, while you have focused on the presence of books, the shared reading, the childhood classics. And there is a tendency to be serious, while you have reminded us that there are bunnies.

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Timothy C. Baker @timothycbaker.bsky.social · 03/04/2026

I hadn't looked up my memoir online in a while, and I'm delighted to see that the first suggestion for similar texts on Amazon is for Liza Minnelli, while on Goodreads it's Virginia Woolf. This is precisely the company I wish to keep.

Cover of Reading My Mother Back: A Memoir in Childhood Animal Stories. The cover is blue, with a pen drawing of two rabbits. Dimly in the background you can see text excerpts from Watership Down, which no reader has picked up on but makes me extremely happy.

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Timothy C. Baker @timothycbaker.bsky.social · 03/04/2026

Hearing a lecture on Edwin Morgan's Pilate at Fortingall in 1998 was one of the clearest memories I have of falling in love with Scottish literature.

Pilate at Fortingall

A Latin harsh with Aramaicisms

poured from his lips incessantly; it made

no sense, for surely he was mad. The glade

of birches shamed his rags, in paroxysms

he stumbled, toga’d, furred, blear, brittle, grey.

They told us he sat here beneath the yew

even in downpours; ate dog-scraps. Crows flew

from prehistoric stone to stone all day.

‘See him now.’ He crawled to the cattle-trough

at dusk, jumbled the water till it sloshed

and spilled into the hoof-mush in blue strands,

slapped with useless despair each sodden cuff,

and washed his hands, and watched his hands, and washed

his hands, and watched his hands, and washed his hands.

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Timothy C. Baker @timothycbaker.bsky.social · 27/10/2025

I'm not going to buy a first US edition of The Quarry Wood, but I like this cover so much more than any of the paperback reprints.

Photo of a first edition of The Quarry Wood (in poor shape), showing a young woman in a long grey dress and a jaunty red cap bracing herself against the wind.

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Timothy C. Baker @timothycbaker.bsky.social · 07/09/2025

I’ve never liked the phrase ‘giving it 110%’, but I’m watching Grand Hotel, and Greta Garbo just acts MORE than any other human.

Close-up of Garbo, in a negligee, with subtitle reading ‘I’ve never been so tired in my life’.

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Timothy C. Baker @timothycbaker.bsky.social · 28/08/2025

New favourite Aberdeen image, from 1932.

Cover of the Aberdeen Bon-Accord and Northern Pictorial Holiday Number, showing a motorboat speeding along the Aberdeen Beach.

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Timothy C. Baker @timothycbaker.bsky.social · 18/08/2025

University management preparing their start-of-term updates. (Still actually from the new music video by The Beths. But still.)

Two white men in red shirts (one bald and wearing dark trousers, one with long blond hair and wearing white trousers) gesture at a flip chart reading 'No Joy No Joy No Joy'.

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Timothy C. Baker @timothycbaker.bsky.social · 07/07/2025

Glorious shade cast by Nan Shepherd in a 1960 issue of the Aberdeen University Review, where after a series of remembrances of the former Professors of English we find this:

Text reading 'The English Chair is now held by George I. Duthie, 1955. Among the many notable teachers of English under professorial rank, W.D. Taylor singles himself out.'

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Timothy C. Baker @timothycbaker.bsky.social · 26/06/2025

If you don't fancy reading a long novel and would prefer to come along and read (aloud) exciting sea-themed excerpts, there's an event Fri 18 July, 14:30. aberdeencity.spydus.co.uk/cgi-bin/spyd...

Text Reading 'Impromptu Reads: The No Prep Preading Group with a Difference'.

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Timothy C. Baker @timothycbaker.bsky.social · 26/06/2025

If you live in Aberdeen and want to talk about Neil M. Gunn's The Silver Darlings, there's a book group for you! (Wed 16 July, 18:00-19:00) aberdeencity.spydus.co.uk/cgi-bin/spyd...

Image for 'Tall Ships Book Group', showing the cover of Neil M. Gunn's The Silver Darlings against a blue background with a coiled rope.

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Timothy C. Baker @timothycbaker.bsky.social · 24/06/2025

It's horrible to discover you may in fact be a film bro.

Reader's Choice ballot for the 100 Best Movies of the 21st Century, where I have listed The Gleaners and I; Yi Yi; Stories We Tell; Morvern Callar; Mad Max:Fury Road; Carol; Paddington 2; Portrait of a Lady on Fire; 120 BPM; and Under the Skin, like I've never had an original thought in my head.

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Timothy C. Baker @timothycbaker.bsky.social · 23/06/2025

What's a poster you had in your room growing up? (The clues, it seems, were there if you looked hard enough)

Poster for the tv adaptation of I, Claudius, depicting Claudius on a mosaic background.

Poster for the French film Ma Vie en Rose.

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Timothy C. Baker @timothycbaker.bsky.social · 21/06/2025

For those of you who are too hot today, Aberdeen is 17 and looks like this.

Photograph of an old-fashioned street lamp against a background of mist. Just lots of mist.

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Timothy C. Baker @timothycbaker.bsky.social · 09/06/2025

In lieu of thoughts, a general endorsement of Saoirse Ronan's wardrobe in the new Talking Heads video.

Saoirse Ronan sits behind the wheel of a car, looking stoic but panicked. She's wearing a polkadot blouse and a knit cardigan that might be a sort of orange colour that wouldn't suit me, but I really like it.

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Timothy C. Baker @timothycbaker.bsky.social · 30/05/2025

It is not especially surprising that Ali Smith’s tiny new book about ghosts/mothers/trees is my favourite writing of hers in years, but I adored it.

A copy of Ali Smith’s So in the Spruce Forest sits on a stack of books, including Claire Lynch’s A Family Matter.

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Timothy C. Baker @timothycbaker.bsky.social · 12/05/2025

One of my former students just got nominated for a Clarke!! (Nothing to do with me, but still.) (Also, great list in general.) (But go Maud!!) www.clarkeaward.com

Covers for the six books shortlisted for the Arthur C. Clarke Award for Science Fiction Book of the Year.
Private Rites by Julia Armfield
The Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley
Extremophile by Ian Green
Annie Bot by Sierra Greer
Service Model by Adrian Tchaikovsky
Thirteen Ways to Kill Lulabelle Rock by Maud Woolf

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Timothy C. Baker @timothycbaker.bsky.social · 07/04/2025

Find yourself someone who looks at you the way Mandy Patinkin and Lee Remick look at Barbara Cook. (This from the 1986 Follies: Four Days in New York documentary on iPlayer, which I might have to watch every day.)

Patinkin, in a yellow t-shirt reading Lust in the Dust, and Remick, in a teal top, look rapt.

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Timothy C. Baker @timothycbaker.bsky.social · 19/03/2025

The kicker at the end of this article...

During the session, committee convener Douglas Ross MSP revealed that the university's recovery plan document sent to trade unions included the number of job losses in its password.

Prof O'Neill replied: "I'm surprised at that, I didn't know that."

Mr Ross asked: "Do you think it's crass and wholly inappropriate that the number of job losses were included in that password?"

The professor replied: "If that was deliberate, yes I agree with you."

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Timothy C. Baker @timothycbaker.bsky.social · 12/03/2025

The Republicans declaring the rest of 2025 to be one long day, in order to avoid congressional votes on tariffs, may be ridiculous politics, but hey, I'm going to meet so many deadlines.

Screenshot reading: The national emergency law lays out a fast-track process for Congress to consider a resolution ending a presidential emergency, requiring committee consideration within 15 calendar days after one is introduced and a floor vote within three days after that. But the language House Republicans inserted in their measure on Tuesday declared that, “Each day for the remainder of the 119th Congress shall not constitute a calendar day” for the purposes of the emergency that Mr. Trump declared on Feb. 1.

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Timothy C. Baker @timothycbaker.bsky.social · 06/02/2025

How I think I look when I'm teaching/How I actually look:

Julian Sands as George Emerson in A Room with a View. A young man, with floppy blond locks, lounges in braces and a white shirt, looking intently in the distance.

Simon Callow as Mr Beebe in A Room with a View. A grey-haired man, in clerical collar and black coat that is too hot for a tennis party, looks a bit befuddled.

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Timothy C. Baker @timothycbaker.bsky.social · 26/01/2025

The memes are true, and younger me wrong. Master and Commander is utterly delightful i.kym-cdn.com/photos/image....

Opening titles of Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World, with the heavily-memed line ‘Oceans are now Battlefields’.

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Timothy C. Baker @timothycbaker.bsky.social · 28/12/2024

I’ve lived in Aberdeen for 15 years and never, to my shame, properly read Charles Murray, but I found this cute edition in the Dundee Oxfam last week and couldn’t resist. He really is very good.

Volume of Charles Murray’s Hamewith and Other Poems on a paisley background.

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Timothy C. Baker @timothycbaker.bsky.social · 25/12/2024

My friend embroidered me a Sufjan Stevens Christmas Unicorn pillowcase, and now I’m crying.

Photograph of a white pillowcase embroidered with the words ‘It’s alright I love you’.

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Timothy C. Baker @timothycbaker.bsky.social · 12/12/2024

Edwin Morgan's Trio will always be my favourite Christmas poem. Orphean sprig! Melting baby! Warm chihuahua!

Coming up Buchanan Street, quickly, on a sharp winter evening
a young man and two girls, under the Christmas lights –
The young man carries a new guitar in his arms,
the girl on the inside carries a very young baby,
and the girl on the outside carries a chihuahua.
And the three of them are laughing, their breath rises
in a cloud of happiness, and as they pass
the boy says, ‘Wait till he sees this but!’
The chihuahua has a tiny Royal Stewart tartan coat like a teapot-
holder,
the baby in its white shawl is all bright eyes and mouth like favours
in a fresh sweet cake,
the guitar swells out under its milky plastic cover, tied at the neck
with silver tinsel tape and a brisk sprig of mistletoe.
Orphean sprig! Melting baby! Warm chihuahua!
The vale of tears is powerless before you.
Whether Christ is born, or is not born, you
put paid to fate, it abdicates
under the Christmas lights.
Monsters of the year
go blank, are scattered back,
can’t bear this march of three.

– And the three have passed, vanished in the crowd
(yet not vanished, for in their arms they wind
the life of men and beasts, and music,
laughter ringing them round like a guard)
at the end of this winter’s day.

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Timothy C. Baker @timothycbaker.bsky.social · 27/11/2024

Cannot believe I never knew, or perhaps forgot, that Petula Clark shows up in I Know Where I’m Going.

Still from I Know Where I’m Going, showing a young Petula Clark with glasses and a Peter Pan collar.

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Timothy C. Baker @timothycbaker.bsky.social · 04/03/2024

Rewatching a triple bill of Bill Douglas's My Childhood, Lynne Ramsay's Gasman, and Charlotte Wells's Tuesday for class tomorrow, and putting myself in A Mood. I really need to teach happier things. (But also, I love Gasman so much.)

Still from Gasman. A father carries his daughter on his back, walking down some unused rail tracks. Glasgow high rises are in the background.

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Timothy C. Baker @timothycbaker.bsky.social · 14/02/2024

Last night I discovered, belatedly, L'Inconnue de la Seine, a death-mask taken from an unknown drowned woman in the 1880s who was taken for about fifty years as the height of beauty, which a) what a great find for Ash Valentine's, and b) Holy Sources of Bella Baxter, Batman!

Deathmask of an unknown woman. The woman's eyes are closed, and her smile is interpreted as peaceful/blissful.

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Timothy C. Baker @timothycbaker.bsky.social · 03/02/2024

Possibly the best book jacket I've seen:

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Timothy C. Baker @timothycbaker.bsky.social · 31/01/2024

Blackboard now offers AI-generated discussion questions on uploaded files. If you set it to 'easy', it is easy (e.g. 'what is the name of the file'). Middling, it's boring but fine-ish. Hard, it randomly makes things up. Here it asks for the meaning of phrases that are not, in fact, in Jamie's poem.

A list of prompts - 'bleached bone', 'turrets of deadlight', 'ancient tree stumps', and 'waves of stone' - to match with the respective answers: 'symbolizes desolation and decay', 'evokes a sense of abandonment and darkness', 'represents the enduring forces of nature', and 'suggests the transformation of ancient landscapes'. Also includes, as 'distractors', 'represents eternally youthful trees', 'symbolizes the collective memories of the community', and 'suggests the shifting sands of time'.
There are no trees in the poem. It's not about any of that. I would put money on the phrase 'turrets of deadlight' never having crossed Jamie's mind.

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Timothy C. Baker @timothycbaker.bsky.social · 12/01/2024

Also, I do have to show off my copy of Gray’s script.

Front page of A Gray Playbook, with inscription reading ‘TIM’S BOOK says Alasdair Gray’.

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Timothy C. Baker @timothycbaker.bsky.social · 03/01/2024

Great fun to read an older novel you know nothing about - not even a cover blurb. Elizabeth Mavor’s The Redoubt isn’t as good as the recently republished A Green Equinox, but has some fantastic setpieces. Sort of halfway between Iris Murdoch and Shena Mackay.

Front and back covers of the Redoubt. The front cover is a large blue cloud over what might be a narrow landscape, but is obscured by a library sticker. The back cover has a photograph of Elizabeth Mavor looking at a tree, but no additional information.

Library stamp page, from Ilkey Public Libraries, showing the volume was checked out 26 times between 4 February 1972 and 11 November, 1975, and apparently never since.

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Timothy C. Baker @timothycbaker.bsky.social · 29/12/2023

Without downloading any new pics, what’s your energy going into 2024?

Drawing of two clowns, one in pink ruffles and one in black, with the text ‘Inside you there are two clowns. One romanticizes community, one romanticizes isolation.’

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Timothy C. Baker @timothycbaker.bsky.social · 25/12/2023

Every year I buy myself a big book to read over the break, and never touch it, so this year I set realistic expectations. (Pictured with a rabbity art piece from my father and the wine I’ll drink later.)

A copy of Richard Scarry’s board book I am a Bunny, besides a plywood plaque with bunnies and bottle of Vouvray (not containing bunnies).

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Timothy C. Baker @timothycbaker.bsky.social · 20/12/2023

I mean, who wants to read academic monographs over the holidays? But mine is now out in affordabler paperback if that appeals…

Paperback on New Forms of Environmental Writing: Gleaning and Fragmentation in front of a small plastic Christmas tree.

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Timothy C. Baker @timothycbaker.bsky.social · 03/12/2023

I used to run the children's department in a large bookstore. I was a child. I have a lifelong thing about bunnies. And I've never heard of Richard Scarry's I am a Bunny before, and based on this one image, it's my new favourite book.

A small bunny, in yellow jacket and red hat, gestures ebulliently in the snow.

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Timothy C. Baker @timothycbaker.bsky.social · 27/11/2023

Good letter from the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Moden Languages here.

Letter from Baroness Jean Coussins arguing that the closure of degrees in languages at Aberdeen will have strategic consequences across the UK, particularly in terms of school language provisions in Scotland and the Northeast, as well as internationalisation, and that these potential closures will also have reputational damage for the university.

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Timothy C. Baker @timothycbaker.bsky.social · 19/11/2023

OK, post-Designing Woman I am now utterly fixated on the choreographer Jack Cole (choreographer of Monroe’s dances, influence on Fosse and Ailey). I absolutely need to learn more.

Photograph of Jack Cole, right foot in air, wearing a very odd stripey crop top.

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Timothy C. Baker @timothycbaker.bsky.social · 19/11/2023

I’ve somehow not only never seen Designing Woman before, and Lauren Bacall is just WONDERFUL.

Lauren Bacall wearing a giant flower in her hair, screaming in displeasure while watching a boxing match.

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Timothy C. Baker @timothycbaker.bsky.social · 15/11/2023

Nothing in life is delighting me as much as these Sacred Heart of Taylor cards (from a NYT article on her tour dates in Argentina).

Three hands hold cards depicting traditional sacred heart images, only Jesus' face has been replaced by Taylor Swift's.

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