This comes out on 2nd November. It has a very readable style, and interestingly the footnotes are in a different font from, and bigger than, the main text.

So far I’ve learnt the following:

How did Chaucer manage to write stories based on the work of Boccaccio shortly after Boccaccio had written them, in an age before mass communication? It’s a good question, one that had never occurred to me before. Apparently, the stories were brought from one place to another via trade routes. It’s kind of obvious once it’s pointed out.

Moleskine books were (and perhaps still are) regarded as a status symbol. I wasn’t aware of that, but two of my accessories while working in a proper job were, along with a suit/jacket and tie and, indubitably, double cuffed shirt with cufflinks, a Moleskine notebook and fountain pen!

Finally (for now) — and this is another thing that hadn’t occurred to me — some people regard the notebook as a kind of Oulipian object. The Oulipo is based on constraints, and a notebook is in effect a physical embodiment of that idea.

The publisher is Profile Books.

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