No, no dangerously leaning piles of new books this week either. My continuing level of self-restraint surprises you all, doesn’t it?

The Wheeler Centre for Books, Writing and Ideas officially opens next week with A Gala Night of Storytelling. I’m very excited to be attending so many wonderful – and mostly free – events over the coming months, as I’ve never really gone to any sort of literary events before. A combination of not really being interested, seeing reading as a solely solitary pursuit, and an illogical presumption that I wouldn’t fit in. This year I’ve decided to throw all self-doubt aside and just go for it, and hopefully I’ll enjoy myself.

Speaking of events, in preparation for a little festivity I am planning for the anniversary of a certain author’s birth in a few weeks, I discovered this photograph of Carson McCullers by Louise Dahl-Wolfe on flickr that I hadn’t seen before. I really haven’t changed all that much from when I was twelve and hunting out new pictures of Hanson, only now it’s with Southern gothic writers from the 1940s.

Painting: “The Bath” (1867) by Alfred Stevens.