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A collection of speeches and essays around the higher education reforms in Britain in the years 2010 - 2013. I arrived in London in 2011, just a few months after the mass student protests had subsided. I eventually also studied at a British university and then in Hong Kong, a system that inherited some features from the British model and also followed (or proceeded?) Britain in the move towards neoliberal competitiveness. The book delves into many technical aspects of the reform, such as the changes to the funding system, the conditions of student loans and the plan to introduce a teaching assessment framework. But, to focus on the more general arguments...

The first great merit of the book is to make an argument against the reform that goes beyond protesting high fees. Now, I believe British students have all the right to protest university fees, which are arguably the highest in Europe, have nearly tripled in a ridiculously short amount of time and disturbingly raise the social and economic barrier in a country where class already plays such a big role. But, to 'only' complain about raising fees has allowed to present the issue as a sectional interest matter: there you go, over-privileged millennials feeling entitled, university is not a right, it is only fair that you would have to pay for it at some point, anyways they are wasting not only tax payer money but also their own time, etc. Collini takes issue with how the reform push us to consider university education as a service that students access for their own exclusive benefits as consumers. Research and higher education benefit society as a whole - they should not cater to the interests of the government, businesses, nor students.

The other major theme running through the book is an attack to the neoliberal pseudo-economic newspeak that has come to dominate so many aspects of our lives, university included. As someone who was asked in an interview how my research 'speaks to excellence' I couldn't help feeling validated. The choice of words, as Collini points out, matters a great deal, because it pushes scholars to justify their relevance in terms that aren't their own: if they have to prove - often in quantitative terms - how their work 'makes an impact' or 'contributes to growth' they are not only bound to fail on the task, but also to undersell (oooops, wrong word) what they ACTUALLY do.

I also appreciated that Collini resisted the temptation to lament a lost golden era, when university where actual universities. Instead, he recognises that, like most institutions, they change in their ethos and purpose. Nevertheless, he suggests, we should hold on to the idea of universities as a place dedicated to open inquiry, insulated in as much as possible from external pressures and demands.

Which brings me to my last point. I think Collini is persuasive when it comes to counter-arguing the right-wing, neoliberal attacks to the university system. But then again, I'm not an hard audience to persuade. He is less interested in addressing what we could call left-wing arguments against the elitism of universities, not only as places but as ideas. This may be a rhetorical strategy: he is making a case of the unique value of university, has to fend off accusations that professors are lazy and only focused on their narrow work, convince his readers that money spent on humanities research is well spent and so on. Yet, in some parts of the book this insistence on the value of universities and professors weakens the argument. For example, in insisting on the uniqueness of universities, he misses the chance to recognize that other professions and other learning institutions need similar freedom from economic and government pressures (he vaguely acknowledges art institutions may be in a similar position. I think schools could be added to the list - sure they are not pushing the limits of knowledge, but they should be encouraging critical thinking?). Or, in his defense of professors, he glosses over the fact that - whether out of entitlement, exaggerate pressure to publish, or something else entirely - there are in my experience MANY professors who do not take teaching seriously and even bully students. I agree that increasing bureaucratic demands and making funding more precarious is unlikely to help, but one should not minimize the problem. By contrast, I think Collini could have a bit more confidence in students capacity to contribute to discussions about the value of education, and what are things that should or should not change. Not as entitled consumers, but as parties involved.

I bookmarked this book as 'to read' during the first months of my PhD, because it was quoted by Brian Harley. I finally brought myself to reading it last December, a few weeks after handing in my thesis. I'm very glad I did: not only it has nothing to do with maps (a definite plus at this point in my life), but it is a fascinating memoir, by a kick-ass woman who could handle not only horses and planes, but also words.

I have never been particularly affected by the mythology of pioneer pilots, but the book captures the magic of governing a plane, understanding how it works and how to make it fly, knowing the skies and the earth below, the dangers and the poetry of it:

'After this era of great pilots is gone, as the era of great sea captains has gone - each nudged aside by the march of inventive genius, by steel cogs and coppers discs and hair-thin wires on white faces that are dumb, but speak - it will be found, I think, that all the science of flying has been captured in the breadth of an instrument board, but not the religion of it'

I couldn't help but compare Makham's attitude towards Africa, natives and colonialists to those of Doris Lessing (I haven't read Karen Blixen, but that would be an even apter comparison). I'm not sure how to put it in a nuanced way, so I will just put it as it comes: Makham has very little white guilt. She is not crushed by her privilege - in the same way as she hardly pays notice to the sexism that she encounters as a woman pilot, which she seems to write off as misguided gallantry. Yet, she is not blind to how race and class shape her relations, particularly the one with her childhood friend Nandi. 'What a child does not know and does not want to know of race and colour and class, he learns soon enough as he grows to see each man flipped inexorably into some predestined groove like a penny or a sovereign in a banker's rack. Kibii, the Nandi boy, was my good friend. Arab Ruta, who sits before me, is my good friend, but the handclasp will be shorter, the smile will not be so eager on his lips, and though the path is for a while the same, he will walk behind me now, when once, in the simplicity of our nonage, we walked together'.

Perhaps this mix of confidence, insight and matter-of-factness comes with knowing, befriending and loving actual indigenous persons, rather than thinking of indigenous people as a group or a political identity. Kibii is a real child: funny, clever, sometimes arrogant, sometimes brave, sometimes pity. He is not a symbol for African children. Makham is not exactly indignant that racial relations mean they can no longer walk together in adulthood, though a certain sadness and disappointment transpires. Somehow, for me the result is a portrait of colonial relation that is more lively and nuanced, but not necessarily less revealing, than Lessing's denounce.

Makham's prose is rather poetic, and it was a long time since I had to look up so many words in a dictionary. Yet, as she makes beautifully underscores, she values clarity: 'I had nearly a thousand flying hours to my credit at he time and, if my eyesight had failed me during my preparations for the examinations, it would have been due to the additional hundred o two hours I spent studying navigation out of books whose authors must have been struck dumb in the presence of a one-syllabe word. Everything those authors said was sound and sane and reasonable, but they went on the theory that truth is rare than radium and that if it became easily available, the market for it would be glutted, holders of stock in it would become destitute, and gems of eternal verity would be given away as premiums'.

A murder mystery / family drama, that revolves around the finding of a corpse in a family's country home, and the unreliable narrator's efforts to unravel what happened. Said narrator, Toby, is unreliable because an attack has left him with serious memory problems, but also because, in his mindless privilege, has gone through life unaware of the pain of others. He always considered himself a good guy, but is now forced to question his innocence, not, or not only in relation to the murder, but more in general. And the book plays with the question, what does it mean to be innocent? Wouldn't we all kill, in certain situation, if we had the chance? And his killing necessarily the guilty thing to do? It could easily turn banal or sanctimonious or lame, but the threads are weaved together very skillfully, as Toby becomes less and less likeable with every page, and more and more believable.

A very enjoyable book: original, funny, engrossing. At its core is the relationship between two sisters, Korede, tall - with unremarkable looks, an obsession for tidiness, and a strong sense of duty- and Ayoola, pretty, superficial, self-centered but devoted to her sister, and a serial-killer. T says it has won a lot of prizes that maybe would be better spent on more literary works. It's true that there isn't necessary a message or a second layer of meaning to give the book depth, but the first layer, so to speak, is never banal. I enjoyed how unlikeable but three dimensional everyone was. For example Dr. Perfect, the love interest of Korede who falls for Ayoola and turns out to be not so perfect after all. There's a great scene where Korede asks him what he likes about Ayoola, and cannot think of anything. Meanwhile Korede, who loves and hates Ayoola so fiercely, easily names many specifics that make her unique.

This was another of T's book that I read just because it was there, since she had taken my tablet for her weekend in Elqui and I got her e-reader in exchange. It is a first person non-eventful narration by a 40 something single woman in Copenhagen. Two themes stood out for me. One is related to what it means to be a single woman.The protagonist seems to want a relationship but her life is not defined by a lack of partner, nor is she unhappy. Nevertheless, she is to some extent defined by her single-ness, because that's what society does. I really like one passage (I cannot copy it here because I gave back the e-reader) where she reflects on the difference between being single in her home village vs being single in the big city, aka Copenhagen. While single women in the village are viewed as I they have failed at life, people nevertheless talk to them as people. Whilst in the city being single is a thing, to the point that a whole industry has sprung up around it. It made me think of how there is a 'cool' way of being single, meaning mainly if you date around a lot, but also if you travel or have some super career, as if you needed to make your single-ness be worth it. Which brings me to the other theme, i.e. the confusing feelings towards one's home place, particularly when home is a small village and one is attracted by the city's freedom, the permission to be 'weird', until one realises there are rule on how to be weird, and that village communities are tough but tight, more forgiving that one gives them credit for, or maybe that's just what they look like from the vantage point of the city. The book has a light, amusing tone to it, but there is a Scandinavian bleakness to it, as if death and loneliness were never far.