Timothy C. Baker

@timothycbaker

Lectures on Scottish and contemporary literature, writes about animals, tries to be hopeful. He/they. Currently trying to open a cinema in Aberdeen.

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Timothy C. Baker@timothycbaker· Jul 8

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.

Timothy C. Baker@timothycbaker· Jun 29

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?’

Timothy C. Baker@timothycbaker· Jun 25

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.

Timothy C. Baker@timothycbaker· Jun 8

Look, it’s been a really rough term.

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

Timothy C. Baker@timothycbaker· May 28

Work update:

Screenshot of the lyrics to Sufjan Stevens's 'Fourth of July', reading [Outro] and then the line 'We're all gonna die' repeated seven times in a row.

Timothy C. Baker@timothycbaker· May 28

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

Timothy C. Baker@timothycbaker· May 25

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.

Timothy C. Baker@timothycbaker· Apr 3

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.

Timothy C. Baker@timothycbaker· Apr 3

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.

Timothy C. Baker@timothycbaker· Oct 27

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.

Timothy C. Baker@timothycbaker· Sep 7

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’.

Timothy C. Baker@timothycbaker· Aug 28

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.

Timothy C. Baker@timothycbaker· Aug 18

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'.

Timothy C. Baker@timothycbaker· Jul 7

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.'

Timothy C. Baker@timothycbaker· Jun 26

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'.

Timothy C. Baker@timothycbaker· Jun 26

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.

Timothy C. Baker@timothycbaker· Jun 24

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.

Timothy C. Baker@timothycbaker· Jun 23

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.

Timothy C. Baker@timothycbaker· Jun 21

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.

Timothy C. Baker@timothycbaker· Jun 9

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.

Timothy C. Baker@timothycbaker· May 30

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.

Timothy C. Baker@timothycbaker· May 12

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

Timothy C. Baker@timothycbaker· Apr 7

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.

Timothy C. Baker@timothycbaker· Mar 19

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."

Timothy C. Baker@timothycbaker· Mar 12

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.

Timothy C. Baker@timothycbaker· Feb 23

I mean, they're not WRONG, but...

iPlayer screencap reading 'If you liked "Blue Velvet" [try] Eight Grade'.

Timothy C. Baker@timothycbaker· Feb 6

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.

Timothy C. Baker@timothycbaker· Jan 26

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’.

Timothy C. Baker@timothycbaker· Dec 28

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.

Timothy C. Baker@timothycbaker· Dec 25

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