Dearest backers of academic obscurity :)

First off, happy new year! May your coffee be strong, may your Mondays be short, and may your hard drives never fail.

I've been hard at work, condensing all the academic oddness into a lovely little book to make you smile and think "hey, maybe this isn't so boring after all". Things you are going to get in the book:

• Awful Rate My Professors comments, like: “Once or twice, his theory talk was interesting, but other than that the only thing that keeps the blood in my brain flowing is wondering what the hell is up with the fanny pack”.
• A rundown of all the extremes of academic publishing: shortest papers, longest titles, most authors, swear words, spontaneous dolphin ejaculation.
• Peer review (“Reject – More holes than my grandad’s string vest!”).
• Fake journals, fake conferences, fake papers.
• An inside look at academic twitter. Preview here.
• Lots of footnotes. I love footnotes.
• A surprising amount of Kim Kardashian.

The current plan is to have a rough draft of the entire book to the lovely folks at Unbound by the end of January. Then it will be reviewed, rejected by reviewer 3, and sent back to me for extensive editing. Not sure when you'll hold the finished product in your hands, but hopefully it won't be too long!

In the meantime, you might be amused by:

• Cats and Academia: a short history
• Winners of the Second Annual Academics with Cats Awards
• Academic papers about Star Wars (like this one diagnosing psychiatric illnesses of the characters)​

Wish me luck!

Glen