John Carey speaks

The Unexpected Professor: An Oxford Life in Books by John Carey (Faber)

I knew I had to get hold of this book after reading John Garth's review. It is as Garth says, a readable and often funny book that, while it claims to be "a history of English literature and me, how we met, how we got on" (xi), it's actually a personal memoir about a usual run of subjects. It's just got a lot of book talk injected in it.

( long book review with many Tolkien references follows )