I mentioned in my previous post that I’ve been in London for the summer, spending almost all my time reading books.   I should clarify that I’m not *only* reading books while I’m here!  Among other things, once a week I’ve been taking my daily walk (I normally walk an hour a day around Wimbledon, where our flat is) to the large park nearby, and sit on a bench, listening to music with my earphones, watching people play football (a.k.a. soccer) or cricket with their kids, and smoking a very big cigar.   I limit myself to one cigar a week, since if I did what I *wanted* to do, I would smoke three a day.  But our flat is tiny, and there’s no way on God’s good earth that I would be allowed to smoke in it.  So I go to the park.  And sit, and listen to music, and … think deep thoughts.

Some of my most creative thinking time is with plugs in my ears and a cigar in my hand (or, well, mouth) and my eyes clouded over contemplating deeply this thing or that.  Last week I basically came up with the outline of my next book on oral tradition (referred to in my previous post) doing just that.

And the week before I tried to think of what I wanted my books to be over the next ten years.  I’m 58 now; and feel that, professionally, I’m pretty much at my peak.  I’d like to stay there for a long while, before eventually entering into a full time cantankerous state.

I think I’ll sketch out what my idea is for now, for these future books, and then maybe devote some posts to each of them, to show what I’ve been thinking about as I look ahead.  These are the books that – at this point (this could change at any time, like, on Friday) – I think I’d like to write, in this sequence.  The titles will almost certainly change.  This is just what I’m calling them to myself….

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