The majority of this post is a fairly cheerful farewell to ‘What Literature Knows About Your Brain’, for now at least. If you don’t feel the need to read that, and you want to explore the 226 posts that preceded the end, some of which could still prove interesting, please start with the last proper annual review here. There have been some worthwhile posts since then, especially focusing on the subjective experience of remembering, but the main bulk of the blog precedes that last round-up.
GOODBYE AND THANKS FOR READING
Normally, when I come back from holiday, and have been reading and thinking outside my usual boxes, I have some things I want to blog about. This time should be no exception — I have been reading lots of science fiction, and I am interested in the way that SF affords opportunities to explore aspects of cognition. It’s been an important theme underlying lots of posts on this blog, that the most insightful fictional approaches to crucial questions about our minds are not necessarily the most realistic ones.
However, at present, I am not feeling animated by the prospect of blogging, and I am also loathe to carry on with the fits and starts, brief posts punctuated by regrets, that have been characteristic of the last year. I think perhaps the heyday of ‘What Literature Knows About Your Brain’ came when I was working on a big and intractable project, and was grateful for the chance to pin something interesting down, briefly, and finish it. Now I feel like I am working on things that aren’t weighing so heavily, so I am in less need of relief. Alternatively, it could be that the big admin job I am doing is sapping my energies. Probably it’s all this and more.
Anyway, I never wanted this blog to be a burden, so I am going to close it down for now, after nearly six years. I am grateful for everyone who has read a post, and to those who have commented on and off the site. Something like this will probably come back when the time’s right. Until then, bye!
UPDATE November 2019
I am sure I will come back to this blog, but no regrets at present. I have been working on it, though, in a rather gloomy way. After a copyright scare, and realising that I could not prove to myself that all the many images I used as fun section breaks (etc.) were safe to use, I decide to remove pretty much all of them. So, that little bit of visual life I enjoyed putting into so many of these posts… has gone. And some of the formatting too!