Welcome to Litsy!

Lancelyn Green's story-by-story introduction is an informative read, setting the stage for his selection of homages to Holmes. He states that he has been careful to collect stories that are written as serious 'apocrypha' rather than parodies, so I'm hoping for some quality entries 🔎📖
Paganini's violin concertos 1 & 2 seemed an appropriate musical accompaniment 🎻
#BooksAndMusic

“O Rose thou art sick.
The invisible worm
That flies in the night
In the howling storm:

Has found out thy bed
Of crimson joy:
And his dark secret love
Does thy life destroy.“

My day off: done some gardening (unusual behaviour!), now sitting in the shade out of the sun 🌞🌡️🥵 with a light lunch, some Blake poetry and Bowie's Hunky Dory.
I have to admit that my choice of reading was influenced by an excellent #BookmarkMatching opportunity🔖🌹😊

I accidentally matched my bookmark to my book today @squirrelbrain

"I have been obsessed with the ancient world since I was eleven years old, when I began learning about Roman Life at school."
- Introduction

"It's tempting to believe that we no longer need to think about politics." ?
- Chapter 1: Old World Order
#FirstLineFridays @ShyBookOwl

#BookmarkMatching featuring the good old XX Valeria Victrix Legion of the Roman Army, and a souvenir Greek Hoplite helmet from a long-ago holiday to Corfu.

I assume that as a Chair of the Gemmological Association of Great Britain and Curator of Gemstones for the Natural History Museum, Oldershaw is deeply passionate about her subject. I do, however, have to make that assumption as, sadly, there is no passion in her writing.
There's a lot of dryly-delivered facts themed into chapters, but often little connection between one paragraph and the next. There is no sense of wonder about the depths of 👇🏻

Of course, I'll be using a dragon bookmark wit this new read! 😁😆

I've been cat-sitting for my son while he and his partner were visiting friends, and taking advantage of being in the city, I'm having breakfast at Gran T's in Ancoats.
I'm enjoying Gossip from the Forest, with its blend of nature writing & the author's riffs on fairy stories.
It's a two-bookmark-book: the red for the page I'm on, the black for the notes, in, If I do say so myself, an excellent example of #BookmarkMatching 🔖🔖😁
#BooksAndCoffee

I enjoyed Wassef's memoir of balancing private life and co-managing a chain of independent bookshops in Cairo as much as I'd hoped, and more than I expected. I don't think I'd have liked to work for her though!
It was an engaging insight into recent Egyptian society and culture, as experienced by an educated, middle class, liberal woman in a patriarchal and increasingly conservative country.
Although I didn't get to her shop, Diwan, when we ⬇️

I thoroughly enjoyed Helen Wilson's cultural history of the robin. Focusing on the European robin (Erithacus rubecula), it includes the American robin (incongruously Disneyfied into Mary Poppins's London in A Spoonful of Sugar, though not as alarmingly as Dick van Dyke's cockney accent), the Asian magpie robin, & other species unrelated genetically but which have been given the name.
Lots of wonderful photos & illustrations: a quick, light read.

The last book I'll finish in 2024 was Simenon's tale of a marriage marred by family interference, bourgeois suspicions, emotional betrayals and psychological abuse.
Set in the claustrophobic environs of a seagoing freighter, dogged by bad luck and paranoid tensions, it's a bit like the film "The War of the Roses" at sea. The story builds to a climactic sea rescue with inevitable tragic consequences.
⬇️