I picked up this nicely illustrated Dickens short story today, "Doctor" being the MCs given name, after the physician shown on the cover delivering him by the roadside.
Marigold is a "cheap jack", a name for a pedlar I've not come across before. This is one of several stories, or "prescriptions" (3 by Dickens), featuring Marigold, written by various authors & published in the Christmas 1865 number of "All the Year Round". Mine is a 1945 edition.

"We want nothing more than to be treated as human beings worthy of the same respect and dignity as those who are neurotypical."
#TransRightsReadathon
The authors recruited 10 trans autistic people to participate in a qualitative research study designed to foreground their lived experience, rather than treat them as objects of enquiry.
As an academic book, the accounts are given third-person, have a summary of each chapter, then a conclusion ⬇️

"NIHIL DE NOBIS, SINE NOBIS [Nothing about us, without us]
We wrote this book because we've noticed that while there is an increasing amount of research on the subject of gender identity and autism, there is distressingly little from the perspective of transgender and autistic people themselves."
#FirstLineFridays @ShyBookOwl
#TransRightsReadathon

#TransRightsReadathon πŸ³οΈβ€βš§οΈ
I've finished reading the first of the ten chapters, Alex, a Canadian non-binary person of Jewish faith. Despite having to deal with professional medicalising of both their trans & autistic traits, Alex says they are lucky to have had an accepting & supportive family & rabbi. I was interested to learn that Judaism traditionally recognises six genders and that movement between those genders, to some degree, is accepted.

I'm reading "Trans and Autistic: Stories from Life at the Intersection" for #TransRightsReadathon ?οΈβ€βš§οΈ
As I'm back at work this week, it's unlikely I'll get to read more than this one book for the challenge. It's a series of summarised interviews with trans and autistic people, presenting their voices rather than talking about them as objects of study. It helps that the authors are both trans, neurodiverse academics.
@IndoorDame @TheBookHippie

"That day Etsuko went to the Hankyu department store and bought two pairs of wool socks."

A commonplace opening line, but I felt captured by this book in the first couple of pages. I'm hoping Mishima keeps it on a similar tack.

#FirstLineFridays @ShyBookOwl

Well, it strikes me that all of the children are dead. They've died from some childhood infection, probably a chill caught from having the window open late at night, Peter Pan is the psychopomp guiding their souls into the afterlife, and a desolated Mary Darling sits in the silent, empty nursery imagining the adventures of her dead children, while her husband quietly loses his mind to grief.
It's dark πŸ–€

"To die will be an awfully big adventure!"

Last book purchase of our break is another children's classic I haven't read: Peter Pan. Visiting Dumfries before setting off for home, we went into Moat Brae, the house belonging to Barrie's childhood friends, where they played the imaginative games which formed the seeds of the book. I guess I had to get a copy while we were here! πŸ§šπŸ»β€β™‚οΈπŸ΄σ §σ ’σ ³σ £σ ΄σ Ώ

Spiegelman starts by showing what a difficult man his dad was to live with, then unfolds the trauma he experienced of surviving the Holocaust, which doesn't excuse all of his later bad behaviour, but certainly explains it. I found that personal story as affective, in its smaller way, as his father's account of the Nazi genocide. 5⭐

I think I'm usually pretty good at picking out books I'll like, but the last few have been so-so to awful, so I'm falling back on the trustworthy Simenon to get me back on track. Cider, snacks and a compilation of cover versions of classic rock, pop and soul done by New Wave acts of the late 70s to mid 80s. Feeling settled and content ☺️

Meh.

Swathes of factoids that might be gleaned from Wikipedia, padded out with a chunk of the Middle English poem "The Owl and the Nightingale", and with a couple of nods to "intelligent design" and creationism, I was underwhelmed and won't be bothering with anything else by this author. 2.5⭐

Lovely owl sketches by Beci Kelly, though.

"... evolved (or designed) ..."
Ok, just UNtagged this book as science ???
I'll keep it as non-fiction for now, but I'll be watching like a hawk! ?

Found a lively bookshop in Kirkcudbright today, Gallovidia Books, and came away these 😌
I thought I was going to read Maus next, as I haven't read it yet and this feels like a big omission, but I've read some heavy books recently, so I'm going to read about nature's silent killers - I mean nature's cute, fluffy feather-balls - instead πŸ¦‰πŸ˜Š

Picked this up somewhat randomly from an antique shop (not sure a publication date of 1993 is actually antique!), and found it rather beguiling.
I don't subscribe to the "show don't tell" rule (who makes up these rules, anyway?), and this is mostly told to the reader as if by an oral storyteller, with repetitions typical of traditional tales.
It's a story of travel, romance, exoticism & eroticism, told quietly, unaffectedly and with poignancy. 4?

#ReadingTheAmericas2023 #USAπŸ‡ΊπŸ‡² #Mexico πŸ‡²πŸ‡½
A quick read despite its 423 pages, and it has fantastic artwork with a cinematic feel.
The narrative is necessarily abridged, even in this tome of a book, and while it is sympathetic to Che and his ideals, it's not a hagiography as Che is shown personally executing people in the field of combat, and ordering executions when in power.
It was an interesting read for me, coming shortly after finishing ⬇️

Against expectation, I was delighted to find a bookshop in the small town of Dalbeattie, and moreso to find it had a good selection of titles (even if one of those is amongst my lowest-rated books: "Dongarusalem", ? I'm looking at you!).
"Che" is a graphic-bio, which I'm going to read next.
"Arthurian Poets: Robinson" is an early 20thC collection I've not come across before, which I hope to be good?
Mishima's "Thirst for Love" sounds like a ⬇️

5⭐ for counter-culture eco-activism, -10⭐ for praising David Icke "for being a great teacher", for using the conspiracy theorist comparison of people with sheep ("sheeple" not actually used, but was illustrated more than once), for using the conspiracy theory that the royal family are Alien Reptiles, & for a whole poem dedicated to moon-landing denialism.
I thought that at the discounted price of Β£1.50, I couldn't waste my money, but I was wrong.

Meh 🫀 It was ok. I was expecting to be blown away, and was mildly disappointed. There were some lines I liked, but I'm clearly not seeing the depths others find here. I'll reread it sometime to see if I can plumb anything more profound, as undoubtedly it's me, not Pablo. 3⭐
I'll read something else by an author from #Chile to do justice to my #ReadingTheAmericas2023 challenge.
@BarbaraBB @Librarybelle

#ReadingTheAmericas2023 #Chile πŸ‡¨πŸ‡±
On the way to Scotland for a few days. Naturally, it's pissing down, but as I've prepared for that eventuality with a massive stack of books & a bottle of whisky, I won't mind staying in, or getting soaked & wrapping up afterwards, as the case may be πŸŒ§οΈπŸ“šπŸ₯ƒ
Mrs B is driving while I read. Soundtrack has included The Proclaimers, Aztec Camera & Paolo Nutini for 🏴󠁧󠁒󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 solidarity, but Elvis is on now 🎢

#ReadingTheAmericas2023 #DominicanRepublic πŸ‡©πŸ‡΄
This had Philip K. Dick feels, with relatively ordinary people getting drawn into mind bending situations, perceptual time/reality slips, and fluidity of personality and body. It takes in politics, art theory, climate catastrophe, challenges a Eurocentric scientific worldview with Afro-Caribbean spirituality, and centres trans experience in the MC.
⬇️

"Depressed heartbreak is rarely disruptive or demanding or loudly eccentric. Depressed heartbreak is like taking a step into death while looking like you have remembered how to behave. I think this tells us something about the half-deadness this world [under late capitalism] demands of us. Learning to go through the motions and not hope too much."

[heavy sigh 😞]
I wish I could go within a mile of a bookshop and not feel compelled to go in and buy like I'm living to 200 years old πŸ˜”
(This, and other lies I tell myself πŸ˜πŸ“š)
#BookHaul

This cocktail is not in the tagged book, and isn't inspired by the pictured book, which just happens to be what I'm reading while drinking, so there's no real bookish justification for this post ??‍♂️
Anyway, it's inspired from the Karen's Diner menu, where Mrs B thinks she would fit right in as a member of staff: Vodka, Triple Sec, Lime Juice, Apple Juice, known as an "Are You Taking the Piss". Sweet, sharp and fruity, just like Mrs B! ??

β€œIn common with other bookish types, I have always existed partly in the shadows. Skulked around the edges of things. Chosen quiet times and deserted places. Enjoyed the gloomy nooks and crannies of life. Maybe assumed that this was true for everyone and learned to have just enough of a daytime public face to pass, while I retreated into my own elsewhere. And this was something I always enjoyed: the ability to maintain a secret elsewhere life."

"Heartbreak is an elastic kind of pain."

#FirsLineFridays @ShyBookOwl

#BookMail My Hajar Press subscription book arrived today, this one being (as far as I can tell before reading it) a series of meditations on collective grief by a sociologist and "one of the leading academics on race". Which sounds very worthy and, possibly, dry, but having a riffle through it looks rather personal and emotive.?
Hajar ask their authors to give a playlist to their work, and this one is rather encouraging: Spotify link in comments.

Waiting for Mrs B to have an eye test, popped out for a coffee, tempted by the breakfast bagel! β˜•πŸ₯―πŸ“–
#BooksAndCoffee #BooksAndBagels

#ReadingTheAmericas2023 #DominicanRepublic ??
I got this for the challenge, noting it's sci-fi, post-apocalypse, dystopian, time-travel with a trans MC, which was all promising. What I didn't look at before buying was reviews, which flag gory horror and graphic sex, which are not in my bailiwick - the fact I thought the word "bailiwick" is probably an indicator of just how far out of mine it's likely to be!? I'll just have to gird my loins!

This absolutely unreliable narrator is a blend of that from Poe's "Tell-Tale Heart", Dostoevsky's Underground Man and Raskolnikov from "Crime and Punishment", and Meyrink's Pernath from "The Golem". He utterly objectifies his whole perceptual world: things have significance only in how they relate to him, and those relationships are a repetitive cycling of elements in varying but finite combinations.
⬇️

Wow! Loads of music to discover with this tag #IndependentWoman 😊🎢😌
Here's my offering:
https://open.spotify.com/playlist/1WM1fCJmHWz8allWdVg1EB?si=5IL27o7JTlKFEW9jkhKv...

#BooksAndMusic

"Apparently, each person has several faces. Some constantly wear only one of these masks, which naturally becomes stained and furrowed. This group is frugal. Some reserve their masks only for their own affairs. Others constantly change their faces but as soon as they get old, they realise they are wearing their last mask, which soon becomes frayed and broken, then their true faces emerge from underneath the final mask.”

β€œThere are people whose agony of death starts in their twenties, whereas many others, at the moment of death, gently, slowly, snuff out, like a tallow-burning lamp that has run out of oil.”

Apologies for a somewhat grim Saturday-morning quote, though, I guess, depending on your engagement with mortality, it's possibly comforting.

"In life there are wounds that like termites, slowly bore into and eat away at the isolated soul."

#FirstLineFridays @ShyBookOwl

This was an impulse buy - it's got "Owl" in the title and I'm a bit of a strigiphile, so...???
Also, it's surrealist, psychological and was banned by the Shah of Persia, unbanned by the succeeding Iranian government, who then banned it again, presumably after reading it themselves and thinking, "Oh, shit! No!" It's short, so worth a bit of time. ?

#ReadingTheAmericas2023 #Brazil ??
Souza LeΓ£o's autobiographical novel of his experience of forced institutionalisation for schizophrenia in a Brazilian psychiatric "hospital" is harrowing & insightful, sad & funny, raw & tender, coarse & literate. Self-loathing is part of the sadness in reading his story, & there's a lot of fatphobic language directed at himself, as well as scatological imagery & institutional abuse. It's beautiful, too. ❀️‍?

"I had moments of lucidity. They were few, but I had them. Sometimes the drugs did work. But there were people who didn't get better, even with the medicine. What good is hospitalisation, then? To gather together the human debris."

"My God! Fundamentalists are taking over the world. They're even coming here to recruit the utterly fucked. Religion nowadays just fucks with people."

- Rodrigo de Souza LeΓ£o

"If you don't suffer, you're not alive. If you're alive, you eat French fries. It's a good thing there are always French fries to ease the burden." ?
- Rodrigo de Souza LeΓ£o

"All Dogs are Blue is a comic modernist novel about being messed up - and then being messed up even more by numbing doses of pharmaceuticals."
From the introduction by Deborah Levy.

The story of a Brazilian man diagnosed with schizophrenia and his treatment in a psychiatric facility, written from the author's perspective of having lived those experiences. From the bits I've scanned, I have high hopes for this one.

#ReadingTheAmericas2023 #Colombia πŸ‡¨πŸ‡΄
As a work of literature this is a brilliant evocation of colonial decline, religious zealotry & the warping of character by dogmatism. Whilst empathy for most of the characters is possible, only two, the abused child & the atheistic Jewish doctor, approached likeability, the former from compassion, the latter from sympathy.
Why, then, having conjured an enthralling scenario, does MΓ‘rquez introduceπŸ‘‡(TW abuse)

I got this slightly battered 1975 book of 19th C. plays yesterday: "The Hour of One: Six Gothic Melodramas". The inside flap of the dust jacket shows its original pleasant shade of gangrene.
Contents include "The Castle Spectre" by Matthew "Monk" Lewis; "The Vampire", featuring Lord Ruthven in an adaptation of Polidori's novel, "Frankenstein or the Man and his Monster", & "The Flying Dutchman", featuring the excellently-named Captain Peppercoal!?

As I had to wait for the second-hand bookshop to open, I whiled away some time looking in a charity shop, where I picked up a copy of WitW, which is a glaring hole in my reading record. I also popped into Action Records, where I found Belle and Sebastian's latest, an old Beck disc of remixes from his Guero album, and a compilation of Courtney Barnett EPs πŸΈπŸ€πŸ“—πŸ’Ώ
#BooksAndMusic

Having serendipitously found a copy of The Further Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, which has been on my wishlist for decades, more due to forgetfulness than it being hard to find, I decided to treat myself to a chippy lunch: Pie, chips and gravy with a mug of strong black tea

Halewood's isn't a shop you go into hoping to find the books you want, it's a shop you go into hoping to want the books you find! πŸ“šπŸ“šπŸ“šπŸ“š This is a relatively uncluttered patch of flooring. It's a health and safety nightmare, but I love it 😊

@LeahBergen Just in case you prefer not to follow links into the Wild Internet 😊 I wonder if this was the book cover you were thinking of?

Of the paintings I'd never seen before when I visited the Lady Lever Art Gallery, this is my favourite. It's by Gerald Leslie Brockhurst, titled "Jeunesse Doree" (Gilded Youth), painted 1934. The model, Kathleen Woodward, later became his second wife, there apparently being some overlap with his first wife ?

Being required to take my remaining annual leave before April, I used a day to visit the lovely Lady Lever Art Gallery on the Wirral, and naturally came away with a book. This is one in a series of catalogues I have from museums for exhibitions I didn't see!
I did, however, see some of my favourite Pre-Raphaelite paintings, including Burne-Jones's The Beguiling of Merlin and Holman-Hunt's The Scapegoat. 🎨😌🎨

"Veined and lustrous, ringed with pearl and azure,
With amber flecked, and orange and black,
Marvellous is the house of his abiding,
The curved, frail mansion on his glistening back."

- "The Snail"
#PoetryMatters #snail @TheSpineView
A re-post, but it fits the tag ??
There's a wonderful reading of the full poem here: https://youtu.be/HsSACOVsCdA

#ReadingTheAmericas2023 #Colombia πŸ‡¨πŸ‡΄
I haven't read Marquez before, but Mrs. B has and says I'll probably enjoy him. I was going to read Love in the Time of Cholera for this part of the challenge, but I came across this in a second-hand book shop today, and it's less than half the number of pages, so... πŸ˜πŸ“– If I like it, I'll see about squeezing the other book in.
@Librarybelle @BarbaraBB

Late entry for #ReadingAfrica2022 #Angola πŸ‡¦πŸ‡΄ @barbarabb @Librarybelle
4⭐I enjoyed how Agualusa introduced small incidents which became significant later on, providing multiple perspectives of the same episode to build a fuller understanding of the intersection of different lives. However, I often forgot which perspective belonged to which character, though that's more due to my own concentration issues rather than any problem with the writing.