Before I went to donate blood, I had a browse in a charity bookshop, and I was going to say I hadn't intended to buy anything, which is a flat out lie as I went out of my way to visit! 😁
To be fair to myself, I hadn't intended to make such a large #BookHaul but 13 books for 13 bucks (well, quid)! What could I do? 🤷‍♂️ I'm only human! 😏📚
I'm particularly pleased with the Wyndham🐧s and the Stoker 😀

I'm starting a bit late in the month for July's #ClassicLSFBC pick, but I think I should finish it before August.
I've had this book since 1980 and have started and not finished it three times, but I've kept it as Zelazny is one of my favourite authors. Hopefully, fourth time's a charm! 🍀
@RamsFan1963

I've put my photo of donating blood (🩸🅰️➕) behind a spoiler to protect the squeamish 😊 Mrs. B is one of those and would literally faint if she saw it!
I don't think anybody's yet posted a link to Tony Hancock's classic Blood Donor sketch for the#LitsyBloodDrive, so for those who haven't seen it, here's a little treat:
https://youtu.be/74rXlqx41vc?si=mqOOMKM96vUwaHIE

#NewInternationalist #555 has an article on the police & justice system in #Nigeria, in which is mentioned its execrable ranking at 122 of 125 countries surveyed for the 2023 World Internal Security and Police Index. #Denmark tops the survey, having the most effective and least corrupt police force (as measured), #Venezuela props up the list at the bottom. #UK is 23rd, & #USA at 32nd is reasonable, but not in the top tier for equitable justice.
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I've had H&S (as they preferred to be collectively known 🫠) and Tecumseh for 26 and 24 years respectively, and at 1207 and 509 pages, I have to face the truth that I'm never going to read them. So, they join the #AntiBookHaul ranks, and I've created space for four other books to come out of floor stacks and onto a shelf! This feels simultaneously 📚👋😢😮‍💨 and 📚👋😌🏆

"A Nibling's revenge is terrible!"
I want this on either a t-shirt ? or my tombstone ??

Written by Lars Jansson, and the last of the collected comic strips to be illustrated by Tove. Not much to say other than, "It's the Moomins," which is all the recommendation it needs ?? ????

Much as I'm finding Vaneigem's "Contributions to the Revolutionary Struggle..." stimulating and challenging, it's also a bit dry, so having got to a natural break in the text, I'm distracting myself with a volume of Moomin comics by Tove and Lars Jansson.
It opens in winter, with the Moomins preparing for hibernation, but, of course, their slumbers are interrupted by a succession of demanding guests seeking shelter from the snow! ?️❄️?

"Don't you find it odious and absurd to make any distinction between immigrant and home-born workers?
In that case you have realised that the old adage about "proletarians having no home land" remains perfectly true and should be borne in mind constantly to ward off the shit of nationalism and racism."

#AntifaBookClub

"Haven't you already taken part in pilfering from a distribution factory, ie, a supermarket?
In that case, you have come to understand that individual re-appropriation of goods stolen by the State & the employer class merely feeds the commodity process until it becomes a collective action & leads to total liquidation of the system, however...it is not enough to just repossess goods. One must also repossess the time and space stolen from us all."

There is a rumour that Russell was with British Intelligence during WWII and involved in Operation Mincemeat and other subversive projects, though there is no actual evidence for this. This sci fi novel detailing the disruptive campaign of an agent provocateur on an alien planet (a thin disguise for wartime Japan) was published a year or so after Operation Mincemeat was made public, so perhaps that's how the rumour started.
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#ZineHaul #ZineMail #AntifaBookClub 🏴

Three little tracts to read, plus a flyer for the Anarchist Book Fair on 8 November 25 at The People's History Museum, Manchester.
1: Radical Companionship, on anti-speciesism and how we might relate to animals in ways that respect their lives.
2: What About the Rapists?: Some responses to common criticisms of non-carceral justice systems.
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"He ambled into the room, sat in the indicated chair, and said nothing."

#FirstLineFridays @shybookowl

#BookMail
Terry Pratchett said of Wasp by Eric Frank Russell that "I can't imagine a funnier terrorists' handbook," which is quite a recommendation!
Written in 1957, it describes a one-man dirty tricks campaign to undermine the power base of an alien empire with which earth is in conflict.
My edition is a 1968 Panther with a cool cover design that I imagine has nothing to do with the contents, but which has drawn me in, nonetheless! ?

"Haven't you ever felt like giving up reading the newspapers and putting your foot through the television?
In that case, you have come to appreciate that the press, radio and television are the crassest vehicles for the lie...We subsist amid a forest of images with which we are driven to identify. We act less & less for ourselves and more & more as puppets of abstractions that direct us according to the laws of profit and power."
#AntifaBookClub

"Has it ever happened that, outside your place of work, you have felt the same distaste and weariness as you do inside the factory?
In that case, you have come to understand that the factory is all around us...It is the time and space of our everyday subsistence. It is becoming accustomed to repetitive moves and suppressed emotions."
#AntifaBookClub

I'm working hard to not just transcribe whole pages from this 1974 Situationist tract.

"Haven't you ever, just once, felt like turning up late for work or felt like slipping away from work early?
In that case, you have realised that time spent working is time doubly lost because it is time doubly wasted - as time which might be more agreeably spent making love, or day-dreaming, on pleasure or on one's hobbies: time which one would otherwise be free to spend however one wished - as time spent wearing us down physically & nervously."

This is one of the categories into which the Dewey Decimal Classification puts this book:
616.85882:
Technology> Medicine & health>  Diseases> Diseases of nervous system and mental disorders> Miscellaneous> Personality, sexual, gender-identity, impulse-control, factitious, developmental, learning disorders, violent behavior; mental retardation> Mental retardation; developmental and learning disorders> Autism

I have so many issues with this! 🤬

"I almost wish we were butterflies and liv'd but three summer days - three such days with you I could fill with more delight than fifty common years could ever contain."
- John Keats to Fanny Brawne

While reading some of Keats' poetry this morning, I was visited by these four butterflies: Speckled Wood (top left); two mating Gatekeepers (top right: I think they were more focused on each other!); and a Large White. And some water lilies ???

Sitting with John by a fish-filled, butterfly-haunted pool before the day's workshops begin 🐟🦋

I loved this! 5🔎😊

I think that most Holmes aficionados would find something of interest here, and personally I enjoyed all the essays, though they're probably not for casual readers of the stories (apologies if that sounds elitist - it does in my own ears!)
The chapters examine a variety of themes including colonialism and Holmes's cultural role in defending and normalising the moral threat to Victorian society of its perpetration of the ⬇️

"Israel, the US's rogue proxy in the Middle East with it's own agenda, initiated the current East by attacking Iran with the declared aim of physically preventing it acquiring the nuclear bomb."

Feels like #1451 of the #SocialistStandard is going to be heavy! ?
#AntifaBookClub

I've always felt that counselling is a radical, political endeavour, rather than a "There, there, poppet" tea-and-sympathy stereotype, and the tagged book was a key text for me when I was a student counsellor.
I'm excited for the workshop detailed in the pic this afternoon at the conference I'm attending: The Person-Centred Approach: Is it Political? Does it Matter?
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I'm attending a weekend conference in Derbyshire and, not feeling the necessity of checking my ticket, I've arrived at 8:30 for a 9:00 start, but it actually kicks off at 11:00! 🤦🏻‍♂️
Oh, well, there's worse ways of spending a couple of hours than sitting in a conservatory with a book and a coffee 📖☕😌

Is there such a thing as an #AntiBookHaul ?

I've taken a deep breath and I'm taking these to my local National Trust second hand book room in order to make space on my shelves for books I want to keep.
(When I say "space on my shelves," I actually mean "marginally reduce the height of the piles of books stacked on the floor," but let's not pick nits!)

“Look for the silver lining
Whene'er a cloud appears in the blue
Remember, somewhere the sun is shining
And so the right thing to do
Is make it shine for you“ 🌤️

🎺🎙️Chet Baker
🎵 Look For The Silver Lining
💿 Chet Baker Sings
📝 Jerome Kern
▶️ https://youtu.be/SpRvuVOCJac?si=Y6t-yyImp2FdShgi

#TuesdayTunes @TieDyeDude

A little cheese, bread and olive platter while I read a Holmes essay and start on a set of short stories about the Bangladeshi capital, Dhaka.
Musical accompaniment by Talking Heads, entertainment by Skye, who is alternately hunting my cheese and a vocal little robin, who is fully aware of what she's up to! 🐦‍⬛🐈‍⬛🧀

"It seems that somehow the hearts of human beings and trees are connected."

- The Princess and the Nutmeg Tree ??❤️?

#FirstLineFridays @shybookowl

"The ghost stories and strange tales that make up this book are set in the ancient Japanese province of Shinshu, or Shinano (now Nagano Prefecture), located in the center [sic] of Japan's main island of Honshu, a region intersected by three mountain ranges, mist-covered streams and a number of large and fast-flowing rivers."

At about ½ way through, the blurb descriptors of spine-chilling, spooky & terrifying ??

"You are not the sum of the things you do wrong
In the eyes of someone who does not understand you" ❤️

? Kae Tempest
?Statue in the Square
? Self Titled
?️ https://youtu.be/aTDOFaAcEyc?si=V1GW3C_ZrO9B9FLw

I pre-ordered Kae Tempest's new album, Self Titled, with an accompanying zine (so this counts as a book post, yeah? ?), which arrived today, and it is excellent! ✊??️‍⚧️?️‍?

StoryGraph highlighted two perennial favourites in my June summary: one of the Sherlock Holmes short story audios I'm listening to on BBC Sounds, and a '50s Folio Society edition of FitzGerald's The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám.
Cats in Spring Rain is a neat book of new translations of cat-themed haiku paired with classic Japanese artworks featuring felines. What's not to love?😻

The blurb says that these are traditional stories of yokai, spectral apparitions of varied kinds, which Wada retells in "spine-chilling" & "terrifying" fashion ?
Some I'm partially familiar with (the Snow Woman, the kappa, & the tengu ?) but I'm hoping to encounter lots of ghosts that are new to me ?
The book is copiously illustrated by the author's daughter, Haruna Wada, who really deserves a cover credit.
I think I'm going to enjoy this one!

"In 2017, President Trump signed an Executive Order banning people from 7 Muslim-majority countries - Iran, Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Somalia, Sudan & Libya - from entering the US for 90 days...The writers were asked to develop a fictional response to Trump's discriminatory ban.
Reading can be an escape, something transportative that takes you to different countries & states of mind. It can take you to all the places that Trump doesn't want you to go."

I was pleasantly surprised by Taylor's book, enjoying it more than I'd anticipated. It combines her accounts of travels in the Scottish Highlands to spot wildcats in their natural environment with details of their evolutionary and cultural histories, their conservation status and the efforts being made both to save them and, sadly, exterminate them, the latter more through negligence and indifference, perhaps, than intent.
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#CatsOfLitsy #Skye

“Heading back, a couple of cars and a van have joined our own in the small carpark, and standing beside the van is a man with waist-length dreadlocks, a beard and a camera with a very long lens... He turns to us as we approach, ambles over, and we get talking. It's quickly evident that this man, Hamza, is highly knowledgeable about the peninsula and its wildlife, and he's soon advising us...When I mention wildcats, he goes quiet... 👇🏻

This is most of the rest of my holiday #Bookhaul 📚I really should stop now! 😏

• Vol. 5 of Jansson's Moomin comic strip
• Short stories with an existentialist theme
• A pamphlet on anarchism
• A J.B. Priestley memoir
• An illustrated book of Japanese demon tales
• How the Greek tragedies can inform the modern experience of depression and suicide
• A feminist perspective on women in Greek myth
• Korean aboriginal folklore and memoir
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"Sherlock Holmes has a fair claim to being the most immediately and widely recognisable fiction character in English literature, even if this recognition often depends on mythologised versions of Doyle's texts."

#FirstLineFridays @ShyBookOwl

As well as the heritage breed soay sheep 🐏 and replica Bronze and Iron Age roundhouses 🛖 at Flag Fen, they do have a small selection of books in the visitors' centre, so I picked up a couple by two of my favourite TV archeologists: Tamed by Alice Roberts, who unaccountably hasn't including cats in her list of ten species 🤷🏻‍♀️ (but I'm kvetching), and Paths to the Past by Francis Pryor, who actually discovered and excavated the Flag Fen site.

On the last day of our holiday in Cambridgeshire, we visited Flag Fen archeological site, where a Bronze Age wooden ritual causeway was found preserved in situ, and which was fascinating to learn about. However... [1/3]

@TieDyeDude I saw this poster advertising evening bat spotting tours on the River Cam and immediately thought of you! 😄🦇🚣🏻‍♀️

I went to the Cambridge University Bookshop yesterday, which prides itself on inhabiting the oldest bookshop site in Britain & being the oldest publisher in the world, so fine credentials!
I picked up the Sherlock Holmes number in their critical series "The Cambridge Companion to...", which I've seen reviewed as dry and academic, so sounds like my kind of book ?
The first essay is on the history of detective fiction & Doyle/Holmes' place in it.

A book I did buy from The Haunted Bookshop, Cambridge is yet another edition (my twentieth) of the Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám by Edward FitzGerald.
This is a 1955 Folio Society edition, different to the other, later edition I have by them.
This one is bound in red brocade with a gold and silver floral pattern, and comes in a gold-paper covered box, rather than the gold slipcase of the later edition. Small, but perfectly formed 💖

The Haunted Bookshop in Cambridge! 👻📚👻

I'm haunted by the books I didn't buy in there! 🧐

While visiting Ely, we're visiting Cambridge, and I could spend the rest of my life in the Fitzwilliam Museum!

Picked up a couple of books, and a couple of bookmarks. (Not my only #BookHaul 📚 don't tell! 🤫)

We're in Ely as our son recently moved here and we've come to visit. Mrs B. has booked us into a lovely B&B above a tea shop, which is full of little book nooks! 😍📚
Coffee and cake upon arrival (I had vegan lemon and lavender, Mrs. B had mocha), and a shufty at the shelves.
We had a stroll up the high street and I popped my head into a perfect Toppings and Co. bookshop - proper visit tomorrow, and a tour for any others I might find 😊

"Timing a trip to look for Scottish wildcats is difficult in a way, but in another way it's not: no matter what time you go, you're almost guaranteed not to see one."

About halfway through, and I'm really enjoying this book ?
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The lovely Aubrey Beardsley frontispiece and title page of Beatrice Clay's retelling of Arthurian stories.
Although written for older children of the Edwardian era, and therefore removing certain "unsuitable" elements, it's not as moralistic as I'd feared it might be. Her afterword about knightly privilege being predicated on exploitation and enslavement of peasants is rather forward-thinking. 4.75 ?

Skye does *not* pose for photographs! I had to edge as close as she'd tolerate to take this. She's not a wild "Highland Tiger", but she doesn't mess about either. She is often playful, but absolutely on her own terms. We're loving getting to know her idiosyncrasies? #Caturday
The book is about the natural history of and conservation efforts for the Scottish wildcat, of which few now survive that aren't hybridised with domestic cats ?

Last post (I promise!) about my walk today in & around the former Roman fort town of Ribchester.
The White Bull pub has a 1707 construction date, but the pillars in the portico are Roman, recovered from the River Ribble.
Lots of wildlife, including ducks & beautiful damselflies by the river, with a nice shady path through some woods.
The distant view of Pendle Hill, where I walked last week, I sighted just before I lost the route!
#WednesdayWalks

Second Refreshment! A pot of Earl Gray tea and summer berry crumble with custard, before I drive home. At a lovely tea shop / cafe /gift shop, Potter's Barn in Ribchester.
#WednesdayWalks