Poetry lovers are viewed with suspicion. Many years later, when a popular tabloid was trying to convince its readers that they had identified a sexually motivated murderer, their character-assassination Exhibit A was 'He owns over a thousand books, many of them poetry'. So, if you are into poetry or, better still, if this book gets you into poetry, best keep quiet about it...
My mother only has photos taken of her children. Never anything else. I haven't got any photographs of Vinh Long, not one, of the garden, the river, the straight tamarind-lined avenues of the French conquest, not of the house, nor of our institutional whitewashed bedrooms with the big black and gilt iron beds, lit up like classrooms by the red street lights, the green metal lamp-shades, not a single image of those incredible places...
He thought Tehran was also like an addict.
A city addicted to smoke, to humiliation, to poverty and torpor whose slightest effort to sober up gave rise to panic. Tehran was an addict that wanted to get clean but lacked the will, and after several days of sobriety would begin using again with even greater intensity. It was an addiction to oppression, an addiction to poverty, and an addiction to inhibition and nostalgia...
Perhaps he was simply offering to purchase the embroidered cloth? But if so, then why the expression of fear on the young woman's face? Why the young woman's concentration, so brittle and freighted with meaning, as if it were the only rebuff she was permitted to make...
https://www.wikiart.org/en/judith-leyster
This was not a painting of temptation, but rather one of harassment and intimidation, a scene that could be taking place right now in nearly anyplace in the world. The painting operated around a schism, it represented two irreconcilable subjective positions: the man, who believed the scene to be one of ardor and seduction, and the woman, who had been plunged into a state of fear and humiliation.
I would dive into the lake
- immediate, its cobalt reach and
silence - slide down, into the rich,
closed, icy book, blue lipped
in a white rubber cabbage-roses
headdress, and a coral rubber nose-clip,
slow-flitting like an agate-eating
swallow, floating sideways in
the indigo pressure.
... the flames rippled over the pages, catching first the old books with the brown paper whose smell I loved so much. I vividly remember how Danko's Burning Heart was engulfed in flames that then licked at Luce's skirt who, desperately trying to protect herself from the fire in the pages of Romain Rolland's book, held Pierre tightly to her breast...
pickLoved this book, a mix of oral histories from migrants and the memories of those who worked on the island.
They were screening an English film, and she wasn't entirely able to follow the plot, but at least there wasn't much talking. A pretty woman with yellow hair seemed unhappy, despite apparently having lots of money, maybe because she kept getting attacked by birds. Siew Li wasn't sure what she'd done to make the birds angry, but maybe there wasn't a reason, who knows how bird brains work...
She saw them from her window, swarming out of two cars parked just downstairs. All those men coming to get a schoolgirl, she thought, unless there's someone else in this block. But no, they were all hers. They seemed in no hurry, going through all her possessions, writing down the titles of books. "Read so much for what? Will Marx help you find a husband?" jeered one of them....
"The British gave the most trouble..."
The 2024 shortlisted authors are:
Out of Gaza: New Palestinian Poetry
Lana Makes Purple Pizza
The Revolution of 1936–1939 in Palestine
48 Stories of Exile from Palestine
Knights of Cinema: The Story of the Palestine Film Unit
Elastic Empire: Refashioning War through Aid in Palestine
Against Erasure: A Photographic Memory of Palestine Before the Nakba
.... they both look down on the crowd....
[H.G. Wells asks] "You don't think they'll swamp you?" I said. "Now look here," said the Commissioner, "I'm English-born Derbyshire. I came into America when I was a lad. I had fifteen dollars. And here I am! Well, do you expect me, now I'm here, to shut the door on any other poor chaps who want a start with hope in it, in the New World?
From recent research by the Literacy Trust [UK]. (I think, of course for adults too, it's just they only asked the youngsters for this research!)
Their programmes work to give more children access to books and reading.
They're looking for support and volunteers: https://literacytrust.org.uk/reading-for-pleasure/
.
"I know. But I'm taking a huge risk by leaving you in charge of this investigation. If there's another murder, Kyiv will hold me responsible. And if that happens, you're out on your ear. I hope I make myself clear?"
"What's the worst that can happen? They're not going to transfer me somewhere worse than Chernobyl, are they?"
Image via Unsplash (Pripyat, abandoned city)
Well, the catalogue isn't out yet (!) but the art was amazing.
https://www.liverpoolmuseums.org.uk/whatson/walker-art-gallery/exhibition/conver...
pickLives of British artists, their art choices and experiences. At points the archive record is so fragile (or non-existant) this is the focus of the book. It would be even better with colour reproductions of the art but Google was my friend here.
...the objects [in the paintings] communicate Nina [Hamnett]'s admiration of her sitters, and create new measures of value - such as imagination, intelligence and grit - entirely distinct from portraiture's traditional criterion: wealth. Borrowing from Cubist portraiture, Nina painted her sitters with a monumental stillness, as though they were carved from wood or rock; they look capable of enduring any weather, any encounter...
College Street.... a maze of coffee shops and dusty bookstores, where, the tongawallah informed her, customers could sit and read for as long as they wished without buying so much as a pamphlet.
Persis wondered, briefly, what her father would make of such wild generosity; she suspected his heart might literally implode at the thought of his own clientele wantonly thumbing the Wadia Book Emporium's merchandise before leaving without a purchase.
She recalled a lecture delivered by a visiting American economist.... a large, florid man who'd reminded her of a water buffalo, had confidently predicted the end of the Raj.....
He'd underlined his analysis with a colourful remark that had stayed with her: Running a colonial enterprise is like raising an elephant. It's hard work, costs a fortune, and sooner or later the elephant craps on your head.
pickThird in a series ( I'd missed the first two). Liked the Swedish small town setting, and the historical case. Suspect it would have been better had I read the others first though!
The experience she wanted to preserve was that of sitting with a pile of newspapers in a corner alone, her sketchbook open, sipping her cocktail of choice, a crème de menthe frappé.
#NinaHamnett
Since it was something that happened only once a month, or if you were lucky twice, that the moon was completely round and so huge and so close to the earth as if you could touch it, and it made the world so bright as if it was daytime, the villagers felt it would be a crime to waste such a night. The girls were out in the village playground singing.... Boys were sitting by the kraal pretending to be men, telling one another tall tales.
Sorely tempted by these.
"The First Decade Collection is a limited edition series of ten hardbacks celebrating the breadth of Fitzcarraldo Editions‘ publishing over the first ten years. With a run of 1000 copies, each book is casebound in fine linen cloth ..."
https://fitzcarraldoeditions.com/first-decade-collection/
#LotteryWinnersOnly
A night away from home followed by a day off. I could get used to this...
so-soI had no idea she had done so much! No prizes for the writing, but felt honest.
The author had so much to say, and so many amazing pictures of musicians/ activists from the 1950s onwards . #BHM
#Winner
From the judges' comments: “New York City is home to more than 700 languages — ‘the most linguistically diverse city in the history of the world‘ – and by examining them Perlin opens out new ways of thinking about the exuberant variety of these aspects of the urban soundscape, which we might otherwise take for granted or ignore."
https://www.thebritishacademy.ac.uk/news/language-city-wins-the-british-academy-...
Janie stood where he left her for unmeasured time and thought. She stood there until something fell off the shelf inside her. Then she went inside there to see what it was. It was her image of Jody tumbled down and shattered. But looking at it she saw that it never was the flesh and blood figure of her dreams. Just something she had grabbed up to drape her dreams over...
Rather than pretending to know the answers, be there to share your questions. Don't be afraid of saying, "I don't know". We are mudlarkers, walking by the shores of our civilisation, and through the muddle, we find discarded and unloved beauties: shards of ceramic, pieces of lapis lazuli.
5. Trust in the power of words. Both written and spoken, words are magic.
From Elif Shafak's substack.
https://elifshafak.substack.com/
[The Magistrate] himself summed up his own personality rather aptly in the name he bestowed on his library!'
Judge Dee pointed with his fan at the inscribed board that hung over the door. Hoong couldn't help smiling when he read: 'Hermitage of the Vagrant Weed'
I don't mean to blow my own trumpet, but I'm a very fast reader, and good at filtering out gibberish....
Is Ludwig a Litsy member?
#BBC
From the author's afterword.
"We spent every Saturday morning in the library..."
so-soAutofiction centred on a breast cancer journey was never going to be a "light" read...
It's evening. Another day is behind you. Metal, grey, swollen with unspoken words. You're all eating pizza. You and the children.... You think how beautiful they are. How beautiful they are!
You don't think about whether you'll be able to watch them grow up. That thought is forbidden. Unnecessary. Damaging. Your thoughts and words are submitted to controls. Good and acceptable. And the others. The others are immediately censored.
Spring time in Florida is not a matter of peeping violets or bursting buds merely. It is a riot of color, in nature-glistening green leaves, pink, blue, purple, yellow blossoms.... The nights are white nights as the moon shines with dazzling splendor, or in the absence of that goddess, the soft darkness creeps down laden with innumerable scents. The heavy fragrance of magnolias mingled with the delicate sweetness of jasmine and wild roses.
